Having spent the whole week lamenting the massive injury crisis that surrounds the North London Derby this weekend, both Arsenal fans and them got a bit more of an inkling as to how actually it’s not all as bad as it seemed over the international break. If you look at the Premier League injury table during the last week before yesterday and the numbers were staggering. The Scum had 13 on there and we were up to eight with the loss of Gabriel. But yesterday’s press conference shed a little more light on the reality. That reality is a little clearer for the Scum, whose manager Thomas Frank confirmed they have Kolo Muani back and available but playing in a mask, Pape Sarr back, Bergvall and Archie Gray too. So that brings them down to seven and when you look at who those seven are, the only real players you would look at and say they stood a chance of making a starting XI for that lot are Solank, Maddison and Kulusevski. So whilst it’s still bad for them, it isn’t as bad as one would think.

How ready they are to start remains the key question for Thomas Frank, but that’s the same for Arteta, who as usual gave nothing away on a single player. He simply said – as we all expected him to – that there was another training session today (Saturday) and they’d be able to assess who comes in to the match day squad. Standard Super Mik stuff. He was never going to give us anything and whilst Frank was a little more…erm…’frank’ about player availability, we still have to wait and see. But as I’ve already said, I’d be surprised if there were zero players available even from the bench. Noni is one I think most of us are pretty confident on, then probably Odegaard given some of the noises we’ve heard and not far behind him, I suspect Martinelli is one we’ve all got our eyes on.

There’s obviously no sign of any hints in the training pics, but I do wonder if there’s some psychological messaging going on with regards to the number of times Saliba and Mosquera appear to be pictured together. That’s us Arsenal fans, eh? If there’s an opportunity to read in to something, we’ll jolly well do it, that’s for sure. But having listened to a few more podcasts, watched a few more videos and listened to a few more Arsenal fans and their perspectives, I’m starting to think that Mosquera in there alongside Saliba is what he’ll do. I think if Hincapie had a few more minutes as an Arsenal player at this point, there would be an element of “you are the left-centre half understudy so you’re up” to the situation for tomorrow. I think Arteta will prize continuity of performance more than the side of where we have a weakness through injury in a game like tomorrow. If it was a Wolves or a Brentford at home, things might be different, but given the size and atmosphere of the game, I just have a Saturday morning sneaky suspicion that it’ll be the Spaniard.

The rest of the responses to the questions were played with the kind of straight bat that my old man would call ‘Geoff Boycott’. He’s an old cricketer for those that don’t know and my Dad used to say he would be so boring to watch, but so effective in test matches, as he’d just defensively straighten up his bat and block anything that was remotely dangerous. He’d then only pounce when a bowler made a mistake. Mikel is a bit like that with all of his questions he asks; it is boring for 90% of them, but if there’s one opportunity to say a little more knowing that it might not come back to bite him in the arse or give fuel for the opponents, referees or pundits, only then will he have a nibble at it.

He did say that “we have everybody healthy, or most of them healthy” and I think that means most of those players – Kai and Big Gabi aside – are all in training. We’ve even seen Gabriel Jesus in full training for a few days now and it was good to see him doing a piggy back with Mikel. It’s easy to have him as the forgotten man at the club having had us sign a new striker in the summer and him only just returning to training now, but I hope we can get some more juice squeezed from that particular lemon because it’s easy to forget just how good he’s been with us when fit.

Arteta said that he needs some behind-closed-doors games to play first, so I think unfortunately that rules him out for this weekend, but if he gets two or three of those in the next week or two, perhaps he might be able to make a bench come December? If Kai is going to be out for another month, for example, then that is a big bonus for us.

There’s also been a few words for Eze said as well, which I think most of us expected, given that The Scum were so close to signing him, with a good interview with Idris Elba that you can also watch here. It’s a really nice video and his smile is just so infectious. I don’t think he stopped smiling at all and now that the dust an excitement on the transfer has abated a little, it’s lovely to have videos like this to remind you just how much this means and just how proud he is to put on the shirt every time. The North London Derby is a big thing for him and you just know he’s going to give it his all this weekend. We’ll need that I think. I’ll touch on this a bit tomorrow on the preview blog, but I think this game is going to be a really stodgy one and so it might take a moment of magic to unlock it. That is what Eze has and if you think about the fact he won Palace the FA Cup, you know he is a player who is there for the big moments, which is why I am hoping that he does indeed step up tomorrow too.

But let’s leave it there for today I think. I’m going to do a little bit of analysis on the two teams tomorrow in an attempt to work out how the game will unfold, so I’ll catch you then, if you fancy checking back in ahead of the match.

Have a good one boys and girls.