It’s a watching brief for us today and this evening, with our game on tomorrow, but I’d be lying if I said I expected some kind of upset in Manchester. Brighton is a good team; they picked up a win in their last game, but their visits to some of the so-called ‘big clubs’ of late haven’t really produced any kind of upset. They came close to us over Christmas, but it felt very much like an ‘on paper’ result to me, because we all saw it and they essentially scored with their first goal, and even after that, we should have buried them. Two weeks before that, they lost away 2-0 to Liverpool at Anfield, and 10 days before that, they lost 3-4 at home to Villa. So to expect them to get anything at the Emptihad is probably quite fanciful, I’d wager.

To be fair to them, though, they have already done their part earlier in the season by beating City at the beginning of the season in August with an 89th-minute winner. So you have to give ‘thanks’ for that.

In the other games that have semi-relevance, we can hope to have a laugh at The Scum’s expense as they go to Bournemouth, and my hope is that the Cherries can have some end product before Semenyo departs for City. It’s a curious one, though, because whilst I always want the Tiny Totts to lose, we do want them to keep Frank in the job as long as possible, because it’s making them all so miserable. So they probably need to win some games. At some stage. Just maybe not today. Villa travel to Palace ad it goes without saying that we want Palace to try to do a number on Villa, whilst Chelsea’s new manager has the small matter of a West London derby against Fulham. I actually think Chelsea is a lucky team, with their derby, because let’s be honest it’s so low-key that the intensity just doesn’t really exist. It doesn’t matter how sh*t The Scum might be, those two fixtures in every season often have so much build-up, so much intensity, that there’s a lot of jeopardy with them even when they are playing pants. Yet Chelsea has none of that. Ahh, well, “it is what it i,s” as the saying goes.

Looking ahead of our game, we’ll have a press conference today at some stage, and the big thing we’ll probably want confirmed is that: a) we have no fresh injury concerns from Bournemouth, and b) maybe there could be a return for Havertz and/or Calafiori?

We’ll get a press conference from Slot this morning too, apparently at 9.45 am, so if you’re reading this later on in the day, you’ll know what he’s said with his update and whether Ekitike is fit or not. I’ve listened to a couple of podcasts over the last couple of days, and the talk has been about how Slot has spoken about Ekitike not playing against Fulham because of a hamstring issue. As the pods I have listened to have pointed out, no hamstring issue in the world recovers in a matter of days, so we’ll find out if he was just essentially lying to save him for this match. That’s my hunch, anyway.

So, about Liverpool then, what are their fans feeling ahead of this one? Well, I read one blog article this morning essentially saying that whilst they are on an impressive nine-game unbeaten run, it “feels like the worst nine-game unbeaten streak of all time“. Ouch. That article also highlights how they’re not too happy with the form, they think the team buckles under pressure, and they’re not as free-flowing as they were at the beginning of the season. I think that last comment is probably the most telling of what we’ll see tomorrow. I don’t think Liverpool will be open at all. I think they will set out to be solid defensively and offer us very little. This is a Liverpool side whose priorities have shifted this season, and they’re now just firmly in points accumulation for a top four/five place this season. If you are looking at it through that lens, then you’re probably thinking as a Liverpool fan, “yeah, we would love a scalp away at Arsenal, it would be a massive confidence boost, but a draw and then get back to winning ways after that is fine too”. For us, because we are in title-chasing mode, the margins aren’t as fine, and so my hope for tomorrow is that we have more desperation to lay down a marker than Liverpool.

I find it interesting that the above article talks about how Liverpool’s pressing is ‘non-existent at times’, which feels very uncharacteristic of Klopp’s team, or the team that won the title last season. A confidence thing? Maybe, which is why this game tomorrow needs to be treated by all of us with a little caution, because as the article points out, it would be very Liverpool to turn up and look great tomorrow. But we do ‘owe them’ a few, actually. At the beginning of the season, it was a nothing game, and they edged it with one moment in that free kick they scored. At The Emirates last season, we were by far the better team, yet we got done on a counter, with Liverpool exiting our gaff with a point they didn’t really deserve in a 2-2 draw. So I hope Arteta is using that today in training and the team talk as motivation ahead of this massive game.

How about the pundits then? What are they saying? Well, first up is Merse, who is predictably going for an Arsenal win and saying that we’ll win 3-1. I like the optimism, Merse, but I think it might be closer than that and went for a 2-1 when we did the post-Bournemouth show last weekend. Chris Sutton is predicting a 2-0 Arsenal, which again I can’t see, but interestingly, the BBC’s AI engine is going for 2-2. I can see that – this fixture had two of them last season and Liverpool have gone something crazy like 20 matches against us scoring. So I expect them to do that tomorrow too. Sports Mole has also gone for a 2-0, and you can read a little more about that preview here; I always find them valuable and interesting.

I’ll leave it there for today and be back tomorrow with a closer look at what we might do, but for now, have yourselves a great day.