With kick-off only 10 days away, I've been thinking about how our squad's shaping up.
GK--I think Cech could still have a solid season in him, better than last year, but if we want to so anything more than challenge for the top 4, one aspect of our improvement has to come from Leno. A lot rests on his shoulders--hope he's up to it.
RB--having both Bellerin and Lichtsteiner is a good situation, two good players fighting for one spot over a long season, and it's possible another facet of our overall improvment could come from Bellerin rediscovering his level of a year or two back.
LB--another position where we have two good options for one spot in the team, there should be very few games this season when we don't have a good player playing at left back, but I don't see as much upside in these two as I do in Bellerin.
CB--Sokratis, Mustafi, Chambers, Holding, Mavropanos. The position that worries me the most. I'm hoping that Sokratis is better than I think he is. Mustafi I have very little time for and don't believe his shortcomings can be excused to a large enough degree by the poor defending of the team overall. Unless Chambers has a much higher level than he's shown previously, or Holding or Chambers can make a quantum leap in their performance level--I think the heart of our defence is going to be a tale of woe that we're very familiar with.
CM--Torreira is the ace in the pack. The remaining options; Xhaka, Elneny, Maitland-Niles and Guendouzi are either not players that fill me with confidence or are too young to be at the level required. And Ramsey still hasn't signed that contract, until he does I'm assuming he'll leave before the window close because I refuse to believe we'd be foolish enough to repeat last summer's mistake.
RM/LM--Özil, Mkhitaryan, Iwobi, Perez, Nelson. I suspect we're going to see a lot of games where Özil is at 10, and when he is wide it'll likely it'll a 3 man midfield behind him which will allow us to play Aubameyang on the other flank.
