Howdy folks, hope we’re all good?

I thought that the catharsis of the Same Old Arsenal pod last night with James and Amanda would help me to understand my feelings over that Chelsea result, but I’m still no nearer to breaking it down. I think that’s because City ultimately beat Leeds and so it feels like they played catch up over us last weekend, but if you look at the bigger picture, we’ve stretched our lead by one point over them compared to pre North London Derby. Imagine, for example, that City would have played Leeds and won the weekend before when we played the NLD. Then they played Newcastle this weekend, lost, whereas we went to Chelsea and drew. I’d probably be seeing that as a point gained.

I guess that’s the challenge with this league and especially at this stage in the season; the games come so fast that leads can quickly erode and at a time in which City have quite a favourable run (including what I suspect will be a routine away win at Fulham tonight), we’ve had some really tough fixtures coming our way.

City fans might point to our home match against Brentford as a more favourable game too, to be fair, but looking at them this season I think it’s still going to be really tough. Their strengths lie in direct play and quick transitions with rapid players and it’s through letting their opponents have the ball and hitting them on the counter that they have had plenty of success at home all season. They’re fourth at home for home form right now, but on the road it is a very different story; they’re fourth from bottom with one win and five defeats. Having not watched as much of them as I’d have liked to so I can talk more definitively about how they will line up against us, I can’t say why their away form is so poor compared to their home form, but perhaps there is that home crowd advantage that they capitalise on. I watched the game against Liverpool at the Gtech stadium and they troubled Liverpool on the counter with longer balls in behind, as well as that impressive throw-in weapon from Kayode that they deploy frequently. If ever there’s a case for moving the advertising hoardings forward for a team, Brentford would certainly be that.

What’s interesting about Brentford from a numbers perspective, is that away from home, they have the second best xG allowed aside from us; so that tells me they sit a little deeper, more compact in shape away from home and tell teams to come at them in their low block. That bears out in the number of passes they have taken this season – only Burnley have had fewer. When you look at the type of passes they do as well, they ain’t going short much, that’s for sure. They attempt the fewest number of short passes in the league (under 15 yards) and the second-fewest medium passes (15 – 30 yards) and whilst I haven’t watched much of them as I admit today, I can already see what this game is going to shape up to be tomorrow.

Having just faced a physical battle against Chelsea on their patch, Arteta and his Arsenal team need to know that they will face the same tomorrow night against Burnley. It’s going to be long ball, it’s going to be physical, it will be a bit set-piecy and it might be a bit of a stop-start game I suspect. Arteta and Arsenal need to be ready for it. We’ve certainly show we can match teams with a physical battle and in a game like tomorrow it will be handy to have so many attacking options to call on, because I’m looking at how this game might unfold and I’m thinking we’re going to have a lot of the ball in their half and chance creation might come at a premium as they stuff their own box with bodies in order to try to shut the game down, then hit us with rapid counter and big long balls.

But that’s been Brentford’s style for a while now, to be fair, because we saw it under Frank and we’ve seen it going back to even the Ivan Toney days. Remember when David Raya was playing for them and we used to see ball after ball on to Toney to battle with our centre halves? We might see a bit more of that from goal kicks tomorrow methinks.

From a shooting perspective, it’s also interesting that Brentford have the third highest shots on target percentage in the league, as well as the second shortest average distance to goal from where they take their shots. That tells me that this is a team who doesn’t take a lot of pot-shots; when they do take a shot, it usually means that it is of sufficient quality to be on target. If Brentford get a chance or two tomorrow, they are testing Raya, so he’s going to need to be ready against his old team.

I don’t think this will be a pretty game by any stretch of the imagination, so it might be one for those attacking players who excel in tight spaces, but what Arteta will also have to contend with is the fitness and availability of players for tomorrow. We’ve been battered, bruised and injured all season and so inevitably there will be one or two that aren’t quite ready or might be feeling fatigue, but I’ll do a more in-depth look at what Arsenal might do tomorrow I think.

Until then we have to wait to see what Arteta says in his press conference today on player availability, before we can start making some decisions on who might start and how we might break down Brentford.

I’ll be back tomorrow. See you then.