It’s kind of wild to me the reaction from Liverpool fans to the result on Sunday. Yes, by all means be mad at the VAR and the general ineptitude from re-branded PROREF, but coming at Arsenal fans as if it’s our fault that a penalty decision was missed is a bit rich. These are fans who have watched Van Dijk get away with kicks and elbows for years. Then there’s the “you’ve won, but what has football lost” rants that online Liverpool content creators have been dropping onto their feeds. Bore off you bunch of absolute weirdos.

Anyway, as fun as it would be to keep basking in the victory of that important win in the context of our Premier League title defence, there’s no ability to spend too much time enjoying it if you’re Arteta and his team, as tomorrow night we travel to Slavia Prague to take on the current Czech champions. They are top of their domestic league, having not lost yet, and will feel somewhat bullish about their chances of getting something against an Arsenal side that seems to only play away games these days.

Whilst their domestic form is impressive, their Champions League form is the opposite; they’ve played three, lost at home to Lens 3-2, lost away to Sabah 2-0, then away to Fenerbahce they picked up a 2-2 draw. I watched the highlights of that 2-2 draw and Fener took the lead on four minutes with a bit of a worldie, then on 10 minutes, Greenwood bagged the second, and they must have thought they were going to serve up an absolute pasting. Then a familiar face, Matteo Guendouzi, handed them a lifeline with a shocking bit of defending, before a 90th-minute equaliser got them a point. On the day and based on the results, it kind of looks like a fair result, and the goal itself was a rapid counter. That’s probably what they’ll be looking for tomorrow night.

What I’m looking for is obviously three points to The Arsenal, but I think I also want to see a bit of rotation. With all due respect to Slavia, the depth and quality of our squad are such that we should be able to shift the team around a bit, with some of those Arsenal players having put in a decent shift against Liverpool. Could we get away with having Rice sit on the bench at the start? Could we see Eze, White, Mosquera, Gyokeres? Maybe a Merino? I’ll do more of a predicted line-up in tomorrow’s preview blog, but for me I think where I’ve been pleased with Arteta’s selection decisions so far this season is when we’ve found ourselves playing these types of midweek games. When you are hoping to play north of 50 games in a season, you need to be able to draw on all available resources, and I think we’ve seen signs that Arteta will do that.

Will that extend to somebody like Max Dowman, for example? Amanda said that on last night’s Same Old Arsenal podcast, and at first I was thinking about dismissing that as an option because of his age. But as we’ve all been talking about for long enough, having seen the likes of Wilshere and Fabregas arrive on the Arsenal scene, if you’re good enough, you’re old enough. Not only that, but we want to ensure that Madueke is fit and firing on all cylinders in the Premier League, given Max still has to serve two of the ridiculous three-match bans that he’s on, following his red at Fleetwood. He can play in the Champions League, so preserving Noni for Hull at the weekend feels like an eminently sensible move to me.

It’s the same logic for Rice, too, because he was imperious against Liverpool. He’d had a week off, he looked supercharged, and if we can even just have him on the bench and not need him against Slavia tomorrow, then happy days. Let’s not forget how stocked our midfield is; Myles is coming on leaps and bounds, but in Merino and Zubimendi we have two World Cup winners in the squad who can’t get a start. This feels like the sort of game that you’d put them in, I think. You need to be able to use the full extent of our squad and, for Zubi in particular, it just feels like he hasn’t been given enough of a crack to win his place back just yet.

We’ll know more about team news this evening, but with Arsenal currently in seventh in the table and looking to finish as high up as possible to get that favourable draw, you’d think that we need a decent win tomorrow night. Getting three points puts us on ten from a possible 12; I think it probably knocks us up a place or two at the halfway stage of the Group phase, so we need to ensure that there can be no Fleetwood-shaped slip-ups. Yes, we need rotation, but Arteta needs to find the balance, because mass rotation leads to a little less security. Players who haven’t played together misplace passes; there aren’t the same runs as those who are regularly on the pitch for the first time, and we get the kind of stodgy play that we saw in the League Cup. There’s a balance to be struck.

Right, that’ll do me for today, I think. Plenty for us to ponder ahead of the team travelling out today. Let’s just hope the team news is relatively positive.

Back tomorrow with a match preview.