The first of two extremely difficult games during the Christmas break is Town’s trip to Arsenal on Friday night (Amazon Prime, KO 8.15pm). Chelsea will visit Portman Road on Monday in an attempt to recover from Saturday’s heartbreaking 4-0 home loss to Newcastle United.
After losing to the Magpies, the Blues, who were two points from safety and in 19th place after the weekend games, put on what may have been their worst performance of the year as they were outplayed from almost the beginning to the end.
Under Kieran McKenna’s management, Town has a history of swiftly recovering from disappointing outcomes and performances. However, they will need to perform at their peak on Friday at the Emirates, where the game was rescheduled from Boxing Day for live TV coverage.
The Gunners have won five and drawn three of their eight games at home, including a scoreless tie with Everton ten days ago. On Saturday, they crushed Crystal Palace 5-1 at Selhurst Park. Their other home draws were a 2-2 point share with Liverpool and a 1-1 draw with Brighton.
If his squad is to win the game, McKenna says they must first enter the game with the correct mindset.
“I believe that we must first demonstrate the proper mindset during the game,” he stated. “I believe it’s an opportunity to demonstrate our unity, spirit, and fortitude.
We will need to demonstrate a great deal of mental toughness. To take them on in the manner that we desire at distinct points in the game, we will need to demonstrate daring at those times as well as have an exceptionally strong organization.
It’s about the mental qualities we’ll need to demonstrate in this game, in my opinion. We discussed that this morning, and on Friday night, we’ll attempt to demonstrate it.
Although playing Arsenal away is definitely a difficult game to recover from after Newcastle’s performance and outcome, McKenna sees benefits to having such a challenging matchup coming up.
Going away to Arsenal is obviously an extremely tough game to play after losing a home game, especially in the way we didn’t want to on Saturday.
It is now our collective responsibility to go and show them on Friday night. I believe it’s a task we’re eager to face and one that we must rise to as a team—the players, staff, and supporters—and then go there and face it head-on, attempt to present a strong case for ourselves, and try to score some points.
The Town manager, who was a player and academy coach across North London at Tottenham, says his team need to try to play their own game at times while they seek to deal with Arsenal’s attributes.
“It’s important for this one, there’s no doubt about it,” he reflected. “Arsenal are obviously an opponent that we have a lot of respect for and we know we won’t have the game all our way and there are going to be long periods of the game where we’re facing a strong opponent and they might have momentum in the game.
“We need to stand up to that and we need to again show resilience. We need to show good organisation.
“But we also need to impose our strengths, bravery and will on them at certain moments and periods in the game. I think it’s going to be very important how we balance them both.”
Quizzed on what he’s most looking forward to from the Arsenal and Chelsea matches, McKenna said: “You kind of get into the flow of it in the season. We’ve been to Tottenham, we’ve been to Man City, we’ve had big games and big clubs. This is another one.
“Each game of this context is a chance to show a real strength of yourself and of the group in a game that no one expects you to be competitive in.
“For us as a staff, it’s to try and come up with a game plan that gives us a chance to be competitive, to convince the players of that and then for the players to go again in a game that they know they’re going to be big, big underdogs in.
“To go there with enough humility to know what the game’s going to look like, but also enough confidence to take the moments when they come, to take the opportunities to impose themselves and to find the belief in there that we can go there and try and get a result.
“They’re a good challenge in that way, a good challenge to show the characteristics within yourself for the staff and the players.”
The Gunners have scored more set piece goals, nine, than any other team in the Premier League and McKenna says he and his staff will be working on how to cope with that threat over the next few days with the players in on Christmas Day morning.
“We’ve still got a few days to go as a coaching staff, we’re working through things, but, of course, the analysts team are well ahead on that set plays-wise,” he said.
“You look at that anyway as a reference to everyone in the league in terms of some of the things that they do, and they’ve been excellent in that phase.
“We’ve got a few more days now to prepare over Christmas. It’ll be a lot of hard work in the next 72 hours and we’ll be as ready as we can be on Friday night for everything that they bring.”
Arsenal will be without Bukayo Saka, the England international having suffered a torn hamstring, which is set to keep him out for some while.
But McKenna knows the Gunners have plenty of other top players and not too many others currently on the sidelines.
“No, he’s certainly not and yes, I don’t think they have many [players out], and there’s no doubt that’s a challenge.
“Apart from maybe [Sven] Botman, who has been out long term, we pretty much faced Newcastle’s first-choice team in good form and I think for us to face them with no injuries would be a big, big challenge. To face them with the injuries and unavailable players that we had on Saturday was just a step too far.
“And we go to Arsenal, and with the same challenge, we have to try and find a way. Of course, they’re going to miss Saka, who is obviously a top, top player, but they have other top players to come in and we have to try and make the best of what we have and the availability that we have and find a way to go and be competitive in the game.”
A year ago when the Blues travelled to Leeds United in a top-of-the-table clash, which they lost 4-0, McKenna pointed out that few of his players had much experience of big ground atmospheres.
Having been to the likes of the Etihad and Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, winning at the latter, does he feel his players are more comfortable in that sort of environment now?
“I don’t think the Emirates will be run of the mill, but it’s probably a worthwhile reflection of a year ago we went to Leeds and that was a step too far for us in terms of the performance we were able to muster on the day,” he said.
“Leeds were the better side, they had more weapons than us and were able to hurt us, and we weren’t able to hurt them.
“So many of the same players now are trying to go to the Emirates or face a top Newcastle side with the same challenge, so it’s a reflection of the journey that we’ve been on.
“I think we have some comparisons to last year in terms of having lost convincingly at Leeds, really, and the group had to stick together, had to stay strong and had to stay positive. A few days later, we played Leicester, and we managed to find a really good response.
“Now, it’s a lot of the same players and it’s Newcastle and Arsenal, so it’s a big jump up, but the same characteristics that we’ve shown to get us to this point are the same characteristics that we have to show in the next game and where that gets us, we’ll see on Friday night.”
McKenna will certainly make two changes to his starting XI with Liam Delap back from his one-match ban and skipper Sam Morsy absent as he serves his.
The Blues boss may also look at the two tough games coming within four days when it comes to naming his team for the trip to North London.
Aro Muric will be in goal with the centre-halves agains likely to be Dara O’Shea and Cameron Burgess. The Blues boss will have to pick between Arsenal old boy Harry Clarke and Ben Johnson at right-back – it seems likely they will play a game each over the course of the weekend – with Leif Davis on the left.
The most likely candidate to replace suspended captain Morsy and Jens Cajuste in the middle of the midfield is Kalvin Phillips; however, Jack Taylor’s performance against Bournemouth and his bench performances, including his game-winning goal at Wolves, have dashed his hopes of starting in the Premier League for a second time.
Conor Chaplin, who will wear the armband in Morsy’s absence, Sammie Szmodics, who filled in as number nine on Saturday, Omari Hutchinson, who is still on four bookings from the Chelsea match—a fifth would result in a one-match ban—and the lone striker Delap of the right could be the three behind the Town manager’s return to the starting lineup.
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