Spent the Easter weekend with family, which meant less time available for blogging first thing in the morning, but had I jumped on here for some post match words yesterday, I’d have talked about a professional performance against an opponent who looked like the jig was up. For Arsenal the approach was good; the players out there did everything right and then the most important thing to do is to avoid any kind of big injuries to key players. That Leif Davis ‘challenge’ on Saka was the only moment in which I was cursing that this season has ended domestically yet. IF we were another six or seven points better off we’d be able to just rest Bukayo and others and keep them wrapped up in cotton wool.

Of course that logic doesn’t quite work because if we were another six or seven points better off we’d be wondering if we could still catch Liverpool, so probably would be demanding our best players till play. So we’re in a bit of a weird situation with the Premier League right now in that we want to win and consolidate the Champions League spots, but we don’t want to do it at the expense of losing any more players to injury and therefore we want have the team with their legs up on the sofa’s at home watching the remaining Premier League games.

Tomorrow night we have Palace and that’s another one that you have to wonder what the approach is after Saka nearly had his ankle taken off. Do you heavily rotate to protect? Or do you say “we need to get to ‘xx’ points before we start doing that, so it’s the best possible team where we can”? I suspect Arteta will go with the latter tomorrow; he’ll want us to pick up another three points and if we do that then you’re basically looking at top five being practically done. I think most of us recognise that we’re probably the second best team in the league this season and so it would feel weird not to see us there at the end, but in reality it only matters that we are in the competition next season. A win tomorrow night puts us 12 points clear of Chelsea in sixth with them having five games to play. They have to play Everton at the weekend which you think they’ll win, but then it’s Liverpool, Newcastle and Forest that they’ve got. Liverpool will have won the league by then because they have Tottenham on Sunday, who are terrible and showed it again last night, so I suspect they’ll have their foot off the gas for when the Scousers go to Stamford Bridge. But if we can pick up three points against Palace, then follow it up by a win at home to a Bournemouth side who have just fallen away a bit and look like they’re unlikely to catch Villa in seventh, then that’s probably it for us in the league. That game, however, is sandwiched in between the two PSG games because of the Palace match happening tomorrow, so once we have played Palace the team has almost a week off to prepare for the visit of the perennial French Champions.

The fact that it has fallen like this is a blessing for sure. Arteta must be delighted to see Palace in the semi final, on so many levels:

  1. Arsenal get to rest up after tomorrow for a vital game so can take the weekend off
  2. Arteta has even more time to prepare, analyse and run the rule over PSG and how they will look to shape up against us
  3. Crystal Palace players will hopefully have one eye on the FA Cup semi final on the weekend against Villa

This game tomorrow feels like more of an inconvenience for Palace than it does for us, so we have to hope that we aren’t going to get any disgusting Leif Davis-style challenges, instead having a game played with two teams who don’t want to pick up any knocks. That will be absolutely fine for any Arsenal fan tomorrow evening, for sure. It almost feels like this game tomorrow might have ‘summer friendly’ vibes to it.

I’ll do a bit more of a Palace preview on them tomorrow and today we’ll have Arteta’s press conference so we’ll get a bit of an update on player availability, but their domestic season is now all invested in the cups; they’re 12th in the League and because of the newly promoted teams all essentially down in all but name (Ipswich ‘could’ technically stay up, but they’d need to win all five remaining games, West Ham lose all five, then a 20 goal swing in goal difference would need to be achieved – so it ain’t happening), every team from probably eighth down to 17th is essentially just playing out the season now. It hardly makes for an exciting end to the season when the title is decided, the relegation spots are decided, then all you’ve got is Sky desperately clinging on to the hope that the Champions League race for positions will peak a little bit of interest.

It just shows that this season’s Premier League has probably been one of the most boring ones in living memory. But there you go.

Right, I’m going to leave it there. I’ll be back tomorrow with a look ahead at Palace. I’ll catch you then.