Morning folks. With the intolerable international break still in swing, there is ZERO real football to talk about. Quite why, having just had an international tournament in the summer just a couple of months back, we have to send players away for a fortnight is beyond me. And to cap it all off, other players are dropping out left right and centre, whilst our players are all turning up for duty and will no doubt play a ton of new minutes under a caretaker manager who won’t be in the job for longer than a few months, is a bit of a joke really.

So I thought i’d revisit our Champions League draw, as I haven’t actually talked about it yet, being as I was on holiday and hungover when the draw went on and the subsequent next day. But it’s an intriguing draw that will give Mikel Arteta plenty to think about, especially given when the games fall and also how they fall.

The first game away to Atalanta will be an interesting one. They’re a good side, Europa League winners and will no doubt be hugely up for this. They will want a scalp in their first game so that’s going to be a really tough match. But what makes it even tougher is the fact that we play The Scum the week before, the 115 charges FC the weekend after. And to make this even more of a challenge, all three matches are away and the Champions League format is now on a Tuesday, Wednesday and a Thursday. So of course we’re playing on Thursday in Italy before we play away in Manchester on Sunday. What do City have? Three home games of course, to Brentford, to Inter and then to us. Oh, and City’s home game is on the Wednesday night too, so an extra 24 hours for them to prepare for it. Great stuff.

You can understand why even the likes of KT have therefore been included in the Champions League squad. The Scot has barely featured for Arteta in two season’s and I suspect will hardly get a sniff this season either, given the volume of players we have at left back, but injuries to Merino and Tomiyasu, as well as Timber still easing his way back in to the side having not played hardly at all last season, surely mean that he won’t be able to play three in a week and Arteta will absolutely have to choose how he rotates his side.

Whether that gives KT any chance of minutes I am doubtful, but if there is a need to make up some bench numbers with experienced players, I personally would have no problem with having him in the team. It’s also nice because you don’t want to see good players – and KT has been a good player for us in the past – get basically zero minutes at all. Especially when they are great pro’s like he has been. He’s not complained, he’s just got his head down and trained, which I think Arteta will respect and that’s why I think he’s also included him in the squad.

Our next game is a home one in between Leicester and Southampton at home and it’ll be PSG at home for us on 1st October. Again, slightly frustratingly those two home games are ones that ideally i’d probably want to swap with the Scum away or City away, but I guess it’s just the way the chips fall. Again, it’s fair to say the chips have fallen in favour of City for game two as well in the Champions League; they play away to Wolves, away to Sparta Prague, then home to Southampton, so Guardiola will get his fair share of rotation options there.

Whhen we play Shkatar we’ll have Bournemouth away followed by Liverpool at home, which will see them travel to German to play Leipzig a day after we have played Shaktar, so there’s an extra day there for us to get a marginal gain. We’ll take that I guess. But then on my birthday we are in Italy once again to face off away to Inter, which will be a tough challenge for us and one that we’ll need to be ‘on’ to get much from. That one is wedged between Newcastle away and Chelsea away and whilst Chelsea look like a bit of a basket case, I’ve got a few Chelsea work colleagues who have said they look like they’re getting their act together. They’ve got zero European football this season, so Maresca will have a full week to prepare for us whilst we’re still patching ourselves up from Bruno Guimaraes’ elbows and the away trip to Inter. So it’s frustrating again that the fixtures seemed to have fallen in such a way that we seem to be playing lots of away games in succession in the Premier League on these Champions League weeks.

After Inter away it’s Sporting away and a repeat of recent matches against the Portuguese, which is wedged in between Forest at home and West Ham away. A West Ham who I will suspect will have bedded themselves under Lopetegui and will therefore be a much more tricky opponent than City faced last weekend, just three games in to the Spaniard’s regime and a new way of playing for the Hammers.

Heading in to December it is Fulham away (I really want revenge for last season there, by the way), followed by Monaco at home and the Everton away and here we are in December and it’s on match day six that I’d say we’ve had probabkly only our second set of Champions League fixtures that you might think are ‘manageable’. In December. I don’t know about you, but this is starting to feel like quite the daunting task.

Matchday seven of eight is Zagreb wedged in between Villa at home and Wolves away, so another tricky one, then we finally finish the Champions League mega league slog away to Girona, before 115 Charges FC come to the Emirates. There’s no extra day for us like there was for City as we play on the same night and, surprise surprise, we have a longer trip and a tougher trip, so we need to be safely in to that final group of eight if we want to be able to fully rotate ahead of what – we hope – will be a massive game. Hoping, of course, because we need to be up there and fighting for the title as well as having done well in the Champions League. It does make me think that we are very much likely to throw the League Cup and heavily rotate the FAS Cup too if we can, but knowing our luck City will get Farnborough Town and Liverpool will line up against Hitchin United, whilst we’ll get a North London Derby in the third round. But let’s wait to see on that one.

Whatever happens, this is set to be a really tough season in terms of volume of games, so getting these early injuries we’ve had is a challenge that we could have done without. Also doesn’t help being shafted by refs in two of three games already this season. Let’s hope the old ‘evens itself out over a season’ starts to ring true, eh?

Catch you all tomorrow.