Well, yesterday wasn’t exactly ‘tip top’ for Arsenal news, eh? I mean, there were some certainties that we were all expecting – Fulham to roll over against City, Thomas Frank to get the ol’ Tin-Tack for The Scum, etc. But when it happens, it’s still a little disappointing, even if the feelings have been mitigated. For an Arsenal fan to lose his job just before he completes his double-agent job next weekend is frustrating. Plus we now have to deal with that bloody New Manager Bounce that always feels like it’s us having to deal with. Forest with ‘Big Ange’ at home was fun, but United with Carrick was not. I only hope that whoever does come in on an interim basis just doesn’t do tactics. Yeah, I agree with all those ex-Spurs pundits who used to play for Harry Redknapp saying “give it to him”. Let’s have him come across us in a North London Derby with the instructions of “just faaaakin’ run arand a bit!” please.

But the really painful news was the Havertz stuff. Out for about a month. Having just come back and looking so slick too. We’ve seen this before when players come back; they have a few games, then pick up a muscular injury, and Arsenal were deliberately holding him back from games to avoid it. But I guess you just never know how the human body is going to react and clearly Havertz’s isn’t reacting amazingly. It’s funny (not funny) because Havertz has not had a lot of injuries in his career, but it seems like the second Arteta uttered the words along the lines of “he’s a machine” when it came to Havertz’s fitness, it feels like he’s had one injury after the other. His arrival back into the team was also co-inciding with some pretty imperious-looking performances. And now we’ve lost him again.

Honestly, are we not allowed nice things? Only a couple of weeks ago, we were saying that Arteta had a full squad at his disposal, bar Max Dowman. Now we’re looking at the possibility of not having the following available for tonight’s game to Brentford:

  • Havertz
  • Odegaard
  • Saka
  • Trossard

That’s a big chunk of our attacking threat, although what I will say is that this is a worst-case scenario, because Arteta would only say when asked yesterday, “we’ll see” about Odegaard and Saka. I suspect the “we’ll see” relates more to Odegaard than Saka, because the reporting from the sources saying they are targeting the Scum game weekend after next is usually quite accurate. So perhaps we get bolstered by Martin’s return, but given there was nothing in the written transcription on Trossard, hopefully he’s fine. I haven’t had the chance to look at any training pics yet.

So on the assumption of Trossard being fit and Odegaard being a ‘maybe’, this is what I have gone for as a starting XI that I’d like to see tonight at Brentford:

Raya

Timber   –   Saliba   –   Gabriel   –   Califiori

Zubimendi

Eze   –   Rice

Madueke   –   Gyokeres   –   Trossard

I toyed with the idea of Odegaard coming in, but I’m thinking he’ll do a job-share with Eze, perhaps either way around. I just think that Eze is more suited to get the best out of Big Vik, then on the left flank, Trossard seems to be on a similar wavelength to the Swede (think that sumptuous ball in behind that Gyokeres didn’t quite get the shot off against Leeds a couple of weeks back). I think we need to ‘lean in’ to the good form of the Swede and I’m just not sure that has come with Odegaard. He was the one I thought would be the guy to feed our number 14, but I feel like I just haven’t seen enough of it. But we have with Eze. So let’s go with that for an hour and see if it works. Gabby Jesus didn’t do enough to win his place, Merino is out, Gyokeres only got 30 minutes against Sunderland, so he should be fresher.

Regardless of the starting XI though, Arteta has been at pains this season to point out that the finishers can also be as important as the starters and, dare I say it, they are probably more important than those who get go kick off. Just think about the Sunderland game and the impact the subs had there – they turned it from a nervy 1-0, to what in the end looked like a comfy 3-0 victory at home.

And I do think tonight will be nervy. Brentford are a good team. A solid team. A team who know set pieces almost as well as we do and in Kayode get a de facto corner every time they get a throw in. They’ll be leaning into that, as well as a rapid counter and interestingly, they also might not deploy Thiago as I was thinking they might. On my run this morning I listened to the preview section of the Beesotted podcast and towards the end they had an interesting discussion about how Thiago plays the target man in some games, but in others he’s happy to drop deeper and feed the pacey wide men. If you think about how they might sit in tonight and rely on the counter, it’s something that I think Arteta has to be mindful of.

Last night City did their bit to ratchet up the pressure. Tonight the players need to be as cool, calm and collected, as Arteta seemed in his press conference.

Fingers crossed tomorrow we’re talking about a victory – by any means necessary.

Catch you all tomorrow morning for a de-brief, then I might see if I can get some peeps on for the Same Old Arsenal pod in the evening.