A Review of Arsenal’s Pre-Season So Far

As Arsenal kicked off their pre-season preparations with two comfortable victories in the Far East, Gunner333 gives us a brief overview of the two games and some early observations.

It is not every year that Arsenal are being tipped as the dark horse in the unpredictable rollercoaster that is the Premier League title race, however with the majority of bigger clubs changing manager there is a sense of hope surrounding the Gunners this season.

One particularly useful indicator of a clubs chances in the next campaign is pre-season and so far at least this has been rather convincing for us. Here I will look at the good points I’ve seen in our games against Vietnam and Indonesian All Star XI.

14th July – Indonesian All Stars 0-7 Arsenal

With a fairly strong eleven named for this clash, many expected an easy Arsenal win, but few would have predicted a hammering of this magnitude. We started off well with Theo slotting home Ox’s pull-back, making it 1-0 at the break. Chuba Akpom, a player many Gooners may not have heard of before, then added a second. Our dominant footballing style and superior fitness was then clear for all to see when we added five goals in the final 20 minutes of the game.

Giroud got a brace and Podolski, Eisfeld and Olsson got the other three. If there is one thing we can learn from this game it is that, although we were up against poor opposition, our younger players can perform and hopefully we’ll see some of them get some game time in the cups next year.

17th July – Vietnam 1-7 Arsenal

After that impressive display against Indonesia some pessimistic Arsenal fans may have thought we would have lacked the fitness to continue the form we showed. But what we saw was completely the opposite. We were once again rampant with Giroud improving on his previous two to grab a first-half  hat trick. Oxlade Chamberlain, Podolski, Miquel and two more goals from Akpom secured another comfortable victory.

Despite conceding late on this result along with the previous one should give us some much-needed confidence that a positive season could lay ahead. I personally would like to see Akpom given a chance in the first team squad next year. From what I’ve seen of him he’s a huge talent and one that could blossom if given the opportunity.

Giroud seems to be responding well to the threat of increased competition up front with all the rumours of a new world class striker coming to the club this summer. I think we’re going to see the Frenchman move up a gear next season and improve on a solid debut year in England.

We now have two more games remaining in our Asia tour before we play both Napoli and Galatasaray in the Emirates Cup. Hopefully we’ll have some new signings by then but for now lets continue our impressive early-season form and keep the momentum up heading into the new campaign.

Thanks for reading and feel free to comment below!