In classic ‘Curse of Chris’ fashion after saying yesterday that Arsenal, Arteta and Aubameyang needed to sort out the situation between them quickly and quietly, it all blew up yesterday, didn’t it? We got the confirmation that Aubameyang would not be captain, that he would not be available for the game against West Ham, plus when quizzed on any kind of timelines for a return the manager was equally non-committal on what the future holds for Aubameyang. It’s another dark day for Arsenal and as Arteta put it another ‘sad’ day too, because this situation helps absolutely nobody affiliated with the club whatsoever. The manager is now without a player who would have been used during this busy festive schedule. The player is not playing and will be probably annoyed and frustrated at the whole situation (even if he is to blame). The club have to pay a guy premium wages for somebody they will not use. The fans lose another goal threat (although lately that hasn’t quite been so). His teammates will either feel let down by him, or frustrated with the club/manager because one of their teammates has been publicly outed and probably won’t play for the club again (or sparingly at least). It is a bad look for everyone.

But my biggest worry right now is about the fact this has happened on the eve of a game and what it will do to the morale and performance of the team. This could go one of two ways:

  1. The team is frustrated, let’s it affect them, we start to drop points as the soap opera that is Arsenal and our season becomes derailed as a result of this turmoil (great for the Amazon documentary series though who will be rubbing their hands together at some mid-season drama like this
  2. The team become galvanised as a unit and pull together to get the job done over this festive period, leaving us in a good position going in to the new year and a little bit of hope that we can still have a successful season even possibly without Aubameyang.

I genuinely fear number one here. Elite sport is about fine margins. It is about finding marginal gains and having every bit of competitive edge you can get. And football is often so much about fine margins. Think about the amount of times we’ve talked about the fitness of players and them being just a little bit off their game, leading to underperformance in some manner. Now take the fact your captain, probably one of the most liked guys in the dressing room, being told to stay away from the training ground. Auba will be mates with loads of those players and as we’ve seen with this young team, it feels like our confidence and our play can be so easily dented at just the slightest thing.

So I worry about tonight because we play a West Ham team full of confidence, fearing nobody, playing decent football and rightly sit fourth in the league. They have scored seven goals more than us and conceded three less. They have four wins out of eight away from home this season and are a physical side that will want to take advantaged of the perceived turmoil we have. They’re a team who go direct quickly and have some of the lowest passes attempt made this season so I am expecting them to get the ball forward quickly and out wide as much as possible, as they are also third in the league for crosses in to the box behind Brentford and Burnley. So we know what they will try to do today and that is to get the ball wide and look to use their height and physicality to unsettle us.

So we need our back line to remain strong and resolute. The good news is that I hope our back five have that in them, but you have to look at our left and side as an area West Ham might exploit. KT is a man who likes to get forward and that naturally leaves space behind him and if Granit Xhaka starts tonight he naturally slots in behind the Scot to cover ground. That’s a worry because of his lack of pace and we know that Coufal likes to get wide and get the ball in to t he box where they have the likes of Antonio and Soucek to use their aerial prowess. We need to be wise to that and we need to be ready to push them back. Today is a game for a high intensity press because West Ham don’t complete many passes when under pressure according to the stats, so for me I’d like to see us press really high and put them under pressure quickly. That probably won’t happen given we are one of the least pressing sides in the league when you look at the numbers. We prefer to build from the back and I’m not sure West Ham will push their players high with a press on us. They too are a side who doesn’t press too much and so I think when we have the ball they’ll be hapy to let us have it at the back and focus on their shape.

So Mikel needs another plan to deal with what they have to offer. We all feel the horseshoe passing of death in the middle of the park, but we might see that tonight unless some of our creative players can inject more penetration this evening.

That’s why I am hoping for a little more chaos in the team and for me that comes in the form of Martinelli up top and ESR, Odegaard and Saka behind. I suspect it’ll be Lacazette up top this evening and I don’t think that’s the right move for this type of game, but we will need those behind the main striker to bring something different. Last season we saw by far Odegaard’s best performance against West Ham and my hope is that he uses that to inspire him again. He’s been in good form of late and is the player I’m looking at to help to drive us forward. But I also want to see ESR and Saka either side of him because both offer something different, something exciting, that we could use and I also think that playing those two wide gives Mikel the option to use Gabby through the middle. As I say though, I suspect we’ll get Lacazette and although I’d rather not see it, if he plays and does what he did on Saturday in terms of end product, you won’t hear me complaining.

Right, that’s it from me, so here’s hoping for three points and that we can all put the latest saga to bed.

Catch you all tomorrow.