Morning folks. Hope you’re enjoying your Arsenal-free weekend? Actually, that’s wrong, because yesterday the Women’s team beat Spurs in a cup game that was shown on BBC 2 and I have to say, I rather enjoyed it, although I suspect that’s because it was an opportunity for us to smash them so that’s always fun. I’m not really a massive fans of women’s football in general, but I am glad they’re getting more game time and hey, football is football, right? I mean, I’d much rather watch that than Antiques Road Trip or Married at first sight.

So the women won, they’re into the next round, it scratched an itch for an hour and a half before dinner. It was also good to get the memory of United skanking another win through a penalty yesterday. Honestly I have no idea how Solskjaer continues to remain as lucky as he is. They were terrible yesterday and should have been battered by Brighton. But somehow picked up the points. Let’s just hope they continue to play that badly because if they do then most of the teams at the top won’t have anything to worry about.

As for today, there’s little on that excites me and if anyone thinks the idea of seeing the Tiny Totts play this afternoon is something I’d entertain, they’d be sorely mistaken. The fawning over the return to England of that long-haired monkey looking gimp doesn’t really appeal to me.

What would appeal to me is to hear more Arsenal news about potential incomings before Monday week, but I doubt I’ll get much of that today as the side prepare for Liverpool at Anfield tomorrow. This morning I’ve been having a little listen to Arteta’s press conference and he’s more than aware of the challenge of facing Liverpool away twice in four days.

It was interesting for him talking about the ‘waves’ of attack we’ll be getting from Liverpool and as opposed to a possession-based opponent like Chelski or Man City, the way in which Monday nights game pans out will be interesting to see how we set up. The fact he’s recognised that Liverpool want to go from front to back is quickly and so I wonder if we’ll see him pick the side with the most athletic ability we have. We need players who can be rapid in transition in thirds through the pitch and to me that’s the likes of Aubameyang, Pepe, also Nketiah through the middle. He was asked about Eddie and of course said nice things, but I do wonder if Monday nights game against the scousers first team would be better for us to play the youngster ahead of Lacazette. I know Lacazette has scored twice, as has Nketiah, but the team tomorrow will be less intensive and certainly less technical in ability, so having a guy who is a hard runner is probably more important than somebody like Lacazette dropping deeper to be more of a link man.

I’ll give more thoughts on the team tomorrow but that’s got me pondering a bit.

He was also asked about Jorginho and the fact both he and Pep were smitten on him when he was at Napoli. He said he didn’t want to talk about other players from other teams – standard manager response – but usually if it’s completely fabricated then usually a manager will just dismiss out of hand. That didn’t happen and certainly that worries me. There is a reason Chelski what to bin Jorginho and if he was such an important player then the noises about them being open to him leaving wouldn’t have even emerged. We need to get out of this idea that we can just pick off the cast offs of other rival teams because they’re not giving us players that they think will make us stronger.

Willian was a different situation because Chelski wanted to keep him but he wanted to go because they wouldn’t give him the security of that extra year that we have. So I can kind of compartmentalise that deal. But Jorginho to Arsenal feels very much like a Benayoun, or a Silvestre-type move, so I hope this rumour dies as quickly as it surfaced.

We need new blood in our midfield, but not that type of new blood, so I hope that we continue with the pursuit of Aouar because that feels like a good move to me. We’ve already have Lyon Chairman Aulas coming out and saying Arsenal’s offer is too low, so we know we’re on the hunt for him and hopefully a second bid comes in. We had to do the same dance with him for Lacazette a few years back so hopefully this is just the opening steps of the transfer waltz with them.

That’s it from me for today. Have a good one and hopefully we see some dropped points from rivals today.

Catch you tomorrow.