Before we get to the Arsenal of today, let’s take a pause and reflect on the Arsenal of yesteryear, as one of our greatest ever players was awarded with a lifetime achievement award at the BBC Sports Personality of the Year. Thierry Henry – my favourite ever player and a guy with whom I’ve been able to watch so many years of amazing football, picked up the award and it was an opportunity to honour a man who has had so much success with The Arsenal. His story is immense, but it also had a fairy-tale finish towards the end of his career with that return to action in 2012 when he came back from his loan spell. I will remember his goal against Leeds until my dying day I think. Amazing stuff and the scenes were awesome.

Thierry Henry – you are a true legend.

Back in today’s world of Arsenal now and last night we got some news filtering through that despite Kai Havertz being rumoured to have been targeting a return to first team football before the year is out in the next few games, he has apparently had another setback which will see him out until mid-January. At this point you just have to laugh at this. It is crazy the level of injuries we’ve had to deal with and then when you see details like this emerging from Sky Sports about the volume of injuries since the beginning of last season, you have to wonder if our ‘injury curse’ has basically just carried on from last year. Last season I called it The Cursed Season but you look at that chart and realised that you might even call this one that same situation too. In that same time Man City have had 18 fewer injuries, whilst Liverpool have had 33 fewer injuries and so it is actually a remarkable feat that we’re still in there fighting for the title, let alone leading the table going in to match week 15.

Havertz’s setback means that he’ll essentially have missed half the season through injury; it’s a bitter blow for a player who hardly ever got injured before last season and who Arteta described as a ‘machine’ just before he picked up his knock. And given his injury last season, as well as his injury this season, I am starting to wonder if we will ever get back the same Havertz. He might come back fully fit, for sure, but we have all heard stories about the psychology of players being out for so longer and never really fully recovering mentally for it. Robert Pires famously always seemed to run a little differently after his injury, I’m pretty sure Rosicky has talked about the impact of these injuries that kept him out for a long time, so what sort of player will Havertz be when he gets back?

Hopefully he can find his old form from when he was fit, because at the start of the season I seem to recall saying on one of the Same Old Arsenal pods that he was on course for a 20-goal season in the early stages of the season. He played 36 games in 2,800+ minutes last season and had racked up 15 goals in all competitions. I’m pretty sure he’d have got to 20 with another 15 games that season to do it. So it was a real shame when and how we loist him and it’s been a massive shame how we haven’t seen him since the opening day against United.

What his extended absence does do is give Gabriel Jesus a chance though. I think for sure he’ll get some more sub minutes against Everton tomorrow, but then I also think that he’ll get a start against Palace. If he can come through 60 or 70 minutes against the Eagles, then I’m 100% convinced that he’ll be making a start in one of the Christmas fixtures, which is not something I think any of us thought at the beginning of the season. His return to the team means we have cover and options to rotate in the absence of Havertz providing the Brazilian doesn’t have an impact, which feels massive, given the context of these next few weeks, as well as the calibre of opponents.

And that run of tough games starts tomorrow away to Everton, which as I mentioned yesterday, isn’t a place that we’ve had such a great time of inj recent years (one win in our last seven). We then play two games over Christmas that we drew at home last season in Brighton and Villa. Let’s also not forget that this time of the year hasn’t always been a happy one for us; two season’s ago we lost at home to West Ham and then away at Fulham. Admittedly we then went on a mega-run of winning game-after-game, but the Christmas period has always felt like a slog for The Arsenal and I’d be lying if I said to you that I don’t have any apprehension. Man City have an easy time of it; a pretty shoddy West Ham team tomorrow who they will batter, followed by a Forest Team who are currently in 16th and have lost eight games, not exactly looking anywhere near the same side as last season, followed by a Sunderland team who despite being in eighth right now, aren’t exactly flying when it comes to underlying metrics. It feels to me like they’re running out of momentum a bit (even though they won the derby last weekend) and by the time they play City on New Year’s Day, I suspect the momentum and vibes they’ve been channelling will probably be running low.

So what all of this means is that at a period in which our rivals will most likely get an easy ride, we’ll have to conquer some demons. And do it with one of our star strikers missing when we thought we’d be getting him back. The hope is that we have ourselves some better news over the festive period at the back, with Big Gabby rumoured to be looking at one of the games over Christmas as a possible return date. If he’s back for Villa, that will be massive because it will mean we hopefully get that main central defensive pairing back up and running for the new year and with Bournemouth away and Liverpool at home on the horizon in January, having him return to the heart of our defence gives not only confidence amongst the fanbase, but also amongst the players as well I suspect. We’ve been able to cover so far, I think Hincapie has come in and done great and hopefully will continue to do so, but there is no substitute for Big Gabby and his return will be very eagerly anticipated for all associated with Arsenal.

I’ll do a bit on team news, Everton, what we might see tomorrow and more in tomorrow’s preview, but for now I’ll bid you farewell for another day and hope your Friday goes great.

Catch you all tomorrow.