I decided to half-watch the Sunderland v City game on my phone yesterday, whilst rounding off my New Years Eve celebrations with one more night in the Cotswolds and a Thai takeaway, with Crocodile Dundee and then the World’s Strongest Man on the TV instead of inflicting my friends on an evening of football. I’m glad I did in that second half, because it was a little too edgy even with the phone on mute for my liking. And that was after Sunderland had been the better team in the first half too.

But the draw was obtained, Sunderland remain unbeaten at home and for a newly promoted side at this stage, that is huge for your fight for survival. Good on ’em.

And we’re certainly saying that this morning as Arsenal fans, because we are all clearly pleased with a result that means our win at home to Villa has become a little more juicier because City couldn’t hold serve in matchweek 19. And I use that metaphor with intention here, because of late it has felt like a bit of a tennis match between Arsenal and City depending on who is going first. In the last couple of week’s before this latest round of matches, it has been City going first:

  1. 20th December – City beat West Ham before we had to get our 1-0 away win at Everton
  2. 27th December – City scaped by Forest and then we had to do our business at home to Brighton

So this round of fixtures was our turn to serve and City had to return it by matching the result. They could not and as a result, we see a four-point lead open up ahead of our game tomorrow against Bournemouth away. That will be another opportunity for us because City don’t play Chelsea until 5.30pm on Sunday and if we have managed to overcome a team who beat us home and away last season, then the lead coule be seven points.

At this stage of the season it means little as we know; we had a seven-point gap at the beginning of December and one month later it is four. We also know we have to go to City – a place we haven’t won there in about a billion years – plus we know what a tough January we have coming up with games at home to United and Liverpool, whilst tricky away games to Forest and then an in-form Leeds at the end of January represent another set of obstacles this Arsenal team will need to overcome. City and to a lesser extent Villa, have shown their capabilities on going on winning streaks and whilst we can celebrate a draw yesterday evening and dropped points from the blue half of Manchester, Let’s not forget that in the League I think they’re unbeaten since around September time.

So we need to be mindful of that and we need to not take any matchweek for granted, including tomorrow’s opponent Bournemouth, who just picked up a respectable point away to Chelsea, just before that bizarre club in West London decided to bin off their manager for some random reason. We’ll need them to show up away at City, but this decision they’ve made hardly gives me too much hope for them this weekend and hopefully it also impacts them for the League Cup semi-final too.

Back to Bournemouth, and despite being on a bit of a difficult non-winning run at the moment (stretching back to a home win against Forest on 26th October), Mikel Arteta – who will no doubt have his press conference today ahead of that game – will be more than aware of what fellow Basque manager Iraola can do to us given the aforementioned double Bournemouth did on us last season. That game last season was centred mainly around the Saliba sending off, which was farcically almost completely mirrored the following day when a Chelsea player brought down the late Diogo Jota in a similar situation. Of course we had the post-game gaslighting from the likes of Dermot Gallagher on Sky Sports following the weekend’s results, but ultimately we couldn’t hold out against Bournemouth side in top form and eventually succumbed with Kiwior making a bit of a mess of one situation I recall that led to one of the Bournemouth goals.

Tomorrow you’d hope it’s a different kettle of fish and firstly, that we’re reff’d properly, but secondly that we are up for it and looking like a team at the top of the league and purring. We’re on a decent run at the moment and the win against Villa will have sent condidence soaring. There’s the slightly alarming news of that video of Declan Rice supposedly telling Morgan Rogers that his knee is “f*cked” which doesn’t sound great, but we found a way to win against an in-form Villa side without him, so you’d hope we have enough of the tools even without him to be able to overcome the Cherries tomorrow.

Their fanbase is a bit mixed on that. My little nose over on a couple of their forums suggest that half think they’ll lose, about a third think they’ll draw and a small minority thinking that they’ll get the win at home to us. Given their form right now you can understand that, but as I’m sure you’ve read just like I have, Bournemouth are a streaky team, so we need to be mindful that their streak doesn’t start tomorrow.

I’ll do a bit more of a preview on how I think the game will go when we hear a little more from Arteta and Iraloa on who is available (e.g. Semenyo, anyone? Although City will no doubt want him playing for Bournemouth against Arsenal for sure, I suspect, so I would have thought he’d be there tomorrow to potentially play his last game for them) for this one tomorrow. For now, I’ll pause, bid you a fond farewell for today and hope that the second day of 2026 works out lovely for you and yours.

Laters peeps.