Mikel Arteta had his say ahead of tomorrow’s tough encounter with Chelsea yesterday and, as usual, he was relatively tight-lipped on who was available. He confirmed that Declan Rice hadn’t trained as of yesterday and I guess we all have to hope that his admission that he ‘has to be vague’ is just his way of not giving away anything. It feels like for every time he’s been like that this season, it’s been the toss of a coin in which the player is fit. I think back to Saka not playing against Bournemouth after Lee Carsley said he was borderline to play in the second England pointless match back in October, but Saka ended up missing our trip to the south coast. So I don’t think we can take it as completely read that he’s a cert to play despite what some of the media murmurings are.

He confirmed that everyone from midweek is available to play tomorrow, which includes Odegaard, although I’d be stunned if the skipper started tomorrow. He played a few token minutes at the end and having been out for the best part of two months I suspect Arsenal will ease him in tomorrow by maybe giving him 10 to 20. Then over the international break he’ll be tasked with getting back up to full fitness and hopefully we see him from the start against Forest.

Merino and Havertz were questions too but I suspect they will be fine.

But will we be fine as a whole? We’re up against a Chelsea team who have had one loss in the league all season on the first day to City at home, as well as that defeat against Newcastle in the League Cup in which they heavily rotated, so this isn’t going to be a remotely easy game by any stretch of the imagination. There’s lots of talk about our recent form against them, but they will be coming in to this feeling pretty chipper, although reading a couple of the fan forums you wouldn’t have thought it. They’ve been talking up how their defence tends to shoot itself in a the foot a bit, how their last outing against Man United was a terrible game, which I think has coloured some of their views on this one. That, and the fact that Cole Palmer is supposedly a doubt, although Maresca seemed to suggest that they’re expecting him to take part in the session on Saturday so I am fully expecting him to be available and in the starting line up on Sunday. That will give them a bit of a boost if/when it’s announced, then we’ll have to see how it unfolds from 4.30pm onwards.

Our boost will need to come from the manager and players and Arteta admitted that the mood has been affected by the defeats and draws (one win in our last five and that was to Preston), but he came out in defence a bit of his team after the Milan game, saying he hasn’t seen anyone do what we did to them in the Champions League in midweek. It’s true we dominated them and yes, we might have been a little unlucky with the ball not quite falling for us, but when you’re in a rut that tends to keep happening. You need something to go for you and I don’t know why, but it just feels like we need the footballing gods to just for once this season, swing something in our direction at Stamford Bridge on Sunday. He’s saying the right things though; he said the team is “doing 10 times more better things than we used to do at that period, that’s the positive thing” when he talked about Dubai and whether the team needed a reset. I’m not sure what those things are, but it hasn’t been end product and that’s the bit we need to find solutions for, but Mikel clearly thinks he knows what is needed. He also said – rather cryptically – that they need “one particular aspect, to go from 95 to 100 and I’m not going to tell you what it is”. My hope that this ‘five percent’ isn’t “score more goals, innit” and that he has a tactical innovation up his sleeve that will unlock his team. I also hope it isn’t “get more players fit, innit”, because that’s not really something he can control. If this extra ‘five’ that he’s talking about is something that he has spotted that has the team working on, then it is within his control and hopefully we see some differences in results. That’s what I’m hanging my hopes on, anyway.

A quick look at the predictions from pundits online has us either drawing or losing and in most cases the gut feel is that it’s a draw. Jones Knows on Sky Sports seems to be the only one who is predicting us to snatch a one-niller, but he’s been off a fair bit of times this season with us already, so I’m not sure. The Opta Supercomputer has us at 39% winning versus 34% winning, which gives a crumb of comfort, but we need to see a better performance than Inter, Newcastle, Bournemouth before we were a man down, etc.

I’m not particularly optimistic about this one, unfortunately, which is a shame because before that Bournemouth game I was starting to think about games as ‘we should win this one today’. It’s taken me bloody ages to get in to that mindset, only for it to be washed away in recent weeks, so I’ll be a bundle of nerves tomorrow afternoon. I just hope we can do something special and get our season back on track.

Right, I’m going to leave it there for today, because I’ve got to hit the gym before I’m off to watch Engalnd egg chasers play the Australians at Twickenham. Quite why I signed up for that nonsense is beyond me, but hey, at least there’s no jeopardy or worry about it like there will be tomorrow, eh?

Catch you all then when I’ll have a bit of a look at how Chelsea might set up.