Hey folks. This is our first challenge.

During the quarantine, i was toying around with some saves when following David’s page, this idea came up. I thought the Arsenal one was quite interesting and here we are then.

I loaded the English, Scottish & Spanish leagues.

This is the squad we begin with

As you may see, there are way too many defenders and some midfielders than I don’t plan to use. Hopefully offers for these players will come soon, and with the space created we can bring some interesting names.

Time goes by and we are arriving at the start of our road in the Premier League without any offers as of yet.

It’s August, 9th. We skipped pre-season for the time being and we go straight to the first match. It’s time to set up the tactic.

I’m trying something new for me this time. I’ve had some degree of success in lower divisions with this one, and I’m going to give it a shot. It’s a small variation of the 4231 direct with two midfielders pushing diagonally upfront instead of going backwards.

It looks like this:

Game 1

Southampton 0 – Arsenal 4

A very promising debut against the Saints. Not a great display of accuracy (we had 7 shots on target from 19 total), but we managed to outclass Southampton and put 4 goals past them

Game 2

Arsenal 3 vs Crystal Palace 1

Lineup changes:

Marc Overmars in the right forward slot, and Paulo Vernazza as a sub.

Emphatic win against Crystal Palace. We absolutely dominated the game until the 70^th minute of the game where they woke up and started to retaliate, managing to score a goal at the closing stages of the game.

Game 3

Liverpool 1 vs Arsenal 4

Our first big test of the season. Let’s see how we do here.

What can i say? Honestly expected a closer match but Wright upfront is absolute bonkers. We held Liverpool to just 2 shots on our goal.

 Game 4

Arsenal 4 – Barnsley 1

Sluggish start, we go to half-time with a 0-0 draw. After Bergkamp netted a goal, all hell broke loose and the goals started raining in.

Game 5

Newcastle 0 – Arsenal 3

Solid victory in St.James’ Park. We had a lot of chances but after we subbed in Anelka for Ian Wright, the doors opened and we managed to finish the game. Nicolas rewarded us with a goal in the 74^th minute of the game. 5^th victory in a row

Game 6

Arsenal 3 – Blackburn Rovers 1

Due to international U-21 matches, Boa Marte and Manninger won’t be able to play.

Lineup changes:

Marc Overmars to the left and Vernazza will play on the right.
Lukic will be the sub GK for this one.

Despite the changes, we dispatch Blackburn with relative ease. A great performance overall. Lincoln’s goal was the first chance they had in the game up to that point.

Game 7

Leeds United 0 – Arsenal 2

This one was a little more even than the rest of our games so far. It was a weird game for Ian Wright, who had 3 opportunities and he wasn’t able to net neither of them. Therefore, I felt it was time to give Anelka some playing time (also in came Ray Parlour for Vernazza and Barrett for Garde).
Within 3 minutes, Anelka closed the lid on the game and we won it 2-0.

After this match, it’s a wrap-up for this first episode.

Join me soon for another episode of this save with Arsenal. See ya 🙂