Tricky Micky Arteta had his press conference yesterday and, as expected, didn’t really give away much in terms of team news.

I suppose the best news is that we have no fresh injuries from last weekend. That is good enough for me because at this stage of the season the last thing we want to hear is that Ben White took a knock, Thomas Partey woke up feeling stiff, or Bukayo Saka’s illness has turned out to be full blown flu. So that’s good to hear the players seem alright.

He did, however, make a cheeky little admission that one player might be back and they are hoping he has a training session today and might be able to be part of the squad. Of course everyone online suddenly got rather excited at the prospect of a return to the team for William Saliba, but because the manager wouldn’t tell who it was that might be back and fit, everyone automatically looked at that as being the boost we need.

But what if it isn’t Saliba he is talking about? What if it is actually, in fact, Eddie Nketiah? Talk about come downs if that’s the case. I know that sounds harsh on poor Eddie, but if he’s the player who can train and goes in to the squad tomorrow, then there will be a lot of Arsenal fans that have an excitable bubble being burst. And that’s nothing on Eddie by the way, it’s just that in those forward positions right now, you’d have to say that we are pretty loaded with talent. We’ve been without Nketiah for a number of weeks now and in his place we’ve had Martinelli, Trossard, Jesus and Saka all playing and scoring, whilst Smith Rowe has returned to full training and is available. So the urgency doesn’t feel there as much as it does for Saliba.

I’m going to stick with what I heard though and that is that Saliba is still out and there was ‘no chance’ he’d be back tomorrow. Maybe there can be some kind of miracle and if that happens then happy days. But I’ve made peace with Rob Holding at the back and I’m getting behind him and hoping he can form part of an Arsenal back line who can either shut Liverpool out completely (unlikely), or can at least reduce the possibility of them scoring a hatful of goals like they do every year at Anfield against us.

Arteta was also asked about that experiment with the speakers and the Liverpool anthem and he did a pretty good job of batting it away to be fair. I liked his reference to playing a back six and if it works everyone calls him a ‘genius’, but if it doesn’t, then he is crazy to do it. The underlying morale behind this story is that it is better to try things and fail, because at least you learn and develop. And you can’t say this Arsenal team hasn’t learned and developed under him. The difference between the way we’ve played this season and the last couple of seasons previously under Arteta has been obvious. Even the comparisons between Liverpool and Arsenal’s respective fortunes this season and last season are stark; I think the swing of points difference is something like 50 points. That’s crazy and shows a rapid ascent in this Arsenal team that we should all be very proud of.

The other talking point from the press conference was the monkey on our backs that has been our form at Anfield. It reads like a scary horror movie script. Big defeats coming one after the other, with little sign of competing when we go up there. It’s why I have been so fearful of this game all week and it’s why I have mentally prepared myself for defeat, because if/when it happens, hopefully it won’t come as much of a shock to the system and make me as sad. Probably not by the way. Paul on the ArsenalVision have a great analogy about kayaking and being told by an instructor to brace himself for the ice cold water as he got dunked in it. You can mentally prepare yourself all you like, but when it happens, you are still never really prepared.

But that’s me and my responses. Arteta’s responses were much more polished and once again I thought he waved away that question from the journo with relative ease; we hadn’t beaten Liverpool for years until we won at The Emirates. We hadn’t won away at The Scum for over a decade and we did it, so there are examples from this season that show that this team are capable of breaking any perceived hoo-doos that might exist.

I still think something is going to happen tomorrow that will change the game and shift it more in Liverpool’s favour, but it appears I’m one of the few, because the other thing I did yesterday was go on to a bucketload of football websites and see what pundits were saying about this game. The responses I read were pretty unanimous: Arsenal to win tomorrow.

Interestingly nobody is expecting us to keep a clean sheet though. That’s interesting to me because we’ve conceded just nine goals away from home all season, so for us to be expected to concede by every pundit given our good defensive displays this season is an interesting thing for everyone to aim for. That’s because of course Liverpool at home are one of the best teams in the league, create a very high xG at home, take lots of shots and score lots of goals. They will definitely score tomorrow, we all know that, but the timing of the goal(s) might prove pivotal. If they score first and early, I suspect it’ll be a long afternoon for us Arsenal fans.

But I’ll give more thoughts on the game, line up and how it might play out tomorrow methinks. For today I’m going to go out and enjoy the Spring weather with the in-laws and The Management, then probably avoid looking for the Man City result as they rack up a cricket score against Southampton at St Mary’s.

Catch you all tomorrow.