Up until yesterday I think I’d watched about two minutes of international football, but for some reason, I decided I might as well put the football on in the background in the kitchen of the Mother-In-Laws house last night. I’m glad I did, because it was a superb game of football, and Saka was brilliant I thought. Yeah, yeah, whatever about Kane, Bellingham and Gordon, my interest is on The Arsenal and Bukayo looked very impressive. His two goals were quite poachery I thought, and it made me reflect on how he’s had a couple of those for The Arsenal this season already.

If he’s getting in those positions for tap-ins inside the six yard box, it can only be a good thing, but it does make me wonder about the Gyokeres dynamic, because those are the positions you’d expect him to take up. It’s no bad thing to have multiple players arriving at different times for that kind of move, but it will be interesting to see how the Arsenal team interacts against Leeds next weekend, which is thankfully now less than a week away.

Eze got on the pitch and looked alright too, which is just as well, because I suspect he’ll be asked to play from the start next weekend too, if Tzolis’ injury is a few weeks. He’s a player who probably needs more minutes than he’s getting, so I’m hoping he can build on the 20 he got last night for England and be ready for the visit of the Yorkshiremen on our turf.

Myles also got on, but only got 12 touches in 11 minutes plus stoppages, so I don’t think you can judge too much of that performance, because the opposition were toast and the two teams were just playing for full time by then.

Elsewhere Zubi got on for 13 minutes, but it was the inevitable Mikel Merino goal that takes the Arsenal headlines from that match, with his volleyed goal slammed home from around the penalty spot to secure Spain’s victory.

David Raya got a rare start in goal, but talk of him being better than Simon and getting minutes ahead of De La Fuente’s main man will be quelled a little this morning, because apparently he didn’t have a great on. SofaScore gave him a 6.0 and I think he’ll probably be a bit annoyed with their goal, because it was one of those that he didn’t set the power in his feet probably to be able to properly push himself across goal to make the save. Hey, whatever man, we know he’s ace and our guy, and hopefully the sooner he’s back with The Arsenal and hopefully unscathed, the better.

Today it’s Martin Odegaard’s Norway who travel to Portugal, and I hope he leaves one in on that scummy rat Bernardo Silva. Apparently after his dirty work in the return fix of this leg a few days back, he simply said “that’s football” in reaction to his petty kick out. What would you know about football, you cheating rat bastard whose legacy has been built on a foundation of cheating from Manchester. Take him out, Martin, go full Karate Kid “Sweep the leg” on his ass. I want to see some tears.

We’ve got one more round of games in midweek next week, then we’re back to the good and proper stuff again, so hopefully the lads who haven’t picked up knocks can all come through unscathed. We’ve potentially lost Kai and Tzolis through this horrid international break, but our squad depth is such that we should be able to handle it, and the better news appears to be that a lot of our players are getting minutes, goals, and form ahead of the recommencement of the Premier League. That can only be a good thing.

Right, that’ll do for today, as I need to get out there and enjoy this late summer renaissance in London that we’re having before it all gets cold and windy again. Catch you wonderful people all tomorrow.