So, who survived the latest round of international torture, eh?

I was making food for dinner last night, and I heard Sky Sports say that after Alexander Isak was sent home because of a minor injury, Cody Gakpo has now also been sent home for Liverpool, which means their front line is starting to look a little bare. Who do they play next?

Man City, of course.

Has that club also got the footballing gods on the take as well now?

Anyway, at least Italy were sensible enough to have Calafiori as an unused substitute in their 4-1 win over Turkey last night. As a quick aside, when did we all start calling them ‘Turkiye’? What’s wrong with calling them ‘Turkey’? In Germany, Great Britain is called GrossBritannien, and in France it’s Grande-Bretagne. They call England Angleterre, so what’s the problem? Maybe I’m going a bit ‘yer da’ with this one, but it all feels a little unnecessary to me.

Anyway, Arsenal’s involvement in that match was thankfully null and void, as I’d hoped, and my other big hope from last night was that Big Vik would play and score. Wishes fulfilled for two-in-a-row on that one, as he bagged the third goal of three on 72 minutes, with the most tappy-in of tap-ins at the back post. If only it was as easy as that in the Prem, eh Vik?

What I liked about it was seeing a nice big smile on his face at the end of the highlight I watched. For his goal on Friday, he barely mustered a smirk, but if this is him regaining confidence, form, and belief, ready to take some minutes and show us the poacher that he is for The Arsenal, then I’m down for that. He’s not my cup of tea from an attacking point of view; I feel like he’s a bit limited in our system, but I wish nothing but goals and happiness for him as an Arsenal player.

In fact, it’s weird, but because I know that he probably values his contribution in goals (as evidenced by the video when he signed and was in the taxi reading Martin Ødegaard’s welcome message), I probably want him to score more than others on the pitch. For example, if you tell me that you’ve looked in a crystal ball and you know that Arsenal are going to grind out a 1-0 hard-fought and uncomfortable win against Leeds in 11 days’ time, but I get to pick the goalscorer, I’m probably choosing Gyokeres. That’s because we need him. He’s completely useless to us if he isn’t bagging goals, so let’s have him come closer to the group by delivering on that end product; whether that’s tap-ins inside the six yard box or not. And to evidence that, once again, he had just 37 touches last night, had a 71% passing accuracy, created one chance, had one shot on target (the goal), and one off target. Just five of his touches for Sweden were inside the box. He just scores goals. That’s it. So having him bag against Leeds would be mighty helpful, methinks.

Tonight we have a lot more action for our internationals on duty, as Saka, Eze, MLS and Konsa are all included in the England squad, whilst Merino and Zubimendi are the guys in Spain who have our attention. I would say the best goalie in the world is David Raya too, but Luis de la Fuente’s obsession with Unai Simón is baffling to everyone in the world except him. The only thing I can liken it to is that weird period in the mid-90s when Tim Flowers seemed to be getting as many games in goal for England as David Seaman was. Back then, Seaman and Flowers were at least alternating, though; de la Fuente plays Simon as if he’s got some dodgy pictures of his wife on his phone and won’t release them to the Spain manager.

There’s also a friendly in which Brazil play at 11am this morning, and you have to hope that Big Gabi is used sparingly by Ancelotti. It’s against Australia, he doesn’t need to be riskes, so give caps to players who haven’t played as much. I don’t want to hear of any hammy’s going pop for our Brazilian because he played 70 minutes in a game that he didn’t need to take part in. Please.

Other than that, there isn’t really a ton of stuff out there, unless you count Paddy Vieira talking about how he could have joined Man United from The Arsenal. Pffft. That sort of story always gets busted out on international breaks. When normally it would be buried by actual news related to current Premier League affairs, Sky Sports have to hit their quota of eyeballs, so it doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that this kind of clickbait exists. And I’m just a sucker for it, because I’ve even linked to it in today’s blog. Hey man, we’re all part of the machine, right?

Well, this part of the machine is going to power down now, so I’ll be back tomorrow with some more thoughts on why Slama went in two-footed on Saka, and we’ve now got Noni as our right-winger until Christmas. See you then for that cheery update 😉