Well we got our press conference from the boss yesterday and for me the one worrying thing that stood out was the Saliba update. We’ve all talked about it online, in the pubs amongst fellow Gooners, about how back injuries are apparently tough to get over and diagnose. But when you have an update from the manager that he’s “progressing well” which is then followed by “hopeful we’ll have him available in the next few weeks”, it does make me very concerned. Especially given that the game at the Etihad looms on the horizon in just 11 days time. A “few weeks” says to me two to three weeks and that probably means he’s going to miss Southampton and City. That would be a huge blow. We’ve already had to do with Partey missing for the home game against City and whilst Jorginho didn’t do anything massively wrong in that game, just the fact of the drop down in quality between the two players means that we were instantly disadvantaged by his absence against the favourites to win the league who themselves had a pretty much full strength squad.

I listened to one of the ArsenalVision podcasts a few weeks back and Clive was talking about how it would be nice for once for us to play one of these massive games with our best XI, or at least close to it. For Liverpool we missed Saliba, for City at home it was Partey and Jesus, it was Jesus against United at home and the Scum away, as well as Partey in the away game at Old Trafford. If we are to have any dreams of getting anything at the Etihad then you feel like we basically need a full clean bill of health and just when it seems like we’re getting there, somebody else goes down.

Which leads me to my second little rant of the day, which is the media narrative that we haven’t had any real injuries this season. What a load of tosh. Here’s a list of key players and the number of games they have missed so far this season (Premier League games only, not including this weekend – based on TransferMarkt’s ‘absences’ section on their website):

  • Saliba = three games
  • Zinchenko = seven games
  • Tomiyasu = six games
  • Partey = Five games
  • Smith Rowe = 15 games
  • Fabio Vieira = two games
  • Gabriel Jesus = 12 games
  • Nketiah = five games
  • Odegaard = one game

There are other players like Nelson and Turner I haven’t even included in this because I’ve gone only to those that have played a certain number of games and are probably part of the core 14-odd that realistically play a lot from the start or come on as a sub. That’s 56 Premier League football matches missed by Arsenal’s team. If you take the whole squad it is 95 matches missed across the wider squad of around 18 players.

Manchester City is 54 matches.

Tottenham is 99 matches – which is a fair chunk to be fair.

Newcastle is 78 matches.

Manchester United is 105 matches, although 11 of those absences are through players suspended, not injuries, ao it is more like 94 injuries. And they have a squad of 32.

My point here is that the yarn being spun that we haven’t had any injuries is false because we clearly have. Sure, we have been more fortunate than the likes of the Scum and Newcastle, but you can’t tell me that we have had nobody missing because the numbers clearly don’t lie.

So Saliba missing for City could be a potential blow, but as Arteta and his players have been pointing out all season so far, we have to ignore everything else other than the tricky trip to East London on Sunday. What I did take some comfort in was Arteta saying that he knows exactly how Moyes prepares, he knows they style they are likely to adopt and he know sthat it is going to be tough. Moyes rotated on Thursday so he’ll have fresh players to call in to the team. But Mikel saying that ‘we are ready’ is good news for me. They will have had the week to assess the Hammers, a week of trying to work out a game plan and a week to address where they think the problem situations will be at. My hope is that it shows on Sunday.

I also just want to touch on the question about Opta’s percentage calculator putting us behind City on being favourites to win the league this season. I think it was 51% to 48% (I know that doesn’t make up to 100% but I can’t remember the decimal places, only that ours said 48% and theirs was 51%) and to me I think I’d put it even more in City’s favour. They have the easier games, they play us at home, they have done it before and they have a bigger squad who haven’t faced any lengthy injuries to key players like we have (see above as a perfect example). The media can go on and on about us bottling it if we don’t win the title, but as far as I’m concerned the six point lead we have right now just evens the playing field up a bit, rather than give us an advantage. It is a mini head start, like starting first on pole position; you may find yourself a slight nose ahead, but that means little over the duration of an F1 race sometimes.

For me I am hoping that more noise is made of stats like this, because I liked it earlier in the season when everyone just said “yeah but City will win it in the end”. We just went about our business, won football matches, then suddenly after United at home people started paying attention. I want us to go back under the radar and then suddenly emerge as champions. I know that is impossible, but I’m just telling you what my utopia would be in terms of the conclusion to this season.

That’s it from me today. I’m not going to bother watching the Man City game later because, frankly, I don’t want to see them smash upwards of five or six against an utterly tragic Leicester team at the Etihad.

Catch you all tomorrow with a match preview.