It’s another friendly match day today for The Arsenal and I’m intrigued to see how we line up tonight against Villareal. Will we see a pretty much first team rock up against the Spanish side? Or will it be a blended side from the start like in the Asian tour? equally, will we have a Villareal side who are ramping up the start to their season by playing a full strength side as they prepare for the kick off to La Liga? They kick off the same weekend we do and have Real Oviedo at home on Friday 15th August, so apart from us and then Aston Villa at home on Sunday this week, they don’t have many games left so you’d expect them to be getting close to playing a full strength side tonight – at least from the off.

Their last match was over a week ago in Portugal, where they lost 1-0 to Sporting in Lisbon and before that they drew 2-2 with St Gallen in Switzerland. I don’t think we can read too much in to it though; like our games it is about fitness and conditioning more than anything else. Which brings me to Mikel’s comments ahead of this game, which are in the match day programme but you can read on the official site, and I think we can read a little into what he was talking about when it comes to the type of opposition we face. He talks about specifically choosing the opposition for the type of manager there is and style they play and spoke about Villareal and Athletic Bilbao in that sense, but I’m not sure I buy his argument that they hand picked Newcastle and the Scum for the Singapore tour. I suspect that gets defined based on money and he gets told who we are playing and has to deal with it.

I like that he highlighted how both our upcoming friendlies are against Champions League sides and I think that suggests a level of quality about these sides, which is good and will provide a test. There’s no point playing a Preston, or a Hannover 96 (although the German second division has already kicked off to be fair) this close to the start of the season; you need to play opponents with Premier League quality or similar and I think in Villareal we have that.

There will also be some familiar faces in that team too. We have a certain Mr Nicholas Pepe in their ranks who last season made 28 appearances, although largely as a sub it looks like, so I doubt we’ll see a ton of him tonight. What a shame that turned out to be because I always thought there was a player in there, but he never really clicked at us and doesn’t seemed to have clicked anywhere for him, whether it’s Turkey, back in France or for Villareal, where he’s made two consecutive free transfers. They also have Ayoyze Perez, formerly of Newcastle and Leicester, who plays a little more than Pepe and got over 2,000 minutes last season, bagging 22 goals and four assists in his 32 games. That’s a pretty good return so I suspect he’ll be lining up tonight, with their other two big players Yeremy Pino and new signing Alberto Moieiro alongside him. Other than that I don’t really know a lot about them. They lost one of their breakout players Thierno Barry to Everton this summer and I haven’t been able to find much footage of their pre season stuff (not that I’d watch hours of it, but it’s good to know what you’re up against), but the focus from our side will always be to look at how we line up, who is performing and which players are looking sharpest for that first game away at Old Trafford.

Arteta talked about how the information from these pre season games gets fed into their ‘database’ and that they use what they get from these matches to evolve game models during the season. I know that elite football and the Premier League is such a detailed and statistical game these days, I know that every match is analysed to death by every club and they use models and data far beyond my comprehension, but it still does amaze me how far the game has come from those training sessions in Austrian where you play a third division Austrian team just t o get your fitness up. The clubs are hand-picking specific training regimes on a day-by-day basis to extract every single marginal gain they can from their pre season, to give them the best possible chance of being successful and in his programme notes Arteta is giving the slightest hint of the detail they go in to.

I liked how Arteta has also talked about how the new players have ‘shaken things up’ too. It all felt a bit stodgy towards the second half of the season and even though I haven’t watched the matches myself I have spoken to people who have in pre season and having also listened to a few podcasts, lots of people were saying how these games we’ve played has felt a little ‘more of the same’ from last season to denote some of the more negative sides of our attacking build up. Well now, with the integration of Gyokeres and Madueke, there’s just a little more in the team than was there before so I’m looking forward to seeing what these guys can bring. The manager is certainly feeling it, but now we need to see it.

We also need to see the return of a few players and having Big Gabi back in training is good. The noises have been that they were just being cautious with him out in Asia and if you look at the window and game opportunities we now have, it wouldn’t surprise me to see him get between 20 – 30 minutes today, with a view to giving him a solid 60 at the weekend so he is ready for the following weekend and the Premier League kick off.

As for the rest of the line up, it’s a ‘wait and see’ time for us all today, whilst trying to find ways to watch the game without paying the silly money the club charges for a friendly ‘pass’.

I’ll be back tomorrow with some thoughts. See you then.