Happy Friday folks – hope you’re all well? If you’re UK based then you must be feeling the cold snap we got going on here – blimey it’s brass monkey’s out there.

But let’s be thankful for the warming sensation of a bit of Arsenal #Content, as yesterday the club released footage of Jurrien Timber in Dubai lacing up his boots, then getting himself out on the pitch for some ball work. If you haven’t done so already see for yourself here.

This was enough to send plenty of Arsenal fans – yours truly included – in to excited messages online and many praying emojis and that one that looks like a whole arm doing a bicep curl. It was juicy stuff indeed. And after the last few weeks we’ve had where we’ve seen the players underperform (in terms of score lines and results), where we’ve all admitted that many of the players look tired but there didn’t seem to be much opportunity (or that Arteta was willing to) for rotation, where we’ve all resigned ourselves to the fact that due to FFP it is unlikely that there will be any reinforcements, this is a welcome bit of news.

I think most of us – despite a few people mentioning it online that he was ahead of schedule, probably had Jurrien Timber down as a guy who would probably start training in March, be up to speed in April an then maybe in May we’d see him on the football pitch. Seeing him out on the field doing ball work in mid January is a bonus indeed. So, what should we start hoping for in terms of seeing the player back again on the field for The Arsenal, now we’ve seen him doing ball work? I did a bit of Googling and found this site which talks about ACL injuries and footballers recoveries. That site suggests that three to six months after surgery footballers are running, but that regular tests have to be undertaken and a physiotherapist will want to keep monitoring. It suggests that it can take up to a year for recovery. But here’s why I’m dismissing that last bit:

  1. That site is talking about the average amateur football – not a professional footballer who has medical teams on hand all the time, the best facilities money can buy and by sheer mechanics their bodies are built and conditioned for sport and physical activity
  2. Timber is 22 years old – In your early 20s your ability to quickly recover from injuries is greater than mid or late 20s. I remember myself as an amateur being able to overcome knocks way quicker than I could at 30, so I would expect the commentary of ‘up to a year’ is universally applied because the context of age isn’t really given and so they’ve gone for worst-case scenarios. A 40-year-old man who has an ACL is probably taking a year. Not a 22-year-old professional athlete.

Don’t get me wrong though, I’m not suggesting that like Partey we’re going to see Timber for Forest away on 30th January. Clearly Timber will need much more monitoring and it will probably be at least another two to three weeks before they start involving him in light training with the rest of the players. He’s been out with a serious injury for five months and there is no way the club isn’t going to treat this with the extreme caution that it needs. But let me play extremely amateur doctor here for a second…

Let’s just say it’s three weeks of training on his own before he steps up and is training with the team. That takes us to week commencing 29th January before he might be in with the group. Then let’s say that before he can be in a match day squad he might need a couple of weeks of training with the group. That takes you to week commencing 12th February. Then let’s say Arteta wants to just have him as part of a match day squad but not play him – just for a week so he gets the ‘feel’ for it again – week commencing 19th February. So we could see him getting on the pitch for Newcastle at home on 24th February. That – I think – feels like quite a long and conservative timescale, but it would mean that he has March, April and May to continue to make an impact – the season is around nine months long and he could still have an impact for almost a third of it – a massive boost for Arsenal and Arteta.

And suddenly with the Partey news as well, you’re looking at the team and thinking “maybe it’s not too bad – squad depth wise”. Sure, we’ve got a few weeks in which it’s going to remain challenging, but by the end of January things could be looking up.

Of course we still don’t know the extent of the Zinchenko and Gabriel Jesus injuries and if both of those players are out for a few weeks then that is a problem; we saw that Kiwior just doesn’t look as comfortable at left back and both Nketiah and Havertz are a bit (or a lot) of a downgrade on Gabriel Jesus. So short term it could be quite uncomfortable, but in a month’s time we could be shaping up a little differently. All we’d need between now and then is to ‘get through’ games and that would start with Palace at home the weekend after this one.

There’s not a lot else to pour over, really, and understandably. Be careful what you click on though; don’t want to be giving your precious time to some of the absolute charlatans masquerading as journalists. This morning I fell for the ol’ “Multiple deals expected to be agreed in the next days” click bait. The “journalist” in question got a precious 15 seconds of my time, but when I realised that the article was basically about the fact Arsenal are looking at tying up a few commercial deals in Dubai this week, I realised that this utter gutter trash journo basically had zero story and was turning it in to an opportunity to try to get a few people to click on a link which basically told you nothing. I’m not linking to it – but try to avoid ‘Football Insider’ if you can folks.

A quick ‘P.S.’ – check out the two James’ player ratings on the Same Old Arsenal last night here.