The Gunners are hard at work at their London Colney facility in preparation for the next season.
Arsenal was due to play Everton or Millonarios in Florida on Tuesday but instead found themselves hard at work in London Colney.
The postponement of Arsenal's planned trip to America may have thrown a wrench in their pre-season plans, but it could turn out to be a blessing in disguise for Mikel Arteta.
This provides him more time to work with his players on the practice field, knowing that they are more energized than they would have been if they had taken the nearly 7,000 miles round trip to the States.
DON'T MISS:
The revised schedule also allowed Arsenal to win a morale-boosting 4-1 game against Milwall on Saturday, which was a significantly easier affair than the game against Inter Milan that was intended to be played that day.
It seemed to have lifted moods around the camp, as the Gunners players all appeared to be in good spirits as they practiced in cloudy circumstances at London Colney.
Here are some of the highlights from the session as observed by football.london.
Leno's blushes were spared.
Right now, Arsenal's goalkeeping situation is difficult, to say the least.
The Gunners are still looking for a new goalkeeper to back up Bernd Leno for the upcoming season, despite the fact that Runar Alex Runarsson's loan transfer to Altayspor fell through at the last minute, football.london knows.
However, until they find that player, they will need the German to be at his best, since Arthur Okonkwo has demonstrated in pre-season matches that he is not yet ready to make the move up to the first-team level.
Leno, on the other hand, will be upset that Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang was able to chip him in a one-on-one training session.
Fortunately for him, Arsenal's chief sports scientist Tom Allen was present throughout the drill and made a stunning recovery to head the ball over the bar before it could strike the back of the net.
Playing patterns
Mikel Arteta has been eager to use this preseason to further indoctrinate his team in his preferred style of play.
The Spaniard has been in command for a year and a half, but due to COVID-19 and European commitments, he has had little opportunity to engage with his players on the training field.
One of the most important things he wants to improve is the number of goals Arsenal scores. Last season, the Gunners finished joint tenth in the Premier League in terms of scoring.
He hopes to remedy this by getting his team to create shooting opportunities from better positions, similar to how Pep Guardiola has done at Manchester City.
A shooting exercise in which wide players were encouraged to dribble near the byline before dragging it back for the strikers to finish was an excellent sample of the types of play we may expect at the Emirates next season.
Promotion for a youngster
So far this pre-season, we've seen several kids make an impression on the senior stage for Arsenal.
Arthur Okonkwo, Karl Hein, Omar Rekik, Harry Clarke, Omari Hutchinson, and Jack Henry-Francis are among the most recent players to be promoted to the first team for some of the friendlies.
Miguel Azeez, on the other hand, is a name we're a little more familiar with.
The highly-rated midfielder did not travel to Scotland, but he has been promoted from the under-23s to train with the first squad this summer.
The 18-year-old, with a new haircut and a new number - 36 - celebrated his call-up with a wonderful curled finish during a training session after demonstrating the confidence to demand the ball from Flo Balogun.
DON'T MISS:
No comments:
Post a Comment