So, now we’ve heard from the managers, and we have somewhat of a team update, we can start to look at how Arsenal get three points in a London Derby that I am really nervous about. Not as nervous as before the NLD, but just starting today’s musings has some butterflies in the stomach, such is the crunch part of the season that we are in right now. We’ll get on to that, but first, we have to have a word about the Champions League draw. That, boys and girls, was probably as good as we could have hoped for from a draw. Leverkusen in the next round, followed by either Sporting Lisbon or Bodo/Glimt in the quarter finals, to set up a game against either Newcastle, Barca, The Scum or Atletico Madrid.

It’s a pathway that I don’t think you’ll have found a single Gooner not happy with when they did the draw yesterday. And for me, with Leverkusen literally next to Koln, I am hoping I can find a way to get a ticket for the away game. I suspect it will be a tough one to get, but I’ll be keeping everything crossed that I can secure one.

And to those fans of other clubs bemoaning our luck, I’m sorry, but I have no time for such nonsense. Do you know how we got this ‘luck’? By winning every single game of the group stages. If – and it is an ‘if’, because all teams at this stage of the competition are very good teams – we get through this phase of play, you can’t exactly say we haven’t played good teams on our way. Bayern, Atletico Madrid, and Inter Milan – all good teams and two of whom are already into this stage of the competition. And Leverkusen will be no slouches either. We have a mixed record of going to Germany, so I am not counting my chickens, but am I glad that we weren’t on the other side of the draw? If I speak, I am in trouble…

The reality of the situation is that we are fighting on multiple fronts and, if we can get a draw that – hopefully – affords more rotation for Arteta at any stage, then that would be amazing. Imagine if we can go to Leverkusen and get the win. It would be massive for the context of our season, because we play the return fixture just before the League Cup final. Man City play Real Madrid in their double-header, which I would hope and imagine is not going to afford them much room for rotation. We may end up not being able to rotate depending on that first result, but upon guesswork and estimation, you’d imagine that we stand a higher probability than City do. We could have done with them travelling away to Madrid before the League Cup final, but there you go, not a lot that can be done.

That’s a ‘future us’ problem, though. The immediate and most pressing problem we have is how to overcome a Chelsea side who will have seen Villa lose to Wolves last night, and will be seeing an opportunity to go for those Champions League spots with the Villains wobbling. Rosenior had his presser yesterday and confirmed that Reece James is back, Cucurella is out, as well as Estevao and Fofana through suspension. The rest of their players who are long-term absentees remain out, but Rosenior seemed pretty confident ahead of this one, saying that “what I would say is that they also know it is going to be a very difficult game for them,” which is fair. Chelsea are no mugs. They have players who tipover the edge, borne out by the number of red cards they have this season (including that disgraceful one on Merino by Caicedo against us earlier in the season), but they have some very good technical players too. Enzo, Caicedo, James, and Pedro Neto – all of those are players that I think are very good on the ball, and we will have to be at our best at both ends of the pitch if we want to get something from this game tomorrow. He did point out – which is a familiar failing of ours recently too – that Chelsea have “we have just given goals away”. IF Chelsea are looking at a weakness in us of our ability to have a brain-fart moment, we might look to them for the same issues.

I had another look at the Burnley game, but I also watched the Sun Sports tactics exposed column to see what Chelsea might try to do to us with a bit of a low block, and the goal they scored kind of resonated with how they might look to catch us out on Sunday. They like to control the central space in their own half around the centre circle, apparently, and the goal they scored against Burnley came through a bit of an interchange in that space, followed by a quick back-to-front movement with a defence-splitting pass from Caicedo to Neto, then Neto across goal to Joao Pedro. Decent goal to be fair. The goal they conceded from a corner was shocking marking, though.

As for Arteta, well, I guess I’ve focused more on Chelsea’s press conference because, as usual, we didn’t really get much from the manager. Half of me doesn’t mind that, because you are giving no quarter to the opposition, but it doesn’t make for easy reviewing for a simple blogger like me!

The training pictures/video don’t give away much either. No sign of Timber, although there was no real comment about his availability or lackthereof. But he did say that Kai would train today, so that’s a positive. I suspect if he’s only training today, it’d be a long shot for tomorrow, but they must have Brighton in mind – perhaps for the bench – as a game he’s been earmarked for a return on.

One thing I did think was interesting was his comments on the mood in the camp. His response of “not too high, not too low” kind of reassured me, in some way. It feels almost as if the stench of the Wolves game was completely neutralised from the high of the North London Derby, which is fine, and you don’t want those players to get carried away. They are professionals, they have a job to do, so getting the game face on and not thinking too much about past successes is exactly how you prepare for another intense football match against a local and hated rival. What was also good – although expected – was his rhetoric around Chelsea. He said that their preparation remains the same, that they aren’t sure whether they will approach this game in the same way as the League Cup second round, but I would be surprised if they haven’t modelled some in-game scenarios for tomorrow based on the first five or ten minutes and how the game plays out. There was an interview with the guy from The Sun who does the tactics column with Declan Rice, and he said something that I’ll paraphrase, but it was essentially “if fans could come and see how the manager prepares us, they’d realise just how detailed our tactics are”. I believe him. Arteta is meticulous; he tries to leave no stone unturned. I’d imagine he only sleeps a couple of hours a night because he is so switched on. That only gets you so far, though; you need the players on the pitch to do it consistently, and that has to go again tomorrow.

Right, that’ll do for now, so I’ll put a pin in today’s musings and be back tomorrow with some more thoughts on how we might be able to collect three points tomorrow. Catch you then.