Arsenal went up to Anfield, a place that is traditionally a painful experience; they went to a ground that normally sees the home fans come away happy, and us trudge home; they went to the North West, where we don’t usually fare too brightly, and came away with all three points.

That was the kind of performance where Champions can be made.

Arteta names what is arguably right now the strongest XI we have with Saliba and Saka injured, and in came Tzolis and Bruno alongside the usual familiar faces. This was an Arsenal side that was intent on stamping their authority on a Liverpool side under Iraola that is still building its identity. Ours is already forged; we have a side which has the defensive foundations that make any opponent feel a little helpless at times in terms of their chance creation. And despite the fact that Liverpool hit the bar (I think that was a cross rather than a shot from Wirtz), and despite the fact that they probably got a good shout for a penalty (Timber was silly there, and we can count ourselves fortunate), Arsenal limited Liverpool to zero shots on target. At their own gaff. Marvellous stuff.

I’d call this game a ‘compelling’ one, rather than one that was particularly exciting. But why would we make it one that is end-to-end? That’s what Liverpool would want. Instead, what we want to do is control the margins, the key moments, reduce as many incidents as possible, and when you can limit your opponents’ attempts on goal to zero, you’re doing that.

In the moment, it didn’t feel like it; however, Liverpool still created a lot of chances. They had an xG of 1.05, 17 shots on goal, and a lot more of the ball in terms of possession and passing. So as I was watching it all unfold, I have to admit that it didn’t feel like one of those games that would be comfortable. But I guess that’s the point. The fact we haven’t won there in 14 years shows just how difficult a place it is to go, and getting three points as well as it being ticked off our away day list is quite impressive.

That’s our season so far in the Premier League, however, eight wins from nine to put us clear of 115 Charges FC is a very impressive return. We’re also six clear of third-place Brighton, eight clear of Chelsea, nine clear of Liverpool, and heck, even the Tiny Totts have only got half of the points we’ve got. We’re on pace for a 101-point season at this rate. We won’t get to that, of course, but we’ve kicked off the defence of our title in superb fashion, and have already knocked off Villa Park, The Amex and Anfield from our tough away grounds list.

And I thought yesterday we started off looking every bit the champions. And wouldn’t you just know it, that the hero yesterday was the somewhat villain in midweek against Fleetwood in midweek, as Kai Havertz crept in at the back post to slot home Rice’s superbly weighted ball into the Corridor of Uncertainty to home the winner early on. Kai said afterwards that Dec had done the hard work for him and it’s hard to disagree; it was another action from Rice which underlined his man-of-the-match performance and showed why he is hands down the best midfielder in the Premier League right now. That was his assist; it was his big chance created, he also had a shot on target, as well as one off target, and 38 of 44 passes. But he did his duty defensively too, with nine defensive contributions, three tackles, two clearances, and three ball recoveries. He does his job all over the pitch, and this morning we have to be thankful that Arteta worked so hard to bring him to The Arsenal. We wouldn’t be the same team without him.

I thought everyone did their job; however, with good performances from all of the back line, Noni was spritely, although if you listen to the nonsense of Van Dijk you’d think he should have been sent off. Not for me; if that’s a headbutt, then I’m a monkey’s uncle, because Mac Allister made the biggest meal of what was minimal contact and should be embarrassed by his reaction this morning. No matter, however, because Arsenal did their job and ensured that Liverpool, and especially Isak, were kept out. Which means we’re getting to the quarter point in the season, and we’ve only conceded five goals so far. The next best is Brighton, who have conceded seven, but I suspect they are running a bit hot right now. Let’s see if that can be maintained into 2027. If it does, fair play to them, but with European football properly kicking in, they’ll have to manage a gruelling schedule. We will too, but we’ve got experience in this, and given how good our defence has been for the last three or four seasons, you can’t say that we are running hot – our back line is just that good.

And ‘good’ is the right word for today, because that win last night certainly felt like it was that – in abundance. We were good value for when we went ahead; we had to weather an inevitable storm as Liverpool tried to get back into the game, but we were value for what we got out of the game, and we have a monkey off our back after that win up there. Today is a good day. Plus, seeing some of the salty Liverpool fans moaning this morning is rather amusing, because I had a comment on the site saying that because of the Conor Bradley stuff last season at our place, they were going to be all over us. Nope. Try again.

It was a happy day, it was a fine day, it means that Fleetwood is a distant memory, which is just the tonic. For some more bonus watching, check Mikel’s response on the official site here.

Right, that’s it from me for today. I’ll be back later on with the guys for a Same Old Arsenal pod this evening. Until then, enjoy your Monday.

1. The NLD away – just hate the stakes, even when they are shit and we’ve beaten them on their own ground for the last couple of seasons
2. The Emptihad – because, like Anfield, we just never win there, and it’s annoying

I guess the upside is that City losing yesterday means that whatever today’s result, we won’t really have lost any ground this weekend. City’s defeat means we are level on points with them, and Brighton’s beating of them – led by one manager fast becoming unbearable and certainly hypocritical after last weekend’s moan about Liverpool not coming to play – was good, but doesn’t put them above us in the league. Liverpool can cut the gap with us to three points with a win, but again, we’d still have three points on them. So as we rapidly approach the quarter-season mark, we’re in good shape.

Except we know that from an attacking point of view, maybe not so much, and today is a day to try to prove that we don’t have too much to worry about. Both Kay and Viktor were poor against Fleetwood, Kai’s form in general hasn’t been great, and Gyokeres’ technical deficiencies are there for everyone to see. So we’ve leaned on other players to fill the goalscoring void, and today might well be the same. I’d even go as far as to say it will have to be the same, because I can’t see either of our attackers getting tons of chances and making their mark against a Liverpool defence that has only conceded eight goals this season. Only us and Brighton are better than that.

I also think that Iraola is going to try to match Slot’s blueprint from last season at Anfield against us; i.e., let’s have a game in which two teams that respect each other cancel each other out. This game feels like it’s probably being won by just the odd goal.

You watch this be a 5-4 stormer now.

Liverpool have the weapons for that. Isak always scores against us, he always causes us problems, and he’ll be flanked by in-form Gakpo and new boy Barcola. That’s quite an expensively assembled front line, up against our robust and experienced back line. And you feel as though the tale of this match later is going to be written based on which of those two units bests the other one. Do we remain resolute, watertight and lock Liverpool down? Or do they breach us and go on to collect what they usually do at Anfield against The Arsenal – at least a point, often three?

I wouldn’t put money on us being able to keep Liverpool at bay, although I was listening to the Arsenal Vision podcast yesterday whilst on my way to do the shopping, and Elliott was talking about how he’s been watching their games, and they haven’t been that amazing going forward. He said he’d watched the last four in all competitions and he wasn’t that impressed. I’ll have to defer to somebody that has watched more Liverpool than I have, but I thought they did a good job of getting ahead against Brighton, then just controlling the game. That’s a blueprint I suspect Iraola would love to replicate today. It’s something that we’ve seen from a lot of managers over the years; go hard and fast and high tempo, get an early goal, then control the match and force Arsenal to come out. That’s what we don’t want. We don’t have an amazing record of going on to win games when we are behind. It’s just not us. We prefer to get ahead, then squeeze the opponent. An early Liverpool goal would possibly be curtains for us, because we’d have to come out, and they’d be primed to hit us in a transitional game.

It is interesting, though, because despite the fact they have what looks like a very potent attacking side, Liverpool have only scored 11 goals this season. We have two more. So whilst pundits might try to big this up as an ‘attack versus defence’ game, the numbers don’t really suggest that.

I’m not stupid enough to think that they won’t get a lot of chances today, though. So we’ll need to make sure we win that midfield battle and control the centre of the park, because if we remain strong at the back when they have the ball, if we control the midfield, we might be able to avoid Liverpool’s pace on the counter. In terms of what team I would therefore put out, I am thinking this one might be the best:

Raya

Timber – Konsa – Gabriel – Calafiori

MLS

Odegaard – Rice

Madueke – Havertz – Eze

Calafiori and Eze still need to work on their connections, and I also think we need to see that from Havertz and Eze too, but I’ve gone with Myles because of his ball-carrying ability. I just think that in the middle of the park, if this game is to be a cagey and tightly contested one with pressing, Myles is the kind of press-resistant player that can wriggle out of tight spaces and help us to get Liverpool out of shape and on the back foot. On the attack, I don’t think you want to chuck Tzolis straight back in, but having him as a sub option would be good, and it’s an opportunity for Eze to build a little more momentum with a good performance. With the Greek now back and training, Eze needs a good performance today to keep him on the pitch ahead of Tzolis, so I hope we get the good version of Eze that shows up in big games. The other decision which will cause an eyebrow or two from one or two of you lovely readers, is the inclusion of Havertz over Big Vik. I know Havertz sucked at Fleetwood, but in these types of games, he offers more, and I worry that Gyokeres on the pitch against Van Dijk and Jacquet just seems him isolated, lost in the game, unfindable and therefore rendered rather redundant. Havertz may have forgotten where the goal is, but he will be more of an option on the ball than the Swede.

And we need every player to deliver today. This ground is a curse for us, has been for more of my lifetime, so I’m not especially confident. But if we have every man showing up, giving us a minimum of seven or eight out of ten, I think we win this game.

Back tomorrow for a debrief/post-mortem. See you then.

That’s the media narrative that will be peddled today and, if we’re honest, sometimes you just have to accept it. Like Chester from The Simpsons once said:

That’s a paddlin’

NOw, of course we didn’t actually take a paddlin’, we should really have dished one out. But when you are the Champions, when you’ve just come back from the Allianz Arena and been the better team against Bayern, followed that up by swatting aside a very capable Everton team in the Premier League, anything else other than a comprehensive victory against the calibre of opposition (with all due respect) that we faced yesterday, then yeah, “A Paddlin'” is what we’re going to get today. Rival fans, the media, most of the internet – most people who aren’t stakeholders with Arsenal connections is going to be after us today. We’re the champions, and when you are, you have a target on your head bigger than any other team – even the ones that cheat.

So yeah, today is going to be one to probably avoid the mainstream media for me, because the hyperbole pitchforks will be out in force.

The reality of the situation is that we’re out of a competition that we probably could do with being out of anyway. It’s four of four in terms of priority, and if you include the Community Shield, it’s only a little bit more of a step up in prestige. If Arsenal won just that, we’re not doing an open-top bus parade. You don’t get a lot of money for winning it (£100k), so the reality of the situation is that further down the line, we’re probably glad to be out of it and have some midweeks spare for the team to have a week off. The fact that Arteta busted out O’Neill for a League debut showed how much he wanted to avoid playing any of his main stars if he possibly could, but by the end of the game it was certainly a more experienced side. So it’s not like we played the kids for the full 90.

I was surprised about Meslier starting, but I guess the thinking Arteta probably had was that the opponent in question was probably such that if you’re going to give him just one appearance this season, that’s probably it. Kepa will most likely play in the FA Cup games, and Meslier needs to at least get his chance in one match this season. Unfortunately for him, in that one match, he basically had nothing to do other than pick the ball out of the net, although the way he conceded – through the legs – does make me wonder if a better ‘keeper would have fared better.

But he didn’t; we didn’t. Fleetwood scored with basically their only shot all night, and it became a training ground exercise of attack versus defence.

Unfortunately for us, our attack was found extremely, and sorely, lacking in quality. I was pleased for Big Vik that he bundled in the scrappiest of scrappy finishes to draw us level, but that was about it for us on a night in which chance after chance was squandered, and if Arteta and his Arsenal team aren’t looking at that January window and thinking about bolstering this front line, then they’re not doing their jobs properly. Because it was pretty bad stuff. One chance that comes to mind was a cross into the box that Havertz got on the end of with a header. It wasn’t really that much behind him; it was a good height for him to angle his head properly. It should have at least hit the target. But I have this saying: when a player delivers a shocking header off target, they have a “50p head” because the angle at which the ball comes off just looks like they’ve got a hexagonal head. That was what happened to Havertz in that moment, but it happened to him all game, because he was utterly abysmal.

And almost to a man, the Arsenal players out there last night were utterly abysmal. You’d like to give the kids a break; they probably should, but Salmon was clearly hooked at halftime because it was his mistake that gave Fleetwood their only real chance. On the flanks, I thought O’Neill looked lively but ineffective, which is going to happen if you’re a kid in a disjointed team that hasn’t played together. That Arsenal team certainly looked like that. Aside from many of the half-chances we never took, sometimes the passing was wayward too, and don’t get me started on the walking-pace football. It drives me nuts. If you’re one-goal down, you should never be having four or five touches and walking the ball forward. You should have an urgency from minute one after you’ve conceded. Yet at the back, we did that thing where we just walk the ball forward. Against a team that has got their goal, who know they are going to defend all night, you can’t just let them settle into a back 10 – you’re not going to get through- and yet that’s exactly what we let them do. And that made it harder for us.

In the second half we were better thanks to the introduction of Odegaard and White, but the forward line and attacking players continued to misfire and look generally quite crap. Havertz had a number of chances, Gyokeres didn’t really do much, and then Max Dowman was finding it difficult too. And so to his sending off. This was a tough one to take, because in real time I thought, “he’s kicked out, he’s off,” and the referee duly obliged. But having seen the replay, I’m sorry, but that’s not a red. There was no ‘violence’ in the ‘violent conduct’ part of the sending off. In fact, there was more violence and intent to literally ‘make a mark’ on a player by the Fleetwood defender. And no amount of ‘he got the ball’ makes the aggression at which he went in on a 16-year-old acceptable. Arteta wouldn’t be drawn on what he said afterwards to Max, but as he walked past him and into the tunnel during the game, Arteta had a face of thunder. I suspect after he looks at the replays he’ll be a little more understanding. The defender was reckless and got away with sending another player off and not himself by the fact that he was lucky to get a it of the ball.

And that’s it, really, for our involvement in this wretched competition for another year. We suck at the League Cup. We have for literal decades. So this one will be easier to get over. But as I said right at the top of the blog, we just have to take what’s coming to us and look ahead to a really tough game at Anfield on Sunday.

Back tomorrow as we start to look at that one.

I’d said in the morning yesterday as I wrote the blog that I really hoped we’d score in the first half. Not only did that happen, but we even got an early goal, as Konsa’s bundled back-post finish saw us ahead within seven minutes. Lovely. It was a scrappy set piece, and just for those rival fans and pundits who cry about us and set pieces, there you go – have some of that!

Mikel even made a joke about it afterwards, which I liked, quite a lot, actually.

On the goal itself, I think Pickford’s not going to be happy about his positioning and flapping there, because it did seem as though it was probably avoidable. Everton in the main, seemed quite organised in defence, I thought, but that one early moment set the tone, and we know that more often than not when we’re ahead, we usually go on to win the game. That’s how I felt even early on in that second half, and whilst Everton did create chances in both halves, I thought overall we looked comfortable.

Until you get that second, however, and until you get that goal that kills it, you’re always worried, so the sight of Big Gabi creeping in at the back post to nod home was grand. We’d had a scare about ten minutes earlier when he went down (Arteta also referenced that post-game), but thankfully it wasn’t as serious as it first looked, and he secured all three points.

I think that was a big win given the context of the lunchtime game, where Villa did their job and beat City, so we had to do ours to keep pace by taking all three points. We’ve done that now; we sit level with them after eight games, and we’ve got a bit of daylight separating City and us from the rest of the Premier League. If Liverpool beat Brighton at home this afternoon, it’ll be five points between the rest of the league and us after Chelsea shit the bed at home to The Scum. As an aside – remember when we were told that no European football would have Chelsea as one of the title favourites? Three defeats and a draw after eight games is not what you’d call title-winning form. The winners of the Premier League in each of the last five seasons have lost five games (us), four games, three games, five games and three games. If Chelsea are to mount this title challenge, they’re going to have to do it pretty flawlessly from here it seems.

That’s why games like yesterday are important for us, because you can’t afford to slip up against opponents like Everton on your own patch. Given how the results have gone for City in this early part of the season, it feels like even draws at home aren’t good enough, so seeing us do what we did yesterday with a relatively easy and professional approach was really positive.

We also managed to rotate a few players in as well – Merino, MLS at left back, Rice in at the six, Gyokeres up top – it was really good to see Arteta use the full extent of his squad. I thought Big Vik did ok up top. Held the ball up at times, looked lively, didn’t score and I don’t even think he had a shot, but he didn’t look lost to me. In midfield, Merino was solid enough, whilst Myles showed us just how versatile he is by slotting into that hybrid inverted left back role that got him into the team in the first place a few years back. This was a great day for the Arsenal squad. I’d have liked to have seen more minutes for Zubimendi, but as Kevin (my cmopanion for the afternoon) mentioned to me yesterday, we don’t know what he was carrying, so I guess it makes sense that he’s being eased in. With Fleetwood to come in midweek, he can get a solid 60 under his belt, then let’s see how ready he is for a starting berth from next weekend, when another big game comes around as we travel to Liverpool.

There doesn’t really feel like there’s that much more to say on this one, because everything went off without a hitch. The players proved that despite the big loss of a talisman like Saka they can step up and deliver wins, and we saw pretty much every one of them put in an impressive performance that has the pundits once again talking us up as potential champions. That’s brilliant to see.

We’ll be discussing it this morning on the Same Old Arsenal podcast in a bit, so if you fancy joining us live – or even afterwards on YouTube – you can do so here.

I’ll be back tomorrow with more thoughts – see you then.

We’re a good team. We’re the champions. We have managed to rotate a few players from midweek, and hopefully that means we’re a little fresher. Arteta has had Thursday, Friday, and yesterday to get the boys in training, get them drilled on how the game plays out, so there can be no excuses from The Arsenal today. After City got their expected win at home to Ipswich, we have to respond.

It’ll be tough, though. It always is away at Forest. I went to the FA Cup game a few years back when Djed Spence had a blinder, and we had Nuno Tavares hooked after just half an hour as we were dumped out at the third round stage. It was a long journey home in the car with my mate Dave Seager that day, and we haven’t exactly had easy ones coming home since then either. Even the one win we did get a few years back was a tight 2-1; for some reason Forest always seem to make it really difficult on our own patch. Certainly compared to when I’ve seen other teams go there.

So I’d love us to start fast today. It’s felt like first halves have been a bit stodgy this season, which has been frustrating, but a fluid and high-tempo-driven first half would be super today. Let’s pop the ball around like champions. Let’s show the world watching on the main event Sunday kick-off time that we are in this fight with City for the long haul. Let’s respond with our own answer to the victory from Cheaters FC by going away to a tough place and returning home with three points tucked under our wing.

In terms of the team I think Arteta will go with, I think we’ll see:

Raya

White – Konsa – Gabriel – Calafiori

Bruno

Odegaard – Rice

Saha – Havertz – Madueke

It’s not what I’d go with, but I just think Arteta will want the pace and trickery of Madueke over Eze. The one thing that could see Eze start instead would be the second half against Lille. He was great in that second half, got a goal, should/could have had another one, and when Saka and Havertz came on, it felt like it clicked more there. So Arteta could take the view that with those two players on from the start, there might be better relationships with Eze and we might be able to bring the best out of him. I’d certainly go for that instead of Madueke, but I think Arteta has been talking up Noni quite a lot in the last week, so I have a feeling he might start on the left.

In terms of the rest of the team, I think sharing the minutes between White and Timber makes sense, whilst Bruno has started to establish himself as ‘the guy’ in midfield, so as good as Myles has been, I think this is the sort of match in which Bruno should hopefully thrive. Forest will sit in a mid-block and having that verticality of passing would be very handy, so I’d have Bruno rather than the ball-carrying skills of Lewis-Skelly.

Forest have a question mark over Morgan Gibbs-White, which would be a touch for us if he doesn’t make the team, but I think there were rumours that he was doing a training session yesterday, so I suspect he will play today. He’s their best player, one from whom a lot of their good work flows through, so if he’s fit, he plays. And that will be a threat for us. He’s got a goal and two assists this season off an xG of 1.67 (only Dan Ndoye has more) and an xA of 1.87. He’s the one that a lot of their creative play flows through, so if we keep him quiet, you’d hope that we might be able to get the points today.

We need to see more from our attackers though. Saka and Havertz came on and looked great against Lille I thought, so I want a repeat of that this afternoon. I also want Odegaard central to our attacking play too, because if he’s visible, if we’re finding him, then we’re on top and stand a better chance of winning the game. Let’s hope he continues the good form he had when he kicked off this season, because it feels like he’s been a little quieter in the last couple of games. But today could be a good opportunity to stamp his mark and I’m hoping we see an Odegaard masterclass today.

We’ll be going live after the game today with the Same Old Arsenal podcast, so if you fancy an immediate post-match debrief, check it out here.

Otherwise, I’ll be back on here tomorrow to look over the key parts of the games with you. Have a good one. Up the Arsenal.

It’s funny because at times in the season like this, there’s still not tons of data to try to interpret how your opponent plays under a new manager, plus I haven’t watched a single minute (live – I’ve watched some incidents on replay) of their football this season. We know that Glasner is a good manager, that games against Palace were always tough and that he’s delivered Palace two trophies in two seasons, but can that form be translated to a strange club in Forest, with a mental owner who once held Morgan Gibbs-White hostage live on TV with a contract announcement video?

Their results paint an interesting mixed bag. Back-to-back defeats to kick off the season against Leeds in the league and then the League Cup, a perfectly respectable 2-2 draw away at Anfield, followed by a 0-0 in which they had what looks like a perfectly good goal against the Scum. They won 2-1 away at Villa, which is impressive, but then lost 1-0 at home to Coventry, before going ahead against Palace before ultimately losing 3-1. So it’s a very mixed bag start to the season for them, reflected by the fact they’re currently 15th in the table on five points.

I remember the game last season. Tough, difficult to break down, then reliant on the most blatant handball not given to us after Alaina flicked the ball with his hand. He even joked about it on social media afterwards. I don’t recall a PGMOL apology either, although that’s hardly surprising. But Forest have remained a really tough nut for us to crack since they returned to the Premier League, so I expect Sunday to be the same. In fact, if you look in all competitions under Arteta, our record away from home reads:

• 0-0 in 2026/27
• 0-0 in 2024/25
• 2-1 win in 2023/24
• 1-0 defeat in 2022/23
• 1-0 defeat in 2021/22 (FA Cup)

That’s hardly sparkling, is it? And some of the performances have been pretty dire too. That 23/24 win was super scrappy, and we didn’t get our first goal until 65 minutes through a Gabriel Jesus goal, before Bukayo made it two.

So I think we should expect more of the same. Oliver Glasner prefers a 3-4-2-1, and it sounds like he plays a mid-block, which we’ve struggled with at times, as Aston Villa away showed this season. They’ll play with wing-backs who will look to exploit the spaces vacated as we press forward, and hit us with fast back-to-front transitions, relying on the likes of Munoz and Williams to venture forward and support Ndoye and Gibbs-White as the wide forwards. Liam Delap will do his usual kicking everyone.

Forest also have a pretty decent defensive record, given their position in the admittedly very early league table. They’ve only conceded eight goals so far, and when you look at all of the teams in the bottom half of the Premier League, that’s by far the best. You have to goal all the way up to Liverpool in ninth to see a team that has conceded less. But they’ve also only scored five, the same as Coventry, and hilariously, the Scum – who are bottom of the league for goals scored on three.

There are signs that they create chances though; they have the seventh-highest xG so far this season, they have created the third-highest number of shots, they’ve hit the post the joint-highest along with Man United, plus they’ve had the second-highest number of headed shots (and second in the league for successful crosses this season). So a picture is already starting to be painted of what we might see on Sunday:

• Defensive solidity and compactness at times into a mid-block
• Balls into the box (which is where you tend to get headed shots from)
• Chances created, albeit not at the greatest conversion rate (go watch them score two goals from two chances now I’ve said that!)
• A team that will play mostly without the ball (15th in total number of passes this season) and play forward every time they do.

Arteta will have this data, his Arsenal coaching staff and data analysts will have this data, so today and tomorrow needs to be spent formulating the plan to counter that threat, and maximise ours.

The next question will be who will play, which after the game against midweek is easier to pick in some positions than others. The Havertz/Gyokeres is easy, but others remain up in the air:

• Bruno or Myles at the base of the midfield?
• Eze or Madueke on the left?
• Timber or White at right back?

Those are the questions Arteta will need to ponder and, depending on the fitness of Timber, for example, you’d wonder if he can start to look at the opponent and the best player who can slot in based on their weaknesses. If, for example, you think that Timber works better because his channel running is inside of Saka and in between Forest left centre-back and central-centre-back, then go for it. But if you want to create space by overlapping your right back, then you go for Ben White. It’s a question that I’m not sure what the right answer is to, but that’s why they don’t pay me the big bucks.

I do think the combative nature of Bruno should be considered, which would be harsh on Myles given how well he’s started this season, but we’ve got options and a big enough squad, as well as plenty of games, so I think he’ll be alright.

We still have another 24 hours before the managers deliver their team news, so there’ll be plenty to unpick there, but for now I’ll leave you be and be back tomorrow with a look at what their fans are thinking ahead of this one, as well as what the pundits are saying.

Laters.

And it’s Leeds United for The Arsenal for the early kick-off today, which means I’ll be dumping these thoughts on here, going for a quick run, then making my way straight to Highbury for a pre-match warm-up with my mate Steve.

These early ones are funny, I find, because they’re usually a little stodgy, particularly if we’ve played in midweek. We may not have done, but the players did for their international teams, so whether we see a free-flowing Arsenal or not remains to be seen. That is also the case with the team selection too, as we have lost a few players due to this patchy international break, but the good news is that we do have some returnees. Ben White, for example, is back and able to start, and you’d expect him to given we’re easing Timber back into first-team football. I also wonder if they might save Konsa and give Mosquera a go at centre-half today too, with the Champions League kicking back off next week. In midfield, Arteta confirmed that Declan is back and that managing his load by not playing for England was the right call. But up top, we know Kai and Tzolis will be missing, so I suspect it’ll be Eze and Big Vik that come in.

So for me, for today, I have a feeling Mikel might go:

Raya

White – Mosquera – Gabriel – Calafiori

Bruno

Odegaard – Rice

Saka – Gyokeres – Eze

There are, as we know, plenty of bench options which do include Madueke and Dowman, plus the return of Hincapie, so we will be stocked. But today needs to be a physically imposing Arsenal side who will come up against a physically imposing Leeds United side. They’re missing Rodon and Daniel James, but the rest of the team are available, I think. And they come into this one in fifth place, with two wins and three draws, so they will certainly be feeling in fine form and able to cause an upset at the Emirates. IN their five games, they’ve scored seven and conceded just three (better than us thanks to that Brighton result we suffered last time out). They gave Newcastle an absolute battering a couple of games back, but drew with Palace at Elland Road last time.

This stage of the season is always a tough one when you try to look at the numbers and assess what sort of opposition you’re up against, but three of their seven goals have come from set pieces, so I think we’re going to need to defend better than we did for Brighton’s third goal a couple of weeks back. Leeds have a strong team, a tall team, and my mate Adam, who I used to work with (a Leeds fan) said to me when we were talking at the start of the season that “we’re a bunch of big bastards”. And at the spearhead of that team will be Calvert-Lewin, who is going to throw his arms and legs and elbows around today for sure. We need to be ready for him.

Leeds will probably accept that we’re going to have most of the ball today. They’re 15th in the League on average possession per game, and third from the bottom in terms of the total number of passes they’ve made so far. They’re also bottom for final third passes, through balls, and fourth from bottom on crossing too. But they’re fifth in terms of getting the ball forward with their pass direction; this is a Leeds side that is going to be direct as soon as they get the ball.

And without the ball, they will press us, intensively. They sit second behind the Scum in terms of pressing sequences and are fifth from the bottom in the number of times they put together 10+ passes. Again, this is building a picture to me of how this game is going to shape up. They will be strong, physical, look to catch us out with longer, direct balls, and they will be dangerous on the set pieces. That’s the sort of game I would normally love, until two weeks ago, when our defending was all over the place against Brighton. But I don’t think Leeds will press us as high as Brighton, and I don’t think they will look to catch us out in the same way, so my hope is that we control the game and do our business in the top end of the pitch. That means that we need to see more from Eze and Gyokeres. We need to have them performing like they did at the beginning of last season and I believe it was the Forest game in which both combined for one of his goals. That’s what we need today. We all know Saka will do Saka things with Odegaard and White on the right, but we need to see Rice, Eze and Gyokeres do some bits on the left. We need more unpredictability.

Perhaps that also comes through Calafiori occupying those unsual positions, because this feels like the sort of game where an organised Leeds defence will make it difficult to create chances, and so having a bit of an x-factorplayer comes in handy. Of course we also have the likes of Merino available too, although I suspect he’ll be a bench option rather than a starter today.

You can’t take anything for granted in the Premier League. Everyone can beat everyone (almost). So we cannot count our chickens. But if you want to fight for the title, you have to win home games like this, so I am hoping that we see an Arsenal side a little wounded from the Brighton defeat, and therefore ready to come out and prove a point against a decent Leeds side today.

Right, I’m off, time to get myself to the ground. See you tomorrow.

I think the question that I, and I am sure you are, is a little more concerned with is our attacking end of the pitch. On Saturday it felt very paltry indeed; we may have created better chances than Brighton from an xG perspective, but if anything, that makes me feel more worried, because not taking them is an issue if you’re going to win the Premier League again. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to have to go through another season like last season, because that was torture. I think we rewrote the definition of ‘laboured’ with our end of the season until we got over the line. After four games, looking impressive, having everyone hand Arsenal flowers and telling us that we’d walk the league, I started to believe it myself deep down. And that is dangerous, as this weekend proved, because this league has quality all over it.

Even Sunderland proved that yesterday. I didn’t watch that game, but that result was mental, and looking at the stats, Sunderland were absolutely value for at least a draw. But ProRef be ProReffing, and if we don’t see another apology from them this week following what was the clearest and most obvious handball by Elliot Anderson at 3-2 to City, I’ll be very surprised. So that’s two massive calls that have gone City’s way in the space of just over a week in the Premier League. Funny that, eh? People talking about how Arsenal get all the decisions need to sit back down, because City should be nowhere near the perfect record they’ve amassed so far this season.

It is frustrating, but looking at City’s results and the way they play, I guess we can take some comfort in that. They were hardly convincing at home to Bournemouth in match week one. They certainly were against a Palace team under a new guy who is finding their feet. At home to Coventry, they scraped past a newly promoted side. They shafted Man United with a goal that should never have been, then they had their share of – shall we say – ‘fortune’ in the game yesterday. They have a 100% record; there might be people talking them up as the real deal, and they might well be, but this is what happened with Liverpool last season after five games, so I’m hoping for a similar story.

Our story needs to kick in, though, and we need to show ourselves as the imperious engine that grinds teams down, because when you think about it, we haven’t been super sparkling. We got criticism on match week two for not putting Villa to the sword. That felt a little harsh to me, because Villa are a good side; it was under the lights, and whilst their team hadn’t got any new signings in to gel, they’re still a side in the Champions League and will come good eventually. Then we beat Chelsea at home with a superb and free-flowing performance that we deserved to win. After that, last weekend, we came up against a physical Sunderland side on their own patch, and we managed to get that over the line. There have been a few ‘grind’ games already, and this weekend we just came up against a situation in which Brighton were essentially having their cup final; they had a celebratory day, they got their tactics spot on, we were the exact opposite of doing what we do best, and it all formed a perfect storm in which we got caught. I talked about this on the Same Old Arsenal podcast yesterday with Amanda, but sometimes you just find yourselves in a situation that is unfortunate for that particular moment. Against Villa, we were up against a team who had mass turnover of playing staff, hadn’t managed to bed in their team, and we probably got the benefit of playing what is going to be a tough away day trip, early in the season. Play Villa in a couple of months, and it’ll probably be different. It’s probably the same for Brighton. They won’t have this ‘special celebration day’ in a couple of months; they’ll be deep into multiple competitions, and so rotation will need to be a factor. They may have dropped a few points, and so their form isn’t what it is right now. Man City go to Brighton on 23rd January – I GUARANTEE that Brighton won’t have the same level of intensity by then, because they’ll have played waaaaay more games than they usually do in a season, because of their European participation.

I’m not trying to excuse Arsenal, I’m not lamenting our luck, or take anything away from what was an excellent Brighton performance; I’m just saying I can’t see them playing like that all season and if they do, then they will be title challengers too. Ask Brighton fans if they believe they’ll play like that every game. I don’t think you’ll get many who will say ‘yes’.

As for us, I’ve seen a few people online suggest that our lack of pace up top is a worry. Perhaps. But we had pace in Martinelli last season, and when he played, we hardly saw a guy who was rapido and getting in behind defences, did we? That’s because most teams don’t play like Brighton. I agree, having Martinelli yesterday might have been a better out-ball than Tzolis, but I think that kind of game happens maybe two or three times a season. Most of the time we’re facing compact sides who won’t press so high. I can tell you this for free: Leeds won’t press us as Brighton did on Saturday in our next game.

So whilst I get it, and I do think we do lack a little bit of pace, I don’t think it is going to make too much of a material difference too many times this season. The difference will be the defence not having brain farts, the tactics perhaps being tweaked for an opponent like Brighton (which I don’t think Arteta did on Saturday), and the key cogs in our machine dictating play, like Odegaard, Havertz, and Saka.

That – the attack and how we make the most of what we have (including what to make of our rotation options) is probably a blog in its own right, so I might keep my powder dry on that one for now, then write something over this extended international slog we now have to endure. So I’ll park any further thoughts until tomorrow, then be back tomorrow with some more musings for you. Catch you then.

Arsenal put in the kind of display yesterday that makes me think that they all went out on the lash on Friday night. Passing was off, movement wasn’t great, intensity wasn’t there and for a team who have become masters of figuring things out and having an answer to an opponent, Arsenal just had no idea how to deal with Brighton’s press and intensity. It was absolutely abject, and Arteta will be giving them all a reality check at Sobha Realty tomorrow when they all do a debrief. I know they’re all going away with their international teams now, but that kind of game, like it unfolded yesterday, kind of makes me think that Mikel might call up the managers of the respective international sides and say “listen, I’ll send them across to you, but you’re going to need to give me an extra 24 hours, because I’ve got some things to say and some hard truths to lay down before the report for duty”.

Arteta said afterwards that he knew from the first throw-in that this was going to be one of those games, and if that really is the case, then he might have to take a portion of the blame for yesterday’s car crash too, I’m afraid. Because it was clear what Brighton were going to do: high press, commit bodies forward, push everyone on to us, and stop us from playing out from the back. After 10 minutes you could see that, so from that moment on we should have just gone long. Irritatingly, if it was like five-a-side and you can have rolling subs, the move should have been to have Raya distribute long, get Merino on the pitch and win headers, and probably also Zubimendi on for Bruno, who had an appalling first start in an Arsenal shirt in the Premier League. In the first half alone, he was guilty of some real howlers, but it wasn’t just him alone, because the whole team had been infected with some kind of passing JuJu; Raya in the first 15 minutes couldn’t find a man, it seemed, and given that just a week ago we had the world lauding him as the best ‘keeper on the planet, this was the kind of display that would bring anyone back down to earth.

From goalkeeper to striker, we were just crap. In fact, let’s go through them all:

1. Raya – talked about his distribution; it was pants, but he probably also should have saved at least one of those long-range shots. If you’re going to call yourself the best in the world, you’re probably pulling off saves for one of those.
2. Timber – again, lost focus once or twice, and there were a couple of big switches where I just couldn’t see him in the picture frame when the left winger picked up the ball.
3. Konsa – no massive howlers that I can remember, but was part of a disorganised defence, and that is uncharacteristic of this Arsenal team.
4. Gabriel – poor at closing down shot efforts and didn’t look like himself at all
5. Calafiori – same as Big Gabi on that closing down, and we never really got to see his marauding in attack. Defensively, he looked wobbly too.
6. Bruno – Don’t know what happened to him yesterday, but some of his passing was the worst in the whole team
7. Saka/Tzolis  – one half chance but Saka was pretty anonymous. I’ve lumped both wide forwards together here, because it felt like they both had similar performances. On a day when them being an out-ball from deep and space being there to have a run, neither did nearly enough to be an option
8. Odegaard – this was a return to those Odegaard games in which, for some reason, he drops into the back four to collect the ball and becomes busy but ineffective for the whole game.
9. Havertz – no change all day, missed a sitter later in the game, and it’s the kind of performance that I worried we’d get when we signed him. Thankfully, my worries have – for the most part – not come true. But that felt like a Chelsea Havertz performance.
10. Rice – bit like Odegaard – busy but crap.

My hope now is that this game is a wake-up call. Arteta talked about that afterwards. Everyone has spent the first part of this season talking about how great we are, how we’re going to win the Premier League at a canter, how there is nobody that can touch us. Well, by the time this day is done, we’ll have Man City sitting top on five wins out of five (they’ll beat a Sunderland side who had all the emotion from their first European game at home on Thursday night), and maybe the talk can all turn to them. My hope is that this shakes this Arsenal team to the core and that we don’t see another half-hearted performance like we did yesterday. And yes, it was half-hearted, because you can’t blame fatigue. We rested so many of our players in midweek, so the majority of those boys out there got a solid week between games (Raya, Timber, Calafiori, Rice, Saka, Havertz), so there can’t be any excuses on tiredness. Brighton were better; they were supercharged, they came with their A-game, and they delivered a sobering schooling. And those Arsenal players, as well as us fans, need to take our licks today.

We’ll of course, all stew on this for a bit, but part of me thinks that this horrendous international break might now be good. By the time we play Leeds 27 days from now, it’ll almost feel like the season has started up again. That’s absolutely fine by me. Let’s all go away, reset, then come back fresh and excited for a new reboot of this season.

But we can’t see another game like that again at all. Not if we want to be fighting for this title again.

Back tomorrow with some more thoughts. Going to do a Same Old Arsenal pod with Amanda in a bit so join us here if you’re around. Think we’re going live at 9.45am UK time.

I was doing other things last night, so I only checked in and out on the game, but seeing them drop a 3-0 away to Brentford was hilarious. This was a side that their fans were telling us would rival us for the Premier League because of the lack of midweek football and the amazing squad and attack they have. Yet here we are on match week five, and they’ve lost two, drawn one, and have conceded so many goals that even Shkodran Mustafi would have felt he stood a chance of getting in the team at this rate.

Brentford are a tough nut to crack away from home, I will grant them that, but it’s still funny to see their fans getting angry. If you’ve spent any time on this blog over the years, you’ll know that I find that odious club utterly reprehensible, and an opportunity to be happy at any downfall they have is an absolute pleasure.

But it’s only a ‘half-pleasure’ right now, because we have to do our jobs later for the 3pm kick-off, and Mikel Arteta gave us an update yesterday, which certainly made me feel a little more comfortable about us going into this one at 3pm.

Firstly, the team news, which sounds pretty positive. Ben White was described by the boss as “all good”. He also said he’s “very positive about everybody” and whilst Ben might feel a little hard done by in terms of a lack of England recall for the upcoming barren wasteland that is the next international break, I do like that we have both him and Timber back for this one. It means Arteta can decide to give Jurrien 60 minutes and let Ben finish the game, or flip it the other way around, as they stage-manage Timber’s fitness following his lengthy absence.

Likewise, we have positives on Mosquera and Hincapie, who are all confirmed to be part of yesterday’s training session, which is great to hear. It will even be a difficult match selection to make for the manager, because he can only name a 20-man squad, and I make it so that we have the following players fit:

1. Raya
2. Kepa
3. Mosquera
4. White
5. Hincapie
6. Gabriel
7. Konsa
8. Timber
9. Calafiori
10. Odegaard
11. Eze
12. Merino
13. Zubimendi
14. Bruno
15. RiceLewis-Skelly
16. Dowman
17. Saka
18. Gyokeres
19. Tzolis
20. Madueke
21. Havertz

I haven’t mentioned Salmon there, but you’d assume he’s not going to make the matchday squad. If I’m looking at that list, I’m probably saying Max gets a sit-down having played in midweek, but given his output against Ipswich, it might be tempting for Arteta. If that happens, he’s going to find himself in an uncomfortable chat with a senior pro. I guess that’s the nature of the beast when you have a squad that is aiming to fight for the top honours this season.

So, with that level of competition available today, who should he play for this one?

For me, if he’s fit, I’d certainly get Timber in there. We need our most robust defensive side today, because Brighton play a high press and have created chances all season. We’re only four games in; their stats are skewed a bit by the pulverising they gave Coventry last week, but Brighton have created significantly the most xG this season on 10.18, scoring 13 goals and leading the league so far. Again, some of that is predicated on the fact that they got three of their five goals against a Coventry side that had gone down to 10 men and were already two down by the time Awoniyi was sent off, but they have still shown they can bag goals against Chelsea (three) and Villa (four). SO this Arsenal team will be tested by a VERY confident Brighton side on their own turf. Brighton will be aggressive; they will look to win the ball high up the pitch, they will try to suffocate and strangle us in our own half, so for us those out-balls from defence are vital. We need passes out from the back, and so whilst I am a little bit minded to wonder whether Hincapie is the better option to start for his defensive prowess, it’s the range that Calafiori has that makes me think he will edge it for a starting place.

In midfield, I think we’ll see a change from Sunderland. I think Bruno will come in for Myles, and we’ll see Rice and Odegaard back. Then up top, I think it’ll be the same front three again as was featured in our last Premier League outing, which sets the team up like this:

Raya

Timber – Konsa – Gabriel – Calafiori

Bruno

Odegaard – Rice

Saka – Havertz – Tzolis

And it’s in those left and right wide forward positions that I’m looking at our two attackers and saying, “this is where you lads need to be the game changers today”. Brighton will push their fullbacks high; they will leave men in our half, because Huerzeler has his way of playing, and he will want to impose the Brighton approach to this game. They’ll probably have more possession than us. I suspect they will most likely score, even though some of our defensive stats and xG that we give away is crazy-good right now. But Brighton take a lot of shots, they score a lot of goals, they press high up the pitch, and they dominate the ball (they are averaging 70.9% possession this season already). As I said yesterday, I think this will easily be our toughest game of the season. Getting three points today would be massive.

One final stat that I thought was interesting, as I looked at the numbers for any weaknesses, and it is that Brighton are 15th in the Premier League for xG conceded. This Brighton team will give us chances, given all of their good play and attacking prowess so far this season. And the ‘xG per shot’ stat – which basically tells you the quality of shots they give up – is the worst in the Premier League. So when they do give you chances, it’s probably in the box and with the most likely chance of being a goal so far this season, albeit admittedly with a small sample size. But even though there are only four games to use as data points, some patterns of style of play are already evident, and we know what type of opponent we’re going to be up against, despite their injuries to key players. The one that has impressed me the most is Yalcouye; he looked good in the Chelsea game and bagged a goal in the Coventry win. He’s slotted in really well, and I think he might be a danger man to watch this afternoon.

Arsenal have the tools to win this; we have the form we’ve been showing to hurt Brighton, but football has so many variables that this one is really tough to call. I just hope what somebody said on the blog in the comments yesterday is going to ring true today: They occasionally do throw one in their own net. That would be useful on the South Coast.

Catch you all tomorrow for a debrief. Have a good one, peeps.

But our performances in the Premier League so far, coupled with the fact that we’re already Champions and so the stress and pressure has subsided somewhat, means that I kind of don’t feel the same about this game as I probably would have done last season. There’s also probably an element of it being still so early in the season that the usual Premier League worries aren’t there.

So tonight’s game away to Ipswich at Portman Road feels like a strange one, because I still have my usual EFL vibes, but I’m also looking at Brighton and getting excited to see whether we can make it five out of five to kick our season off.

As for the team, well, I suspect there absolutely has to be rotation tonight, and I’d be stunned if Arteta didn’t ring the changes. It’s not a 100% certainty though; there have been times in the FA Cup earlier rounds, or this competition, that Arteta has gone stronger on his XI than we’d have liked. But the days in which you see a bunch of kids out there just don’t exist anymore. Let’s look at an alternate XI that Arteta could put out tonight, whose minutes have been limited:

Kepa

Salmon – Mosquera (if fit) – Gabriel – Hincapié

Zubimendi

Merino – Eze

Dowman – Gyokeres – Madueke

And if he goes for that, I’d be more than happy. In fact, I’d be even happier if Big Gabi wasn’t in contention in this team, but I suspect you’d have to move Hincapie into the centre and then find a left back from the youth team. I suspect Arteta doesn’t do that if Salmon plays, which means we’ll more than likely see at least one of our main starters get on the pitch.

Of course, that side still doesn’t include Bruno, so he could put Zubi in at right back, Salmon in central defence with Gabriel, then have Bruno occupy the deep-lying positions. It’s not ideal; Zubi probably won’t thank Arteta for it, but given some of the potential injuries to the team in the shape of Mosquera, it probably needs to be done.

We do need Mosquera back for these kinds of games, though. With Konsa’s form being such that he is going to find game time perhaps a wee bit limited, these are the kinds of games he needs to get to ensure he has minutes in the tank. My hope is that the injury he sustained against Villa was just a tweak, and the club felt a week or two’s rest would be enough. As of yesterday, it’s two weeks, and we haven’t had a press conference from Arteta on tonight’s game, so we’re not sure on team news, but he didn’t seem that fussed about it after the Villa game, so I have hopes that we’ll see him tonight. And if that happens, it means the above line-up becomes feasible, plus you can keep Bruno in reserve for the visit to Brighton on Saturday afternoon.

As for Ipswich, well, it’s tough to really do any kind of analysis on them, in the same way that it’s tough for them to do any analysis on us, because the Arsenal team tonight is going to be so different. I suspect the same can be said for Ipswich tonight, although we don’t fully know if Gary O’Neill will view this as a distraction his team doesn’t need. He’ll never say that, of course, but it wouldn’t surprise me to learn before kick-off that he’s either rotated his team fully, or he’s gone full strength to see if he can lay down a bit of a marker. Against Leicester in the last round he rotated, but Leicester are in a spot of bother and a league lower than Ipswich now, so that was hardly surprising. We’re a different kettle of fish entirely. He’s a sensible bloke; they have Everton away on Saturday, and I don’t think their squad is that deep that they can fully handle a midweek-weekend fixture congestion, even if the season is still young and the players are relatively fresh. On the other hand, Ipswich picked up that win against Sunderland on the first match week; they beat Palace away at the weekend, so they’ve already picked up six points and are doing pretty well at this early stage of the season, so perhaps he’ll feel like having a go at The Arsenal on their own turf is something worth doing.

See what I mean? I am even flip-flopping myself on the line-ups and the approach from them; it’s really hard to properly work out what sort of game we’re going to get. We do know that O’Neill is a pretty decent boss; he likes to be compact and organised out of possession, whilst pushing his wide forwards up to press when we have the ball at the back. The hope is that our ability to play out of the press can get us out of trouble if that happens tonight, and also catch Ipswich out if they press bodies forward, but without the distribution of Raya at the back, it might not feel as simple as it would if we had him in between the sticks.

If we progress this evening, I don’t think we’ll find out our opponents until tomorrow evening, but the job needs to be done, and Arteta needs to make sure that those players who do play demonstrate to him that they are ready to step up if called upon through injury and suspension. So hopefully we get a good performance from those squad players this evening.

Back tomorrow with a match review.

It was a cautionary tale of the ‘always on’ mentality needed in the Premier League.

Sunderland were superb at home last season. It is the reason they are playing in Europe in midweek next week. They drew with us, Villa, United and City, and they beat The Scum (although that was less of a ‘feat’ last season), and they showed that with the right coaching, shape and structure, a newly promoted team can easily avoid relegation if they have the right signings in place as well. Granit Xhaka was a key one in that respect, and tonight we’ll face up against him for the second time, having missed him at the Emirates last season. He is a fighter; we all know that, and the vision of him standing over Merino and having a go at him still sticks in my mind. He will be all smiles and hugs before the game, but the second that he crosses that white line, he will view us as the enemy, and those Arsenal players will need to treat him as such as well.

I don’t think it will be that hard, though; there aren’t actually many players left from the last time Xhaka played for The Arsenal. That day was a 5-0 win in which he got two goals, but the squad that day only now has White, Ødegaard and Saka in it; such has been the renewal of Arteta’s Arsenal since the Swiss left. There will still be smiles and a happy reunion with the manager, and I enjoyed his interview with the Premier League ahead of this one. His is a story with a great redemption arc, and as fans we love to see that kind of stuff.

So then, to the football, and what sort of game we’re going to get from Sunderland today. With only three Premier League data points to draw upon, and all against what you would call ‘mid-table’ opposition or worse, it is difficult to say with any certainty how Regis Le Bris will line his side up. I saw an interesting stat today from Opta that since the start of last season, Sunderland have played the most forward passes in the whole league. They are a direct side, who want to go forward quickly, and the ‘zones of control’ on this page show that they are more left-sided dominant than anywhere else. On that side they have Nelson Angulo, but they also have the new guy Fofana, who was rumoured to be with us on deadline day, so I wonder if those two might share minutes today, as Le Bris tries to keep his side fresh for Alkmaar in midweek next week.

Opta has them lining up in a 4-2-3-1, and I think most of the pundits are suggesting that, but I suspect it will be a similar approach to last season. That means I think they’ll look to go a little longer, but in our defensive third, it’ll be Enzo Le Fee and Brobbey who will be looking to win those battles. Brobbey showed at the Emirates that he’s a big, strong, powerful guy, so perhaps aerial duels might be something that Gabriel and Konsa need to be mindful of.

In terms of the data, it’s tough because, as mentioned already, the sample size is small, but from what we have seen so far, Sunderland are down there in terms of goals scored (three), their xG is around mid-table (4.40), they’re about mid-table on the total number of shots and shots on target, possession, passing numbers, the lot. They sit towards the top of the league on through balls, which rings true with their forward passing metrics that I saw from Opta; if they’re getting on the ball in the middle third, they’re going to try to put Brobbey in.

Defensively, they are up there with us in terms of xG conceded, sort of, because we’re miles in front of anyone in terms of how miserly we are in front of goal. But they’ve shown that they have a decent shape about them so far, so we will need to be better in front of goal than we were against Napoli, I reckon. I suspect we won’t get as many clear-cut chances as we did in Naples on Wednesday.

So how do we beat them?

Well, for me, a lot of what is good about us so far is via Martin Odegaard, so he surely feels like the guy we need to get on the ball. It’s funny because when you look at our stats on Opta, we are dominant on both left and right sides of the pitch. I looked at that map on that page and assumed it would show us right-side bias, but we’ve been mixing it up with Tzolis in there, as last weekend against Chelsea, where our second goal came from, attests. If Sunderland are left-side biased, and we are right-side biased, it does feel like whoever wins that battle will be the eventual victors.

So in terms of team set-up, I suspect Arteta goes back to the side that succeeded against Chelsea:

Raya

White – Konsa – Gabriel – Calafiori

MLS

Odegaard – Rice

Saka – Havertz – Tzolis

Maybe he has a think about Bruno for Myles, which is certainly something I’d be thinking about, given how he’ll get a hostile reception, and it’s the type of game I suspect he thrives on. But I just have a feeling that Arteta puts his faith in Myles once more, with rotation happening in the second half. That team has shown it can get goals, and with the slightly rotated side in midweek not exactly putting a decent-but-not-great Napoli side to the sword, I think Arteta reverts to what I think we’d all call the ‘first XI’ based on form and availability right now.

I often find myself saying “start early” in these preview blogs, but I don’t think we have to today. We can feel our way into the game. If we can limit Sunderland’s opportunities in attack, it’ll keep the home fans quiet, which will be absolutely fine by me, you and any Arsenal fan tuning in or in the stadium. But we need to be ready for direct football and a Sunderland side who will fancy a scalp under the lights.

Right, I’m off to go and see a bunch of old Spitfires perform at Duxford, so I’ll bid you all a fine farewell. Let’s hope Everton can make this a hilarious afternoon at The Scum Stadium, before we kick off in the North East. Ciao.

It’s a trip up to the Stadium of Light to play Sunderland, who last season, when we played them, were certainly in a rich vein of form, specifically on their own patch. I think we remember it all very well; long ball, not dealt with, Ballard slams it home to put them one up. We respond with a Saka goal and a superb Leo finish on 74 minutes, before they score with basically the last kick of the game. A real gut-punch because when you look at the numbers, we really did batter them that day.

But it is a new season, a new opportunity, and an Arsenal team with four wins out of four so far in all competitions will go into tomorrow night’s encounter full of confidence. Is that how the pundits will see it though?

Pretty much, although a few are predicting this to be a tight one, which I could totally see. Sunderland are a tough team at home; they have Xhaka back in that midfield and have a 1-1-1 record in the Premier League so far, with their home win at Fulham the only data point we have for whether their home form will once again make the Stadium of Light a bit of a fortress. But Chris Sutton on the BBC website reckons we’ll do them with a 1-0, as does Lewis Jones on Sky Sports. Sports Mole have been a little more bullish with a 3-1, but if I was to pick the more likely of the two results in Arsenal’s favour, I’d probably opt for that tight one-goal result.

That makes for nervy prep, because whilst we’ve looked imperious so far this season, as we saw with Brobbey’s goal in injury time last November, it only takes one slip-up for an opponent to capitalise in the Premier League. Last season, just before we kicked off against Sunderland we’d not conceded in our previous eight matches in all competitions. It was that period of the season where we were joking that it was annoying when teams even had a shot against us. We go into this game in a similar situation to back then; this time we have recently conceded – against Chelsea – but it’s the xG stats that we’re all looking at, as the Napoli game was another one in which we reduced our opponent to pot shots and speculative efforts from distance. Where that happens, you play the percentages and most of the time teams don’t open you up and don’t score worldies from 25 yards. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Sunderland certainly have players who have the ability to do that tomorrow night, so whilst I would be happy to take my chances and see them have 25-30 yard efforts, I don’t think that we should be too complacent about how we defend in our clusters and recover the ball.

Team news-wise, we’ll find out more from Arteta today, and I’m particularly interested in hearing about Jurrien Timber, because he’s a guy who we really miss, and Ben White can only play so many minutes, you fear. I hope that we get a good update today from the boss on that one.

In terms of how our opponents’ fans are feeling, it’s a mixed bag and clearly their fans are recognising the form we are in. There’s the usual comments about a stoppage time penalty to win it 1-0, one guy suggested they play six at the back against us, but what is nice to see is none of those weird comments from fans of whom we have no natural rivalry with, saying things like “I hate Arsenal more than any other team”. We all know when you’re the champions, when you’re the best team (or have been based on last season) that you’re there to be hated and shot at, but Newcastle, Villa, weirdly Forest fans, etc, have all said some pretty ‘out there’ things in the last year or so that I’ve been snooping on opponent fan forums.

In many ways it is a shame that they are playing their game against AZ ALkmaar on Wednesday next week; it would have been good to see how they fare after a big European night for them next week, then us having to play them, but as the guys oin Sports Mole suggested, Arteta’s rotation of some players, and the depth of the squad, should mean that we can still go into this game relatively fresh. Tzolis can come in for Eze, Kai for Havertz, Calafiori didn’t start in Naples, Saka came off for Noni so he’s hopefully ok, plus there’s one of Myles, Bruno or Zubi who could all play against the Mackems in the engine room of the team. So from a freshness perspective, I’m less worried about that.

We do need to make sure that the profligacy in Naples isn’t carried over in the North East tomorrow though. As I said on the Same Old Arsenal midweek pod we did last night, I do think we should be looking at giving Bruno his first start, given his background as ex-Newcastle captain. It feels like this is the kind of game he would love to be in the trenches for. But team line-ups and tactical thoughts on how this plays out need to be saved for tomorrow, I reckon, when we’ve heard both managers speak.

And so until then, I shall bid you all a fine Friday, and I will catch you all tomorrow ahead of the evening’s big kick off. Enjoy your Friday.

Laters kids.

Martin Odegaard, captain extrodinaire, leader, goalscorer, the metronome through which our creative play flows, showed everyone watching last night just what you get when he is fully fit, in form, and able to deliver in the final third of the pitch. 121 touches in total, drifting over to that right-hand side in between defence and midfield, picking up the ball and keeping us in control, he was once again a dominant force and deservedly the man-of-the-match in a hostile environment that could have been quite difficult for us on Champions League match week one.

He created the most chances, he had the most touches, he completed the most dribbles and his finish was the absolute pinnacle of pure. I remember being a kid and playing football in front of our house. We lived in a detached town house and to get to the front door you had to go up a flight of concrete steps. ON those steps as a metal railing and as the steps finished and then levelled out to a concrete front porch, there were two railings at either end of the porch that had bigger iron rails than the rest. My brother and I used to use those as the posts when we were playing football. I would deliberately try to hit those railings, in an effort to pretend to hit shots in off the post, because those goals felt the sweetest.

That’s what MO delivered last night. And I loved it.

His goal may have separated the two teams on paper, but in fact it was much more than that last night in Naples, because in truth Arsenal should have won by more than the one paltry goal we did win by. Merino had a point-blank header saved, Hincapie had a couple of chances, Saka should have scored, White had a chance, plus we had a barrage of efforts off target too. In total, Arsenal took 26 shots on goal, had eight on target, 58% possession and an xG (according to FOTMOB) of 4.05.

Four. Point. Zero. Five. That’s not comprehensive; that’s an absolute mauling. Towards the end of the game, Napoli fans were whistling, and The Management asked me why. My only explanation to her was that they wanted the referee to blow up early, because in truth, Napoli were the latest team to find themselves shut out by an Arsenal defence that once again conceded very little xG. In total, Kevin De Bruyne et al managed just 0.22; so they were reduced to pot shots and half-efforts, as Arsenal kept control and showed the reason why they’ve only conceded one goal so far this season.

If you’re going to be a little bit picky, you’d say that we probably shouldn’t have been so profligate in the sharp end of the pitch. If this was a night for Big Vik to show us why he needs to be in the consideration for a starting berth, he didn’t show it at all, I’m afraid. Just nine touches in the whole game, although FOTMOB has him creating four chances with those nine touches, so if you’re being kind, you’d say that he was certainly efficient. But when you consider that Havertz had 13 touches in his cameo, plus one big chance created, you can see why he’s probably getting the nod against Sunderland on Saturday evening.

Arteta may have rung the changes last night, but the same fluidity on the ball remained, and I have to say once again, much like Chelsea, there were times last night when we popped the ball around so fluidly, as if there wasn’t a care in the world for those Arsenal players. They just knew they were superior to their opponents, and those Napoli players knew it too.

And I love that Arteta felt happy to make those changes. Hincapie in, Merino in, Eze in and Gyokeres in. Alright, it didn’t result in the flurry of goals we probably deserved, but we still got minutes into legs that haven’t played too much, and for me that is important for the games ahead.

I’ve mentioned some of the stats already, but you can take your pick to see just how dominant we were. Five big chances created to Napoli’s zero, 559 accurate passes (at 92% completion) to Napoli’s 383 (and 86% completion), xG from open play was 3.81, and for those detractors last season who said Arteta couldn’t coach attractive football and all we relied on was set pieces: WHERE ARE YOU NOW?

We had 433 of the total 605 passes in the Napoli half; we were camped there. Napoli took just eight touches in our box. We had 51. 51! These are the sort of numbers that, if you took away the badges and just showed the result and stats, you’d probably argue it was a League Cup or FA Cup game against a lower opposition; such was the dominance.

Yes, there could be questions that are asked about the finishing from the team yesterday, and yes, that may well raise its head when the media does its analysis today. But I’m not minded to get too stressed about it, personally, because I feel like what this team is doing is very repeatable. A lot of the talk in the wake of the Chelsea game was that what Chelsea do is not sustainable, i.e., goalscoring and not keeping it tight at the back. But if you have a rock-solid defence, it absolutely is sustainable, because if we keep being so miserly with our chance creation for the opposition, it quickly grinds them down. Then we only need one moment of magic to win the game. Sure, we could do with upping it a bit in terms of our end product, but I feel like we’ve already shown we can do that with our opening games. So I’m in a really good place when it comes to this Arsenal team and how they are going about their work. Last night we were also able to rotate players so that we can have them ready and as fresh as possible for Sunderland on Saturday evening, as well as get minutes into players’ legs who haven’t played, as I’ve already mentioned. Ben White was even able to come off for Zubi, so hopefully that’s him with a little more juice in the tank left for the trip to Mackemmland.

But on the whole, this was a performance that had the control and dominance of a team that can call themselves champions. And I loved it. Looking to do a post-Napoli pod tonight if I can get some people on the show, so keep your eyes peeled on the Same Old Arsenal podcast here for more info.

Let’s get it straight – Chelsea have been a basket case, and last season they were a bit of a joke. How they got to any cup final is a minor miracle, but they have looked a rag-tag bunch of assorted footballers accumulated because Clearlake watched Moneyball too many times and thought it was easy.

This season may be in its infancy, but already they have shown what they are going to be all about: Blistering attack. They have a litany of creative players, and in Rogers, Palmer and Joao Pedro they have a rapid forward line who feel like they are set up for swift counterattacks when out of possession. Which you have to think is the way they’ll play today. Whether Alonso wants to play that kind of football long-term remains to be seen, but in many ways the first two games of the season have probably provided him with a decent enough blueprint for how to line up against us today, i.e. hit Arsenal in transition when the ball turns over and get the ball forward as quickly as possible. Emi Martinez basically went full-Jordan Pickford on his debut and went long time and time again, and it’s hard not to see him do that again today. Playing out from the back, with their defensive challenges, against an Arsenal team who wants to win the ball high up the pitch, would be suicide. So I think Chelsea are going long, and they’ll want to contest duels over the halfway line up against our defence.

That’s where I start to look at who might be the best pairing for Gabriel: Konsa or Mosquera?

Initially, I would have thought it would be Konsa, but having looked at his numbers from last season, he’s in the 59th percentile for aerial duels won, which isn’t exactly amazing. Where he excels is in ground duels, in which he’s one of the best in the Premier League, but in the air, less so, according to those numbers in the link. Gabriel, when I look at it, ranks at around the 20th best in the Premier League (which includes attackers too), so I wonder if we will almost certainly see the same approach to what Brighton faced last weekend.

So Chelsea will let us have the ball; they will want to hit rapid back-to-front counters; they will go long out from their ‘keeper. How do we win this game then?

It sounds a little redundant, but the first goal matters here more than usual, I think. If Chelsea score early, I do worry about our need to get back into it and leaving space in places we don’t want to leave space. Those pockets out wide when our fullbacks have pressed up higher in the pitch; think of the goal City scored early at the Emirates last season when Calafiori got drawn out. That’s what I worry about. And then, just like that day, Chelsea tucking in and trying to make it difficult for us by compacting into a lower block, leaving one or two rapid players up top so that we have something to worry about on the counter.

We have to be prepared for this. I think Arteta will certainly have been thinking long and hard about this, as well as those game state scenarios in which we are behind and how we respond.

Team news-wise, Alonso said he wasn’t sure about Caicedo, but I think he will be playing today. They have Leeds in midweek, then they play Hull – both at home – and if he can push Caicedo to get 60 – 70 minutes today, those are games he could probably leave him out to rest for. And if he plays, then it’s a player who can cover a lot of defensive ground, which enables their attackers to effectively be given a little less restriction on sitting deep in a defensive shape. That worries me. If Caicedo doesn’t play, I think I’m feeling a little more confident about this one, for sure.

For us, I do think Arteta starts Konsa, particularly given we’re expected to have the ball and he has a very good passing range. I also think that Bruno might start too, because of his cameo and forward passing range he’s already shown in coming on against Villa. He was impressive; he can sit in that six role, be up for that battle when Chelsea go long, but he’ll also look to set Arsenal players in behind against a Chelsea back line that has looked a little shaky at times already this season. However, as mentioned, game state has played a big part in this, and I don’t see Chelsea being as open against us as they were against Fulham and Brighton. In those two games, they were the big dog; they were the ones that were expected to go forward more; they were the team that would perhaps have switched off and left a bit more space because they know that they can hit those teams hard when the ball turns over. They don’t know that as much against us, so I wonder if they will actually be much tighter and more compact against an Arsenal side that they know is drilled to within an inch of its life about shape.

The rest of the team selection I think is faily self explanatory, so I’m opting for:

Raya

White – Konsa – Gabriel – Calafiori

Bruno

Odegaard – Rice

Saka – Havertz – Eze

Actually, maybe Eze needs a little more of an explanation. I think these kinds of games need some kind of end product magic to them, which Eze has, and if Chelsea do move into a deeper block without possession, he might find himself in pockets where his close control and long-range finishing might be useful for us. Havertz clearly starts against his old club, and has got a couple of goals against them, so let’s hope for some more.

At this early stage of the season, nothing is really terminal; it’s just about bragging rights and statements. Which is why I am thinking that actually I think this one might play out like the City game last season, and end with the points shared. Earlier in the week on the Same Old Arsenal pod, I predicted an Arsenal 2-1 win, but the more I’ve thought about this, the more I think that this kind of game feels ripe for one of those “Sky Sports builds up, ends up a cagey 1-1 draw”. So I’m changing my mind. I hope I’m wrong.

I’m there for my first game of the season today, so I’m hoping for a good one, and all three points. Back tomorrow for a post-match debrief. See you then.

I watched bits of the Chelsea game and, whilst going forward they did look good to be fair, cutting Brighton open on several occasions, at the back they look shaky as heck, and if they are like that against us next weekend, I’d 100% back us to pick up the points. But there’s no doubt they have a wee bit of momentum after those wins, so The Arsenal need to build theirs this evening with a team that has been a bit of a thorn in our side in recent years. In the last four games, we’ve won two and lost two. If you use the COVID period as a line in the sand, it’s four wins for Villa versus three for us, and the defeat last season was in incredibly late and dramatic fashion.

For some reason, a bit like Newcastle fans, Villa seem to have an irrational hatred for us. Perhaps it is because we continue to insist that Unai Emery is not that great, whereas they point to his trophy haul in his career, having delivered the Europa League to Villa once again. But in tonight’s game, we see a Villa side who have had the bulk of their stars taken away from them. Morgan Rogers, Ollie Watkins, Ezri Konsa, Youri Tielemans, Donyell Malen, Emi Martinez, Lucas Digne, with Douglas Luiz and Jadon Sancho also returning from whence they came upon the expiry of their contracts. In return, we will find ourselves up against plenty of familiar names (as I went through yesterday), but not in a Villa shirt. And it is my hope that our consistency of team can therefore have the edge over the uncertainty of the Villa side, who are still working out their own automatisms. I will begrudgingly admit that Emery has done a good job with Villa; they finished in the Champions League places last season, they massively outperformed metrics like xG, and they have plenty of talent who can hurt us (Cash and Buendia both got the goals for them against us last season). The stats that day told of a fairly even game, with both teams sharing a roughly equal amount of possession, shots on and off target, fouls, corners, etc. But it was an Arsenal team who were makeshift at the back, with Gabriel and Saliba both out that day.

Tonight, we know that Saliba won’t play, so for me it’s time to give Konsa his debut. He’s a big boy, he’ll be well aware of the pantomime booing that will come his way. He’ll know that it is just part of the spectacle, but he’s a professional who was bought because of his experience and abilities, and so I say we have to chuck him in alongside Big Gabi. It’s harsh on Mosquera, who I thought did well against Coventry, but you don’t spend £50million on an experienced England international to see him not play in big games. And this is a big game. So for me I’d have the following as my line up this evening:

Raya

White – Konsa – Gabriel – Calafiori

MLS

Odegaard – Rice

Saka – Havertz – Tzolis

With Gabriel Martinelli due to be confirmed as departed the club any time soon, Tzolis is basically the defacto number one choice at left wing, but I wouldn’t be averse to seeing Eze there more too. I’ve also chosen Calafiori as the one I’d want in there because he has started the season really well, he seems to already be striking up a good rapport with Tzolis, taking up positions that enable them to find each other with regularity, so whilst we all love Hincapié, that feels like the right thing to do to kick off this game.

And the good news for Arteta is that he has so many options. Mosquera is a great cover for White or Konsa, Hincapie covers both Calafiori or Gabriel, whilst Zubimendi is an World Cup winner that could equally start instead of MLS. We don’t have 100% certainty over Bruno, but there’s no need to rush him back when you also have Eze and Merino available, whilst up top Viktor Gyokeres can be used in the second half if Kai isn’t working. And if Saka is to be protected, then Madueke is there too. We have such depth and I expect Arteta will certainly want to use it at some stage this evening.

Villa will look to press high and be compact in that midfield area of the pitch; Unai likes to leave a little more space with a higher line, so weirdly, if that happens, it’d be the kind of game that Big Vik might thrive on. But with Kai having scored two in two if you count the Community Shield, you can’t be dropping him. Maybe there are options in the second half, but the way the initial skirmishes go in this game, I’d expect Villa to try to go from back-to-front as quickly as possible as soon as there is a transition, looking to spring traps on us as we build up as we usually do through the likes of Odegaard. So we’ll need to be ready for that and I do think that’s why you have to start Konsa, because I think I read a stat/heard a stat that he was one of the most difficult people to get past last season – he’s a duel winner and therefore good with one-on-ones. If you’re coming up against a team who want to spring transitional traps, then you need individuals to win their battles. If he is that guy, if he does it in an Arsenal shirt, he’ll be a fan favourite. But he’ll also be very valuable in games like this.

It’s a game we lost last season, yet still won the league, so you can’t say that a defeat or a draw tonight is a massive problem for this Arsenal side, but given that last season we lost five games, the season before Liverpool lost four and the season before that Man City lost just three, it shows you that the Premier League is usually not won if you pick up a couple of defeats so early in the season. So tonight is one that we need to win and lay down a marker for the rest of the league. Last weekend’s 3-0 win was fun, but it was against a Coventry side who have already shown that they will struggle this season. So we need to be showing against a quality opponent that we are favourites for a reason.

I’ll be back tomorrow for a match review, maybe a word or two about those exiting players (Gabby’s Jesus and Martinelli), but for now, enjoy your bank holiday Monday (if you have one) and I’ll catch you all then.

We all already knew, in reality, because we’ve been hearing the stories from the French press. But as an Arsenal fan, you still await to hear about it via the official site, which is as expected in its vagueness. I get it though; they’re hardly going to say “we have no real idea of an exact timeline, but we’re saying around three months”, because if it’s more than that then the club will just get a pasting for misleading people.

The frustrating thing above everything else is that back injuries are notoriously difficult to predict. We all remember how his injury derailed any hope we had of winning the league in 2022/23. That injury sustained at home to Sporting Lisbon had him out from 16th March 2023 until 20th June – a solid 97 days – and had him missing 15 games in total. Now, I guess the good news out of this is that surgery is not needed, because if it was, I would be guessing that we wouldn’t be seeing him until February next year. Heck, it could potentially derail his whole season, so we have to look at some small measures of positivity here. But it is still a massive blow. He’s one of the world’s best defenders, and there is no way to replace him. But, much like with Kai last season, the club has to find a way to augment the squad so we can mitigate that loss somehow. Last season the club moved quickly to switch their thoughts towards Eze and getting the job done, when it was clear Kai would be out for an extended period too, so if we can do the same again here that would be useful. If Saliba’s back injury is similar to 2022/23, circa 100 days puts us at 31st October from today. So we’ll be needing somebody for the first nine games of the season the Premier League, plus League Cup and Champions League games.

I’m still a fan of giving Mosquera a go. And, as I said on Tuesday, if Timber and White are fully fit then I still believe we have the numbers. I also think that for some games last season – admittedly only one or two – Norgaard was an able third-choice centre half. So we have numbers. But many Arsenal fans will ask about quality. Personally, I can’t be having a 28-year-old Ezri Konsa for circa £40million. That sort of money needs to be reserved for the big purchase if you ask me. But what I could get behind is a deal for free-transfer John Stones. James from Gunnerblog reported that Arsenal would be looking at somebody like that, and the Standard has backed that up with words Arteta has talked previously about the centre-back here. If Stones can be persuaded – and I say that only because he’ll know that he isn’t first choice here – to join us, I think it would make perfect sense.

For Stones, he joins the Champions, reunited with somebody he knows well, playing right at the top level having left Man City.

For The Arsenal, they get a Premier League-ready centre-half, good ball distribution, a very accomplished player with plenty of experience of winning things, who can provide decent cover.

The questions that stop this from being a ‘no-brainer’, however, are:

• Will Stones get more game time at somewhere like Chelsea, with whom he is also linked?
• What does that mean for Mosquera’s pathway?
• What sort of shape is his body in at 32, given that last season he missed 24 games through injury, the season before it was 34, and the season before that it was 14 again.

That final bullet is the big one for me. It’s all fine and dandy if Stones starts the season and is fit for the first 15 or so matches, because that takes us into around October/November and hopefully a returning Saliba, but if he plays two or three games at the start and breaks down, we’re lumbered with another player on the treatment table and the same situation we are in now.

It’s a tricky one for The Arsenal, but I’d still be tempted to do it. If it’s low wages, he plays backup to Mosquera or he’s used in the ‘smaller’ games, then I’m kind of ok with it.

The other news was the leaked image of Christos Tzolis from HandOfArsenal, so I expect we’ll get something either today or tomorrow, because he appears to have done his medical and pictures, so we just need the announcement now. Will be interesting to see what he says about joining the actual biggest club in London.

There’s some stuff from yesterday about Newcastle being ‘frustrated‘ with the Guimaraes situation, which I understand if Arsenal still haven’t opened talks, to be honest. Last summer we loved a bit of Berta plate-spinning, but we’re at the stage now where he has to pick a plate and grab it. It cheeses all parties off by the sounds of it, not just the Arsenal fans. If the deal’s there to be done at £75million, just do it I say. Then let’s focus on that wide-left forward position to complete our summer stuff (after the centre-half replacement.

Right, I’m going to leave it there for today, as I have a busy one in the City. I may or may not blog tomorrow, depending on how sore my head is – if you know what I mean…

So catch you either tomorrow or Saturday. Have a grand one, peeps.

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.

Just two wins.

Sounds simple, right?

Well, yes, the logic of it is. Arsenal start the first half of this two-part challenge tonight against Burnley, a side already relegated and without a full-time manager, who by all rights should be on the beach or at least feeling a little down about the fact they will not be in the Premier League next season. This is a Burnley side with four wins all season, nine draws and 23 defeats to their name. Only Wolves have lost more games. They have conceded 73 goals in their 36 games – an average of just over two goals every match, and have scored just over one per match with their 37.

Burnley have also allowed the most shots of any team in the league – 607 – as well as the most shots on target with 209. On a game average perspective, they have conceded nearly 17 shots in total (16.9) for every match this season, with the opposition also getting nearly six on target (5.8). To give some context, West Ham (sadly all but relegated now after their defeat to Newcastle yesterday) has given up 538 shots and 185 on target. So Burnley have had 69 more shots on their goal than any other side in the Premier League this season.

And yet…

We know that this is The Arsenal, and we never make it easy for ourselves, do we?

If there’s a way to make this difficult, Arsenal, of all teams feel like they could do that, although today I’m hoping that even the smallest fear any Arsenal fan has is extinguished early on. Get that first goal of the match in 15 minutes, and everything changes. Go in at halftime at 0-0, and the stadium might feel a little different than it will tonight before kick off.

I think the Arsenal fans at the ground will be big-time up for this one. The Atletico Madrid blueprint showed us just how much of an impact we can make, and, with it once again being an evening under the lights, with the team bus being greeted at 5.45 pm just like that game, this is set to be another fervent atmosphere that the players need to feed off. The noises coming out from the back channels of people with access to players on social media were that the staff and players were genuinely stunned by the pre-Atletico Madrid build-up. In a really good way. It helped to inspire them, and I think the same will happen tonight. I certainly hope it does. Red Action have done another great job in organising the pre-meet at 5.45 pm by The Bear roundabout in front of the Armoury, so the fans will do their early bit to lift the players in those opening salvoes, but then it needs to be the players that step out onto the pitch to carry those vibes and channel them into their boots.

There has to be a fast start. And for me, that means:

Raya

Mosquera – Saliba – Gabriel – Calafiori

Rice

Odegaard – Eze

Saka – Havertz – Trossard

I debated a bit about Gyokeres, and I’d be more than happy to see that too, but I just worry a little bit about a possible low block. Gyokeres is a tidy finisher, but this season in tight spaces, I just haven’t seen as much as I’d like when in those small spaces, and so for me, I think Havertz just edges it. But this isn’t to say that I’m going to be shouting on the internet if Big Vik plays. His 2026 record and goals scored are there for all to see, and if we’re going to be getting plenty of shots in this game, there are worse people to be having those shots. The challenge for him has been getting the space in these tight games, whereas Kai certainly is better at finding that space and is better with the ball at his feet.

The talk has been about who plays right-back, and it was lovely to see pictures of Timber as he arrived for training, but I can’t see him starting tonight. It surely has to be Mosquera. If we’re going to give Calafiori licence to drift forward more and find pockets of space, then having that guy who can operate as a third centre half feels like it could work well. Imagine Calafiori bombing forward, Gabriel shifting across to cover the space, Saliba shifting centrally, then Mosquera occupying a hybrid right-back/right-centre-half position. Just feels like it works, right?

In the middle of the park, I’ve gone with Rice as the lone six mainly because I want to find a way to get both Eze and Odegaard on the pitch. Martin to try to pick the moments in which it is tight and congested at the back, with Eze the ‘shoot on sight’ player – feels like, given the above context of Burnley, that has the right dynamics on it. It’s slightly harsh on MLS, but when we come to Palace next weekend, I would be thinking more about that game for him than today. Today demands specific skill sets, and I just think the captain and Ebs fit the bill better. The two guys on either side of the forward kind of pick themselves right now. It means that for me, this side has seven of your outfield players who are all quite attack-minded (I count Calafiori in that), which is absolutely what we need.

Burnley will get chances. The fact they have 37 goals this season shows that. But we just need to have 100% concentration at the back and be ruthless in attack.

Fast start. That is everything. Start with the intensity of a side laser-focused on a Premier League title. Game faces on, from the first kick, be at the Burnley players, make it happen. The time for talking is done. Now it is time to deliver.

I’ll be there, a nervous wreck, sure to be singing my heart out and losing my voice by full time. Let’s hope when that final whistle comes, we’re celebrating another victory and just one more cup final to go.

Catch you all tomorrow.

The cynic in me says that, as we reach the pinnacle of the drama on this season, he wants to double down on his usual approach of leaving injury problems even more open in the air, by adding day before we play, as an extra bit of speculation. Indeed, the injury update was just that, with him saying “not much at the moment” when asked about the team news. So we’re nowhere closer to knowing if Calafiori is fit, or Timber, although I guess if you want to look for some crumbs of positivity on the injury news front, at least Arteta said: “he’s progressed a little bit in the last few days”. I don’t really think that will be enough for him to be in the squad, but if you’re looking at him possibly having some involvement on Sunday next week away to Palace, that might give us some hope he could play a part in the Champions League final too.

He was asked as to whether Calafiori could play right back, which I thought was a kind of bizarre question, to be honest. The way the Italian plays left-back is so niche that I’m not sure that you could just invert him onto the other side and away you go. I’m just not sure it would work.

As would be suspected, given Ben White’s injury, most of the chatter was about who he plays in at right back. He referenced the fact Rice played there against Brighton earlier in the season, then semi-acknowledged it didn’t work on Sunday, simply saying it was “something else”. You’ll never get Arteta saying negative things about any players, but that was a tacit admission of a bit of a cock up on his part last weekend, so I suspect he’ll go back to basics on Monday night with Mosquera in there. He didn’t admit that, he even said there were a few ‘options’ that he wanted to look at, but I’d be surprised if we see anything else this season other than the young Spaniard at right back. According to TransferMarkt, he’s played right back just once for a full 90 this season, which was at home to Sporting Lisbon. Now, that data might be a little out, because they’re saying he was a centre-half against West Ham, which we all know wasn’t right, but I’m trying to rack my brains on those times at right back and I’m not coming up with loads of examples. Again, according to TransferMarkt, he’s had a total of 211 minutes there this season, which feels like a slight worry, and with Summerville showing him a clean pair of heels last weekend, you do wonder about how viable it is for Palace and then the Champions league final. There’s absolutely no way that Palace and PSG won’t target him if Timber isn’t fit, so I hope this week in training has seen the defensive coaches give him a fast-track to right back crash course. It feels like he might need it.

A lot of the other questions he was asked were a bit ‘meh’ in my opinion. He was asked a few times about the City situation and the Bournemouth game, but he played the straightest of bats and simply dismissed the conversation, simply saying things like “focus on Burnley”, which is absolutely the right thing to do right now. We can’t have any hint of a team underestimating an opponent, regardless of the current situation they find themselves in, in the Premier League. He simply can’t entertain questions like “do you have one hand on the trophy?” at this stage; he and his players need to be laser-focused on Monday night, to make sure they do their job and just expect it to go to the final game of the season.

Other than that, I’m really not sure what else is worth talking about from the press conference. It looked a very bland press conference from where I’m sitting, which is kind of a good thing given how close we are to the end of the season. These kinds of press conferences have the potential to be journo fuel for a potential story, but Arteta did what was required as part of his media duties, and now it is about getting on that training ground and preparing for the Clarets.

I had to check myself for a second there, because I was about to say “Scott Parker will have his say today”, but then realised that actually it is Mike Jackson who is in charge. Plus, he’s already had his press conference! Their news is that Hannibal Mejbri could be fit, but the rest of the team is pretty much available. Which means that unfortunately we’ll probably end up seeing Kyle Walker take to the field, which isn’t ideal. Jackson’s general comments were pretty much as expected though; asked the players to ‘thrive’ in that kind of environment, admitted there would be some exits, said he was sad for Scott Parker. There’s not a lot else that I took from it to be honest, but then again, the guy is filling in for the last few games of the season, so I’m not really sure what else he is supposed to say.

And so I’ll toddle off for today, I think. I was asked yesterday to give some thoughts on the VAR debate after the West Ham game for BBC Sport, which you can read here if you want a bit of bonus reading. Other than that, I’ll catch you all tomorrow.

Laters peeps.

That is such a shame, and you have to feel for him. And on so many levels, too. Firstly, he was starting to look like his old self again; regular football had seen him linking well on that right-hand side, he looked fitter to me, he was impacting games positively, and we could see his impact when he came out of the team on Sunday. Some of that, as we know, was down to the manager not quite getting the balance of the side right by shifting Rice to right back, but I also just think our back four had a great look to it with the two centre-halves and then Calafiori roaming on the left-hand side. Earlier in the season, we all talked about the gulf between Timber and White, but with each passing game, it felt to me as if that gap was shortening, so to have his season cut short like this is incredibly sad.

You could kind of see it on his face on Sunday, too, I think. He is a guy who will run through brick walls, and so when he’s wincing and hobbling off, it means that something bad has happened. I think we all probably suspected as such, but when the news comes through on the official channels, it’s still a shock. And yet, sadly for Benny Blanco, part of it isn’t really a shock. Sadly for Ben, his last two seasons have been blighted by injury, as a result of his constant playing through pain and willingness to be a soldier for Mikel Arteta and his Arsenal side. His TransferMarkt injury record tells us this: this is a guy who was robust enough to play through everything, until he wasn’t. He was a guy who could run through those aforementioned brick walls until he couldn’t. And clearly, that point in his career kicked off last season with him missing 29 games through four separate injuries, then this season it will be another three games to take him to 13 games missed this season, across four separate injuries.

He’ll be devastated on multiple fronts here. Firstly, not to play and have yet another setback in your season for the second-year running, but secondly, the timing of this injury couldn’t be worse. For him or us.

Ben will miss two games that could see us (hopefully) lift the Premier League trophy. Given the fact that he was now the de facto first-choice right back and we were only playing once per week for the next three matches, that is a load that he certainly could have managed before this impact injury. If we get over the line, he would have been there, on the pitch, to be part of that final push. But secondly, he will miss the Champions League Final. That is the pivotal point in a footballer’s career. That is history. And to have it taken away as he has is really cruel indeed.

Again, because of the current unknown situation surrounding Jurrien Timber, I think Ben White would have been an odds-on to start in that showpiece final. And although I am less worried about the World Cup, given his form and the fact he’d been playing regularly for The Arsenal, I think there was also an outside chance of him making the England squad too. At a time when he was edging his way back into contention for the national team, he’s been ruled out almost indefinitely.

So, what now then at right back for these remaining games, eh? Well, that is a conundrum that Arteta has to solve. He’s previously said that he doesn’t know if Timber will play again this season, but there are chinks of light on that story, as reported on social media by HandOfArsenal:

Arsenal General Update

David Raya has a 1 year OPTIONAL extension on his current contract which has 2 years left. All parties are very relaxed about his long term future as a payrise was agreed last summer as reported by @SamiMokbel_BBC .

Contender for POTY? Serious shout…

— HandofArsenal (@HandofArsenal) May 11, 2026

I think the caution from Arsenal – and from us as well – is well-placed. Timber hasn’t played in coming up to months, so he will need time to get back to fitness. And even if he does come back before the end of the season, is he in tip-top shape to take on somebody like Khvicha Kvaratskhelia? I would question that. As PSG once again lead a procession to their domestic league title, he has sat on the bench for two of the last three matches against Angers and Lorient, only playing 29 minutes in a 1-0 win over Stade Brestois at the weekend just gone, so he will be fresh. The other option – which, to be fair, for a third-choice right back ain’t too shabby, is Mosquera, but again it isn’t optimal. I think for the Burnley game on Monday, you’d hope that Mosquera can come in and do a job and, for Palace away with him playing from the start, you’d hope he’ll be able to feel his way into the game well enough. But that Champions League final sticks out, and the quality of opposition sticks out. It is a worry.

And the other final worry I have with regards to this news is for the player and his longer-term future in itself. Has Ben White played his last game for The Arsenal? That’s difficult to speculate on right now, but if some of the online reading on MCL injuries is right, he could be looking at between three and six months out. Not only does that impact his ability to recover and have a pre-season, but it is unlikely that – if he wanted to go somewhere and play football more regularly this summer – his chances of doing so have just taken a blow. If we assume the worst-case scenario, it’ll be six months, and that takes him to November this year. With no pre-season to get up to speed as the rest of the squad are well into it, you’re probably talking until December before he can start to be considered. And my biggest worry with this sort of timeline is that it all feels a little Tierney/Tomiyasu-like. KT was a regular for The Arsenal and Arteta when he first arrived, but after his knee surgery in 2021/22, he never really got trusted by the manager afterwards and saw out his contract as a bit-part player. Tomiyasu was exactly the same. If Ben isn’t getting into matchday squads until December next season, one fears that his playing time is going to be limited, because Arteta will have moved on and found another right back to deputy Timber, I suspect.

I’m going to leave it there for today. But I’m going to say thank you from one Gooner to the man who has been such a cult player for us over the years. His sh*thousery will go down in folklore, his interviews, his deadpan face, but most of all, his connection with his teammates in that right back slot.

Get well soon Benny Blanco.

How is this becoming MORE stressful each week?

How on earth are we STILL being put through the wringer?

Honestly, my nerves are shot to pieces. My heart rate has been getting up to cardio-load levels during games. Then, when you have an ending like that yesterday, it goes up a notch even further.

Those last 15 minutes or so (including stoppage time) were the worst/best that I can remember. And when it finished, I was trying to put out social media messages, but my hands were shaking. I was an absolute mess.

But we did it. Somehow, we did it, getting over the line, albeit in somewhat controversial fashion, against a West Ham team fighting for their lives.

I have my family connections to West Ham, so I am not happy that, to all intents and purposes, they are probably going down. And to get what you think could be a vital point in the dying seconds against a team at the top of the Premier League, only to have that taken away, is a gut punch.

But it was a foul. If David Raya doesn’t have an arm across the front of his shoulders, he’s catching that ball that was put into the box. If he isn’t having his shirt pulled behind him, he is catching that ball. And as Trossard said afterwards when interviewed, Raya himself was very calm when the decision was being reviewed. Because he knew it was a foul.

And in that moment, you have to say, it feels like we got some kind of football god-intervention happening for us. Because I’ll be honest, I thought exactly the opposite when Wilson struck that ball. And I wonder what the players would have felt like, too? You’re leading, you know that if you win this tough away game, you are just two victories away from the first league title in 20+ years, and it is taken from you right at the death in stoppage time. It would have been a mental hammer blow (pun intended) that would have given Man City players just as much of a boost as it would have been a blow for our players. The psychological toll that it would have taken could have been huge. The title would have still been in our hands, a big win against Burnley would still put Arsenal in the driving seat to do it on goal difference, but you just feel like City would have used this result as a fuel to go on and absolutely smash Palace in midweek to call the goal difference into question, too.

And now, with Arsenal having got over the line, the pressure for City is massively ratcheted up. They know they basically have to beat Palace, AND beat Bournemouth in the middle of next week. It isn’t done, we still have to win against Burnley and Palace, and despite what anyone says, those two teams are still Premier League sides with decent players, but the momentum has swung back with The Arsenal, and that is huge.

It has come at a cost, though. The Ben White injury is such a shame. He hobbled off; it was a problem with his knee, and if we see him this season, I will be surprised. It’s compounded all the more by the fact that Jurrien Timber might not play again this season, meaning our young centre-half Mosquera, becomes the de facto fullback for the foreseeable future. He’s an able deputy, but he isn’t as good as White or Timber, and it’s a problem for us when you start to think about the Champions League final, for example.

It’s also a shame because with Ben in position, we absolutely dominated the opening 15-20 minutes of the game. Sky Sports showed some stats saying that we’d had nine attempts on goal in the first 15 or so minutes. Calafiori (also apparently injured – no surprises there, though) was linking well with Trossard, we were getting in behind, we hit the post and bar and had one off the line from Calafiori that could have made the complexion of this game look very different. But the White injury changed everything, because Arteta decided to go a bit left-of-field with his subs for the White injury. I think in the cold light of day, when he re-watches this game, he’ll hold his hands up to say sticking White in at right back just wasn’t the right choice. It meant we not only lost our right back, but the control in the centre of the park, and West Ham found themselves with a little more space. Arteta did, of course, course-correct his decision at halftime, but that second half felt stodgy and disjointed overall anyway. Zubimendi suffered the ignomy of being a sub that was subbed off, but he’d hardly had a blinder of a game, plus Arsenal needed to change it because, from a tactical perspective, it wasn’t working. We weren’t finding space in between the lines for those passing lanes, and Havertz felt like a natural choice because he’s going to stand in between the West Ham defence and midfield, rather than where Zubi stands as a deeper lying midfielder. You feel for the Spaniard, but needs must at a time like that.

And those needs were rewarded by Leandro Trossard, who has – quite handily – decided to find some form in recent weeks. I thought he was good again yesterday; lively, looked good in partnership with Calafiori, and whilst his finish had a touch of fortune about it with the deflection, I think on balance we’d deserved that little bit of luck given the chances we created earlier in the game. We also need to tip our caps to Martin Odegaard, whose introduction in the second half as a sub was massively significant. He gets the assist for the goal, his Platoon-style celebration I particularly enjoyed after it went in, but he was central to a lot of the progressive stuff we did when he came on. At a real crunch point in the season, we needed a captain’s performance from the bench, and I think we got one.

And points, well, we got all three. With 20 minutes to go, I didn’t think that would happen. At 96 minutes, I didn’t think that would happen. But here we are. It’s still in our hands. And we have two more wins needed to achieve something magical.

Amanda and I will be discussing all of that and more on the Same Old Arsenal pod later on this evening at 5.45 pm if you fancy joining us – here.

Arsenal need to do their job, though. It is still in our hands. A win today and it will feel like we are nearly there. But this one will by far and away be the most difficult one, I suspect, because West Ham are fighting for their lives, and when you look at their recent home form, it’s actually pretty good. They have two wins and three draws, with their last outing being that late 2-1 win over Everton. Before that, they beat Wolves at home 4-0, and before that, they drew 1-1 with City, 0-0 with Bournemouth, and 1-1 with Manchester United. So this is a West Ham team that gets up for these big games on their own patch, and they will certainly be up for it today.

Mikel Arteta has several decisions to make, specifically on the line-up and tactical approach. I have to say, the ‘finding’ of Myles Lewis-Skelly in midfield feels to me like an approach that we should probably be continuing today. The adage “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” comes into play in my opinion; the system has been set up to enable us to find players in between the lines and when you are going to have to break down a probable Nuno low-block West Ham side, you need to be able to have that ability to find players in tight spaces who can wriggle out of danger. Myles certainly has that, and so I would be picking him today.

So my starting XI for this afternoon’s game at The London Stadium is:

Raya

Mosquera – Saliba – Gabriel – Calafiori

MLS – Rice

Odegaard

Saka – Havertz – Trossard

My thinking on the selections are:

1. Mosquera for White – because I think there’s a question on how much we can play Ben White before he breaks down. With Arteta confirming that he’s not sure if Timber will play again this season, we do need to make sure we’re not overplaying White. I also think Mosquera has proved himself more than capable, and as such, it makes sense to use these players to keep squad harmony too.
2. Calafiori instead of Hincapie – I think the fact that West Ham will sit deeper in a lower block means we need a little more chaos than Hincapie offers. Calafiori stepping into those zones in which West Ham players aren’t sure whether to track or not gives us another option in the attacking third, which I think we will need today.
3. Odegaard instead of Eze – this is the one I wasn’t sure of the most, if I’m honest, because Eze has been playing well of late. He wasn’t amazing against Atletico, and Odegaard did eventually come on, but I just wonder whether Arteta will want a player who has a bit more ball dominance and control. I could happily see it the other way, however, with Arteta favouring that kind of player who will pull out a finish from nowhere, a la Newcastle at home a few weeks back.
4. Havertz for Gyokeres – again, this move for me is based on the fact that we are facing a team who will sit a little deeper and I don’t think they’ll be looking at giving us much green grass to run in behind, so I want my striker to be a bit more of an ‘on the ball’ guy, because I think today will be more of an ‘on the ball’ game for The Arsenal, rather than one that will find us with lots of space.
5. Trossard and Saka stay – Saka has been nursed back into this team and played just 58 minutes against Atletico. You’d hope that means he’s good for at least 70 today, and with Trossard also looking like he’s found a little bit of form, I think you have to start him. You could argue that Eze could play there, but I don’t think Martinelli gets the nod, for the same reason that I wouldn’t play Big Vik.

The nerves are starting to kick in now. Finding out about West Ham’s home form has me a little nervous now, and I’ve just had a look at when they last tasted defeat on their own soil – it was on 6th January against Forest. They’ve been knocked out on penalties against Leeds, but that game in itself was a draw, so teams are finding it difficult to beat West Ham in East London. We are going to have to go and do something that only one team has done in 2026 so far.

It’s going to be edgy, it’s going to be tense, there are moments that none of us are going to like, but I have hope that we’ll get over the line on this one. We need to. A draw still leaves us with the ability to win it on goal difference with a big score against Burnley, and then a win against a hopefully rotated Palace team preparing for the Europa Conference League final, but sending a message by winning this game could be absolutely massive.

Let’s hope the boys are up for it.

I think we’re podding straight after the game on the Same Old Arsenal podcast today, so if you are around and want to dive into it – with delight or disdain depending on the result, subscribe to the pod channel here and you’ll get a notification when we go live.

Otherwise, I’ll catch you all tomorrow, with a debrief on what went down.

So, what of West Ham then, eh?

Well, there are plenty of Arsenal fans who don’t like West Ham, on account of a section of their online fans who, frankly, were a bit weird about the whole Declan Rice stuff. They have a long history of booing/hating some of their ex-players, like Paul Ince back in the 90s, but I sort of get that one. Ince was still a West Ham player officially when he was pictured wearing a Man United shirt, as Sir Alex tapped up the former England international in a move that, these days, would earn United a certain hefty fine. But Arsenal’s situation is different. Everyone knew Rice was off. He had one year left on his deal, and Arsenal came in with a mammoth fee that smashed our own transfer record for Pepe into smithereens. We sing and joke about getting Rice “half price”, but the reality is that it was, and still is, fair market value.

I personally have a bit of love for West Ham. Half my family is from East London on my dad’s side (if you’re a regular reader, you’ll already know that), and I have been holding out hope upon hope that they would get out of this slump. That amplified more when we all saw that it was The Scum they were fighting against, but it looks like the Scum are going to just limp over the line. With Leeds now safe, they might be a bit on the beach on Monday night at the Scum, so I suspect they might win that to secure their safety.

Annoyingly for us, we will have to play a part if we are going to win the league, because I think we HAVE to beat West Ham on Sunday. We are going to need to pick up maximum points in our remaining games because I think when Brentford lose tomorrow, and the gap is two points with three to play for us, we can’t really afford to give them any leeway. I had previously joked with my brother that I was hoping City would drop points and we could field a team of kids against them to give them the best possible chance of them staying up whilst we win the Premier League this weekend, but I think deep down we both knew that wasn’t going to happen.

My brother is pessimistic. He thinks we will all but relegate West Ham this weekend, which makes me sad, but I can see why he’s saying that. And he’s not alone amongst their fanbase; you don’t have to go far online to see how unhappy they all are. Here’s one I found within seconds:

I have followed this club over 5 decades and seen many ‘typical West Ham’ wins against all odds.

Sunday will not be any such thing.

It is a mismatch.

And:

I hope we give them a fight maybe even get a draw and scupper their chances.

But if we go a goal down I fear either it’ll get toxic (especially if there’s Arsenal fans in the home end) or there’ll be a mass walk out.

And:

No point messing about:

West Ham 0 – 4 Arsenal
Tottenham 3 – 0 Leeds

All done and dusted.

And:

we are down and the players know it or certainly will after this latest pumpoing by arsenal at the bowl. championship here we come !

a lot of the players will start thinking of the WC and transfers away.

hopefully sullivan has a lively afternoon ! should be a good protest on 16 mins ! the highlight of the match for hammer fans !

There is a smattering of fans who are hopeful of getting something, but the majority think this will be a pumping. I’m not so sure. We are buoyed by the result in midweek and an excellent performance against Fulham, but this is a West Ham team fighting for its life. Their players won’t go down without trying to lay a few jabs and swipes at us, and with the likes of Bowen available and having scored against us plenty of times over the years, as well as Summerville, who looks a very good and tricky player on that left-hand side. I liked the look of Dioud earlier in the season on the left of their defence, but my question is whether or not we’ll be able to get at that West Ham back line. If WhoScored are right with their probable line-ups, you have to be hoping that Mavropanos and Disasi can be got at, as well as Walker-Peters at right back.

From a numbers point of view, it doesn’t look amazing for West Ham. They’ve conceded 61 goals this season (third-worst). They have an xG against of 55.14; they’ve had the second most shots of all teams against them this season, with the same number of shots on target. On average, West Ham concede nearly two goals a game, 15 shots, with at least five on target.

They also have the second-highest concession of goals from set pieces, with 17 this season in 35 matches. That’s an average of a goal conceded every two games. With a team down there, you’d expect the number of tackles they’d be making to be high, but perhaps that shows some of the deficiencies, because for the number of tackles made this season, West Ham are seventh in the Premier League; it’s hardly Sean Dyche “Backs to the wall, lads, Ben Mee on the line” stuff, is it?

On the attacking front, they fare a little better, in at 15th in the league for goals scored. Their xG puts them 14th, with their total number of shots they have at 16th. So, whilst as Arsenal fans we can look at their defensive problems as a cause for optimism, the attacking threat they have can’t be dismissed. Last season, we may have scored five at their ground, but they bagged two, so Arteta needs to be reminding his players today and tomorrow that they need to have their heads screwed on. In that regard, Man City’s 1-1 draw there can be a cautionary tale; I had a look at the stats from that game and it was a proper battering in all but the scoreline. City had 21 shots, six on target, 71% possession, 670 passes to West Ham’s 294, 15 corners and yet mustered just the one Bernardo Silva goal on 31 minutes, countered just four minutes later by a Mavropanos header from a corner. West Ham, by the way, sit comfortably mid-table when it comes to set pieces, and we all remember Mavropanos doing us a dirty at the Emirates a couple of seasons back.

I’ll talk more about the team news and what the pundits are saying tomorrow, as we get a little more intel from the managers, but this is going to be a tighter game than I think a lot of people (who aren’t Arsenal fans) might envisage. More on thoughts about that, then, but for now, have a great Friday, and I’ll catch you all tomorrow.

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.

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.

And at this stage in the season, when we’re all looking at how neck-and-neck this is, we’re looking at teams like Newcastle and saying things pre-match like “out of form, lost their last four matches, few players out injured, plus ours have had a week off – we should be having a go at them today.

But on what basis, and by what evidence, did we think that would be the case yesterday? It was always going to be a tough one, a grind, separated only by that moment of magic as Eze swept the ball home in 10 minutes. The timing of goals often impacts games, and I remember turning around to those around me in block five and saying things like “no, we need to go on and make this a big win”. But the stage of the season we are at, the fragile nature of some of the psychology, I believe, is in this Arsenal team, meant that this was always going to end up being a nervy one. These sorts of games always happen when you don’t get that second.

I hear there were some comments from Sky saying that the Arsenal fans were nervous, edgy, and that was impacting the atmosphere. Nope. Sorry, not for me, because what I saw and heard was a collective of Arsenal fans who were loud and vociferous and were behind the team from the first minute. Of course, when you get down to the last 10 minutes of a game, and there’s still only one goal in it, there will be some tension. That is natural. But this wasn’t a day in which the crowd supposedly played their part in Arsenal dropping off.

I think the drop off in performance in that second half had something to do with the fact that we had to once again endure Madueke, Martinelli, and Gyokeres as an attacking trio. And as we all know, we’ve all talked about, we’ve all listened to various Arsenal fan-focused media, and heard that trio doesn’t work. There are too many runners, not enough ballers, evidenced at the end too, when Gyokeres had the simplest of passes square to set Saka in on goal, to which he couldn’t even execute. The Sweded is somebody who is essentially a bit useless unless he’s able to get a shot off or is in the right space inside the penalty box. I tell you now, if that was Havertz in that position, or maybe even Gabriel Jesus, they’d have found Saka in on goal, and we’d be talking about a late goal to prop up the performance.

To give him some props, however, I thought Gyokeres did ok when he came on. He hassled, he harried, he chased, and he held the ball up well. He was fine. He didn’t get into the kind of positions you want your centre-forward to get into, but there was one moment where he’d peeled away on the left-hand side, and instead of slotting him in, Odegaard just squared the ball backwards to Zubimendi, who tried a little flick/dink that didn’t come off. Odegaard should have gone to the Swede the first time, but I think some of those Arsenal players just can’t work out where to get him the ball, probably because, unless it’s in the centre by the penalty spot, they know he can’t trap it.

But, like I say, he wasn’t too bad, unlike Madueke and Martinelli, who I thought both had poor games overall. But that’s par for the course this season. Madueke did show a little more to his opposing fullback Dan Burn in the first half, but I thought once he got him on a yellow, he should have had more of a run at him. He didn’t, and when Saka’s number came up to come on, I think we all couldn’t be happier. And he almost instantly made an impact, forcing a deflected shot out for a corner. He’s clearly not fit enough to start, but hopefully he gets more minutes in midweek against Atletico, then we can look to start him against Fulham for the home game next Saturday evening.

And hopefully both Kai and Eze are fine too. Both came off, Eze seemed to be ok afterwards and said it was just precautionary, but I’d be wondering whether or not he’s at risk in midweek now. Arteta gave his usual “we will have to see” commentary, but he didn’t seem too worried about either player. Kai would be the one I’d have more concerns with. I think a lot of us probably suspected that it might be Kai starting yesterday, with maybe Gyokeres in midweek against Atletico. I think you certainly have to think about that now.

One other player that Arteta is going to have to think about in midweek is Martin Odegaard, as well, because I thought he faded in the second half. In the first half I thought he looked lively, I was pleased to see him getting on the ball and dictating play, but he was hardly mentioned amongst the gents in Block Five in that second half, which I think speaks to how he was probably feeling the fatigue of only just returning. He played the full 90. Can he go again in midweek? If we’re not going to risk Eze, he might not have a choice.

It’s similar to Zubimendi too, who came off on 81 minutes and who I read had been sick at halftime. If that’s a bug, then you wonder why he didn’t play, but it was interesting to see that Myles came on for him, although I suspect it is only because Norgaard hadn’t made the match-day squad.

And so we saw out what was a really nervy 1-0 victory. If we do four of those in the Premier League between now and the end of the season, we will all have aged quite significantly, I suspect, but for now it is good enough, and we move on to a big game in Madrid on Wednesday night.

I’ll be back tomorrow as we start to look ahead to that semi-final.

Quick P.S. on the Pope non-sending off. I know Arteta was insistent on it being a red card, but I’m not so sure. I think it probably is a little closer to a red than a yellow, but I can’t be saying that I 100% agree hand on heart – hence not really going in to much detail on it for today’s blog.

This could be the biggest game for Arsenal football club in over two decades.

In 2022/23, we had to go to the City and win. That was an Arsenal team that was a surprise challenger, who were up against a City team in their peak, that ended up winning a treble. Arsenal had lost William Saliba a few weeks earlier and had to go with Rob Holding at the back. It was always an outside bet.

Today, the situation is different. As usual, Arsenal have a load of injury questions to consider, but rather than “have to win”, this game still leaves things in the balance, regardless of the result.

But a result that sees Arsenal anything but it means that we are in the driving seat to win our first title in 22 years. Just typing that has me shaking with nerves this morning.

The problem we have is that rather than going into this game with swagger and confidence, we go into it having lost three of our last four games, with one of those being against 115 Charges FC at Wembley in a cup final. The momentum is with the financially doped football club, and Arsenal’s is patchy, to be generous.

My normal approach to talking about these matches pre-game is to do a bit of a data look at the situation, but that feels a little futile right now; we know that these games always throw up tactical nuances that change throughout the match. We know that Guardiola and Arteta are masters of tactical adaptability, so looking at the data for patterns of play, to my untrained eyes, feels a little spurious. So instead, today is more of a ‘feelings’ and ‘vibes’ blog, with some thoughts on which Arsenal players I want to see in the starting line-up today.

HandOfArsenal posted last night that Odegaard was with the travelling Arsenal squad, but a decision will be made tomorrow morning if he makes the match-day line-up. I doubt he will from the start, but if he can do 20-30 minutes, then that would be a huge welcome boost. He adds a layer of technical security on the ball, and with Saka already ruled out, it feels like every body we can get into that squad who can keep the ball and give us more security, is vital.

And with that in mind, if I’m picking a starting XI I am hoping will play today that has the right level of technical quality on and off the ball, here’s what I am going for:

Raya

Timber   –   Saliba   –   Gabriel   –   Calafiori

Zubimendi

Eze   –   Rice

Gabriel Jesus   –   Havertz   –   Trossard

Gabriel Jesus is the weirdest one out of that lot, but he is good on the ball, he has a massive incentive to up his game on a former home ground, he will chase, harry and defend as well as getting forward, plus he looked alright for his Sporting cameo in midweek. I think it is too much to ask Dowman to start. Madueke has been poor in his last couple of games, as has Martinelli, so throwing a little bit of a curveball could be something that surprises City. And if it doesn’t work, if he’s terrible, then you can decide to get Dowman, or Madueke, or even Martinelli, on the pitch at some stage.

If Odegaard is available, that’s where this is also interesting, because suddenly, for that second half, we have options. If we need to Hincapie can sure us up at the back, I doubt Timber (I’ve made a wild hoping gesture that he’s fit today) could do the full 90, so I’d have Mosquera ready, you have Odegaard in midfield, Martineli/Madueke/Dowman as your wide attacking options, plus, if you really need to go for it, you give Gyokeres 20 minutes and tell him to get into those box spaces and being ready. In theory, we could have a very strong bench.

But that’s not the problem today. The problem is Arsenal needing to stay mentally on it and up for it, because I don’t want to have to think about the fallout if we take a pasting today. And that could happen. We are TERRIBLE at that stadium:

• No win in 11 years
• Seven defeats in 10 games.
• 25 goals conceded.
• Eight goals scored.
• Five goals conceded in five of those games in the first 25 minutes.

We just don’t have any kind of historical backing behind us in this fixture since the oil money came in. That 2-0 win, in which Cazorla starred, is the lone island of green amongst a sea of red, dating back to 2010, since City received their ill-got gains. If you go back to 2010 for the numbers, it reads two wins in 25 years, with nine defeats and four draws, and it is a rather depressing tale of an Arsenal side that has never really been able to consistently deliver blows against the best team of the last decade.

Which is why I’m not super confident about today. How can I be? I have hope. I am praying that Arsenal show up. But form, history, injuries and the situation dictate that today, unfortunately, I fear the worst. I am hoping to see something different, I really am, but there’s a reason most people are predicting a City win, and it’s not just because so much of the footballing world seems to have a vendetta against The Arsenal. It’s because City are good. Very good at attack. Cherki, Doku, Haaland, Semenyo, Savinho, Foden, Marmoush, and Rejinders – all have goals in them. And we’ve struggled for that of late. I hope that we have more space than usual and that some of our out-of-form attackers realise who they are, but I am worried about how this game might unfold, especially if they score their customary early goal against us.

We need every player, to a man, for Arsenal to be 100% on their game today. We simply cannot afford any lapses in concentration on passing or a lack of tracking runners. It will result in disaster if we have even two or three passengers today. That’s why I am hoping Arteta goes with the full complement of technically gifted footballers. We can’t be having any eight-touch Gyokeres games, or 10-touch hugging the touchline Martinelli games. Nope, we need guys stepping up, showing for the ball, finding space, delivering in the right moments.

I’m absolutely sh*tting myself today. So I’m going to fill my morning and right up until kick off with jobs and other things, in an attempt to take my mind off of what is unfolding later.

Amanda, James and I will hopefully be doing a post-match reaction to the result on the Same Old Arsenal pod after kick off, so join us there at some stage – we’re still working out exact times.

Today the managers will give their press conferences. A week ago, Arteta tried the rousing speech to get the home fans to bring the noise. In midweek, he talked about ‘fire’. I have a feeling today he will lean in to the ‘enjoy the ride’ narrative. He can’t get the home fans on side as this is obviously an away one, so it has to be a message to his players via a public medium, so I think that message is going to be “look at what you have achieved so far, embrace the challenge, show everyone what you are capable of”.

And let’s be honest, everyone is basically calling this a City win. I don’t blame them. They have the momentum. They have the recent results. They have the home advantage. They have the attacking talent. Conversely, our form has been poor, our performances have been patchy, and we are away from home. I had a look at what the pundits are saying, and it is no surprise that they are all basically backing City to win this. Chris Sutton says 1-0 City on BBC Sport, Merse goes for a 1-0 City, Shearer says a City win, Paul Scholes (unsurprisingly) thinks City will win ‘easily’, DAZN have said 3-1 to City Sports Mole goes for a 41% chance City do it, 34% chance we do it, 24% chance it is a draw. The only person who seems to think we could get something is Gary Neville and Lewis Jones on Sky Sports, who say they are thinking it’ll be a 1-1 draw.

That would be a dream scenario, let’s be honest, because the way I feel right now, even I’m struggling to make a case for us getting a point, let alone a win. We’ve scored three goals in our last five football matches for crying out loud.

I think we’re all just praying that some sort of good news on returning players is found out. I say “found out” rather than announced, because we all know Arteta will give us nothing, so we’ll be reliant on HandOfArsenal dropping some kind of news that certain players are back in training and have made the match-day squad for the weekend. Otherwise, we’re looking at probably Ben White against Doku and, like the cup final, that worries me.

What I am trying to find solace in is some of those interviews of the players, like Decaln Rice, who has said he and his teammates are ready for the ‘ultimate test‘ this weekend. I have no doubt he is. That man has prove time-and-time again that he is made for this type of match-up. But unfortunately, this season, our attackers have proved they are not. Just look at this goal return from the forwards on this chart:

• Bukayo Saka = 6 (26 Premier League appearances)
• Trossard = 5 (27 Premier League appearances)
• Madueke = 2 (21 Premier League appearances)
• Gabriel Jesus = 2 (12 Premier League appearances)
• Gabriel Martinelli = 1 (26 Premier League appearances)

Saka gets a bit of a pass because he’s been injured, but that’s pretty crappy across the whole team, it has to be said. I really want to dig in on Martinelli for that, but looking at his time on the pitch, he’s basically been a sub for most of the season. He’s played 900 minutes in total in the Premier League, coming on as a sub in 16 of those 26 appearances. But when you think about what he gave us away at Southampton and at home to Bournemouth, you can see why. It’s just not good enough at this stage of the season.

And it’s these stats that are the reason I am so worried about the weekend. These games always feel like a ‘first goal wins’ and when your attackers aren’t delivering the goals, it already feels like you are playing with one hand tied behind your back. I’m probably going to talk more about that over the weekend, I think, because it does feel like the first goal wins it and, annoyingly, more often than not it is City. I also feel like they seem to get that first goal really early, too. In the game in September, we started better, looked better, but Haaland scored within 10 minutes, and we were left chasing the game the whole afternoon. We did score very early in the 5-1 last season, with Odegaard bagging in two minutes, but in the 2-2 draw in September last year, it was Haaland again in nine minutes that put us on the back foot. When you look at games at the Etihad, other than the 2-2 just mentioned and the 0-0 from the season before, the wins City have had have had first goals scored:

• 2022/23 = 7 minutes – De Bruyne
• 2021/22 = 7 minutes – Gundogan
• 2020/21 = 23 minutes – Sterling
• 2019/20 = 45 minutes – Sterling
• 2018/19 = 1 minute – Aguero

That’s an appalling record in terms of early goal concession, pointing to a historic issue with keeping the temperature of a game down. And, once again, we’re going into this one in which those normally quiet City fans will be in full voice. You look at those numbers, and it doesn’t exactly feel like history won’t be repeating itself, eh?

If I’m going to try to find some positivity today, it is that if we score at their ground first (it hasn’t happened since 2015, guys and gals) then perhaps it opens the game up, or alternatively if we keep them out in the first half they might start to commit more bodies forward and leave even more space in behind, then maybe we can get something. But as of right now, looking ahead to this one, without any idea of player availability, I’m just not sure.

I’m really sorry, guys, I feel like I’ve been a proper neg this week, which doesn’t exactly make for fun reading. But let me assure you, I love this club as much as you, I want only the best for them, and I will spend the entire game in a praying position on Sunday. I am hoping for the football gods to smile down on us, but I’m a bit like Paul Ashworth in Fever Pitch; I tend to look at the glass half empty when it comes to The Arsenal, because I feel like any time I get a little too positive, something rocks me. The last time was when Villa defeat when we were on that amazing run in 2024.

Anyway, I’ll leave it there for today, then be back tomorrow when we can have a look at what the managers said. See you then.