Arsenal face ‘nightmare’ of needing to beat Southampton for Champions League place

Arsenal are ‘sweating’ on Champions League qualification and could face the ‘nightmare’ prospect of needing to beat Southampton to confirm their place.

Lamine machine
Mediawatch is sad to report that Reach headlines have finally entirely eaten themselves. This Manchester Evening News offering is compelling evidence:

‘Marcus Rashford shows true Lamine Yamal colours as Man United watch on’

No-one knows what it means but it’s provocative, it gets the people going. And more importantly it gets ‘Rashford’, ‘Yamal’ and ‘Man United’ in the same conversation, which is otherwise rather difficult.

It turns out it actually means that Rashford ‘has given away what he thinks of Barcelona star Lamine Yamal’. Does he reckon he’s a poor man’s Harry Maguire? Has he gone all Garth Crooks over his hairstyle choices? Does he think Yamal, still technically a child himself, should feed more children?

It is of course that really mundane and meaningless fourth option: Rashford has liked two Instagram posts, one from Yamal himself and another from Rio Ferdinand praising the teenager. Crucially doing so while Manchester United ‘watch on’ while he ‘shows true colours’ over a player no-one had any reason to believe he didn’t like or at least admire before.

READ MORE: Arsenal ‘dream’ fights main character battle vs absurd Barcelona star Lamine Yamal

Sweet dream, or a beautiful nightmare
John Cross, meanwhile, has shown his true colours for the Daily Mirror. And they’re a bit weird really.

‘Mikel Arteta would be taking a huge gamble by resting players against Bournemouth,’ he writes of a ‘nightmare Champions League scenario’ concocted entirely in his own head.

‘In fact, it would be [sic] far greater risk to give them a break rather than play them ahead of the Champions League semi final second leg with Paris Saint-Germain,’ he continues, despite a) no evidence of that actually being true and b) no suggestion Arsenal are planning on sending the kids out to get thrashed this weekend anyway.

There will naturally be a degree of rotation but it feels like professional football manager Arteta might realise the need for balance and rhythm and all that modern coaching chat.

But Cross seems genuinely affronted by the strawman he himself has built. He says ‘you cannot turn performances on and off like a tap’ and Arsenal will be ‘stuffed’ by Bournemouth – one win in their last 11 games – if they roll out the reserves like multi-time Premier League champions Oleksandr Zinchenko or the really quite good Jorginho, for example.

The best bit is the idea that Arsenal ‘will also be sweating on their Champions League place’. They are not mathematically guaranteed a top-five finish, granted, but there is a seven-point buffer to Nottingham Forest in sixth and the teams chasing them are dogged by inconsistency, with some of them facing each other and thus points being unavoidably dropped too.

That is not enough for Arsenal, who could suddenly ‘easily lose their next three games’ – despite not losing three consecutive Premier League games since April 2022 – which would leave them exposed to the truly horrific possibility of ‘potentially needing to win at Southampton on the final day of the season to guarantee Champions League football’.

‘Easy?’ Cross scoffs. ‘Well, that’s the sort of arrogant attitude which would see Southampton fired up to ensure they get points to ensure they don’t finish as the joint worst team in Premier League history.’

And that last thing Arsenal would want to face is a ‘fired up’ Southampton determined not to go down in the record books as historically sh*t.

If that doesn’t petrify Arteta into giving William Saliba, Bukayo Saka and friends a full 90 minutes against Bournemouth, this might:

‘To drop points now would mean Manchester City could easily usurp them for second place.

‘And we’ve spent all season saying that City have had a nightmare season. If they finish below City then it will be a complex after finishing as runners-up to Pep Guardiola two years running.’

Imagine the sheer embarrassment of being usurped for second place. At this point it might be worth advocating for Arteta to sack the second leg against PSG off to focus on the glory of finishing the closest distant runners-up to Liverpool.

Shock and awe
‘Arsenal’s form has been shocking of late’ – John Cross, Daily Mirror.

They have had a few frustrating and careless draws of late, but have also beaten Real Actual Madrid twice in the last month and only narrowly lost to possibly the best team in the world.

Arsenal are sixth in a Premier League form table despite that being a clear and justifiable second in their list of priorities for ages. How ‘shocking’.

Bad share day
Friday’s edition of ‘How to ‘use’ speech marks in “online journalism”‘ takes us to this wonderful headline…

‘Man Utd co-owner Ratcliffe ‘could sell shares in club’ with potential Saudi offers’

…which quotes a phrase not used anywhere else whatsoever in the story body. And how frustrated the Daily Mirror website must have been when it ran out of space to fit ‘Nice’ into the headline, entirely accidentally implying those Saudi-bound shares might indeed be in Manchester United.

I like the way you Zirk it
‘Man Utd player showed true colours with antics after all three goals vs Athletic Club’ – Daily Express website.

Manchester United player Joshua Zirkzee celebrated Manchester United being quite good.