I spent the day out yesterday having a walk with the Management. We went to the pub for lunch and she kept saying “why do you keep looking at your phone? What are you watching?”

“Videos of the Eze signing”

**Wife rolls eyes**

It was good content to absorb yesterday and with the bank holiday today in the UK it was also nice to have a few jars more than I normally do when getting home, as I watched Ma United slip up again against Fulham. It’s funny because last weekend we saw a United side that looked alright, but there were still people saying they might challenge the top five. Not on yesterday’s performance I don’t think. I like to have this thing where every ‘rival’ or ‘big team’ dropping points over the course of the weekend is a good thing. Sometimes it means it is a banker because you get games like City and the Scum played out Saturday lunchtime, but then I think “which is the best result out of that?” and in that instance Tottenham winning is probably for the best. City dropping as many points as possible, as early as possible, is a good thing and whilst The Scum will be getting all excited as they do every time they have a new manager and he goes on a run, hopefully they revert back to the norm and will be dropping points by the time we get to game week 10.

As for us, well, Eze content aside, we also had the news about Bukayo Saka and Martin Odegaard’s injuries not being as bad as was first feared. That is a sigh of relief. There’s no real noises about how long they are out for and I suspect it will be more than a few days, but if we’re going to lose them for a couple of week’s, at least do it when there’s an international break coming up. We play Liverpool next Sunday on the 31st August, then our next match isn’t until 13th September when we play Forest at home. So between today and that Saturday there is a solid 20 days space. If both are out for Liverpool then there’s also no way they’ll be reporting with their international teams and so hopefully they can stay at home and recover ahead of what would then be a tricky time against a decent Forest outfit who have a win and a draw so far.

It’s mad that our injury curse from last season seems to have followed us in to this one. Ben White, Martin Odegaard, Bukayo Saka and Kai Havertz all picking up knocks as we hit the big kick off, but as opposed to last season, Arsenal were ready this time. We’ve stockpiled for a reason and you can see why, but hopefully those are all just little early knocks we can deal with, with the squad we have, and we can still go up to Anfield looking strong and maybe giving ourselves a chance to win up there for the first time in – like – forever or something.

It does make you think about the sales we need to do though. Whilst we need to balance the books, we’re not in the position where we can make mass sales right now. Sure, there are fringe players who we can make some money off – Sambi Lokonga, Zinchenko, Fabio Vieira – but I’ve seen that Porto are in for Kiwior and whilst that does sound like a move that will generate cash for us, you do wonder about how long Calafiori can stay fit for this season. Imagine if we lose Kiwior and then the next week Calafiori is out for a few weeks or months? It would mean Mosquera covering both right and left centre halves, whilst Myles would be the only recognised left back – which then means you have to put the breaks on any Zinchenko sale. which isn’t ideal.

Oh bloody hell – just found out as I’m writing this that Saka is out for a month. I guess at least that international break comes at a time in which it takes up one of the weeks in which he’s out. The attention now needs to turn to who will replace him on that right wing and I suspect most of us think it’ll be Madueke. Four weeks for Saka suggests it’ll be a little bit of an audition for Noni to get game time in a more favoured position. It probably works well for him because he knows he has solid game time from the start and not just bit part minutes. It also means that there’s an opportunity for either Eze, or Martinelli, or Trossard to get minutes on that left hand side too. That’s why we’ve needed that level of squad depth and whoever takes that role on either flank needs to step up and deliver.

We talked about that on today’s Same Old Arsenal podcast which you can check out here and it was interesting to hear James talk about Eze coming in for Odegaard on the right, because I wouldn’t have thought Arteta would go for that, but you never know.

Right, that’s me done for today – back tomorrow. Have a great Monday kids.