Plenty of discussion on this one inline, on socials and in the GCs on WhatsApp. I think the discourse on this is predicated on his role. I still maintain I suspect he’ll be number three, and if that bears out, then I’m quite ‘meh’ on this one. I’m not angry, I’m not excited, it’s a body coming in and I’m sure he’ll be a good cheerleader for the team. He’s played 107 times in the Premier League, 265 career appearances, he has experience and he won’t be on mega money at Leeds United. I heard somebody say that it was a two-year deal, which very much therefore feels like a “come be with us for a couple of years, train with the team, pick up a wage, get Arsenal on your CV and you can move on after that”. I don’t think anybody should read anything else into it. We move on.

Who to, next, then?

Seems like this Greek lad Christos Tzolis is the one most likely to go through, with a £35million move being mooted across a few channels yesterday, and I have to say I don’t mind this deal. In a summer where Premier League clubs are looking to charge farcial amounts for their tlent, perhaps looking to mainland Europe to unearth the next gem isn’t a bad idea. I listened to the Arsenal opinion pod earlier this morning on my run and the lads were talking about how City picked up Doku from Rennes, he had a ‘bedding in’ season, then this season and last season he was making a real impact. They picked Doku up at 21-years-old from Rennes for £55million in 2023. This guy is a little older at 24, plays in obviously a weaker league in Belgium, but his numbers are pretty good. If you take the idea that Gyokeres’ target that I set was basically to just be half of the output machine that he was in Lisbon, and he achieved that, if Tzolis is the one replacing Trossard for £35million, having scored 22 goals and got 29 assists in 52 games. If he can translate that into even 10 goals and 10 assists for the first team at Arsenal next season, then that’s absolutely fine.

He’s apparently rapid, he’s got Champions League experience and two goals and an assist, so he’s been playing in the elite competition. He actually played against us in our 3-0 win in December. WhoScored put him down as a 6.5 out of 10 score on the day, which was second best in the team, on a day in which they really were second best, as Noni had arguably his best game for Arsenal that day, bagged two goals, and I wonder if this potential arrival really does signal the end of any chance that we see Noni on that left hand side.

Mind you, given Saka can’t seem to do 90-minutes for England at the moment, Noni is probably looking likely to be starting the season off on that right-hand side anyway, at this rate. That goes the same for a few Arsenal players for the start of this season, methinks. Saliba’s rumoured back problems won’t go away, so if you’re Christian Mosquera you’re looking at the start of the season as an opportunity to rack up some minutes. And whilst a doubt remains over Timber, and Ben White back in training (and having a lovely ol’ catch up with Meslier as the club showed on a video yesterday), he’s probably looking at the start of the season as an opportunity to get himself minutes too. I think a few of us thought that his Arsenal race was run, but I don’t see how Arsenal sanction any move for White whilst we still don’t have full knowledge on the Timber situation. It’s a bit of a worry, I have to say, because what was thought to be only a few weeks, has turned into him missing a World Cup. And even if he is fit for the start of pre-season training, if I was Arteta, there’s no way I’d sanction a White exit right now. He’s experienced, he knows the first team, the Premier League, he is looking fit and he can slot right back into that role and know exactly what Arteta wants. Keeping Ben White, whilst there are so many other questions around fitness of players for the start of the season, is feeling kind of important now.

It’s why the Bruno Guimaraes move now – if it happens (and I still remain sceptical, as I wonder whether it’s an agent play for a mega-deal from Newcastle) – makes sense. Rice is playing with pain and spends half the time with an ice pack strapped to his leg. If Bruno comes in, Rice can be eased in for the new season. Zubi has hardly played this World Cup, so you’d hope he’d be ready and raring to go, whilst Myles will also be in contention. So there are options there for Arteta for the start of the season, even if he decides to give the World Cup lads extra time off to recover. I saw talk that Rice, Saka and Saliba will basically not be seen until October. I suspect that’s a little hyperbolic, but if you give them three weeks off after the World Cup, that takes you to the second week of August. Then they have to pick up as pre-season training again, so they’ll be a month behind the other lads – that takes you to the middle of September, so that October timeline suddenly doesn’t look as unrealistic, right?

If we get the right cover and quality in, then I’m all up for it. We don’t want to see Rice and Saka in particular breaking down and then not being seen until 2027. The club will have all the data and medical records they need, however, so I personally am feeling quite relaxed. Again, as I’ve said once or twice already this summer, that’s the benefit you get when you are champions.

Right – catch you all tomorrow. Hey! I even managed to get through 1000 words without talking the World Cup – great stuff!

Last season I actually went into the semi-final in a pretty confident mood. We’d beaten PSG pretty well at home, we’d already managed to vanquish Real Madrid in the previous round, so “why not PSG?” I thought. Of course, they showed us that they are made of different stuff and dispatched us in both games, scoring some pretty decent goals, to be fair. At the time, Mikel Arteta said we were the better side over the two legs, and I think you can certainly make the case for it:

• Merino’s offside goal was tight
• Dembele shins one in off the post
• Donnarumma made several fantastic saves, particularly in the second leg, where we had nearly 3 xG versus PSG’s 1.7 – of which they scored two goals.

I also think that our injury problems didn’t help. In the first leg, we played Trossard as a centre forward because we had Havertz, Jesus, AND Merino out injured, so it’s fair to say we were quite significantly underpowered for that semi. I mean, when you look at the bench, you get that feeling even more – youth team players like Butler-Oyedeji, Henry-Francis, and Kabia all made the bench last season. We were beset by injuries, and it took its toll.

This season is different, and different for a variety of reasons, for sure. Let’s start with the options Arteta has at his disposal. I’ve just mentioned that we had a bench of youth team players in that semi-final. That won’t happen this evening. We did the Same Old Arsenal preview pod last night, and Amanda and I couldn’t agree on the starting line-up, but one thing we could agree on is that it is great that we have such strength in depth. For example, this would be my lineup tonight:

Raya

Timber – Saliba – Gabriel – Calafiori

MLS

Odegaard – Rice

Saka – Havertz – Trossard

That would be my line-up, but think about who could still play a part from the bench:

• Mosquera
• Hincapie
• Zubimendi
• Eze
• Madueke
• Martinelli
• Gyokeres
• Dowman
• Merino

You can name ten players on the bench for the Champions League matches. That’s nine I’ve just mentioned there, let alone factoring in Norgaard and Gabriel Jesus. If you factor in that you have to name two goalkeepers, there are going to be three players from that list who can’t even make the bench. That’s strength in depth. It’s very different from last season.

What’s also different, too, is that I am not going into this one expecting us to win it. I said on the preview pod 1-0 to The Arsenal, that’s what my heart wants to go with, but PSG and their firepower in attack make them the bookies’ favourite. They are the ones that are expected to retain this trophy; they are the ones who took their chances against us last season, they are the ones the neutrals will expect to win. In some perverse sense, that makes me feel more at ease about the game. It takes the pressure off. I suspect part of that is because we’ve won the league. We are already champions and winners, and there will be a parade tomorrow regardless of what happens tonight.

And I hope that the fact that the players are already Premier League winners has also unlocked them, too. Rice and Saka spoke about the fact that they feel that the weight has been lifted. They can say they are winners now. They will feel a little taller. And that confidence going into this game is huge. I hope they can play with the freedom that will surprise PSG. I hope we get the best version of The Arsenal today. And I think we will.

I also think the fact that Arteta was able to rest players last week is huge. Saka, Rice, Odegaard, Eze, Raya, Gabriel, and Saliba – all have basically not played many minutes for nearly two weeks. Any potential fatigue we could be thinking about for the team, any emotional strain, was immediately lifted on 19th May after City dropped points at Bournemouth – 11 days ago. They’ve had 11 days to prepare and focus themselves, whilst also celebrating the Premier League win. They go into this game an inch or two taller.

So whilst PSG are the favourites, they probably do edge it in terms of quality, there’s enough there for these Arsenal players to suggest that we might be able to do something special tonight. And I have no idea how I would react if we did. The Premier League trophy celebration tomorrow was enough for me, so the fact that this could happen tonight, I’m not sure what I’ll do or how I’ll react. It’ll be crazy after the game if we do win. I’m going to the screening with The Management this evening at the Emirates, the party kicking off if we win will be immense. I’d love to be part of that. I pray I can.

That’s all that needs to be said for today. It’s going to be tough, it’s going to be nerve-biting, but it is a chance for those players to etch themselves into Arsenal’s long history, to be woven into the fabric of the club for eternity.

Go out there and Make it Happen, lads. We’re all behind you.

Up The Arsenal.

But as the countdown begins, as I start to see more and more tactical preview shows, I guess it is time to put those game faces on and start to look at what lies ahead of us on Saturday evening.

It’s a scary prospect. I mean, sure, they play in a Mickey Mouse league that they’ve just won by six points and have been coasting for the last few weeks, enabling them to focus on the Champions League prep, but they are still a thoroughly impressive side. And we will – by the sounds of every European football expert out there – find ourselves as underdogs on Saturday. They have spent the season resting players at the right moment; they have the balance and blend to their season that enables them to do that, plus they have some of the most frightening attackers on the planet. In the knockout stages, they smashed Chelsea 8-2 on aggregate. They did Liverpool 4-0 on aggregate over two legs. Then there was that crazy 5-4 game against Bayern, which they followed up with a 1-1 draw at the Allianz. So they know where the net is.

But they also aren’t the tightest at the back either. In the Champions League this season, they have scored a whopping 44 goals across their 16 matches, nearly three per match. But they’ve conceded 20 – so they don’t always keep a clean sheet and they are going to leave space for us this coming weekend. We all know Arsenal’s impressive Champions League run, built on the foundations of a solid back line that has conceded just six compared to PSG’s 22, but have also ‘only’ bagged 29 from PSG’s 44. It’s also worth pointing out that we have played two games less, so perhaps that goal tally might be closer to them if we had.

What’s interesting, when you look at the numbers side-by-side, is that PSG averages a higher possession than us, which is not so surprising, but also more ball recoveries and tackles won. Because of the fact that they’ve played two games more, I looked at the ‘average per match’ on the UEFA website, and PSG averages 6.44 tackles per match compared to our 4.43. ON ball recoveries, they average 39.07, compared to our 34.86. The ‘saves’ are more similar – PSG have 2.82 to our 2.43.

So what does this tell me, the very poor data nerd in disguise? Initially, I looked at those numbers and just said out loud, “Well, they’re just better at us at most things, right?” Of course, that could be true, but it could also mean that they make more tackles per game because they put themselves in more compromising positions defensively. Teams towards the bottom of the Premier League often lead the way in things like tackles or blocked shots, because they have to do more of it by volume. Perhaps the same could be said for PSG? Or, perhaps I’m just injecting a little too much Hopium at a time in which we all might need a fair dose of it?

The number of ball recoveries, as I interpret it, could be due to a higher press from PSG. I do think they do press higher than us, and when you can force that from your opponent higher up the pitch, you get more turnovers. In the Champions League this season, we’ve tended to dominate games on possession, often just shutting down matches, so when you slow down the game, then perhaps there is a tendency to see fewer ball recoveries. I think.

There’s one more stat that I saw that I thought might be worth highlighting, which is a goalkeeping stat on the number of claims that Raya for Arsenal, or Chevalier for PSG, makes. In fewer games, Raya has made 38 claims and 19 high claims, whereas Chevalier has 18 claims and 11 high claims. Our goalie commands his box more than the PSG one – could this be an opportunity for us? Given our penchant for set pieces, I certainly hope so.

So there are a few titbits of opportunity for us, but the key will be to stop their constantly rotating and fluid front set of players. The news on Hakimi will be key, because like Calafiori (who I would play in the final, by the way), the Moroccan likes to roam and pop up in unusual places. If he isn’t available (and he’s been out since they played Bayern a month ago), then that’s a big plus for us. They also have Chevalier and Nuno Mendes, who haven’t played since then, but it wouldn’t surprise me if all of those players have basically just been given a month off to prep for this one.

So there is still a bit of team news and expected tactical set up to be concluded ahead of this one, whereas for us it is pretty much just Jurrien Timber who is the question mark. There’s no way he starts on saturday, but getting 20 minutes from him could be big, so let’s just hope for more positive updates. Apparently he was in training yesterday, so that’s great news.

Other than that, we play the waiting game as the build up to this intensifies. It was weird that Arteta did the Champions League presser last week, but I guess there will be more embargoed words that will come out from that one today or tomorrow, as the team make their way to Budapest for the last match of the season.

Right, that’s it from me for today. It’s going to be another scorcher for the UK, so I’m going to finish up here and make sure I have my set up all sorted for a day of work – outside in my garden.

Catch you all tomorrow. Have a great day.

But having seen Arsenal win the Premier League and lift the trophy? I’m still going.

The Management asked me yesterday “How long is that Arsenal flag in the lounge window going to stay up there?”, to which my retort was “A little while longer, love. We still have the Champions League”. I think she thinks that after that, it’ll come down, but if we win the darn thing…well, let’s just say, it ain’t gonna be moving for some time after that for sure.

Regardless of the result, the fact that we have that and a parade to look forward to, means that this week can just be a continuation of the party, so in a sense, I’m kind of glad the club didn’t go early by doing something yesterday. It meant I could spend more time consuming ALL THE CONTENT, messaging more friends who are Gooners, watching more videos, listening to more podcasts, all whilst soaking up the glorious sunshine.

It’s made me really reflect on how much this title means. I knew it would mean a lot, I think we all did, but I didn’t realise it would have as big an impact as it has. I didn’t realise that a full week after we learned our fate and the victory was confirmed, I’d still be revelling in it. I spoke to my brother (West Ham fan) after they won the Europa Conference League, and he was happy, but I remember him saying, “After the high of seeing and experiencing it, it’s a bit of a come down to realise that it was just a moment of joy and tomorrow is just another day”. He tried to echo those sentiments after I spoke to him last Tuesday, after the Bournemouth/City game. I couldn’t see it that way. I still don’t. This victory is amazing. It is phenomenal. It shows just how massive the club is on a global scale. There have been parties everywhere. I’ve seen clips of a preacher spelling out an acronym at a sermon, in which the acronym spells ARSENAL as he preaches the word of God, whilst also nodding to his team. I’ve seen the parties in Africa, America, and Asia. Arsenal are a truly global entity and a cultural beacon for so many people to identify with all over the world.

And as for those Arsenal players, well, they have written themselves into history. They will meet up 20 years from now and instantly have a bond that they can share and talk about. Bonded for life through the unifying force that is the football club. There’s something beautiful in that. Regardless of players who maybe haven’t played as much, like Norgaard or Gabby Jesus, they still have that bond, and there is something magical and wonderful about that.

It must be so weird for them to go to work today, though. In many ways, they’ve done the hard work, but after the parties on Sunday afternoon/evening, then probably having a day off yesterday in the sun, today it is back to London Colney, and game faces on. And I have to say I’m really intrigued as to what Arteta will do this week. I doubt we’ll get much intel, but he has to bring those players back down to earth, as well as prepare them for a huge game in just four days. A game which could take them over and above any of their Arsenal title-winning predecessors. Arteta will be focused on how PSG set up, what Arsenal need to do to counter their obvious strengths, as well as amplifying our own strengths against them. Will he lean in to some ‘revenge’ narrative from last season’s semi-final defeat? Maybe. Maybe he’ll use that as fuel?

I think there will be an element of it, but I also think that having a solid two or three days to prepare for this big opponent will be big for him. The players and manager often talk about not really getting time to do much training. Well, they will this week. I suspect they’ll leave London for Budapest on Friday morning, which means Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday can be spent running through scenarios, working out team strategies, and getting the players in a fitness situation where they are good to go. The likes of Merino coming back for minutes on the pitch on Sunday would be welcome, but so too would be Timber in training. I suspect his ability to play a significant part will be limited, but just having them there will be great for the players and coaching staff.

And I guess we as fans will need to get our game faces on too. This is the biggest single club competition game in world football. I’ve been approaching it as a ‘nice-to-have’; a ‘free hit’ if you will. But come Friday and Saturday, I wonder if the usual nerves have started to kick in? They aren’t here now, it is weird to think that they might not be there at all, because of the Premier League win. But I’ll have to cross that bridge when I come to it. For now, there’s more basking in the sun to be done.

Catch you all tomorrow for some more thoughts.

And in yesterday’s blog I did say there would be a time to bust out the ‘receipts’ for all of those fans.

Today needs to be a bit of that I think. Not least because I was looking at Sky Sports this morning as I was getting changed and saw a video of this bottle wanker talking outside of the City ground. I have never heard such revisionist bullshit in my entire life. You could see he intended to do this video as a “fair kop, I’ve done meself up a kipper here” to start off with, but then he waffled on about being ‘rent free’ in everyone associated with Arsenal’s heads. Like it ius some kind of consolation. Some kind of small victory he can take.

“Rent free”. You can have space in my head my friend. I am literally happy to give it to you. I don’t care. You wanted to make a name for yourself, you thought you were hilarious, then when it has backfired, you’re now rowing back with this faux “it was only banter” nonsense, which also included saying “I never said tears”. Technically, I guess you are right, you didn’t “say” anything of the sort. You just decided that your moment of fame needed to be doubled down on after you beat us by filming yourself pretending to cry tears into an Arsenal bottle.

You have reaped what you have sown, my friend. Now don’t try to dial it back because your actions have backfired so spectacularly.

Rent free.

Yep – you have a special place in this season and this summer’s ‘banter’ logs. You are welcome to it.

He’s just the culmination of what I talked about yesterday, though; the ‘weaponized banter’ age brought about in the main by social media and the ability for anybody to go ‘viral’. And if you’re going to go viral, if you’re going to be part of that scene, you need to be able to laugh it off and hold your hands up. I think he tried in that video yesterday, I really do, but ultimately he couldn’t help himself. He had to ‘yeah but’ like everyone else who plays in that arena. And it’s because of that ‘Yeah but-ary’ that I’m even talking about him this morning. He is a twat who can’t just hold his hands up.

As for me, well, I’m still celebrating. I’m off to a conference today, which, if I’m honest, I could really do without. The management and I shared a bottle of Veuve Cliquot, two bottles of primitivo, as well as a Chinon, before we finally hit the hay, such was the jubilation. I’ve booked myself somewhere for lunch on the parade day, as the wife and I will be making our way towards Islington Town Hall to celebrate the title win. And hey, who knows, maybe there will be a second trophy on display too? That’d be nice.

On the Champions League, I still find it so weird that I’ve barely registered it or thought about it since the Atletico game. All my energy, mental faculties, focus, and will have gone into the Premier League. That was the one I wanted. I craved. And now it is done, I am still just so happy. And yet if you are one of those Arsenal players, having partied yesterday and enjoyed the celebrations, now you find yourself having to get your game face on for what is the biggest domestic club game in the footballing world.

We are in the Champions League Final, and I’ve spent the build-up to it not even registering that in my mind. It’s just so bizarre. But nice, actually, because I feel like whatever happens in nine days, this Arsenal team is already a winner. How on earth is the Champions League a ‘nice to have’???

Maybe as we build up to it I will feel different. Maybe I’ll start to have the nerves kick in this time next week. But for right now, where I sit, it just feels so amazing to be in a position where I don’t have the stress of football weighing me down. Only joy.

I’ll probably try to compile some pre-Palace thoughts tomorrow, as we build up to what is thankfully now a meaningless game, but for today, I think I will leave it there and let you go about your day, enjoying being a supporter of the Champions of England.

Feels good to say that.

Catch you all tomorrow.

How mental is that?

I am a season ticket holder. I have been going for decades and have been a season ticket holder for nearly two decades. I have achieved the requirement for home ticket allocation this season. I have always promised myself that, come hell or high water, if Arsenal ever get to a European Cup final of any level, I will be there. It is a real ‘bucket list’ thing. It’s something I’ve dreamed of. In 2006 is was 23-years-old, in my first job, I hadn’t got my season ticket yet, and I couldn’t have afforded the trip either, given that I was only just a year into my first job. I was gutted I couldn’t experience it, but at that age, and with our recent history of winning trophies, I always thought “there will be another opportunity”.

When we reached the Europa League Final in 2019, I said: “I’m going”. I was convinced that, despite some of the murmurings about how difficult it is to travel to Baku, I would find a way. Well, we all know what a farce that was, with tickets being given out to the locals because of the sheer lack of available travel plans for normal fans.

Yet here we are, 20 years after that 2006 Paris final. Seven years after Baku, and normal match-going fans are once again being shafted. If I put myself in the ballot, the chances are that even if I am fortunate enough to be one of the circa 25% of fans that might get my ticket, I’m going to be asked to pay £821 for my ticket. £821. For a football match.

It is a disgrace. UEFA are a disgrace.

I was asked on BBC London yesterday evening to talk about it – I dumbed down how I was feeling for obvious reasons. But I am furious.

By the way, I know this is an ‘us’ problem now, but it has been a problem for all fans for several years. I had a quick check at the price of tickets for fans in Munich last season. The same. The top category was the same price. The second was €650. The third was €180. Yet you can bet your bottom dollar there will be plenty of neutral ‘influencers’ who make their way to that final at the end of May.

F*ck UEFA. They have priced fans out of football yet again. And have been doing it for years.

This should still be one or two more days of basking in the glow of a Champions League Final. Yet I am having sleepless nights on whether or not I have to essentially spend a big chunk of my monthly wage packet, for a 24-hour trip to Budapest. And I find myself having to seriously consider whether I can afford it. I am literally being priced out of watching my team play in a game they haven’t played in 20 years.

There will be people who read this and think “Boo-f*cking-hoo. You get to go to games, you can clearly afford the season ticket, and there are those in the world who can’t even dream of even watching one game in their life in the Premier League, let alone a Champions League final,” and I get it. I appreciate that I am lucky. But just because of that, it shouldn’t make me feel any less outraged at the prohibitive nature of what many consider a working person’s sport. It isn’t. It is for the ultra-rich. It is for the one-percenters. Probably the 0.1%-ers, actually, and that stinks. Football should not be marginalised. It should be something that everyone has the opportunity to be part of as a fan. It stinks.

And it’s worse for the World Cup. I’m not going to go to America, I have no interest in watching that live, but I saw something on Sky Sports yesterday, in which there was a ticket on sale for $11million. Yep – you did not read that wrong. One ticket to the World Cup Final for that money. That is the worst football-related ticketing thing I have ever seen in my life. Land of the free and home of the broke if you want to be a football fan in the States. Oh, unless you’re a billionaire, or some kind of Instagram influencer like that Speed twat. I bet he’ll be on the pitch in Budapest at some stage, doing the stupid noises that he does.

Sorry, a bit ranty this morning, but it’s hard, you know? This was meant to be a joyous occasion. But I just feel frustrated at the ticketing news. And some go home and away. These people deserve priority, of course they do, but you can’t tell me that 16,824 tickets for Arsenal fans is acceptable in a 67,000-seater stadium. That’s not right. That’s a farce.

But as the ‘ordinary folk’, there’s nothing we can do. We are just the riff raff. We don’t count in football. And every fan from every team that has played in the competition for years has complained about pricing. But it has got worse last season and this season. Do you want to know how much the most expensive price was in 2024 at Wembley?

£610. Here is the official UEFA website to show that price.

In euro’s that is €705. This season it is €950. That is a 35% price increase in two years for the most expensive ticket. During that time in the change in inflation value (which you can calculate on the Bank of England website here) has gone up by 5.2. So £610 in 2024 is the equivalent cost (as of March 2026) of £641.45. So even if you take inflation into account, UEFA has jacked the prices up last year and this year by 28%. They are passing on an additional third of the price of the ticket to the fans. An utter joke.

Right, I’ll leave it there for now. On the upside, if you want some more content to feast on from the actual football side, Amanda and James did a post-Atleti pod last night which you can watch here if you like. Other than that, I’ll be back tomorrow as we look ahead to that massive game against West Ham. See you then.

Last night was one of them.

In anyone’s life, there are lots and lots of things that change. School, job, friends, where you live, your health, your money situation – loads. But some things are constant. For me, my family is obviously the biggest thing in my life, but a constant that I have also had since I was eight years old was The Arsenal.

And, as such, when big milestones happen for The Arsenal, I tend to mentally ‘bookmark’ them. I remember those big moments years after they have passed. Winning the League in 91. In 98 and, Tony Adams was against Everton. 2002. My first FA Cup final in 2003. The Invincibles in 2004. Plus, of course, the Champions League final of 2006. I was one year into my professional working career. I was at a local newspaper, and I remember the joys of getting to the final, as well as the low I felt the next day. There was a Spurs fan who worked in the office who came down first thing just to laugh and gloat. That is etched into my memory like it was yesterday. But as I am older now (not sure how much wiser), I recognise the feat just to get to the final is huge for the club, the manager, and the players.

That shows through not just in the response on the final whistle from the players, or the reaction of the Arsenal fans, but also in the history that Arsenal have in this competition.

Only twice in our history have we got to a final.

That is the most important context this morning. We know that Arsenal have won nothing yet. We all know that this weekend, unless we beat West Ham, we still could come away with nothing. And if that happens, we will need to ask some serious questions. But after a night like last night, now is not the time for ‘yeah but’s. Now is the time to celebrate and recognise what this Arsenal team has achieved by getting to a final.

This is a 71-year-old competition, and this is the second time Arsenal have reached it. Those Arsenal players deserve so much credit. They have bettered their efforts by one from last year, and they have done it with easily the best defence in the competition so far. The 1-0 victory last night, against a decent, albeit slightly limited, I thought, Atletico Madrid side, was done based on a strong defensive foundation. Now, that’s not to say there weren’t moments in the game that had us worried, and the Saliba mistake header that allowed Simeone junior to round Raya for what I thought was the equaliser. But, as if to underline the defensive prowess of this Arsenal team, Saliba was bailed out by some superb work from Gabriel to save his bacon.

Phew.

But that chance aside, as well as a little more territory and ball from Atletico in the second half (which was always going to happen given the fact their season was on the line in that second half), I thought Arsenal pretty much snuffed out anything the Spanish side had to offer. I’ve just had a look at the stats from last night; we out-shot them 13 to five, we had more possession (54% to 46%), we had more passes (443 to 388), and we had a greater xG (1.58 to 0.58). By all accounts this was a close game, but it was one that Arsenal were very much in control of from start to finish.

Now, scratch that, because Arsenal were in control from about two hours before kick-off. Because the fans who went yesterday absolutely smashed the brief for being the 12th man. I was there, I saw it with my own eyes, my mouth is scratchy this morning through so much singing and shouting, but we made the start of this game electric through the fans welcoming the team buses, the early entrance and packed concourse with 30-minutes to play before kick off, as well as the opening tifo and then way in which North London Forever rang out just before kick off. The players have subsequently said they could see and feel it in the ground, and afterwards Arteta referenced the impact it had on him and the players. Football is sometimes a sport in which the perfect symbiosis happens between fans, and that’s what it felt like last night. We were there for them, then those players were there for us.

And of course, the ‘franchise’ player would be the one to be the eventual match winner, wouldn’t he? Bukayo Saka will score many more visually impressive on the eyes goals in his career; he certainly has already done so, but that one will be long remembered by him. He was a mere child when we got to the Champions League final the first time – he’s just done his part in history to put us through last night. I don’t know about you, however, but I thought the chance had gone. It was one of several superb runs into the channels that Gyokeres did on the night, his chipped cross finding Leo’s feet (who was also very good, I thought), before Leo seemed to want an age to set himself for the shot. Oblak managed a decent save, to be fair, but when Bukayo crept in front of his man to tap home from inside the six-yard box, the limbs in block five were everywhere.

And then it felt like it would be a case of holding on to see what Atleti would throw at us. But here’s the thing, and I am clearly saying this in hindsight, but the team set up and performance of those players to a man was absolutely spot on. Arteta had named an unchanged team, which was a surprise, but it was absolutely the right call. Ben White was good, I thought Calafiori played well, the inclusion of MLS was a surprise master stroke and I thought his performance was really great, too. He strikes me as a kid who is so unfazed by this kind of occasion (in fact, given how he was interacting with the crowd, I’d wager he might be one of those ‘big game’ players), which was perfect on a night like this, and alongside Declan Rice they absolutely bossed that midfield. It was a quieter one for Eze, but today is not a time for picking holes, so let’s move on and talk about Big Vik, who followed up his good display against Fulham with another impressive outing. He had his defender pinned all night and never stopped running. He emptied the tank out there and the home fans recognised this and showed their appreciation. He was also unlucky not to score after a great cross from Hincapie. It would have been a goal that his performance merited and although he won’t get the numbers on any official charts or tallies today, there won’t be many Arsenal fans who aren’t saying very positive things about the Swede this morning.

I think Amanda and James are going to do a post-match pod this evening (I’ll be at work) so look out for that one later. But for now, have a great day Gooners, and enjoy this one.

Catch you all tomorrow.

But here we are this morning, on the eve of a Champions League semi final, and our Premier League fate is back in our hands.

I always liked David Moyes.

Those mini celebrations for that draw last night have now been superseded by the small matter of Atletico Madrid at The Emirates at 8pm this evening.

Mikel Arteta had his press conference last night and he gave us the further good news that both Kai Havertz and Martin Ødegaard are with the squad this evening, which is also a massive boost. We’re still missing Timber, but I think we’re all getting used to that, so there’s a decision to be made in a few positions tonight.

I do think he will rotate a little bit from the weekend. Simeone basically gave his whole team the weekend off by playing a completely rotated side, so they will be back and fresh and we need to be ready for that. Arteta will shuffle his pack a little too, so my gut feel on the starting XI for this one is:

Raya

Mosquera – Saliba – Gabriel – Hincapie

Zubimendi

Eze – Rice

Saka – Gyokeres – Martinelli

I personally wouldn’t be starting Martinelli, but I think Arteta will lean in to the ‘vibes’ of how the Brazilian likes this competition, so I think that’s what Mikel will plump for. I also think he’ll be wary of White having played a lot of football and got a fair few minutes in on Saturday against Fulham, so I think the Spaniard gets the nod. It’s the same with Calafiori; we can’t be having him break down by playing back-to-back games in such a short period of time, so I think the Ecuadorian comes in to stabilise and battle whoever plays right wing for Atleti tonight.

I think Kai has a role to play tonight, but not from the start, so there will be a job-share with Gyokeres this evening I’ll bet. That situation will also be mirrored for Eze and Odegaard too, I suspect, although Arteta will need to be mindful of Saka’s minutes. He got 45 against Fulham and at halftime we had the luxury of being able to bring him off. I suspect tonight the manager will be looking at an hour for our Starboy, so there will need to be some minutes for Madueke too.

But the good news is that we have options all over the pitch. If the team I’ve selected above does indeed start, we’ve got White, Calafiori, Odegaard, Trossard, Lewis-Skelly, Havertz, Madueke – all able to come on and impact the game. That’s a luxury Arteta hasn’t been able to call on too much this season, but I’m glad he’s able to do it in one of our biggest match ups.

The prize is there for all to see. It’s a Champions League final in Budapest. It’s the psychological boost of knowing that’s in your back pocket as you try to then win your first Premier League in 22 years.

The atmosphere tonight should be rocking. The home fans, buoyed by the weekend win and City also dropping points, will be well up for this. We’ll get the usual histrionics from the likes of Simeone, but after the outrageous performance of the Atleti manager in re-refereeing the game, I think the home fans are going to bring the noise and howl for absolutely everything this evening. Every foul. Every tackle. Every decision against Arsenal. Everything needs to be treated as an injustice and should be met with howls of derision. I know I will be where I stand.

From a tactical perspective, it feels like we probably need to start fast again like we did in Madrid last week. Simeone made reference to the fact that they speculated that Arsenal would tire in the second half, and inevitably they would get chances. They will get opportunities – with players like Alvarez, Griezmann and Lookman, there’s no way they wouldn’t – but we have to assert an early control on the game. That has often manifested itself this season as Arsenal slowing the game down and keeping it at the back. I don’t think we can afford to do that this time. We need to move the ball quicker, with poise, and get the ballers in our team on it. Feed Eze in between the lines, get the ball to Saka quickly to isolate his man, then look to the channels for the early runs of Gyokeres. That’s how we overcome a formidable opponent in the shape of Atletico Madrid.

They might try to replicate their three man defence and pushing their fullbacks high, but I’d be surprised if they do that from the off, because it will leave a fair bit of space. In the first leg they were one down at halftime, on their own patch, and needed to chase the game. Tonight they can probably afford for the game to start off a little more cagey. The more the sting is taken out of this match, the more it suits the away team, and the more the crowd might start to get nervous and antsy.

I’m making my way back from Portugal this morning, so will be spending the early part of the day on a flight with nothing more to do than worry about what’s going to go down tonight.

I hope it’s an Arsenal win. That would be massive.

Catch you tomorrow for some post match thoughts on how it all played out.

With Unai Emery going ‘Full Unai’ with his team ahead of their home game against Forest on Thursday, Villa put in the kind of performance you expect from an end-of-season team that really are mentally on the beach. That was frustrating from an Arsenal fan perspective because:

1. The Scum won and will probably now stay clear of relegation
2. West Ham will now be doubly motivated next Sunday when we play them.

That second point will be one to worry about. Over the years, West Ham have given us tough games on their patch, and with the threat of relegation now very real with just three games to go, they will be more fired up for this one than we could imagine.

West Ham got battered by an improved Brentford side on Saturday, which had mixed blessings for us overall, because:

1. It means that Brentford are closing down a European spot and next weekend they will go to City, knowing a win could be huge for them
2. West Ham are probably going to need to beat Arsenal next weekend – their heavy defeat doesn’t help the goal difference either.

Before that match yesterday, we also saw Bournemouth pick up a big win at home to Palace, which was certainly a better scoreline for us, because:

1. Bournemouth will be buoyed, and to qualify for Europe, will probably need to beat City in a week and a half at home on their own patch
2. Palace losing heavily shows us that there’s a team that has all eyes on a possible European final, which will happen just after they play us on the final day, when hopefully we are fighting to win the title.

The complexities and permutations of this season are not lost on a single Arsenal fan, I don’t think, and in pubs and homes all over the Arsenal-supporting world, we’re all doing the mental gymnastics to see chinks of light or opportunities to build out a little more hope, through the actions of others.

But it will be Arsenal’s actions that define this season. If we beat West Ham, then we hopefully have two games in which you’d hope Arsenal can rack up plenty of goals. If we do that, then the goal difference thing would swing from City’s favour to ours. I can’t see City hammering all of the teams they are playing by fours and fives. So there is a chink of light and hope that we might have a bit of an advantage.

Tonight, all eyes will be on Merseyside. Can Everton do something against City? I’m not so sure. They’ve lost their last two games to Liverpool at home and West Ham away. Before that, they picked up a 2-2 draw away at Brentford, but before that, they won at home 3-0 against a shockingly bad Chelsea side. Their record at home this season is mixed; I just had a look, and there are defeats to United, Brentford, Tottenham, and Newcastle, whilst also draws against Leeds, West Ham and Villa. They are a patchy side. But the good thing about tonight, one would hope, is that today’s game means that if they lose it, their outside chance of Europe is basically gone. That’s what most Arsenal fans will be hoping for this evening – that this ‘last chance saloon’ inspires them to do something special in front of their own fans.

Mind you, the same could have been said about Fulham at the weekend, and yet we absolutely rinsed them in that first half on Saturday. To be fair, that was at home for us, whereas this is away for Man City, so perhaps that swings the balance back a little, but I still think that Everton probably won’t have too much for a City side who are in form at the moment. Despite their bitching through the back channels about their impending fixture congestion, they’ve also just had over a week off, so they will be fresh now, too.

As for us, we have our eyes trained on that Champions League semi-final, and Arteta will be making his way to The Emirates this evening to deliver his pre-match press conference ahead of the game. The noises we’re hearing are that Kai is pushing to be fit to play a part, which would be massive not just for tomorrow, but also in the context of the remainder of the domestic season. Having him as an option when we’re facing a low block in the league might be very important, although tomorrow night I think you do still have to go with Big Vik, given his two goals and confidence will be up after one of the best performances for him this season.

The big question I have is around Timber. Like, are we actually going to see him this season, or nah? I really would love to have him back, or even news of him back, but what we’ve had over the last couple of weeks is Arteta saying “a few more days” and yet not even a sniff of a return. Odegaard too, we need to get a good update on, but I suspect his absence from the weekend was precautionary and there to manage the knocks he’s had that have kept him out of that difficult period of April that we’ve just overcome. If he’s back, if Timber can even just be seen in full training this week at some stage (even if it is not possible to be in the squad for tomorrow), then I will take that as a big positive. Having him available at right back for a game like West Ham feels like it would be a huge boost, although at this stage, given how long he’s been out, I’m not sure even then how viable it would be.

Let’s wait and see what Arteta says later. As for me, I’m going to take the opportunity to enjoy the rest of my bank holiday weekend in Portugal, before I fly back tomorrow morning. I hope whatever you are doing you have a great day too. Catch you all tomorrow.

I am convinced of it.

Diego Simeone was waving his arms around like a lunatic. He was encroaching on the referee. He was barking and hollering, and so was the crowd. And last night’s referee just played to that gallery.

Let’s look at the facts here, boys and girls:

1. Eze gets to the ball first
2. There is contact by the Atletico Madrid defender
3. It is inside the box

It. Is. A. Penalty. Now, what you could argue is that the contact was, indeed, minimal. And because of that, if the referee doesn’t give it, you’d have me saying things like “tight call, but it’s not a stonewaller of a penalty”. And then you go with the on-field decision. But when the referee gives the penalty, there is ZERO chance that it shouldn’t be given. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Nothing. No way should that have been re-refereed in the way it was.

And yet here we are. Simeone is a prick. Afterwards, he supposedly (can’t find the exact quote but some journalists mention it on social media) laughably tried to claim Gyokeres’ penalty shouldn’t have stood because he backed into the Atletico player. Utter deflection, because his side had been edged out in the second half, and I thought we’d played really well to go one-up in the break. Their home fans were loud and raucous for the opening exchanges. Atleti started well and fed off that, but once we rallied and started getting on the ball, I thought we looked composed and in control. You could tell that Atletico Madrid were going to show us respect; this is a swashbuckling Spanish side who bag a lot of goals, but they were remaining tight and compact in their shape, and at times I was watching this game seeing a back five from the home side. That is a compliment to what we were doing in possession, and I thought the back four, particularly, were good.

Arteta changed it a bit, and I think it is a blueprint we need to think about moving forward, because Rice was playing the deeper of the two midfielders, with Zubi just in front of him, and that also enabled us to move to a back three at times and give us more passing lanes. It was good from the manager, and even though we still had that dreaded front three, we had a few chances. I still think between them, Martinelli and Trossard, when he came on, didn’t offer enough on that left-hand side, but Madueke was better.

And so too was Gyokeres, who notched his 19th of the season, and never in my life have I been more convinced that a player would score penalties than the big Swede. We all have our issues with Gyokeres; he’s been frustrating at times this season, but when it comes to finishing and penalties, the ball stays hit, and you know we are going to score.

That’s why the Eze penalty is also such a disgrace, because Gyokeres absolutely would have tucked it away to win us the game, and then you’re talking about bringing a one-goal lead back to your own turf. We’ve been robbed of that, and it’s a real shame because although Atletico were better in the second half, there was still so much positive to take from the way Arsenal handled the game overall.

On the Ben White penalty, I think Arteta handled that perfectly too, afterwards, admitting that it isn’t given in the Premier League, but it is in Europe, so we have to stomach it. Atletico had other chances too. Raya made a couple of good saves, Griezmann hit the bar, plus big Gabi made a tremendous block to deny the Frenchman. We rode our luck at points, but there’s no doubt in my mind, the luck was more with the home side than ours by the time the final whistle came along.

So where do we find ourselves now? How am I feeling this morning?

Actually, pretty good, if truth be told. We went to a tough ground, with a partisan home crowd and a barking manager, we came away with a draw. We can all be annoyed by the end, but before a ball would have kicked, I’d have taken an away draw to turn our home game into a knockout. Away goals mean nothing anymore, so this match next week is effectively one in which all is decided on the night. And having home advantage has to make you feel more confident.

I also think Arteta has some ammo now. We got minutes into Saka’s legs, Calafiori is available, Eze also got on the pitch so he should be fine for Saturday, Rice and Zubi had great games. The only question is with Odegaard, who came off and I read that he was getting some treatment on the sideline. We have to just hope that it’s nothing massive and he can have a day or two off and be ready for the game against the Cottagers on Saturday evening, because we need everyone now.

Arteta can use this injustice on the Atletico game, but he can also use the performance for Saturdaay too. The team can take confidence from the game and given that Saturday’s game is an evening kick off and hopefully the weather is good like last weekend, the home fans might just be feeling a little more boistrous than we would have done if we’d have lost last night.

We didn’t lose. we played pretty good. There is some confidence that can get built back up now. And so on to Saturday, in which another big match looms and Arsenal simple MUST win.

Back tomorrow as we start to prep for that one. See you then.

I don’t really feel massively nervous about tonight.

It almost feels like a League Cup game.

I suspect it is because I’ve been battered and bruised by the Premier League campaign that the Premier League is the ‘one I want’ the most, coupled with the fact that our beloved football club has an absolutely shocking European pedigree, given how long we’ve been competing for European honours. The years of Arsene Wenger and the ‘get top four for Champions League and the revenues that accompany it’ have conditioned my brain to think like an accountant with this competition. It is not one to be won by The Arsenal, but merely to get as far as possible, so the bank balance and potential funding of superstars can be enhanced for the following season.

That is utterly mental. The Champions League is, arguably, for some, the biggest prize in football. It is evidence that your club has overcome all of Europe to be at the top of the tree. It has massive revenue gains for winning it, of course, but the kudos far outweigh it for so many.

And we’ve only ever been to the final once in my lifetime.

This should be a competition I revere. A competition I want more than anything. I’ve seen us win the Premier League multiple times. The Champions League is one we have never really ever had a sniff at. The final in 2006 may have seen us go a goal up, but we were already backs-to-the-wall and likely to fall short, given the opponent, but also the sending off of Jens in that first half. This Arsenal team – by getting to the semi-final two seasons in a row – has shown that they have the consistency to be one of the best in Europe. We are here because we won every game in the group stages. This isn’t a ‘plucky’ Wenger side who had some amazing results, but were never really going into games with massive expectations of victory.

But this Arsenal side has the capability.

Standing in front of us, however, is an Atletico Madrid side who want to come out swinging like a heavyweight boxer tonight. This is an Atleti team who will not dance around the ring with us; they aren’t going to spar and trade tactical jabs looking to ‘unlock’ us, like Simeone teams of old. They are coming to us tonight to land a knockout blow in the first round, and Arteta and the Arsenal players need to be ready for that.

Atleti will start with Alvaraz and Griezmann, who will rotate a lot and cause us problems with the pockets of space they take, but I wonder if Lookman is also free? He’s apparently been a bit of a revelation since signing for them and if he’s missing then that sounds like a big positive for us. They are also missing Pablo Barrios, who is a good player in the middle of that team, but other than that they’ve been coasting in La Liga; they’re pretty much secured for top four and it means they can put all eyes on this competition.

That makes them even more dangerous, because we’ve had to go from game-to-game with massive emotional effort in our matches; we are still fighting on the domestic front and there has been plenty of comments in the press about how we look ‘fatigued’. It’s easy to see why when key players like Rice and Zubimendi have played so many games, whilst other players like Calafiori and Timber have struggled for fitness.

The team news on that front is a little bit more positive, but not completely, because Timber was once again confirmed to be out. And at this stage, I’m wondering whether or not we’ll see him again this season. every week goes by and we keep getting a ‘not ready’ and now we’re at the six week stage in which he hasn’t played. Even if he’s fit for Fulham, he’s not going to be able to play much part in it, if he hasn’t trained much for over a month.

Calafiori is back, and I wonder if today is the game for him or not, given how Atleti will play. On the one hand, he will pop up in spaces that will make the Atleti players think, but on the other, given their cleare propensity to attack this evening, it leaves a defender out of position at times tonight. That could play into their hands.

That’s why I’d be thinking about Calafiori as an impact sub this evening, with a view to him being deployed from the start against Fulham on Saturday. On the other side, I’d go with Mosquera. Back in his home country, he’ll be keen to impress, and with Ben White playing a lot of football at the moment, I do worry that we’re going to get close to the point in which he breaks down again.

That back four (Saliba and big Gabi are implied) plus Raya makes up a hard-working, strong-in-the-tackle, not massively expansive, but defensively sturdy, back line. And I think that’s the right call for this match. Keep it tight, try to deny space, avoid any kind of slugfest like we saw last night. Because it is a game we would stand no chance in.

The midfield I think, is fairly obvious in two of the three, but I think Arteta might go with Eze instead of Odegaard. Martin played the full 90 against Newcastle, and he faded in the second half, so to me, this feels like a job-share situation between Eze and the captain.

Which means the left and right wings need to be reviewed too, because if Odegaard isn’t starting and Eze is positioned centrally, then there will definitely be a change from Saturday. I’d go for full change, personally, with Saka and Trossard on from the start. If Saka was a ‘maybe’ for the City game, I think Arteta and his coaching staff had him earmarked for a few minutes against Newcastle, with this game as the return date. And with him and Trossard either side of Gyokeres, it feels like we have more ballers around the Swede, than runners. Martinelli and Madueke are – as we all know by now – the wrong foil for our number 14. Hopefully Saka and Trossard can start and show that he can be useful in a game like this.

Nothing gets decided tonight, unless Arsenal fall apart, which hopefully isn’t going to happen. Let’s cross our fingers that we also see some green shoots of a good performance too. It would be timely given the remaining games this season and the importance of each one.

Back tomorrow with a post-match review. Catch you then.

@SamiMokbel_BBC has confirmed the below.

For clarity, City’s objective is to manipulate the fixtures and avoid playing Bournemouth on a few days rest when Bournemouth have 10+ days rest… just like Arsenal had to do the other week.

It would hurt Palace’s possible final
prep too https://t.co/qZZpHDsiHG pic.twitter.com/u79BFpYoek

— Magic hat (@themagic_tophat) April 28, 2026

I don’t think I want to spend too much time on this, but it does feel as though there should be little room for manoeuvre here. Arsenal had to suffer playing a very good Bournemouth team after they were not in the FA Cup, and we had both FA Cup and the Champions League games in between our Premier League matches. If City are playing a fresher Bournemouth too, then so be it. You can’t rearrange things just because of the hope from the TV companies (because you can bet your bottom dollar that Sky will want this re-arrangement, to take it to the last day of the season) that they get more drama on that last week.

They’re gonna get it anyway! Have you seen how nervy we look when playing!

Those nerves were heightened somewhat at the weekend, when we thought that we’d be losing both Eze and Havertz for a period of time, right when they were just coming back for us and able to play significant minutes. Thankfully, Eze dispelled that almost immediately by doing his media duties and being seen on the pitch afterwards on Saturday. Phew. One sigh of relief down.

Then we got a ‘sort of’ sigh of relief yesterday evening, as news emerged from the likes of The Athletic that Kai’s injury is not as bad as feared, which again is good stuff. Depending on what you read, there are variations on when he could potentially be back. I suspect we’ll get it confirmed from Arteta this evening that he’ll play no part tonight. I saw one report suggesting that Arsenal think he might be able to play some part in all of our remaining Premier League games. If that’s true, then happy days, because that means he’d at least be fit for the Fulham home game this coming weekend.

I suspect that might be a little more hope than reality, though.

What he brings is without question. We talked about it on Sunday, and Scarlet spoke the truth when she said that we looked very different after Kai came off. That’s very true indeed. I had a look at some of the stats up until the 34th minute, when he limped off, and we had:

• Better possession (just) – edging it 51% to 49% (we finished the game on
• More through balls (four to one)
• Level on shots (they ended up out-shooting us by the end of the game)

But the way we played just looked more fluid to the eye. Kai links players all around him, where Gyokeres seems to be a lot more isolated. A lot of that, I think, is that his technical quality is so low that the players don’t want to lose the ball, but rather than turn this into a Gyokeres-bashing piece, I want to lean in more into what Kai brings us.

We were much better against City. It ‘felt’ better against Newcastle until he came off. I also think the Everton game we played well, although Big Vik did his bit by coming on later in the game and making an impact. The prospect of not having Kai for anything longer than Fulham next weekend was very real, so having him potentially available thereafter is massive.

The next worry we have about this week is the volume of games within a week. Jamie Carragher pointed it out on Monday Night Football last night, but we play Wednesday-Saturday-Tuesday, at a point in the season in which we still have players not fully fit and back to form. It’s going to be quite some gruelling week, and when I look at tomorrow night’s game against Atletico Madrid, I can’t help but think it just needs to be one of those “just get through it” games. Get through it, try to keep it tight, then see how much you can rest up before playing a Fulham side who have had a week off, plus will be coming off the back of a morale-boosting 1-0 victory over Villa last weekend.

I didn’t watch the game Fulham played, but I’ve looked at the numbers, and it looks like a classic one in which one team (Villa) had all of the possession, but Fulham created more chances and ultimately like us had that one moment of magic. Before that win, they had just one win in six games, so their form was patchy, but as we know, so was Newcastle’s, and yet they made us look very leggy indeed at times on Saturday.

I don’t know how we overcome that, to be honest, because Arteta has very much just patched up players and sent them out of late. I doubt Saka can do many 90-minute games, and given he was only given around 20 minutes on Saturday, surely he can’t start in Madrid?

Odegaard and Eze will also need to be managed carefully, so despite our big squad, it’s all feeling a little paper-thin in certain positions right now.

We’ll know more later on who is likely to start, and wouldn’t it just be nice to get some positive news about Jurrien Timber, eh? Let’s see what the boss says later.

Otherwise, I’ll be back for a match preview tomorrow, so I’ll catch you then.

I used to collect the match-day programmes back when I was a kid. It was usually for big games I’d ask for one (FA Cup final, etc), or for matches I was in attendance at. I don’t do it so much anymore, but when there is a potentially big game like Real Madrid at home last season, or PSG in the semi-finals, I pick one up. It probably shows where our performances are at (and maybe the opposition) that the thought never crossed my mind as I was heading into the ground.

I think part of it is to do with the fact that my eyes and mind have been worryingly fixated on the game in Manchester on Sunday, but also, I think we’ve had it rammed down our throats since the summer that the Portuguese league is akin to the Championship. In the summer, it was the gamble in relation to signing a killer in that league and whether it would translate to the Premier League (which has some truths about it), but last night it was in my mind as we thought about beating a side that plays in a league that is more like lining up against Wrexham, Oxford and Stoke.

The TIFO was out to bring the atmosphere nonetheless, and I thought overall, considering where a lot of us are right now with the Arsenal and the performances, the fans were in decent voice throughout.

Arteta named the same attacking line-up as Saturday, which was a slight worry, and in reality, whilst the stats will say we have eight attempts and one big chance, we were hardly peppering the Sporting keeper’s goal.

The ‘goal’ of the evening, however, was to progress. So we have to say that is a big ‘tick’ because overall Arsenal limited Sporting to barely anything. They hit the outside of the post towards the end of the half, but that was pretty much it. And in the second half, they offered very little threat overall. I think we have the key defensive components to thank for that; Gabriel and Saliba looked assured again, whilst Hincapie had an excellent game, I thought. He was strong and physical in defence, whilst in attack, he was getting forward and providing options on the wing in both halves.

If I’m seeming a little overly critical today, I think it is probably because I had hoped that this would be a bit of a ‘reset’ ahead of Sunday. I hope that Arsenal would come out all guns blazing, catch Sporting Lisbon out, control the game and maybe bag a goal or two. I do think we did come out well in the first half, but we were still found wanting on those wings. I do wonder how long we can let Madueke get away with these types of performances, but he came off with a knee problem in that second half, so Arteta’s hand might once again be forced, unfortunately. Throwing Max Dowman in for our biggest game of the season seems harsh, but we might be at the stage of saying “who else?” at this rate.

Let’s pull today’s musings back to some positivity, though, eh? And that positivity comes in the shape of Martin Zubimendi, who was excellent last night and picked up the man-of-the-match award.

The verticality of passing has returned!!!

I think a lot of that probably had something to do with the fact that Eze’s reintroduction into the team gave him an outlet to find further forward, and Eze himself looked lively and also played well, I thought. He was there to link up; he was further up the pitch in between the Sporting midfield and defence, and were he to have another forward in front of him who could receive the ball and make less static runs, we might have found ourselves ahead with a few chances. Having Ebs fit and with minutes under his belt for Sunday is certainly something that gave me cause for some optimism.

So too, did having Havertz come on for his cameo up front, because we haven’t seen that of late. Kai has been playing in that midfield role that doesn’t work for him at all, so when Gyokeres’ number came up for Havertz, a lot of the Block Fivers around me were very pleased. Kai has to start up top on Sunday, with Eze behind him.

Back to my ‘reset’ point, and I think a few players needed that, if we’re all honest. The back line needed another game in which the opposition’s xG was negligible. Zubimendi needed a game to remind us of his quality and passing range, and by picking up the man-of-the-match gong last night, his confidence will be flowing back in. Seeing him cut a sad and depressed figure on Saturday, as his teammates consoled him at times, was not fun. So if I could have chosen anyone to have a really good game and look a little more like the 2025 version of himself, it would have been Zubimendi.

Rice was his usual all-action self, and I thought Leo looked a little more spritely too, so hopefully he’s good to start at the weekend.

And if you think about that huge game at the weekend, there are some more overall positives we can take:

• Havertz only playing a cameo means he should be fresher
• Hincapie, with minutes under his belt following injury, means he will be ready
• Zubi’s good performance will give him confidence
• Eze getting 79 minutes means he should be good
• Trossard for Martinelli feels a bit of a no-brainer.

It would be lovely to hear news of Saka, Timber, Odegaard and Calafiori all being back for Sunday, but they won’t be fit enough to start, so let’s just take these positives for now and move on.

And move on we do. To the semi-final of the Champions League. Something that we’ve only managed three times in our history. That’s an impressive level of consistency that Arteta and his team should be applauded for. Can they go one better than last season and make it to the final?

Let’s get the small matter of Sunday and Newcastle at home out of the way first before we worry about that.

Catch you all tomorrow.

Honestly, this Premier League race has infected my brain at this stage.

I can just hope that tonight proves to be a different tonic for the players, that they use this as an adrenaline booster, ahead of the weekend’s match. Because we need it after that disastrous Bournemouth result last weekend.

That result came about because of a poor tactical setup, as well as some pretty bad basics being missing from some players, but also because of the wrong players out there on the field for the type of opponent we were up against, due to a lack of the right type of players available. So when I saw that there was ANOTHER open training session, and ANOTHER one that had a host of players missing…well…let’s just say I was hardly filled with comfort.

No Timber.

No Calafiori.

No Rice.

No Odegaard.

No Saka.

Great stuff.

Even if those players were just doing light training, there are some in there that you’d have to say probably won’t make tonight. And if they don’t make it tonight, that means they are certainly doubtful to be fit at the weekend, for the most important domestic game, certainly this season, but perhaps since Arteta took over this team.

I saw somebody on social media saying we are doing this season on ‘hard mode’. Certainly feels like it, eh?

For his part, Arteta once again came out swinging in his press conference, interrupting one of the journo’s asking him how he is feeling with the phrase “I am opn fire”. That Basque passion certainly shone through in his press conference. I saw a Chelsea fan online – yep, that’s right, A CHELSEA fan – say that if he were a player and he heard this from his manager, he’d want to run through bricks walls for him. We’ll park the metaphor that would inevitably mean those Arsenal players would shatter into a million pieces if that happened, due to our rotten injury luck, but the sentiment there is one that I hope rubs off on those Arsenal players. Because they need to be at it tonight. I dread to think what might happen at the weekend if we’re knocked out of the Champions League on our own patch this evening.

Sporting will be missing Fresnada, who I thought looked very impressive at right back in the first leg, but they do have ‘Diplomatic Immunity’ Araujo at left back, who one would hope is not gievn the same freedom for fouling away from home as he was at home. Other than that, they have pretty much a similar side that lined up against us, which means we will need to be mindful of those balls in behind the fullbacks for the channel running that caught out White a week ago.

It is for that reason that I would seriously consider Mosquera at right back tonight, because White has played a lot of football recently. Mosquera has the recovery pace (think his recovery tackle when Southampton had a man through on goal in the FA Cup a couple of weekends back), so let’s get him in there. At left back, you’d hope that because Hincapie was left on the bench on Saturday, he’s back and in contention to start, and that’s what I would opt for. Even if Calafiori is fit, I kind of feel we need the Italian on Sunday – assuming he ever gets fit again. Arteta was asked about Timber and Saka and said “maybe one of them” could make the match day squad, and given he said Saka was suffering from an Achilles problem, my gut feel is that at best we get Timber for the bench.

I’d also be considering Norgaard as the holding midfielder at this stage, too, because Zubimendi’s form is in the toilet right now. Norgaard will not do anything fancy, we won’t get those progressive passes we have seen from Zubimendi towards the start of the season, but the Spaniard hasn’t been doing that for ages now anyway, so we might as well lean in to a traditional six that is going to break up play and sit in front of the back four, for protection.

And then, to the attacking side of the pitch, for which I need to see some of those wide forwards grow some f*cking cajones and put in a display. Martinelli, Madueke and Trossard were all shambolic against Bournemouth. Fix up. Step up. Do your job. Take your men on. Have shots. Link up with your centre forward. Track your runners. Yeah, we’re looking at you from last weekend, Noni.

I think Arteta will go with Gyokeres up top, and I hope he does, because the man is about the only one with end product these days. Plus, I’d be looking at Kai as the number nine on Sunday because let’s face it, in those sort of games Gyokeres is basically a passenger. So save the German for the weekend.

And please, Arsenal, get this done in 90 minutes. The thought of 120 minutes and then having a couple of days off before we travel to Mancchester fills me with as much dread as everything else has this week. At this crunch time, where the players need to be able to prove they are worthy of where they have got to, we need back-to-back results. No excuses. Tonight, go out there and prove the watching world that you are ready to grasp the opportunity. The coach has done his bit, his staff have done their bit, but now it is up to you players to do yours. So go and do it.

I’ll be back tomorrow, hopefully in a more cheery mood, so let’s keep out fingers crossed for a good Arsenal performance under the lights.

See you in the morning.

I think my biggest issue is that I am worried that nothing will change in a short period of time. As I said to somebody in the comments from yesterday’s blog, I was convinced – clearly misplaced – that we would see the likes of Timber, Calafiori, Odegaard, etc. But none were in attendance, and the result was the dross we got served up. My worry now is that, ahead of the Sporting Lisbon game, we’re not going to get from Arteta any difference in terms of the ability to change the team around much. We should, hopefully, have an Eze who can at least start, given that he got minutes on Saturday. But to me, it feels like that is not enough.

Hincapie being on the bench on Saturday would, I hope, mean that he can start tomorrow night. He hasn’t been out that long, so the ability to return to a better level of match sharpness should be there. That is good. Myles showed that whilst he’s still a good, young player who we all love, he still switches off where perhaps the Ecuadorian doesn’t.

I think the other thing that has me really worried about this week is that with every day that passes with certain players out, getting them back to a ‘best version’ of themselves takes longer. Odegaard was out for a while, came back against Sporting, and got injured again, which means his ability to be back up to match fitness has been diminished. If he’d have come back to Sporting and got 60 minutes, then played at least 30 minutes against Bournemouth, then you could be looking at the Sporting game tomorrow as another 60 – 70 minutes, to which the City game would be one that you’d hope he’d have enough minutes under his belt to be a better version of himself. But by picking up that knock against Sporting, then missing the Bournemouth game and having to find our information from that bloody Norway manager, it feels like it is two steps forward, one step back with him.

It’s worse with Saka. When he wasn’t featured against Southampton, having reported for England duty, I was thinking “that’s absolutely fine – he’ll get the rest and be a better version of himself for some of these massive matches coming up”. But by missing Sporting away, then Bournemouth at the weekend, it is nearly a month since he last played. That means his ability to be the Saka that we all NEED on Sunday is further diminished. Do you believe that if he’s in the squad, he’ll be able to have the impact we would need? I don’t. Not having just returned from injury, anyway.

It’s the same with Timber. He trudged off on 39 minutes against Everton on 14th March – exactly one month ago. With a month out, do we really believe that he can be back to full fitness for Sunday? To line up against a Doku who has just run Gusto ragged at Stamford Bridge? I don’t. If he’s ok to be in training, then Arteta can’t risk him tonight. Maybe he can give him 20 minutes, but then throw him in for the biggest domestic game of the season? That would worry me, if I’m honest with you.

And that’s why I’m so down right now, because the way this has all unfolded just feels like there is some kind of domestic curse that is enveloping us at this time of the season. The injuries, like last season, have been constant. The form has been pretty poor, but the performances have been dire, and when grouped all together, it just makes you feel a little weary, you know?

I guess you could say that City had the same problem in March. They drew to Forest, they lost to Real Madrid twice, and then also drew away at West Ham. But then they had that League Cup win and have been looking in great form ever since. One could argue that the very same could happen to us, and maybe a win tomorrow night against Sporting could help to boost those players ahead of Sunday. But it just doesn’t feel like it right now. As I’ve already said on the socials and in the blog yesterday, our record at City is utterly grim, so I don’t really hold up much hope for us.

Do you know what’s mental? Tomorrow night we play a Champions League quarter-final, at home, with a one-goal advantage, and I’ve spent most of today’s blog talking and thinking about that City game at the weekend. This is a Champions League quarter-final. We’ve got to the semi-final three times in our history so far, so a win or draw tomorrow means it’s only be the fourth time. Ever. But that Premier League title is the one that I’ve always wanted the most, and to see it slipping away as it has is, frankly, destroying. It’s one that I am going to feel the saddest about and, and even if by some miracle we were to then get ourselves into a Champions League final and win it, I STILL don’t think that will stop the feeling of the Premier League slipping away, if indeed that does happen.

Arteta will have his press conference this evening, and if I’m honest, all I want to hear from him is that some players are back and available for the squad. Even if not ready to start, I just want good news on Timber, Calafiori, Odegaard, Eze, and Saka. If we get some of that, then maybe tomorrow’s match preview blog will be a little lighter and airier one from me.

Catch you all tomorrow.

And were it not for David Raya, we may well have succumbed, but having him back in the side showed the difference you can make when you have a world-class keeper in between the sticks. I actually don’t think Kepa was that bad last weekend – he’s just not Raya, who exuded calmness and composure with the ball at his feet, but also followed it up with some fine saves too. His first, from a pretty splendid ‘Paul Merson Pass’ outside of the ball splitter by Diomande to put Araujo in, was finger-tippingly brilliant. It crashed the underside of the bar, but he had a vital touch, which enabled the ball to avoid rippling the net. And who knows what direction the match might have changed into, had that gone in?

As a quick aside, the shooter in that instance must have had something on the referee, because quite how Araujo managed to avoid a booking for accumulation despite making upwards of seven fouls last night is beyond me. He had obviously read the Jordan Ayew Book of Impunity with Refs, because even when players like Madueke exasperatedly asked “How many?”, he still got away with one or two more.

It felt like a game in which we really did have to ‘huff and puff’ last night. We were in control in terms of ball-dominance and xG chance creation, but Sporting did have their moments. When you look at the stats, it was pretty 50-50, and so as the clock ticked down to the end of the game, my nerves were more about avoiding a last-minute sucker-punch as we have on a number of occasions already this season, rather than winning it. So when Martinelli shimmied himself into enough space to dink it to Kai in the middle of the penalty box to slot home, I was over the moon. It was a rarely-seen Martinelli pass; we don’t usually expect to see him being the provider to that type of goal, but more the man running on to it. It was a really deft chip and quite impressive from the Brazilian. So too, was Havertz’s touch and finish, which was certainly very clinical, and you could see how pleased he was with his celebration. The run was the type of run that you expect from Havertz when Gyokeres is on the pitch; he is playing as a false nine as Gyokeres occupies another defender, he finds the space in between centre-halves, which enables him to be picked out with a run from the D to the penalty spot, completely unmarked. Kai will not give us the vision or passing range in midfield that Odegaard or Eze can, but as a second striker, he has a big impact.

Elsewhere in the team, we had some decent, if not spectacular, performances. I thought Rice was superb again in his midfield duel-winning role, winning his one tackle on the night, making four interceptions, and recovering the ball 13 times. Any nerves about his lingering fatigue were dispelled last night, and that was great. Big Gabi had his hands full with Luis Suarez, but he came through 90 minutes and, like Rice, I am just pleased we had no lingering effects from what was clearly a niggling knee injury on Saturday. I thought White looked shaky in some of the ‘big’ moments – like that chance from Diomande to Araujo – but if you look at his performance as a whole, he did alright I thought. Plus we got 70 minutes out of Odegaard, which is positive, although his performance felt like a pretty rusty guy. He wasn’t really able to impact the game at all, and of all of his 48 passes (out of 59) that came off, I’m struggling to remember how many really did any kind of significant damage. It’s tough when the guy you come on for does what Kai did, but this season has certainly been one in which substitutes have made the biggest impact. I can’t remember the exact number, but I think we’re close to 40-odd involvements from Arsenal players this season. I think that’s miles more than any other team, so it really does show the positive impact that Mikel Arteta’s changes have made this season.

Understandably, Mikel Arteta was delighted last night, but I do wonder if he will continue to analyse why we have found it so difficult to break teams down. It isn’t as if Sporting sat in a low block last night, I didn’t think. There was space there for us to exploit, but it felt like we chose safety first in ball retention, which, I guess, given this is the first of a two-legged affair, is understandable. But I did feel at times that we could have got more out of the likes of Trossard and Madueke, who blew hot and cold last night I thought. We all know that when Gyokeres doesn’t get service he is basically a passenger, which is why I wanted a little more from our wide forwards. And that left-hand wide-forward slot continues to be an enigma, because it feels like no player wants to step up and make it his own. Martinelli was pretty poor against Southampton, but then comes on and made a key impact last night. Trossard had an indifferent game, but if he doesn’t start at the weekend, I’d imagine that he’ll come on and play well from the bench against Bournemouth. It’s frustrating, but equally a bit of a relief that you know these guys can impact from the sidelines when coming on. Or maybe it is just that Martinelli loves the Champions League? That’s six goals and two assists in 512 minutes – he’s averaging a contribution every hour -Harry Kane averages one every 70 minutes, for context.

So it’s a victory, it’s a commanding position in the Champions League, but it’s back to domestic focus immediately now, because Bournemouth on Saturday lunchtime is already filling my stomach with a bit of dread/fear/butterflies. Catch you all tomorrow for some more thoughts as we build up to that.

Let’s start with the good news, which I think top of my list this morning, the inclusion of Big Gabi in the training session. He went off with a knee complaint against Southampton and was pictured with an ice pack on his knee. When you see that sort of stuff, you naturally feel the worst, but he took part in training, and that means he should be good to go tonight. Phew. I think for me the worry was less about this evening – we have Mosquera, who has proved to be an able deputy all season – but more about what a knee injury could do for his participation for the rest of the season. I think the club will clearly have to monitor him very carefully, but this at least means we have our best centre half in contention for tonight, and hopefully he gets through ok and his knock he sustained can be managed.

It’s the same with Madueke, who this time last week we ended up talking about how his season might end, as he was pictured walking out of Wembley with a knee brace, but he played against Southampton as a sub coming on, and he was also pictured in training. That is really good news, because the bad stuff coming out from yesterday was that Bukayo Saka is out for tonight. And once again, I have to say, to all of those tosser rival fans and media pundits who complained about Arsenal pulling players from international duty – where are you now, eh? Because Saka hasn’t played since the cup final, and there’s no way Arteta would have him in the squad tonight unless he couldn’t train and wasn’t ready. He sounded a little more optimistic about both Saka and Timber for the weekend, but it seems we’ll have to do without them both this evening.

Which is a blow, but it is why we brought in those expensively-acquired squad players, and for Saka, we will see Madueke, but for Timber, who will play at right back? I have a feeling it might be Mosquera. Ben White has played a fair bit of football of late, but he did look a little underpowered with some of his running against Southampton, so I have a sneaky suspicion that Arteta will go with the Spaniard. Either way, we’ve got two solid pros to replace Timber, and even if White does start, I’ve got a feeling we’ll see a better performance from him, because he’ll be around more of the first team.

Which for me means Raya in, Saliba in, Big Gabi in, Calafiori in, Zubimendi in, Rice in (who was also pictured in training), Odegaard in (taken off against Southampton, clearly to protect him for tonight), Gyokeres in, Trossard in. And with Madueke on the right, it makes for a more familiar first XI line-up and one that I’ll expect a little more cohesion from as well.

As for Sporting, they’ll fancy themselves tonight, not least because they’ve won their last 17 home games in all competitions. That sort of run breeds a lot of confidence, and they’ll fancy taking a scalp against us, even though we’ve either beaten or drawn against them in our last five games. They knocked us out on pens a few years back, but last season’s 5-1 win in the group stages was probably one of the best performances we had in the season. We need to take the memory of that and use it as fuel. This Arsenal team have shown they are capable of much more dynamism in the Champions League this season, as teams come at us, and I think Sporting’s home form will mean they fancy having a go tonight.

Their main strength from an attacking point of view comes via Luis Suarez (not that one), who has already bagged over 30 goals in his season. It appears they aren’t missing Big Vik too much, so he’ll be keen to remind them of what he’s capable of, and his good form going in to this means his confidence will be a helpful factor, I hope. Sporting look like they play in a familiar 4-2-3-1 formation, with Goncalves and Trincao as their main creative outlets to spring Luis Suarez. Trincao is a familiar name, as he played in November last season during the 5-1 victory, but there doesn’t look like there is a ton of players remaining from that side. By my count, if Sporting play their ‘first choice’ side, the familiar names who played in that game last season are:

• Trincao
• Hjulmand
• Inacio
• Morita
• Araujo
• Diomande

So actually, it is more than half the team, but there has also been a fair bit of churn, so we need to expect a very different game from last season, I think. That is also true because of the manager change, with Sporting having only just lost Amorim to United, before appointing Joao Pereira, who lasted just over a month before Borges came in. He’s therefore had over a year to mould the side in his image, so I suspect there will be a much tighter game this evening than there was 17 months ago.

Arsenal need to answer some questions that have popped up in our last two games. They have people who are already stoking the ‘bottle jobs’ fire, so a performance in a big European game tonight will go a long way to showing that they are ready for the remaining two competitions we are in. Ready to fight, ready to pick up results, ready to make this still a wonderful season, despite the last two disappointing results in the domestic cups.

We’re going to face a hostile atmosphere, a Lisbon side and home fans who are massively up for it after their impressive comeback against Bodo/Glimt, so those opening salvoes in which they will try to high press and probe us need to have Arsenal taking control of the game and quietening the home crowd. I am hopeful we can do it.

I’ll be travelling for the second half tonight, so I will have to play catch-up, but I will be back tomorrow with some post-match thoughts. See you then.

The Arsenal players have no such luxury, as they face Sporting Lisbon tomorrow and are likely to head to Portugal today ahead of that Champions League game. And suddenly, whereas a week ago we were looking at this tie, as well as Southampton, as one in which we’ll be potentially in two semi-finals if we beat opposition that we are favourites to overcome, we’re all getting a little nervous about this. After all, Sporting beat us over two legs last time we played them in the knockout stages. That goal they scored to lob Ramsdale at The Emirates, then going on to win on penalties, still haunts me. And when you learn that Sporting have replaced Gyokeres with a guy named Luis Suarez, one starts to wonder if the Footballing Gods’ sense of humour and desire to chuckle at Arsenal fans frequently is actually just cruel. We have a pretty bad record at Southampton, and the footballing gods decided that they like a bit of narrative being perpetuated. We have faced Sporting Lisbon for the last few season’s and they’ve made life dificult for us, so the footballing Gods have decided to drop some more narrative in there by pairing us up, with us having their former striker lining up, whilst they’ve got a guy whose name evokes a certain kind of narrative when you think about failed bids and goals scored against us.

But as I said on the Same Old Arsenal pod this morning with James, I’m kind of getting over the Southampton poor result, and I think the quick turnaround is good for all of us. It means that we can put all of our efforts into these final two competitions, which were the ‘main’ ones anyway. And, where we were talking about fixture congestion to us, the same will befall Man City, because our game against Newcastle at home won’t be moved, but their game away to Burnley will be. That means they’ll have to play it in midweek, possibly when we’re playing in the Champions League, so they have their own challenges with the schedule as much as we do.

For me, my dream has always been the Premier League. My ‘hope’ is the Champions League too, or at least progressing to the semi-final, but I want that Premier League title, and so if being out of the FA Cup means we approach games like that Newcastle one without it having been moved because of the FA Cup to a midweek game, then that’s fine. The absence of our involvement in that competition means there is a solid week between Man City away and Newcastle at home. That can’t be a bad thing.

What we do need from Mikel Arteta today is a confirmation that Gabriel Magalhaes is ok. That’s the one I am still worried about, but I am choosing to be positive with the mantra that No news is good news, as the saying goes. Again, I mentioned this on the pod, but by now, if there was a serious injury, somebody like The Athletic would have gotten wind of it and would have published a story on it. We haven’t had that yet, so I am hopeful that his exit on Saturday was purely as a risk-aversion opportunity.

He won’t give us updates, but there is an open training session literally going on as I’m typing this. We know that it means little in reality; Arteta loves to be able to pull everyone away from those sessions if there are any doubts over any of them, so we have to take it with a pinch of salt. But maybe we’ll see a Timber, or a Saka, which will at least give us some hope that their rest has been well-received by their bodies and they are ready for their trip to Portugal.

The next clue will come with the pictures of the players as they board the plane. The club’s social media team normally drop some snaps of the players, so that’ll give us an idea, but it will then be Arteta’s press conference that will be the interesting one to see who he says can play. He’ll give little away – he never does – but even just some crumbs of positive injury news would be welcome right now.

There’s not really a lot else to take from today, to be honest, so I think I’ll leave it for this one, be back tomorrow as we start to look ahead at Sporting Lisbon, then I’ll catch you all then.

Be good.

His finish yesterday sailed past the Leverkusen keeper Blaswich who, up until that point, very much had the feel of Gandalf and was not letting anybody pass. He’d made six saves before Eze’s rocket to break the deadlock and some of them were worldies too. The one he saved with his foot to have the ball just skip wide of the post is the first one that comes to mind. But on a night in which big shocks had happened in the other part of this side of the draw with Lisbon beating Bodo/Glimt, this was not to be another upset, as Arsenal pretty much dominated from start to finish.

One of the criticisms I think a few of us Gooners have had is that we haven’t started games too quickly. It’s felt at times – certainly in 2026 – as though we take our time to ‘feel’ our way into a game and how the opponent sets itself up. This was not the case last night. Arteta made some tactical tweaks, including Ben White, which I think worked really well, and we were pretty much on the front foot within the first few minutes. You could see that White was looking to overlap and create more space for Saka and I think he must have appreciated that, because he got on the ball and was creating chances. There were still some instances in which I thought Saka could have got a shot off a little earlier, but today is not a day to be bagging on the starboy. Sometimes, to recapture your best form, you have to take incremental steps in the right direction. I thought last night was definitely one.

But there were strides forward from a number of attacking players yesterday. I thought Trossard looked lively, popping up in spaces across the front three, whilst Viktor Gyokeres must have had arguably his best game of the season yesterday. He didn’t score, which is obviously a marker a lot of people will put down as another failing, but not me. Not today. He used his power well; he looked to be half a yard sharper. He had a few runs at defenders and a couple of shots, one of which was deflected wide. He is the sort of guy who will probably have got into the dressing room at full time quite disappointed in himself for not scoring, but I bet the manager was exactly the opposite of that.

After the dominance of the first half, things felt like they got back on to a more even keel in the second, which you’d expect given Leverkusen couldn’t just sit back and hope to counter us in transition. We had our goal, we didn’t need to press forward, so gaps started opening up and even though the game ended with Leverkusen having more possession than us, I think we created the better chances in the second half overall. The one for them that stands out is the fantastic Raya save right at the end, but other than that I can’t rememberr him making a string of saves. That was Blaswich who was in that mood last night, making a couple in the second, but not Arsenal’s second, which was another superb Rice finish from outside the box. Have that, you open play Arsenal goal naysayers.

His first touch for that goal was sublime. It meant it sat up perfectly for a second touch, then the stroke of the ball past the Leverkusen goalie to just kiss the post – *chef’s kiss*. He picked up the man-of-the-match award on the night and, once again, the cries rang out about how we’d really made a steal with him on the price. He’s fantastic. He’s all action. He’s the best player in this Arsenal team by a country mile this season. There’s talk that Bruno Fernandes should get Player of the Year – pull the other one, it’s got bells on. Rice has been the most consistently impressive footballer in the Premier League; he’s been doing it in the Champions League, and his goal last night ensured that the last ten minutes or so were nowhere near as nervous as it could have been.

There were so many positives to take from individual and collective performances last night. I thought Zubimendi looked spritely; he’s been accused lately of taking the safe and backwards options on his passing recently, but I thought he was much more progressive and willing to take risks. With the League Cup final on the horizon, it is lovely to see that we have players hitting some stride, although Declan Rice’s post-match comments about being shattered are a concern. Arsenal and England should take note; there is a period coming up here where there is an opportunity to manage his and the likes of Zubimendi’s minutes differently. I said it on social media, but I’ll reiterate it now – neither of these players should be going away with their international teams, and neither should be starting against Southampton a week after that, too. If you can wrap them up, give them rest, a kind of Spring Break, if you will, then it could be beneficial to both The Arsenal and their respective international managers.

Defensively, we looked good too; our pressing was right, we got into our shape at the right time, Gabriel and Saliba looked good and Hincapie and White both performed well. There was also enough time for a Kai Havertz cameo and I thought he also looked lively when he came on.

And all of this means that Arteta has options for Sunday, too. In the pub before we were talking about where we were going to have a drink on Sunday and a few of us joked that we were overlooking Leverkusen. That wasn’t the case for those Arsenal players, who will also have the big confidence boost of knowing they are into the quarter finals with a great chance to progress there too. But before that, it’s all eyes on the League Cup now, and a showdown with 115 Charges FC. My hope is that they are licking their wounds and feeling a bit sorry for themselves this morning, having just been knocked out to Real Madrid last night.

More on that tomorrow as we begin the countdown to the first trophy attempt of the season. Catch you then.

This is a weird fixture for me. When the draw was announced, there was relief about a possibly easier passage through the competition. WhatsApp groups were awash with ‘take that’ and ‘lovely’ comments. Then you get to the first leg kick off, and you’re thinking, ‘hopefully we can make a statement tonight and put one foot in the final’. Then at the end of the game, after Arsenal haven’t been great, Leverkusen have shown a blueprint on how to counter and hit us on the break, the mind thinks ‘got away with that one, but we have the home leg to finish the job’, as well as ‘the game at home now becomes a one-off cup tie – lovely’.

And yet, here I find myself, Tuesday morning, apprehensive about the match. Yes, it IS a one-off cup game, for sure. And yes, we WILL be heavily favourites to go through, most definitely. But all it takes tonight is one good low block, one transitional counter, and we could find ourselves out of a competition that so many Arsenal fans have coveted for years. We’re all looking over at City’s daunting tie at home to Real Madrid, but if we aren’t careful, we could have our own psychological blow tonight against a Leverkusen side who drew with Bayern at the weekend. Of course, the caveat remains that they played over half the match against ten men, but they still got a draw, and that will still fill them with some confidence, I would have thought.

Arteta did his press conference, and the bad news is that Odegaard and Timber are out. The good news is that it sounds like Leo is back, and whilst Arteta confirmed White is back up and in full training, I’m not sure whether he’ll start in place of the absent Dutchman. Mosquera was preferred against Everton, and I suspect it might be the same tonight. Of course, it may be that Arteta selected Mosquera for that game because he knew he could only get White playing the majority of one match out of these two, so he’s prioritised the Englishman for his overlapping runs today. Maybe I’m talking myself into something that won’t happen, but that does make sense to me, especially after Saka’s performance in the first leg. He wasn’t great; he was hooked on 60 minutes in favour of Noni, but if Arteta wants to create more space for Saka up against Grimaldo tonight, then playing a guy with whom he has a clear connection would make sense to me.

The rest of the team picks itself largely, I think; Raya, Saliba, and Gabriel will all play. I suspect Hincapie comes in at left back. At the base of the midfield, it’ll be Zubi, with Rice on the left and Eze on the right. Up top, I doubt they’ll risk back-to-back starts for Havertz, so it’ll be Gyokeres, with possibly Trossard and Saka flanking him. I certainly think that dynamic works better than Martinelli wide left, plus I’m not sure that Noni on the left really worked against Everton. You could ask the question about whether he deserves a start on the right, but I think Arteta sticks with one of his most trusted players in Saka tonight, so for me, it should be Trossard.

The game plan has to be about control tonight, which I suspect makes for a tetchy start to the game, probably a little shadow-boxing from Arsenal as they look to maintain the control of the ball, with Leverkusen tucking in deep and maintaining a tight shape throughout. They want to hit us on the counter and get a goal up so they can sit deep and see us deliver the horseshoe of death aka The Arc of boredom, so if we can score in that first half, maybe it draws them out a bit, and a little more space opens up.

I suspect patience will be the name of the game today; it is not going to be a pretty one, unfortunately.

Leverkusen will look to Grimaldo to find space in that left-hand-side pocket, and particularly with Timber out, they’ll want to see if they can stress either White or Mosquera, so if we can keep them pinned back as much as possible, then I think we can nullify him somewhat. They have Schick back, which will be a different kind of physical threat, but I wonder if they look at the likes of Kofane as a viable option, because he really tested our two centre halves all game last week, so it will be interesting to see how the Leverkusen boss goes about his starting selection dilemma up top. Of course, if they are behind in the tie and he needs to throw a Hail Mary, then both Kofane and Schick up top could be an option. We need to be wary and ready for that possibility.

The good thing is that if Leverkusen go down that route, then it means they are behind, and in that situation, we would all back our defensive line to be able to hold out.

We’ve gotten used to this season – and particularly ‘The Business End’ of it being quite uncomfortable, nervy and at times downright stressful. But Arsenal keep finding ways – even when leaving it late – to win these football matches. Nothing is guaranteed; those ‘finding ways’ could very well end tonight, but we’re in a good spot as it stands and I am hopeful that we have the players to see us through this evening. Fingers crossed I’m right.

I’ll be back tomorrow with a debrief, as always. Catch you then.

We touched on this a bit yesterday in the Same Old Arsenal pod, but I wonder what the psychological impact of the recent results might be for those two respective teams in this title race? When Man City scored those two late goals at Anfield, the prevailing media narrative was that this was the momentum shift. ‘City were coming’, ‘City have done this before’, and ‘this is the moment they crank up the gears’ were what we heard. That match was on February 8th, and since then they’ve beaten Fulham at home, Newcastle at home, Leeds away, drawn with Forest, and drawn with West Ham in the Premier League. That’s not the same City as we’ve been told about, and certainly sides like the one that we faced in 2023/24 wouldn’t be at this stage in the season dropping points. I wonder if the psychology of dropping back-to-back points in the league, whilst we have picked up back-to-back wins, will impact them? Likewise, does a probable exit this week to Real Madrid (barring some almighty Madrid collapse with them 3-0 up) do more damage to them yet as they prep for us on Sunday next week?

Conversely, we have just gone and got a last-minute winner, before seeing City drop those points away. Does that point the dial in a positive direction for the psychological boost of this Arsenal team?

Maybe, maybe not. The fact that City have been patchy since that Liverpool win shows that things can swing very quickly in this league. Arsenal have done nothing yet, they’ve won nothing yet, but we are in a fabulously commanding position from where we sit. We can all continue to hope that this team drags itself over the line.

It’s weird, though, because we’re at the ‘business end’ of the season now, with seven games left to go, and yet we don’t actually play any Premier League football for just under a month. It’s the Champions League tomorrow, the League Cup on Sunday, then an international break, then the weekend after that is Easter, before we kick back up in the League against Bournemouth on 11th April. There’s a lot of football that will be played, but Premier League football takes a bit of a back seat. Which I kind of like, to be honest with you, because it feels like a little bit of a rest. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll be nervous again tomorrow, but despite never having won the Champions League, and it being a massive trophy to win, it’s the Premier League that gets me the most. It’s the one I want to win the most, and if that meant sacrificing everything else, I would gladly do it. So whilst I would be sad to go out tomorrow against Leverkusen, whilst I want us to go deep and maybe even win it, I’m kind of looking at everything other than the Premier League as a bit of respite.

Mikel Arteta will have no time to dwell on such things, such is the hectic schedule. He’ll have given the lads yesterday off, then today it will be back in light training as they prep for Leverkusen. He’ll also have his press conference this evening, and I hope that we get some good news on the players who have question marks over them. I think, particularly, I’d like to see Trossard fit, not least because I had a weird dream about Martinelli last night. The Creative Services Manager who works at my company was playing on the opposition side, and Martinelli – clearly rattled by him – decided to come from behind, grab him in a wrestling sleeper hold move, then drag him down to the floor. He got himself sent off, and we were on the back foot from there. I hope that isn’t a weird sign or premonition for tomorrow. Mikel – play Trossard or Eze on the left – trust my spidey sense…

Other than that, I guess there’s not really much else to do today other than re-live that wonderful moment in which Max Dowman scored to secure the win. What a day for him, his family, the Arsenal players, and Arteta. I’ve watched clip after clip of that, with particular rewatching of Peter Drury’s beautifully hyperbolic commentary. When it is for your team, it really does feel like a work of art.

Right, I’m going to call it there, I think. Have yourselves a great day, and I’ll be back tomorrow as we do a match preview ahead of that Leverkusen match-up.

The problem is, it takes two to tango, and Bayer Leverkusen were in no mind to make it an open and easy game for us.

I guess where I’m at this morning after that 1-1 draw in the Bayer Arena, is that it’s a decent draw and leaves us with the minor advantage of home soil for what effectively becomes a one-off knock out game now. That’s how I reflected on it to The Management when she came home last night and said “What does this mean now?” after I told her the result. With the abolition of the away goal rule, the home leg for us becomes the equivalent of an FA Cup round; there’s no need for mental gymnastics, or the psychology of being a goal or two up – it’s just them versus us and if it’s level after 90, then we go to extra time, followed by pens.

And if you look at the way we played in the main last night, you probably have to say “I’ll take that”. We weren’t great. We had our passing structures all set up, Eze was finding pockets of space deeper, getting on the ball. But I suspect that’s exactly what Bayer wanted. He’s not a guy who dictates from deep. He’s somebody who comes alive in the final third and last night he was probably a little too far from it, a little too often, for my liking.

I thought he had a decent-ish game though, which cannot be said across our front line. Martinelli had the best chance right up until Kai put the ball on the penalty spot to draw us level late on in the game, but his shot off the bar was about it from the Brazilian; it was another frustrating one in which I don’t think he beat his man often enough (when he did he drew a yellow card from the Leverkusen right back, but he never built on that, which is disappointing), and spent a lot of time checking back and slowing the play.

Big Vik started brightly and used good strength within a minute to leave Andrick on a yellow (who might have seen red if his body check on the same Arsenal player would have been 30 minutes later instead of three) early on and he had a couple of early touches and lay-offs that I thought meant we might get one of the better performances from the Swede, but that soon faded away.

But the biggest surprise of the night was just how poor Saka was. In fact, he was so poor, that people on my social media timeline were questioning whether he was fit or not. The manager never alluded to anything in his post-match press conference, and in fact, he even hinted (or so I thought) at the reason Madueke came on being the poor performance of the Starboy. It was just so odd; he never beat his man, his passing was off, he was slowing the play down and it seemed like he’d run out of ideas. One or two of us have touched on the fact we need him to step up, because he’s our best player, but this season has so far been quite underwhelming. And yesterday’s game felt like it was a point in which more people are going to start questioning him.

His replacement Madueke made an instant impact. He was beating his man, which is his bread and butter, and the move which led to the penalty was excellent. I thought the pen itself was super soft, although in real time it looked like a stonewaller to me, but when you see the replay you’re getting quite annoyed that’s it’s given if it’s against you. Mind you, the referee was terrible all night and gave silly fouls and ridiculous yellows all night. Zubimendi’s and Havertz’s were a case in point; how on earth Kai got booked for standing his ground in the penalty box is beyond me. So maybe we shouldn’t be so surprised that he gave that penalty.

It was a relief to bag it, and kudos to Kai for the cajones to step up against his old club and deliver, but it felt like we’d got away with that draw in the end. The stats and efforts overall tell of a game pretty evenly matched though, so perhaps the draw is just the footballing gods appreciating and recognising that neither side really deserved it on the night. Leverkusen caught us cold at the beginning of the second half with their corner goal (Jover will have them all in doing lines on the blackboard this morning, for sure), we caught them out late with a bit of trickery from Noni. One cancelled the other out and we go again on Tuesday evening next week at The Emirates.

I’m not really sure what else there is to reflect on in that game. It wasn’t a classic, Bayer were set up to contain us and then hit us on the counter with Kofane proving a handful for a surprisingly shaky looking Saliba and Gabriel, but they didn’t really have a ton of work to do when you think back over the chances created. Raya made one worldie of a save, I’ve mentioned Martinelli’s crossbar challenge effort, but other than that I can’t remember either side creating a ton and deserving to win this game outright.

That needs to change in six days’ time though. And we need to see a better performance on Saturday too.

Back tomorrow as we look ahead to that tricky one against Everton.

Tottingham Popspurs, my-oh-my, what on earth? Even during the most banterous of Banter Era moments, I don’t remember us doing what they did last night. Three Champions League goals conceded in the first 15 minutes for the first time ever, I believe. A goalkeeper subbed off after 15 minutes for the first time ever. A Spurs side who have now lost six on the bounce in all competitions. And a manager who was supposed to be the short term ‘fixer’, now being heckled by a fanbase who in the last month have talked about ending the season, but now all believe that there is a massive chance they go down.

I can’t remember if I’ve talked about it on here, but I would love it if they went down. Love it. There are Arsenal fans talking about how we’d lose a guaranteed six points, about the joys of the North London Derby being unmatched, and about how it is good to have them in the Premier League for us. Not for me. Whack them down to the Championship, please.

That’s 245 words of today’s match day musings that I’ve wasted on that club, so let’s get to The Arsenal now, shall we? Arteta and Havertz (understandably, given his history with Leverkusen) were the ones up in front of the media yesterday, and thankfully, it appears as though some of the knocks from the weekend and players missing from training were exactly as we’d all hoped – nothing serious and rest has been had. So we have Gabriel, Saliba, Raya, Zubimendi, Rice, Calafiori and Trossard all available for selection tonight. Charles Watts also reported that Ben White travelled with the squad, so that’s great news as well. Hopefully, he can get some minutes today, because I do think Arteta is going to have to keep Jurrien Timber from breaking down by limiting his minutes if he can. White is a good player, has been a great servant for us in his time so far, but he’s already shown his body can’t handle being the sole breadwinner on that right hand side, so Arteta needs to make sure he keeps both players as fresh as possible by giving them minutes.

I think the rest of the team is going to be largely easy to predict, with just a question on left wing and left back. I’m thinking Arteta will go for:

Raya

Timber   –   Saliba   –   Gabriel   –   Hincapie

Zubimendi

Eze   –   Rice

Saka   –   Gyokeres   –   Trossard

I think Hincapie’s form, plus Arteta not wanting to risk Calafiori, suggests the Ecuadorian might get the nod. He’s not cup-tied, given that technically Leverkusen are still his club, but that’s all the more reason to start him, I think. He’ll have some extra impetus and incentive to demonstrate how his career is kicking on, and his form is such that he deserves that start. On the left this is a tricky one. In the Champions League, Martinelli has been bagging goals, and with teams often pressing high (especially at home) it feels as though there’s more space for him to exploit. But I’ve gone with Trossard because:

1. I think he works better with Gyokeres
2. I think Leverkusen are going to go more compact tonight and look to contain Arsenal

They may be at home, but if they are solid defensively and can limit us in a lower block, then the pressure switches to us at The Emirates. Thankfully, the away goal rule is done, so it does mean that Leverkusen can’t do the ol’ “draw 0-0 at home and 1-1 away and go through” that felt like it was one of the more rubbish things about the 90s and 2000s Champions League. But the gameplan can still be similar; stay in the tie in the first leg, then see if the supposed ‘favourites’ crack under the pressure on their own turf. It’s how I would set up tonight.

I’ve watched a couple of good tactical videos, including this one here, so it appears as though we’re going to get a back three from Leverkusen with two floating 10s supporting their front man. They’ll rely on their wing-backs for width and in Grimaldo, they have a quality player who this season is their second top scorer in all competitions with 12 goals. Not bad for a left wing-back, eh? There’s a question mark over their main man, Patrik Schick, who has been out with a muscular injury for the last couple of games, but their coach confirmed he trained yesterday and so will be in the squad. I talked about the strengths of the guy who might replace him yesterday, but if Schick is available and starts, it will be a different prospect for Gabriel and Salba. He’s about six foot three and is good in the air; he’ll be a strong link-up man for them in bringing those two tens in place, and if they utilise their wing-backs as we think they might.

Apparently, one of the challenges Bayer has is that they haven’t really rotated their first XI much this season, so I have read, with one report saying that Grimaldo has openly talked about how fatigued he is. We have to hope that is the case tonight, especially given that Saka only came on as a sub at the weekend. I hope he’s fresher than the Spaniard and that his penchant for venturing forward leaves space in behind, becaus eit feels like that might be an area of the pitch we could take advantage of.

Nothing is decided tonight, but we know full well, having seen Bayern smash Atalanta and Atletico dispatch the Scum, that you can very well put yourself with one foot out of Europe if you don’t get the duels right and the tactics spot on. Leverkusen have already beaten Man City away (something we haven’t done in about 10 years!), as well as drawn at home to Newcastle and beaten Villareal on their own patch too. They are a decent side in their own ground, so Mikel Arteta needs tobe very wary of that.

Catch you all tomorrow for the usual debrief.

It won’t be easy, of course, but when you think about the balance of probabilities, it’s a more favourable tie. As I went for my run yesterday, I was thinking about this: there are seven sides we could have been drawn against. That means 14 permutations (seven home, seven away). If I think about what would be the topfour or five permutations, it would have been Port Vale at home, then Port Vale away, then Southampton at home, then Southampton away. We got the fourth-best option out of 14 options, so that’s pretty good.

Of course, as is the way this season, the narratives already started to drop, with an article on Sky that I read last night saying that we haven’t played a Premier League side so far in the FA Cup. Of course, nobody is mentioning that neither have Chelsea, and they got the best possible draw to get into the semi-finals with their home tie to Port Vale. But there you go. They aren’t the story so far this season, we are.

Still, it could have been worse. We could have got the draw that City got – Liverpool, albeit at home for them. But that represents a really tough match-up that Pep is not exactly going to be able to rest players for. Liverpool will be looking at this as a competition in which they can win a trophy, despite a difficult season, so they will go strong. City will need to match that, which means their April is suddenly looking like quite the douzy of a month. They play Liverpool in the FA Cup, the Champions League quarter final probably against Bayern, Chelsea away (who will no doubt have rotated for Port Vale at home) in the Premier League, then the second leg of their quarter final in the Champions League, before they play us. Their last game is away to Burnley, which is the banker for them.

Now, none of us should be counting our chickens, of course, but our games at least on paper don’t look as scary. We have Southampton away, then the quarter final if we can overcome Leverkusen to either Sporting or Bodo/Glimt, before playing Bournemouth at home in the Premier League, then it’s the second leg of that Sporting/Bodo quarter final at home (again, if we make it), before we play them. Our last game is a tricky one at home to a Newcastle side that I am really hoping will have nothing to play for, but equally will give us a tough match-up.

Once again, we have to put a big asterisk against all of these matches, but you’d rather have our run of games than theirs. It means April may well turn out to be a pivotal one in the season; I really hope we rise to the occasion in our games, with City hopefully dropping points and not being knocked out. For example, I kind of want to see City win their games against Real Madrid. We want them to be playing quarter finals just before they play us in the League. If they’ve been knocked out to Real Madrid, they have a week off before they play us, whilst we’ll have played a home match if we beat Leverkusen. That’s the kind of marginal gain that could have a big swing in a match like that at the Emptihad.

But we still have to respect and do our jobs against Leverkusen. Arteta will be up in front of the press today to talk about that game, but tomorrow evening’s early kick-off is one that we will have to see Arsenal step up against a patchy Leverkusen side this season. Their last five matches in all competitions have been:

1. 3-3 draw away to Freiburg
2. 1-0 win away to Hamburg
3. 1-1 draw at home to Mainz
4. 0-0 home draw against Olympiacos
5. 1-0 defeat to Union Berlin

Like I say – patchy.

They still have players who can hurt us in the shape of Schick and Grimaldo, but I think the Czech centre-forward is currently injured for this one, so that might be a big advantage for us. That means they’ll likely turn to the pacey Christian Kofane as their attacking outlet, who has seven goals to his name this season, and I suspect the Cameroonian will make life difficult for our centre halves tomorrow night. They’re also missing Loic Bade, Arthur, Flekken and Lucas Vasquez – the latter being at Real Madrid last season and sucking on some sour grapes after the game by saying we did “almost nothing” in the game at the Bernabeu. It would have been nice to see if Martinelli can skin him again tomorrow night, but I guess it just isn’t meant to be.

For us, all eyes will be on those players who were rested from the weekend, plus whether Trossard and Calafiori’s knocks are longer-term than just a precaution, although I suspect we won’t really know, given how much we know Arteta likes to tell us almost nothing in his press conferences. Despite that, though, I am still hoping that he at least confirms that the two that came off at the weekend are fine for Everton on Saturday. We may not need them for tonight, but we do need to start rotating this team and not over-relying on players, given how quickly the matches are coming right now.

We’ll find out more later, I’m gutted I couldn’t get a ticket as I’d have flown over tonight, but let’s hope that The Arsenal are in good shapes for this one, because keeping the impossible dream alive of a quadruple would be mighty nice with a win tomorrow. I’ll catch you then, when we have a look at how we might line up.

This morning I am thinking about Pierro Hincapie, who got on the pitch this weekend, after Trossard’s injury, to help us win at Mansfield and get our name in the hat for tonight’s draw. I’ll give some thoughts on the draw in a minute, but back to Hincapie for now, who yesterday we had a kind of ‘worst-kept-secret’ announcement from Fabrizio Romano, that Arsenal would trigger his £45 million loan clause to buy, meaning he’ll be an Arsenal player next season and sign a five-year deal.

We all knew that was the case; we knew that it was very much like the David Raya deal that took him from Brentford to us, but ol’ Fabrizio just wanted to rubber-stamp it by making his announcement yesterday. And I don’t think there’s an Arsenal fan around who wouldn’t say “good stuff” on that deal.

I don’t think that’s always been the case, though. I think a lot of us were wondering why we’d signed a deputy left-back/centre-half when we already had Myles Lewis-Skelly and Riccardo Calafiori, with a few fans I know jokingly suggesting that it was because Mikel collects left-backs. Forget collecting Gabby’s, it’s in that side of the pitch that he has a real penchant for…

But the Ecuadorian has grown in stature in 2026, to the point where I think a lot of us are wondering who, when fit, is Mikel’s first choice left back. Calafiori kicked off this season in fine form, even scoring on opening day, but as per last season (and pretty much his whole career), injury has hit him, and as a result, Hincapie has been able to get himself successive minutes for which he’s been able to establish himself as a regular.

I think it’s an interesting profile in the way in which he plays that position, too, because it isn’t the same as Myles and Riccy. He feels very much like a ‘defenders defender’; he doesn’t invert as much, he fits a more traditional position on the pitch for a left back, plus I can picture him in my mind’s eye as he overlaps his man, trying to get down the wing to put a ball in. Of course, that isn’t always the case, and his goal against Wolves shows that he can pop up in that insight channel at times, but to me, he offers a different way of playing that left-back role, and I wonder if Mikel is preferring that right now. I saw one of his press conferences recently in which he talked about how difficult the Premier League is, about how three to four years ago you could invert your left back and that would create space, but that space isn’t there any more, and it makes me think about the role that Hincapie is playing and how he has the starting jersey as it stands. Football is constantly evolving, tactics ebb and flow throughout the season as teams learn to adapt and shift their approach based on the opposition. Teams know about the inverted fullback approach Arteta brought with Zinchenko, so they have countered it, so perhaps we are shifting back to a more traditional look at left back?

Of course, this could all be nonsense on Wednesday or Saturday next week when Calafiori starts (hopefully his knock doesn’t keep him out), and he goes back to being that dynamic left-back who pops up in central midfield. But I just think it is an interesting talking point when thinking about Hincapie and how well he has done in this latter part of the season. Will he now go on to stake his claim like Timber has done on that right-hand side? I’m not sure about that, because I do think Arteta loves a bit of Calafiori, but Hincapie certainly seems like he’s in the driving seat right now.

Which is also interesting and timely, given who we play on Wednesday in the Champions League, as the Ecuadorian returns to his ‘old’ club Leverkusen. I would imagine that the reason he didn’t start on Saturday was that Arteta has him earmarked for that midweek fixture. I suspect it will be weird for him, though; just one year ago, he would have been pulling on that Leverkusen jersey and heading out in front of them to play Werder Bremen in a 2-0 defeat (technically, he was an unused sub, but you get my point). Now he could be up against them in a red and white shirt as Arsenal’s starting full back.

It’s not just him, though, as Kai also will be returning to a familiar haunt, as he had four years at Leverkusen before moving to Chelsea in 2020. So he will also be keen to get on that pitch I suspect. His 60-odd minutes on Saturday has hopefully given him a platform to get more minutes, but I suspect it will be Big Vik who starts in midweek, given that he didn’t get on the pitch on Saturday. There will no doubt be a role for Kai at some stage on his old stomping ground, but if I’m a betting man, I’m thinking that Arteta and his coaching staff are looking at that Everton game as one more likely to feature Havertz from the start.

We’ll know more tomorrow when Arteta does his press conference, but for today, all eyes are on that FA Cup draw tonight. The games are due to be played over the Easter weekend of 4th and 5th April, and given the upsets of Southampton and Port Vale yesterday, I’ve got a hankering for a return to Vale Park. That probably won’t happen, and it does feel as though we have a big tie coming up in the next round; Liverpool, Chelsea and Man City are all still in it, and it feels to me like we’re getting one of those away. I just have a feeling about it, you know?

If we’re mapping out a preferred/least preferred list, mine would be:

1. Port Vale
2. Southampton
3. Leeds
4. West Ham/Brentford
5. Chelsea
6. Liverpool
7. Man City

You just know we’re getting City away, don’t you? It feels almost destined, given we’re in a title race with them. We’ll know by 7.30pm this evening though, so I’ll come on here tomorrow and give some initial thoughts on that when we speak next.

And so for now, for today, I will wish you and yours a great day and I’ll catch you tomorrow. Ciao.

Of course, with the Champions League semi-final run and money in there, Arsenal’s fortunes were improved on the previous seasons, but ultimately, the club is still making a small loss. I’m no finance expert, so I’m not going to go into the details of it, but I can talk about how it makes me feel overall, which is that a small loss of £1.4million before tax is pretty decent. I’m also not a tax expert, but I suspect the club’s aim is to get as close to break even as possible each year, and even a small loss isn’t that bad, because they can still avoid paying Corporation Tax, and can even apply for a tax refund I think – if I’ve read the stuff right on the UK Government website. What’s the point in making £500k profit if the Government is going to take a chunk of it, eh?

Anyway, the most important news is that this Arsenal team has turned winning, with investment, into hopefully a relatively sustainable enterprise and as long as we can keep doing it, then as a fan who is not that invested (pun intended) on the financial side, what you want to hear is that the club is in a decent position and we aren’t going to have to send round donation buckets in the North Bank any time soon.

The Champions League is part of that cash bump we’ve had, as I talked about yesterday. We’ll find out about who we have in the draw tomorrow. But it has, at least, been narrowed down. It’s Leverkusen or Atalanta in the next round of the competition, and I have to declare my interest right now. If Arsenal get Leverkusen, I’d really love to go to that one away. I have an aunt in Koln, which is 10 miles away from the centre of Leverkusen, and it is my favourite City in Germany. I’d love to be able to get my arse over to Koln and then do a long weekend over there for sure. Atalanta, I have no such ties, plus it’s a bit of a longer trip, so I wouldn’t be making much effort to go there. They also gave us a little bit of an awkward time last season in the group stages, so I’d be a little more wary of them, plus we haven’t played Leverkusen in an official game since 2002, where we beat them over two legs with a draw away and a win at home 4-1. I’d take a repeat of that again this time, thank ye kindly.

So that’s me declaring our hand, but we’ll find out the reality on Friday, for which we can all start making our arrangements.

As for the here and now, well, it’s Chelsea that is starting to loom on the horizon, so I guess the build-up for that really starts today. And as I usually like to do, the first question I asked myself as I started to think ahead of that massive game, was:

How many in uries and suspensions do Chelsea have?

There are people in this world who say things like “I want to play against their best team” or “I don’t want that team relegated because it diminishes our achievement” or “I don’t want them to get points deductions – I want us to win it fair and square”.

I am not one of those people.

I want to take any – and every – tactical advantage that is humanly possible. Give me rivals relegated. Give me points deductions for everyone except us. Give me suspensions. Give me injuries. I want them all. Last weekend, we played a shocking Spurs side, but they were also shocking because they were decimated by injuries. I cared not. In fact, I didn’t say anything to anyone, but before the game I was worried, I feared a backlash, but the rational side of my brain did tell the emotional side that this team were not good and they were missing most of their best players, so we should surely have the better of them. I want that for every future game between now and the end of the season, please.

We’ll find out for definite their situation tomorrow when Liam Rosenior gives his team update, but without knowing everything there is to know about that horrendous football club (why would I?), I would think that their best back line includes Cucurella, Colwill and Fofana. Perhaps a Chelsea fan would tell me differently, but those three are – I think – going to be missing on Sunday. Colwill has a long-term injury. Last weekend, Rosenior said Cucurella had a hamstring injury (so that should be a few weeks out), and Fofana is suspended because of the sending off (another one!) against Burnley. I hope that it certainly gives us an advantage from an attacking point of view. They still have that combative midfield of Caicedo and Enzo Fernandez, who will be there for them, but hopefully our attackers can have the upper hand against a weakened Chelsea defensive line. They will have Gusto, Adarabaiyo and Chalobah (who scored against us in the reverse fixture) available, I suspect, which is still a collective of decent players, but maybe we can get at them a little more than we might have with those other guys in the team. We’ll see. I’ll do more of a tactical look at how they might play against us either tomorrow or Sunday, I think.

And so until then, I hope you have a grand day, and I hope you enjoy your Thursday, whatever you decide to do with it.

Catch you all tomorrow.

In many ways, this break has been one of the most delicious of all. If you’re a regular reader, you will know that I absolutely detest international football with every fibre of my being (except maybe during the international tournaments, but even then, they’re just sort of ‘there’ more than any real desire to become fully immersed), so when we win and then the players go away on international duty, I like basking in the glow, but it’s still a bit “meh” knowing there’s a break from The Arsenal. This time, the only break is a natural one because we qualified for the next round of the Champions League without having to do what Newcastle did last week. I hope that those two extra games tire them out for when we play them in about six weeks, but not before they have hopefully expended all of their energy in knocking Man City out of the FA Cup.

Actually, that’s a point…do we want City out of the Cup at this stage? I mean, if they were, it gives them a little more rest time when the sixth round comes along. Perhaps what we actually want is Newcastle knocked out, then City to play either Chelsea or Liverpool in the sixth round, away from home, so they are pretty much forced to play their full squad to get over the line.

Anyway, let’s not think about that right now; let’s go back to the discussion about basking in the glorious glow of the NLD win. I think I said this yesterday, but I’d love to be somebody who works at London Colney this week. I mean, I’d love it most of the time because I’d get to work for The Arsenal, but I would just love it especially right now. I bet the place is buzzing. But at what point does the fun, games and general frivolity change for the players? I suspect Arteta will have said, “Enough, time for some game faces on now,” from at least today. The two games we have coming up are really hard. Chelsea at home and Brighton away; two very good teams, who have been tough for us for many seasons. Brighton away, especially, so there needs to be a focus from those players. Because we need six points. There is zero chance in hell that City drop points in their next two away to 15th in the league, Leeds and then 17th in the League Forest at home. It’s funny, though, because you look at where Brighton are at the moment, they are only three points off Leeds in 14th, so I guess you’ve probably got City fans looking at that game and saying the same as us. It’s always easier to project invulnerability from other teams than it is your own. They certainly have an easier one at home to Forest than we do this weekend to Chelsea, but if we play to our full potential, then it shouldn’t matter. In the coming days, I’ll probably start looking ahead at that game, what those scummy Chelsea fans are saying, as well as their vibes and who is fit, but as it stands, I don’t feel like I want to start doing that just yet. It just kind of takes away the thinking and basking from the NLD, you know?

Instead, I think I’ll continue to soak up more content like the lovely Bench Cam that the official site posted yesterday. Yes, please, Arsenal, let’s have more of that content to digest over the next 24 hours, eh? The players need to put their game faces on, but we fans, we just need a little longer soaking it all up, yeah?

Maybe we could have a look at who we might want in the Champions League phase? Now we’re starting to see some of the decisions being made with players ahead of the draw on Friday, and I didn’t realise that our path has kind of already been laid out before us, so we’ll get one of the following:

• Olympiakos
• Borussia Dortmund
• Bayer Leverkusen
• Atalanta

Olympiakos makes me go “oh FFS, again?” – we seem to get them a minimum of once every three years and, frankly, I just don’t want to do this dance again. Even though I’d be pretty confident that over two legs we’d progress.

Dortmund, too, kind of gives me some PTSD vibes following years under Wenger in which it felt like, more often than not, we’d lose to them. However, they got beaten by the Scum at the Toilet Bowl, so perhaps there’s not as much to be worried about as I feared.

Leverkusen were former Bundesliga champions, but with European elite clubs (and Sunderland) picking at the carcass of Leverkusen last summer, it’s not quite the same side it was last season I don’t think.

Then there’s Atalanta, who sit seventh in Serie A and without one of their stars Lookman who joined Atletico Madrid this season and perhaps that’s impacting them. We picked up a 0-0 against them last season and it wasn’t the best of games, but again, I’d fancy us against them too.

So It’s not too bad in the Round of 16 and by Friday we’ll know which side of the draw we are on and whether we get what feels like an inevitable double-legged tie against City if we progress to the other rounds.

Right, I’ll leave it there for today, and be back tomorrow as we have to say goodbye to the basking and hello to the apprehension ahead of Chelsea on Sunday.

Catch you then.

Before a ball was kicked, yesterday morning and afternoon, I was excited for this game. The reason was that, like the League Cup game against Chelsea, it felt like a little more of a ‘free hit’ than the Premier League. I can absolutely guarantee that I won’t have the same feelings when we play Man United on Sunday.

And I think Arteta had that game in mind when he picked this starting XI to line up in Milan last night. He would never admit that, he might also say that minutes and load needed to be managed from the trip to Nottingham last weekend, but I think he’s well-aware of what kind of different and difficult challenge a refreshed and rested United might pose, so he selected his playing pieces yesterday very carefully, I think.

There were starts for some of the regulars; you’d expect that given the opposition – Inter rested players at the weekend for this game, and you can’t expect Arsenal to play all the kids with a calibre of opposition that we had. So I wasn’t surprised to see Raya, Saliba, Timber, Zubi, Saka and Trossard all start.

Complementing them was, of course, MLS, the returning Mosquera (who played really well given the physicality of his opponent last night), Eze, Merino, Gabby Jesus, which still made for a very experienced lineup. And you could tell, because from the first minute we were on top of them. We probably could – or even should – have scored within the first couple of minutes. We pressed high, we closed space, we forced Inter into a few errors, and it felt very much like the start of the PSG away game last season. Unfortunately for us, the similarities with that game also existed in the form of not getting that Blitzkrieg goal that I think Arteta probably wanted within the first minute or two.

Well, I say we didn’t get that early goal, but we actually did. I guess we did so much in the opening five minutes that I momentarily forgot that we were actually ahead by 10 minutes. Timber’s deflected shot was, I think, superbly poached on by Gabriel Jesus. He loves the Champions League, doesn’t he? We’ve said it ever since he signed, and I think it has more to do with the space afforded to Arsenal, plus the reduction in physicality of the Champions League (teams are all winners in their respective domestic competitions, so they’re used to playing football and not just low-blocking the shite out of football matches), that means some of our players can flourish. Ironically enough, I think Gabby Jesus has plenty of upper-body strength that does help him in the Premier League. But there’s just something about the Champions League that makes him more prolific. 

And prolific he was yesterday. His first goal was a predatory strike just outside the six-yard box, whilst the second was a nod in about two yards out. Although I think we have to say that there was a touch of fortune about the way the ball kissed the bar before falling for him to nod in ahead of any Inter defenders. “A penny for Viktor’s thoughts with those chances” I thought when that second one went in. Those are the kind of positions he’s been taking up (think his Burnley goal as one example), but the ball just hasn’t been finding him. I do think we need to have a serious think about whether he’s right for us in the long term. I’m just not sure his style fits, and when you see our former first choice number nine bag his third goal since returning from injury, you start to wonder. But these were goals that I would also have expected Viktor to get, were he on the pitch, anyway. 

It didn’t matter a whole deal, though, because despite coming on as an impact sub, he still bagged the best goal of the night. And it felt like the kind of YouTube goal we saw from his highlight reels last season for Sporting. Inter pushing up and pressing, Arsenal defend a corner well, Martinelli plays an absolute sumptuous pass in behind, and the Swede gets the wrong side of his man. He didn’t quite race away from his two centre-halves; he also sort of fluffed the pass to Saka, but you can’t argue with his pounce on the loose ball and finish.

That essentially ended the game as a contest, which was certainly a very good contest up until that point, with Inter having their fair share of shots and attacks on the counter. It made for a good game. We talk about the Premier League being a good advert for football, but in reality, the increase in tactical discipline and defensive risk-aversion often results in games in which Arsenal have to wade through the treacle of a low or mid-block. The Champions League has no such stodge and, as a result, proper football matches can unfold. This game had some basketball moments, it had some fine goals (the Inter goal is one that you have to begrudgingly say was a good hit from just outside the box), and it had two teams wanting to move the ball around purposefully. It even had a little bit of handbags with Bastoni pushing Merino over after he’d gone in on a couple of Inter players. It was fun to watch. Made all the more fun, of course, by the fact that we won. 

And that win allowed us to confirm our top two slot in the competition, significant because it means all of our knockout games will be played away first, then at home all the way to the final. Will that make a difference in helping us to progress? Let’s bloody-well hope so. 

The team will travel back today, they’ll be back in light training tomorrow, I suspect, which means the Friday session to prep for United and then also on Saturday. And with players rotating and resting like Rice, Timber too (whose job was shared with White on 60+ minutes – which I liked a lot), we hopefully have ourselves not only fresh players, but players rather buoyed and confident going into that game against United. 

Can’t ask for much more than that.

Back tomorrow as we start to prep for that big game on Sunday.

But please, for the love of all that is holy, Mikel, please rotate the key players out for this game.

At Forest at the weekend, Declan Rice aside, we looked off it. Some of that was due to our inability to deal with the mid-block; some of it was due to poor form from some players, but I saw a few assertions online that some of it may well have been due to fatigue. Three away games in a row, with the fourth taking place this evening, means a fair bit of travel (even if one of them was just across London to Chelsea) and who knows, maybe that plays a part. But these players are all seasoned pro’s now; they’re used to playing twice/three times a week, and they’re used to the Champions League by now. Fatigue is a factor, but it shouldn’t be a deciding factor with performances like the weekend just gone.

But if it is, if it is even the ‘slightest’ of concerns ahead of a potentially resurgent Man United at home this coming Sunday, then Mikel Arteta simply HAS to rotate tonight. And rotate well. Personally, I’d rotate the shizzle out of the team, but I doubt Mikel will do that; he is a pupil of the school of “winning all the time” and we’ve heard him in the past say things like (paraphrasing here) “big players need to be able to play 60 games a season”, so my big fear this evening is that Mikel brings out all of the big guns to play against an Italian side who got one over on us last season.

That game was decided by a frankly farcical penalty, as well as (and this will shock you) a number of missed chances by us. But I also seem to recall that it was a pretty turgid game, which is also what I am expecting tonight. Inter have the second-best defensive record in this competition. We have the best. We have two defensive juggernauts going against each other, which sometimes means a cancellation of the actual ‘football’, with a tactical battle that makes it tough to watch.

Don’t care though. 

If this game ends 0-0, if it’s played at walking pace, if the players leave plenty in the tank for Sunday, then I am a-ok with that. But even if that is the case this evening, I still don’t want to see some of our big-name players playing. Maybe you give them 15 minutes at the end to keep their well-oiled engine-like machines ticking over, but that’s it.

So, who should be the ones to start for this one then, eh?

Well, for me, I think we probably need to see at least one of White or Timber drop to the bench. Given he broke down after we played him for three/four games in a row before Christmas, that would be Ben White. Perhaps there’s an argument to say he can start this one, then job share with Timber for that last 30 minutes, which means Jurrien comes in fresher for United on Sunday, but personally, I just want to make sure we don’t lose either of them, and that to me means we don’t really want to be seeing them both starting. So I’d have MLS in at left back. If this is going to be a game of low incident, then getting Myles to build up some minutes and form in a game like tonight feels perfect. 

As for the rest of the defence, if Mosquera is fit, I’d give him 60 minutes and sit down Saliba. Big Gabby is our big player, but he’s also the leader in that defence, plus he’s missed more of the season pre-Christmas, so Big Bill getting a rest feels about right for me.

Midfield is where I’d start to ramp up the rotation. Get Nwaneri in there for Odegaard, who was poor against Forest, as well as Norgaard anchoring the midfield. Every time the Dane has played for us, he’s been solid, stable, ‘no frills’ and that’s what we need tonight. It gives Zubi a rest, and it means we’re giving Christian a Champions League night in a big stadium. Feels obvious to me. In at left, I’d have Eze, and if this is going to be a game where you need some trickery to unlock things, why not have two creative and attacking eights given the chance? I’m not sure Arteta will do that; he might go for Merino, but I just hope to at least season Nwaneri at some stage. We don’t need Rice tonight; sit yourself down, Declan, get those feet up, then be the best version of yourself on Sunday (not that we haven’t already had that – he was the best player for us against Forest).

Then, up top…now…what to do…?

For me, I’d play Jesus from the start. The Italian defence will probably lap up a player like Big Vik, so let’s see if Gabriel Jesus can do something in the Champions League, which is a competition he’s always enjoyed playing in. And similarly, I’d also say that Martinelli can get the nod, too. I want Trossard for United, so I’d be telling him that he gets the jersey in the more important game this week. For the subs, let’s give Havertz another 20 minutes up top; I can see that he might be instrumental on Sunday, and we need to start building up those minutes for a player with whom we’re all so desperate to see get some proper minutes now. He’s being managed – the sensible thing to do – but we need to start unleashing him now because the games are only going to get more intense and we need him. On the left, I think he will go for Saka, but personally I hope he choose Noni Madueke and tells him “here you go, two games in a row, so show me what you can do”, and with a few goals in this competition already, maybe he’s just suited for this kind of competition like Gabriel Martinelli is?

Mikel gave us an insight into how he thinks Inter will approach this game, by being aggressive early, but this team – regardless of rotation or not – is a physical one, so I don’t think I’m too worried about the press of Inter from the start tonight. 

It feels like a bit of a ‘free hit’ tonight, so I just want to see an Arsenal team unscathed, ready for Man United. We can still finish top by a good win over Kairat next week, so let’s go into this one wanting to win, putting our best foot forward, but not if it means somebody is going to tread on said foot.

As always I’ll be back tomorrow, so I’ll catch you wonderful people then, when we’ll know if we’ve got ourselves into the top two with this game or not.

Ciao.

Arteta rang the changes yesterday as Jurrien Timber, Eze, Calafiori, Rice and Saka all dropped out of the starting XI, with some not even on the bench (although apparently Timber did travel with the squad so that’s a positive in terms of his fitness I hope). Rice was supposedly ‘ill’ but if it’s just a bit of a cold then that’s fine and these guys are such highly-tuned athletes, that their recovery time for colds and coughs is probably 24-48 hours. Hopefully the midweek rest gives him the opportunity to be ready for Wolves and we see some of those players returning.

But what will please Arteta more than anything else is the manner in which this rotated side played, because it didn’t look too disjointed at all. I do think we were more open defensively and given Raya had to make a number of saves in the game it kind of shows; Arsenal don’t usually concede too many shots but it felt like it was one of his more busy nights if you look at all of the numbers other than the scoreline.

That’s ultimately the one that matters though and that scoreline does all but mathematically guarantee us safe passage – I was looking at the table this morning and it’s Liverpool and Atletico Madrid who are towards the bottom of the top eight qualifiers on 12 points. The maximum they can get is 18 (what we’re on) and the swing they’d have to both have on goal difference is +13 – so there would need to be an almighty battering we’d have to take, plus they’d have to crank up big scorelines, for us to drop into the territory of being really worried.

So back to the game then, in which Arsenal showed that they were just a class ahead of their opponents, albeit still seeing Brugge take some heart in some decent chances. But after 25 minutes we were ahead and it is the kind of goal that deserves to win any game. Madueke’s solo run from just inside Brugge’s half was an example of what people have said he is capable of his whole career – he’s just not had the consistency to deliver on it. But it was one of those that you just let out a little screech when you see it go in and my “what a goal!” was enough to get The Management coming in to the lounge from the other side of the house to see what had unfolded.

I thought Madueke was brilliant last night. Last season we suffered when we lost Saka and until we found Nwaneri towards the end of the season, we didn’t really have an answer in one of our most attacking threat parts of the pitch. In Madueke we have somebody who when he comes in, the opposition aren’t going “yeah, we’re alright on that side, let’s just shut it down and focus on other areas. He was a threat and willing to go at his man all night and he caused problems throughout, including right at the start of the second half in which he bagged his second goal with the most easy of headers you’ll ever get as a player. A penny for Big Vik’s thoughts for not being there to bag one of them (thought he had another quiet one and it might be an ever-so-slight cause for concern there, but let’s park that for now), but Noni was and we were two-up, which even the Club Brugge captain admitted afterwards was pretty much game over.

They still created chances, Raya still had to make some very smart saves, but the psychological damage was done and it was a case of how Arteta managed the rotations of his team thereafter. He brought on Saka for ‘ticking over’ minutes, he even gave 60 to Gabby Jesus which was lovely to see and even though he nearly scored by hitting the bar, he’ll just be pleased to be getting a feel for the ball and covering the ground he did. I thought he looked lively and Mikel Arteta will be very pleased that he has that option now available to him for this particular moment in time.

Not to be outdone by the man on the opposite flank though, Martinelli wanted a headline or two and his – the first Arsenal player to score in five consecutive Champions League matches – was written the second his curling shot left his boot. It was a fabulous finish and he will be very pleased with his efforts on the night, especially given he was the player in the pre match press conferences talking about low-block ‘park the bus’ teams in the Premier League. It’s true, but you don’t want to manifest a jinx in those situations, but although I worried he might have tested footballing fate, it was not to be the case and I think that little boost of confidence will be good for him too.

There are so many positives to take from last night. Like Christian Norgaard, for example, who slotted in at centre-half and was pretty good I thought. Or how about Zubimendi, whose cross for Madueke’s headed second goal did all of the heavy-lifting. That Spaniard is a little magician. He anchors our midfield, sure, but he also covers so much ground, his passing range is immense and he just knits everything we do together so well. I love watching him.

Merino was solid in midfield, the back line had a couple of moments in which we were breached, but Brugge couldn’t capitalise, and it’s six from six, just one goal conceded and 17 scored. It’s an impressive haul that now gives Arteta the option of rotating players in future games and in the new year when we might need to sit a few players down to rest, he’ll be able to do that. It’s brilliant stuff.

And I am just glad we now have the bad taste of Villa out of our mouths and can look ahead towards domestic action and hopefully getting a result against Wolves on Saturday night.

Back tomorrow with some more thoughts.