Having to be a recipient of that utterly tragic and awful “you’re getting mauled by the Tigers” chant that the Hull City fans busted out against United and do on a regular basis when they are ahead. It’s so cringey, it must be infuriating to opposition fans, and I really hope our miserly defence can go full Gandalf “YOU SHALL NOT PASS!” tomorrow, because I really don’t want to have to deal with it.

And now I really hope I haven’t manifested it into existence…

Sergej Jakirovic had his press conference yesterday, and he’ll be hoping for quite the opposite of what I want, obviously. He gave us praise as the best team in Europe, as well as PSG, and hinted that they are going to be a little different tomorrow with a few plans up their sleeve. It’s interesting because the last time I heard that it was Tonda Eckert for Southampton, and whilst I am heavily refusing the urge to make a few iPhone Spygate quips at him, Southampton did out-play us in the FA Cup and then went on to beat us at St Mary’s last season. So I’m sure I can be forgiven for hearing that from an upcoming opposition manager.

I also think there’s a very real chance that we’re a little sluggish tomorrow, given we seem to have played 29,362 away games this season already. Yes, there was some rotation, but the team was out in Prague on Wednesday, will have had Thursday off, and then have today to prepare for Hull. Whereas the Tigers have had all week to put their “Plan A, B and C” together. This game tomorrow can’t be taken for granted, and I’m sure Arteta has spent plenty of time since the game ended on Wednesday night and through tomorrow at 3pm doing his analysis on Hull.

He’ll have a lot more data on them than I do, but from what I can see, on a player basis, their main creative threat this season is Mohamed Belloumi, who leads the Hull team for shots, although in the Premier League in total there are 11 other players (none of them from Arsenal) who have had more. I’ve seen him a couple of times in highlights and for most of the United game they won at the beginning of the season, and he’s got a few tricks about him. So we’ll need to watch out.

The only other individual stats I found that were interesting were that their left back Ryan Giles has put more crosses in from the left than any other player this season – by a mile. He’s swung the ball in 52 times, with Truffert (Bournemouth) and Williams (Forest) next in that list on 32. As a result, he’s also had the highest number of successful crosses, but only nine – so they very much play the volume numbers game on their left-hand side. They also have Ollie McBurnie, who has won more aerial duels than any other player in the league – he’s going to fancy his chances then, albeit against our two big lads Konsa and Gabriel. But the data is starting to build a pattern of the style of play we might see tomorrow. Their ‘keeper has almost made the second-most saves in the Premier League. He’s been a busy boy so far.

From a team perspective, Hull are probably punching a bit above their weight so far, and as James said on the pod earlier in the week, he watched them in the Playoff final, and they weren’t great – I’ve heard that a fair bit about Hull from last season. But we thought the same in 2008, and look what happened to us on our first home league game – a bloodied nose by Phil Parkinson’s Hull.

This Hull side are second-bottom in terms of xG created, so they don’t really fashion high-quality shot chances, and they don’t take a lot of shots either – second-bottom in the Premier League again for that on 96. To give you an idea of where that stands, Man United are top for number of shots they’ve taken, on 167 – so it’s just under double the amount. On set pieces, they have four so far, which is joint third in the league, and their touches in the opponents’ box is third from the bottom. They’ve taken the least number of passes of any team in the league, and when it comes to the direction of the pass, they go long and forward almost as much as Coventry. They also don’t string passes together.

So kids, what have we learned based on the data?

1. Hull don’t have a lot of the ball
2. They seem left-side dominant
3. They’re going to try to go long and direct as quickly as possible – with McBurnie probably the target man
4. They rely on their ‘keeper having a great season.

I think there’s data to suggest that if we are going to win tomorrow, we’ll probably have to break down a lower block that is going to go long and look for knockdowns. So patience might be the name of the game. On the team news, they’re apparently missing a bunch of players, including Butland, Gourna-Douath, Hughes, Targett, Gyabi, Matazo and Ansah, with Crooks suspended (yeah, I have no idea either). I saw a review on one of their forums suggesting they’ll go 5-4-1, with a few of the standard and random “I hate Arsenal” vibes from weirdos on the internet. I’mnot quite sure what we ever did to Hull, but there you go.

The pundits are going for Arsenal wins, but I think everyone agrees it will be a defensive low block and an attempt to have a frustrating afternoon for The Arsenal. Which makes me laugh that if that plays out, we’re going to get labelled with the ‘boring to watch’ tab. How about we have a team come out at us for once in a while?

Chris Sutton has gone up against Football Manager the game, and in that simulation, it’s a 1-0 Declan Rice goal that wins it for us. Apparently scored on 27 minutes, which I’d take as far as first halves go. Sutton himself goes for a 2-0. Lewis Jones on Sky Sports goes for a 2-0, so we’re getting close to the ‘full house’ stage with these predictions online – let’s hope it is that simple tomorrow.

Arteta will have his press conference today, so have a better idea on team rotation and who’s fit, but for me I’m just hoping to only hear positive stuff ahead of a tricky one at home – they all are to be fair.

Back tomorrow with a match preview after we’ve heard what Arteta has to say.

But this was a game that should have been seen out completely, and I think Arteta will have some words to say to his team about the second half, because whilst the first half was pretty flawless, the second half certainly didn’t have that about it. And yet, I never really felt like we were in any real danger of dropping any points. Sure, Slavia picked up in the second half and ended up beating us on xG, total shots, and shots on target, but it always felt like we were keeping them at arm’s length. I think the fact that they scored on 90 minutes and not somewhere around the 70 mark probably also helped.

We ultimately did keep them at arm’s length, managed to get minutes into some players who haven’t played as much this season, and we also got some good performances from them:

Hincapie

Not played a ton because of injury, on commentary they said it was only his second start this season, and he offered us a different perspective on that left-back role. I thought he did well on the overlap, got forward and overlapped like a more traditional left-back, which also helped when Eze was drifting in field.

Zubimendi

He’ll be really pleased with his night’s work, because I thought he was excellent. Won headers, won duels, kept the ball well, covered ground, looked impressive. It’s the kind of performance that makes you wonder whether or not he should also get the nod at the weekend too.

Merino

Played centrally, looked tidy all over the pitch, grabbed an assist, got a few shots off and had a decent game. Uncharacteristically headed over from close range from a Gyokeres nod back, but was an awkward position so I’ll give him a break there.

Eze

Again, I really liked what he did last night. Was good on the ball, took his man on well, seemed to be linking up quite nicely with Big Vik, and I suspect the reason he only got 60 minutes was because he’s been carrying a knock, as Arteta had mentioned at the weekend. It was a tidy performance that I would say has helped his chances of competing with Tzolis a bit more than when he was given the chance at Forest, for example.

Gyokeres

Man of the match performance. This is what we thought we were getting when we signed him. We thought we would see this every week: Strong, physical, held off his man, clinical finish that was very impressive given the angle and the bodies closing in on him. He bagged an assist as well as a goal, and as opposed to an easy pass assist, this one was warranted. Held his man off, was strong, then played a very clever over-the-shoulder hook to set up Noni for the opener within the first ten minutes.

And so to Noni, who missed out on the man-of-the-match award by a hair’s breadth, I reckon. I thought he had an excellent game. Had his fullback on toast all night; twisting, turning, finding space, delivering good balls in, and for a guy who sometimes can infuriate with his finishing, he slotted through the keeper’s legs to put us one up as if he’s been doing this his whole career. We obviously know different. But this is EXACTLY what we all hoped for when Saka picked up his injury. We need the next man up to deliver end product and worry defences, and Madueke is now putting together a run of form that has us hoping that he will fill the void and we won’t notice as much that the Starboy is out. I make that Forest away, Everton at home, Lille at home and last night – all games in which he has been brilliant. And I think he was good in the most part in the Liverpool game last weekend too. He’s an in-form guy and given that so many of us questioned the signing, this is really positive to see, because without him it’s going to be difficult to compete for the title given how much we need to spread the goals around.

I guess the one thing that you’d probablygo “hmmm….could have done without that” is that Declan Rice played the full 90. Arteta was asked about it afterwards and just kind of dismissive about it, simply saying:

“The game required it, and he was also rested against Fleetwood. He had a week to recover before Liverpool, it’s his second game in a week and we expect our players to be able to do that”

I mean, I get it, of course he’s right, Rice came through unscathed and put in another solid performance, but I remember a quote from Mikel a few years back where he said that Messi and Ronaldo played 50 – 60 games for like 10 seasons, so if players like Saka want to get to that level, they need to be prepared to play the volume of games. I’m sure they both did, but I bet there were periods of the season, certainly ingames, where they were very much just walking around and conserving their energy. Rice’s game is all action. He covers every blade of grass. He’s a highly tuned machine, but you can’t just run that machine hot for 200,000 miles. You do need to recognise that at times we’re going to need to give him a break. Hey, Mikel has access to more data than me, he has a team of professionals at his disposal, he knows far more than I ever will about playing at the top level, and in midfield. But I just worry that we do need to preserve Dec’s legs as much as possible. I’m not sure how much we do that by not just taking him off for the last 20 – 30.

Anyway, perhaps it is ‘no harm, no foul’ and we’ll just see another solid performance against Hull on Saturday. Which, by the way, is another ‘three games in seven days’ situation. But that’s another gripe for another day.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Back tomorrow with a match preview.

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.

I hope that’s the same for the players, for which we’ll find out more today from the manager, and I suspect he’ll also talk about the Dowman card. The fact the club appealed it probably shows that whilst Arteta was pretty surly-looking when he exchanged words with Max on the night, he will have softened his view significantly since then. I wonder if he’ll be asked – or if he volunteers – to talk about it and say he thought it was something else. To be fair to Arteta, when I first saw it, I thought “he’s off – kicking out at a player on the ground”, but then you watch it again, and it’s hardly a kick, plus the challenge that goes in on him and earns nothing for the player is frankly ludicrous.

But that’s the game, unfortunately, and until the authorities get off their arses and do something, we’re doomed to continue to live in a world where spitting at somebody carries the same offence as breaking somebody’s leg and potentially endangering the rest of their career.

Max won’t be available for Liverpool, Hull or Newcastle, and given that we know that Saka is going to be out for a while, he is a definite option that would have got minutes, had he been available. Not a lot we can do about it now though, so we look to Liverpool without him, which is a daunting enough task in itself.

That’s because SUUUUUUCK up there. Our last win was on 2nd September 2012, and it was NEW SIGNINGS Lukas Podolski and Santi Cazorla who scored both goals in that very weird purple and black kick. Since then we’ve suffered eight losses and eight draws, so whilst chasing that win has been elusive, there have been plenty of times in which we’ve at least picked up a point. Which is why I find myself once again pessimistic about this one on Sunday, as I always do. But on the other side of the fence, how are they feeling?

I had a little look, and this is interesting, because unlike some of the teams down there or in mid-table, the talk is all about how they are playing and how they recognise this will be a tough game. When you visit a Sunderland, Forest, Newcastle or Villa forum, it’s all subjective crap like “I hate Arteta” or “Those cocky Cockneys need to get it” and other such nonsense. But the forum pages I’ve looked at are Liverpool fans focused on the best attacking lineup, how to counter our physicality, with a few smatterings of “I’d probably take a draw at this stage in the season”.

Liverpool has always represented a tough place to go, in my whole football-supporting life, and it will prove again to be so on Sunday.

As for the pundits, well, we’ve got Chris Sutton predicting a 1-0 to The Arsenal. But he admits it will be tight. These games always are. Lewis Jones hits us with a 1-1, citing the fact that Liverpool love a tactical foul to slow the game down. We’ve seen enough Arsenal games to know that we don’t need any excuse to slow the game down to try to make it a tactical chess battle, so I can kind of see where he’s coming from here. Sports Mole say the most likely outcome is an Arsenal 2-1, giving us a 47% chance probability of it, but I don’t buy those odds. Give it to me at The Emirates, and I’m probably nodding along in agreement, but not at Anfield, and not with our history there. Squawka has gone with a tight 1-0 win for us, but again, the reasoning I’m just not sure about. They cite the fact that there is no Ekitike, Frimpong, or Szoboszlai, but I suspect he’ll be on the bench and able to get maybe 20 minutes at least to impact the game, and we saw what he did from a free kick late last season. So I’m not as bullish.

I guess if I’m going to make the case based on some numbers (might do a bit more on that tomorrow as well), it is that Liverpool have only won one of their four home games this season, having lost one to City and drawn to Forest and Fulham. So they haven’t been spectacular on their own patch. But you just look at how up for it they were against City, and were the better team until the farcical second yellow for Gravenberch, and you can see that against the big teams who come at them, they can cut you open with the talent they have. We also know that Isak loves a goal against us and always plays well, so it’s going to be tough to contain him, Barcola, and Gakpo.

But if we want all three points, we must contain them, and you kind of feel like we’re going to have to keep a clean sheet to stand any chance of winning it. With our slightly misfiring front line, it doesn’t feel like we’re the kind of side that’s winning it 2-1 or 3-2, so my early prediction is that this game is won by a single goal. Which way that is, I don’t know.

We’ll at least know more on what the managers thinhk – kind of – by the end of today. So we will be able to have a look at that tomorrow, to which I’ll pen some thoughts on that and maybe look at some of the stats for Liverpool this season,to see what type of side they are under Iraola.

Other than that, I’ll catch you all tomorrow, and hope you have a great FRiday.

And he was, unfortunately, which isn’t great news or timely ahead of a big game at Anfield. We all know Gyokeres’ limitations; we know that ultimately he’s probably not really technically good enough to play for Arsenal in the long term, but Kai’s downturn in form is a worry to me. He has all the tools to be a quality centre forward; he’s got physicality, he’s decent in the air in the middle of the park, he can hold off defenders, he has an intelligent football brain in terms of his positioning. But sometimes he does miss the odd sitter. And it feels like when he’s out of form, he looks really out of form.

And right now, he does look really out of form. He’s certainly in a bit of a funk, and it’s not that game against Fleetwood that was isolated, because he’s had a few games like that of late. Somebody even asked me when he last had a good game for The Arsenal. I pondered that. Then I decided to have a little look at the last five games we’ve played in all competitions. At Fleetwood, he was bad. He missed chances; he didn’t seem to be able to get into good positions; he only broke the defensive line once to get in behind, and he put that shot wide when he should have scored. But what about other recent games?

Against Everton, he played around 25 minutes, having come on for Gyokeres, who FOTMOB said had a 7.5 game. Kai’s was 6.4 and included two defensive contributions, zero touches in the opposition box, and one pass into the final third. He won two of two ground duels and made four sprints. He was ok, but Arsenal were already a goal up and scored the second goal pretty much as he got on the pitch.

In Bayern, he played 68 minutes, got an xG of 0.56, which isn’t too bad given that in the Premier League this season Haaland is averaging 0.64 and Isak has 0.61. So for that game, he had decent chances in the minutes he was on the field. He just didn’t take them. He created just one chance; he only had one blocked shot, 23 touches in total, and four touches in the opponent box. That last stat doesn’t worry me as much, because he isn’t a penalty-box striker, but with one pass into the final third and one line-breaking pass, we should probably expect more from our main guy.

In the tight 1-0 win at Forest, he was bad, with again just 24 touches in 66 minutes, 0.33 expected goals, two shots off target, four touches in the opposition box, three line-breaking passes (which isn’t too bad), and one accurate cross from two. FOTMOB has him at 6.4, with only Eze on the day performing worse – and Ebs was hooked at halftime.

The final game in this run of five was the 3-0 win over Lille, in which he played 25 minutes, had 14 touches, got an assist, and created two chances; one of them was a ‘big’ chance. We’d scored just before he came on (Timber’s goal), but he and his other subs definitely made an impact and we won it comfortably. So he definitely had an impact there. But from the start? Maybe Chelsea at home on 6th September?

So when I think about the question, I’ve titled today’s blog as – Do we need to be worried about Kai Havertz’s form? – I do think the answer probably is “yes”. I don’t think we can rely on Big Vik unless he’s got a run of five to six games in a row basically playing 60 – 70 minutes each time, to get back up to a rhythm. So we need Havertz to start affecting and impacting our play more than he does. He’s been fit enough for long enough now for us to know that the previous injuries he’s had should be behind him. But as it stands, we’re going into a massive game away at Anfield, and I genuinely have no idea who should be starting. My gut tells me you have to give to Gyokeres, given he’s had two decent games before Fleetwood, and although he too wasn’t great against Fleetwood, he got his goal, so maybe there’s a bit of confidence he has there. But because we’ve seen the Swede swallowed up by decent defences, I’m still minded to lean towards Havertz. But he has to show us more than we’ve got in recent weeks. Maybe he just needs one to go in off his arse?

I wonder if Arteta will be asked about the strikers’ form in tomorrow’s press conference? I certainly would if I were a journalist in the press room. Especially after that showing of bluntness against Fleetwood, which has come relatively quickly after the lacklustre forward display against Forest. If he is asked, he’ll no doubt bat away any criticism, back and defend his players, but behind closed doors, it would surprise me if he didn’t have them in the video room today, with his coaching staff asking them questions about how we get more from them.

I’ll be back tomorrow with some more thoughts as we head towards the weekend – catch you kids then.

In the second half, and also a lot of phases in the first half, only one team was playing and trying to win

What a twat. When you’re winning in a game of football like Liverpool were, you don’t commit bodies forward in phases of play where you don’t need to. Honestly, as a club, I have no main beef with Brighton, but he’s a bit of a knob, and it makes me more hopeful that this purple patch they are going through comes back to the mean of results. There’s no doubt they’re running hot; they’ve scored 23 goals from an xG of 14.91, and have an xG goal differential of 8.09. That’s miles more than any other team, even City on 3.88, so what is happening with Brighton at the moment is that everything they touch turns to goals.

It was the same against us, when you think about it, with the goals they scored. There’s no doubt they were deserved winners; there’s no doubt we played crap, but their first goal is one of those that Pascal Gross probably scores one in 10 of them if he tries that again. The same with their second goal that the Greek lad got. Then you see stuff like that shot from the halfway line they had last week, or the fact Lewis Dunk did a similar wonder strike towards the start of the season. I’m not saying they don’t deserve to win these games, but I am saying that I do think their hot streak in terms of those goals going in will readdress itself over the coming months. They’ll still be up there; they’ll still be a force to be reckoned with, but you can’t tell me they’re going to finish the season with 109 goals, because that’s what they’ve been trending on up until this point.

One team that definitely won’t be up there is Man United, who looked massively cooked last night against Bournemouth on their own ground. Surely United fans couldn’t have seen this coming? They’ve made this mistake before, hiring the caretaker manager, so this has been in the post last season. People questioned whether they’d be challenging for the title, but that was always going to be a fool’s opinion; they rode the crest of a wave for Carrick’s arrival, then when they weren’t playing one game a week, the poor design of the squad has been found out, as well as the tactical knowledge of the manager – which has players like their captain openly questioning him in public. United continue to be a hilarious hot mess, and as an Arsenal fan who lived through football in the 90s and 2000s, this is delicious to see. Long may it continue, although I suspect for Carrick that won’t be the case.

As for us, we’ve got the small matter of a trip to Highbury to face off against Fleetwood tomorrow, and as James said yesterday on the Same Old Arsenal podcast yesterday, they’re hardly in the best run of form. They’re currently 18th in League Two, having played 13, lost five and drawn five, and on Saturday they lost away to Exeter City 2-1. They also lost their game before that to Cheltenham 4-2, and according to WhoScored, their playing style is that of a team that takes long shots, attempts crosses often, controls the game in the opposition half, attacks through the middle, and tries to play possession football. There’s limited data I can find on them, but the little I have is that they are not a low block team, so hopefully they come and have a go at us tomorrow, because if they do, then we could be in for a treat of a football match.

As I said on the pod yesterday too, to be fair to them, I thought Everton also tried to come out and play a bit. Now, I don’t know how much of that was down to game state; we’d scored early so any potential plans to frustrate us kind of went out the window after we’d gone ahead early, but I like to think that Moyes wasn’t expecting to go full Sean Dyche on proceedings on Saturday, and I hope the Fleetwood manager Matt Lawlor decides that there’s no benefit in setting up to frustrate. Let’s have a bit of a football match play out tomorrow.

And hopefully Arteta will give us some mass rotation. I’ll do my predicted lineup tomorrow, but I think it must be inevitable that several key players are going to be asked to stay at home. Rice, Big Gabi, Odegaard – you guys need not even get on the bus. Get yer feet up at home and watch it on Sky Sports.

That’s what I’ll be doing tomorrow, and before then, I’ll pen some match preview thoughts tomorrow based on what we hear from Arteta today in some kind of pre-match press conference.

See you in the morrow. Have a good 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.

And let’s see how the press conferences play out today. I hope Arteta hits the assembled journo’s with a big fat “see what happens when teams don’t come to play anti-football against us??” vibe. That’s what I’d do. But I’m an emotional, irrational football fan. And that’s why they don’t pay me the big bucks.

So we’ll just get a little bit more vanilla from the boss, who will give us a team news update and the one we all want to know about is Bukayo Saka. All we heard in the aftermath of the Bayern game was Arteta saying, “It does not look good”. I feel like he’s been wrong with some of his instant responses before, but equally he’s also been spot on, so it will be interesting to see what he has to say now that there’s been a bit more time that has elapsed. Sometimes the worst injuries are the ones that happen when there isn’t a collision, and the way he went down and then held his quad has plenty of online physios talking about how it could be a couple of months basedon where he was holding his hands for where the injury was, as well as the nature of how he kicked the ground and then instantly went down. It’ll be a real shame for Saka, because it feels like he’s been plagued with various different injuries in different parts of his body for a few seasons now. If we’re lucky it might only be a few weeks. If we’re unlucky we might not see him until 2027.

Hopefully the rest of the team are fine. From an Everton perspective, we’ll also get confirmation from David Moyes, who may even wheel out Norgaard against his old club, or even Ainsley Maitland-Niles. Both will get a warm reception I suspect, but that won’t last, as we’ll need game faces on to pick up all three points. There’ll have Barry and Grealish for us to worry about, but having looked at the stats, I think we all know that this will be another low-block team who will press us in patches, but try to maintain their shape and frustrate. The data tells us that Everton are a side in the five for high turnovers, which I think is interesting, and they are in the top five for pressed sequences too. They have the seventh-best defensive record in the league on xG, plus the best ball recovery numbers of anyone in the league. They win almost as many ground duels as us and arein the top five for fast breaks. So I think we’re going to come up against another well-drilled side and the inevitable Jordan Pickford time-wasting on goal kicks that will never go unpunished – even with their new countdown rule the refs do (which I actually think is a good addition to be fair).

Their fans are not exactly optimistic, with the following comments I found on one of their forums:

Second verse, same as the first. We’ll gift them three points because of our manager.

And:

Let us grieve, man!

And:

Let me guess, brave resistance and a solid rearguard effort, but lose 2-0.

I can see why they are a little melancholy after the home defeat to Chelsea last weekend, but they sit eighth in the Premier League, they have two ins, four draws and just that one defeat, so they are hardly in a poor vein of form. It’s not rich, but it isn’t shocking.

But do the pundits feel the same? The Sports Mole team reckon it’ll be just that, a 2-0 win, whilst Chris Sutton on the BBC thinks the same scoreline too, and given that was the eventual one last season, you can understand why. Even Lewis Jones on Sky Sports is going with that too, and it kind of feels like there’s a reason they’re all saying this. If that is to be the case (and I really hope it is), then I just want us to score in the first half. We just haven’t done enough of that lately and I don’t know about you, but it’s starting to wind me up!

Right, I’ll leave it there for today. I should probably go and do some actual work. Catch you all tomorrow for the usual match preview. Be good.

Last season our away games were Athletic Bilbao, Club Brugge, Slavia Prague and Inter Milan, and Inter were hardly any great shakes. This season we come up against a Bayern team who I think are going to cause us a lot more problems. So this becomes a really interesting test of this Arsenal teams’ credentials in this competition.If we progress out of this group stage, and if we do it as a team finishing in top eight, it’s unlikely we’ll meet Bayern again until probably the quarter final, but I expect them to go deep in this competition, so the likelihood is that if we keep progressing, we will see them again. So tonight becomes somewhat of a tester for us against one of the big clubs, and arguably one of the best four teams in Europe, if the bookies’ data is to be believed.

I think that’s probably right. Bayern sit top of the Bundesliga, as usual, and will inevitably go on to win their domestic league. They are undefeated all season, have already beaten what looks like their closest rivals, Dortmund, in the German Supercup, they smashed Leipzig 6-1 at the weekend and are looking their usual imperious selves. They have a Harry Kane who has bagged nine goals in 10 games already, and given his history with us, will fancy getting his customary penalty, which he always seems to get when playing The Arsenal. They are a formidable opponent and we should be rightly wary.

But they are not infallible. Their last outing saw them draw 3-3 with Norwegian side Viking (Harry Kane getting another penalty – warming himself up for us, obviously), with Olise sent off, which means he won’t be available tonight. He’s one of their key attacking cogs, and when you also factor in that they also don’t have Musiala due to his longer-term injury, that’s two very key attacking options they are without. So we have some hope that we could get at them, and this could be better than pretty much every memory I have of playing Bayern Munich as an adult. Even the 2-0 win we got back in 2013 ultimately didn’t mean anything, se we’d lost the first leg at home and then ultimately went out on goal difference. So as a 43-year-old Arsenal fam, I can’t really remember a time away from home that we’ve enjoyed ourselves at the Allianz.

To be fair, few teams do, because the perennial German Champions are constantly stocked with the best players in their league. They have players who come through their youth ranks who are also the best in Germany too, like Lennart Karl, who scored against us last season and I thought looked like a really good talent.

We’ve got our own too, however, and in abundance, so the question for most of us this morning is how Arteta deploys his. He confirmed that Zubimendi is back in the team, and Hincapie is a ‘maybe’, but I think he won’t be risked, and we’ll see him against Everton on Saturday. He was asked a lot of questions about Arsenal’s style of play, brought about by more media comments again as they try to find something to poke at The Arsenal with. I covered this with some thoughts yesterday, so I won’t go over it again. But we all know that we won’t see a low block at Bayern, so I hope the team takes the opportunity to show what they are capable of in an attacking sense.

And with that in mind, I’m really intrigued as to what Arteta goes for tonight. If you’d have asked me two weeks ago, I’d have told you the front three would be easy: Saka, Havertz and Eze. Those are the three best technical players we have at the moment; they are the ones who play the best football and give us the best chance of a goal. But Havertz’s display at the weekend has me questioning, as does Eze’s, and conversely, I thought both Gyokeres and Madueke did well, so I don’t think either could be ruled out. I think Arteta probably does go with Havertz in Germany, because he’ll be super up for this one in his home country, but with Bayern sure to leave more space in behind, a channel runner like Big Vik could be an option. On the left, I think it is more likely we’ll see Noni. His impact on Sunday, plus the way Arteta purred about him afterwards, has me leaning towards an inclusion for Noni, so my gut feel on tonight’s side is:

Raya

Timber – Konsa – Gabriel – Calafiori

Bruno

Odegaard – Rice

Saka – Havertz – Madueke

I toyed with the notion that Arteta would go for Myles either at left back or in midfield, but I suspect he might just stick with the more experienced midfield for now, plus the ‘X-factor’ nature of Calafiori popping up in those pockets in attacking spaces. But if MLS is preferred in any position at left back or central midfield, he’s in such form that I’m not going to complain.

We’re going to have to do a fair bit more defending tonight than we did on Sunday, we certainly aren’t going to have as much of the ball, but we will get more space to play our football. This is not terminal if we lose, a draw would be fine, a win would be amazing, but getting all three points would also be a big statement for the rest of Europe. It would show that this Arsenal team are geared up to go deep in this competition. So I’m excited to see how we get on.

Catch you all tomorrow.

I’ve seen a few bits and bobs from yesterday, and what I saw made me chuckle. Apparently now (and I’m not linking to any of these because I don’t want to fan the flames and amplify the nonsense) was some media outlets deciding that, where last season set pieces were ruining the art of football, now it is just Arsenal’s all-round play that is damaging the reputation of the Premier League.

I know, funny, amusing, and irritating all at the same time, right?

It’s pathetic that professional journalists have to stoop to the lowest form of clickbait to get traction by citing something wrong with The Arsenal, because they know the size of the global fanbase we have is enough to generate digital tailwinds for their lazy gutter-trash pieces of what can barely be described as journalism.

Now, I will admit, I think most of us would agree that on Sunday we weren’t great. We slowed the ball down too much; there needed to be a bit more urgency in the first half. Perhaps we could have just passed around with a bit more pace. But whilst I think that is a valid criticism, talk about us ruining the Premier League this season because of the style of football is just patently wrong. It wasn’t Arsenal on Sunday who formed a block that showed little ambition other than going long in hope of Liam Delap getting on to something. To be clear: I don’t blame Forest for their approach. Glasner has to set out his team to frustrate because they know that with the quality of players we have, if he pressed us high, then we would find space and it would almost certainly result in more goals scored. But there was no way that was going to happen.

Speaking of goals scored, how are Sunderland, Forest, Fulham, Coventry, The Scum, Bournemouth, Palace, United, Villa, Newcastle, Hull, Everton, Leeds and Liverpool all getting on with making the Premier League great by scoring goals? After all, that’s what makes games exciting, right? Because last time I checked, those 14 teams out of the 20 in the Premier League have all scored fewer goals than us. So whilst we can all admit that we’d like to see more goals in the ‘for’ column for The Arsenal so far this season, let’s not pretend that we’re the problem here. Low block football, cautious football, tactical cancelling out happens throughout the Premier League. Arsenal’s ‘struggles’ in front of goal come because most of the time we come up against this kind of football where we have to break down low blocks, because teams know how strong defensively we are. You know when old pros talk about how United, or the Arsenal teams of the past, used to “beat you in the tunnel”, because of the quality, physicality and presence of their side? That’s kind of what happens with us and our back line. If you’re Oliver Glasner on Saturday morning doing your pre-match team debriefs, you’re not telling your players that “we’re gonna have a right go tomorrow”, because you know you’re going to be cut apart. So you set your side up to be difficult to break down and maybe nick one.

We have a whole big match tomorrow night before we next play Everton at home on Saturday, but how do you think David Moyes is going to set up his side, eh? I can tell you now for free, they ain’t playing expansive football. They didn’t last season, did they? We all remember that for the Max Dowman goal, but let’s not forget that it wasn’t until the 89th minute that Viktor Gyokeres scored the first one. WE battered them and had 25 attempts at goal on that day. The season before that? The Sean Dyche 0-0 in which we saw the usual Jordan Pickford spend a minute on every goal kick he took in the first half. That game Everton had two shots in the whole match. We had 13. I’ll do more of a preview as we head into the weekend and that game, but already those ‘neutral’ journos who want to write puff pieces about The Arsenal, will be starting their articles. They already know how the game will play out, and it feeds their narrative that Arsenal play boring football. Hey, come at our team, then see how boring we are, eh? And in the season before that, just to put a bow on this particular discussion, is that we relied on a last-minute Havertz winner again, having had 26 shots on goal to Everton’s five.

I’m not trying to fully defend us. I didn’t enjoy watching the game on Sunday. I suspect you didn’t either. But the hyperbole around Arsenal’s style of play after a result like that isn’t warranted. So I just felt like I’d call that out this morning. More evidence will come tomorrow, too, because I don’t think we’ll see a Bayern Munich team that just sits back and watches us play the ball across our back line. I suspect we’re going to get one hell of a game.

I’ll be back tomorrow for a match preview of that game. But until then, be good, do something amazing today, and I’ll catch you in the comments.

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.

They are a strong team.

They are a physical team.

They press intensively.

They go long and direct where possible.

And that’s pretty much how the game played out yesterday. Leeds haven’t lost this season. They have one of the best points accumulation in 2026 going back to December last year. They changed their approach and style back in December and it has seen them look like a very capable Premier League outfit. This isn’t the same side we played and spanked at home towards the beginning of last season.

On that day, it was two goals in a five-goal hammering from Big Vik that had us wondering whether his goals might actually translate from Portugal to the Premier League. That has only really half happened, but I did expect to see him from the start yesterday, and I think a lot of Arsenal fans did too. So when the team news came out, there were plenty of raised eyebrows, not least because Kai was starting. We all thought he’d be out for a few weeks like Tzolis, but having him available is great news for Arteta and us too. Kai is by far the better footballer. But I do wonder whether or not it might still have been a day for the Swede. Just back from Sweden with a bunch of goals, up against a good Leeds side, but one in which there was space to run in behind, and we did try those balls in behind for him to chase a few times. Gyokeres’ game is a basic one, but it is one that suits the style of play that we saw yesterday. I wonder if he might have got more joy than Havertz in that first half, because whilst the German was busy enough, he wasn’t quite at his best I didn’t think. He never really got much change out of the back line in the first half, bar that one header that he nodded back pretty tamely to Trafford in the Leeds goal.

It was a pretty uneventful first half, if truth be told, and there were one or two wobbles from us defensively, but Leeds never really carved us open. I don’t know what happened to Big Gabi yesterday, but I thought he was poor, with some of his passing particularly noticeable for its inaccuracy.

To be fair he wasn’t the only one, because I saw a bit of that from MLS, from White, Calafiori wasn’t getting into the advance positions where we know he can do damage, plus we had Madueke on the left doing one good thing for every headless chicken thing he does. And the result was a halftime beer wondering if we were going to come out at Leeds quickly in the second half.

Only we didn’t. It was all a little too pedestrian at times, and as my mate Luke had remarked at halftime, if Odegaard isn’t dictating the play, if he’s having a game where he’s busy but doesn’t find the space to punch through those creative passes, then we look a little stodgy at times. And up until the Leeds goal, that is how the start of the second half played out. Leeds grew into confidence in the game, although they only created one shot that Raya tipped over from my recollection.

The numbers bear that out too; 2.33 xG for us against Leeds’ 0.62. Leeds may have had 11 shots (we had 13) and five on target, but they were long-range shots that, most of the time, you’d rather take your chances with than being cut open inside the six-yard box. But then they scored in the 55th minute, and the worry I had was that this was starting to feel like “one of those days” – you know what I mean, where things are just weird and off. The problem is, we had that in our last match, so when you go behind at home in the manner that we did yesterday, that is a big concern if the team doesn’t respond. Two defeats back-to-back can quickly turn a blip into a spiral. The team had to respond.

And I really thought they did, but it did take us about five minutes to get our heads right. Leeds had a bit of territory for five minutes after they scored, but just as Mikel was getting the subs to warm up, our response did kick in. On their goal, my initial thought was that Rice just didn’t track back, but to be fair, he got all over the pitch, so he can hardly be blamed too much for being half a yard behind the onrushing extra man Leeds had in that move. Justin’s finish was tidy too, although I feel like he scored a carbon copy of a goal like that for Leicester a couple of seasons back, so perhaps that was something that could have been anticipated.

Regardless of that, we were back level just six minutes later, and it was the move that sparked us into dominating the final third of the game. Madueke’s clipped ball to the back post was good, White’s header back was well timed, and unlike in the first half, Calafiori was in a dangerous spot to tap the ball in off Trafford. He’ll probably feel like he should have saved it, but sometimes these balls come at you so quick that you don’t have too much time to react when they are straight at the body. It went in, Calafiori wheeled away in celebration, and the firghtback was underway. From that moment onwards we dominated, and the subs that Arteta made had helped that. Bruno was getting on the ball and moving into more dangerous spaces than Myles had done, Viktor did pretty well in occupying his markers, whilst Jurrien looked decent and managed to get a solid 30+ minutes under his belt. The goal that was scored by Bruno, however, wowsers. It was lovely stuff from Odegaard in the build-up, Rice with the flick, then Bruno’s finish was sublime. The stats nerd in me says that with only a 10% likelihood of scoring, it was a tight one that decided the victory, but the football purist in me doesn’t car; winning games with screamers is the funnest way to win football matches. I’d take that all season long please.

And so we find ourselves today with another win, five out of six, in a good spot, knowing that we can watch the Liverpool v 114 FC/Asterisk FC/Cheaters FC game having done our job.

On to Lille on Tuesday night.

Catch you all tomorrow.

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.

Mikel Arteta has signed a new contract with The Arsenal

This is fantastic news. Yes, everyone was ‘calma’ about it at The Arsenal; the journos ‘in the know’ were all saying it is pretty much done, but now it is all official, and he’s signed on until 2030. That means, if he sees out his contract, he’ll have done 10 years at The Arsenal and hopefully will have built that ‘legacy’ that we are all talking about right now.

It has not been all plain sailing; we’ve had some bumps along the way, but this is the right move for the club, and I don’t think you’ll find any proper Arsenal fans who aren’t delighted with this news. The video the club did, where he stood in front of two LED walls of Arsenal fans and their messages, was absolutely lovely to see. I’m clearly biased on this, but The Arsenal has always tried to demonstrate that it acts with ‘class,’ and when we do things like this, you really get the sense that those values shine through at the club. When some clubs are intent on taking cheap shots on signing unveiling videos, or two drag the game into disrepute with their own inability to admit their dodgy wrongdoings, The Arsenal does things the right way and, in that regard, I am proud to call myself an Arsenal supporter when I see things like yesterday and all the #content that accompanied the video.

There were also the little touches that reflect, represent, and acknowledge the proud tradition of the club, like the fact that his ‘contract’ (although we all know that deal had been signed somewhere else, and this was just ‘for the Gram’ as the kids say) was delivered to him by the CEO in a box that was used by David Danskin, the club’s first Club Secretary, as a writing desk tool as well. Richard Garlick even talked about how we are connected to our history, we acknowledge and are proud of it, and that shines through with little actions like this.

I’m also proud of the longevity of managers the club has had in my time. I was born in 1982, so I’m not really going to count or claim Terry Neill or Don Howe, as I didn’t even get into football until I was six, but by then George Graham had been in charge for a couple of years, and so my experience of full-time (not caretaker) managers is:

1. George Graham
2. Bruce Rioch
3. Arsene Wenger
4. Unai Emery
5. Mikel Arteta

Five in 28 years. That is class. That is The Arsenal.

Like I say, it hasn’t always been perfect though, and I remember telling my mate Johnny from The Arsenal Opinion Podcast after the Villarreal defeat (ironically at the hands of Emery) that I thought he wasn’t going to make it. I don’t like being the guy who shouts for the manager’s head, but I was basically there in 2021, so to see how this has turned around is marvellous. And as I’ve already said in my blog in May of this year (KSE apology tour), you have to give huge credit to the owners on this too. They stayed patient; they truly did ‘Trust the process’, and in May everyone with a stake – whether physical or emotional – in The Arsenal was rewarded.

And now we find ourselves looking towards the future. I’ll save Leeds chat for tomorrow, but next on the ‘to do’ list is apparently Decaln Rice, which again, I don’t think you’ll find an Arsenal fan in the proverbial house who doesn’t want this deal done quickly and soon. He’s a key cog in the team; he is one of our best players (there’s a shout for ‘The best’ player), he’s a guy we want to be part of this ‘Legacy’ that Arteta is talking about. So let’s get him on the train/boat/bus – whatever form of transport metaphor takes your fancy.

One more final video link to show you before I pop off for the day, which is back to Mikel, and the fan sit-down that he did that the club videoed. I just think this is lovely. Yes, it is PR; yes, it is heavy on the production value, but it comes across as so genuine. There is genuine warmth from him, from the fans around the table, and it serves to underline the ‘connection that Arteta is always talking about. You see things like this, and you realise that to him, these aren’t just words at pre-match press conferences; they are real values and cultural identity that he has been despErate to build at the club since the day he walked through the door. He ‘gets it’ and ‘gets’ what it means to all of us. Having a manager like that is amazing. Yeah, he rubs up opposition fans, pundits, and the media with the most trivial of things (“HOW DARE HE STEP OUTSIDE ARBITRARILY WHITE LINES THAT ARE PAINTED ON THE TOUCHLINE!”), but you cannot look at videos like that and what his actions have shown and not convince me that every single Premier League team wouldn’t have him in a heartbeat if they could.

They can’t. He’s ours. And he’s here to stay for a while longer.

Back tomorrow as we start to preview the return of The Arsenal and Leeds at home. Speak then.

Their defeat yesterday was one I watched a big chunk of, and actually I thought they played quite well until they went behind. That felt like the game was over, so I switched over, and the final result of 4-2 to #114 Cheating FC leaves them floundering in mid-table. And unfortunately, I suspect it does mean the title might be done. The challenge for teams at the top fighting for the title in the WSL is that the margin for error seems really slim. Two defeats away at perennial winners Chelsea, then last season’s champions Man City, is no massive shock, and of course there will be the home games for the ladies to get revenge, but when you look at the history of winners in this competition, it means the margin for error is tiny because of the fewer games they play.

Last season, City won it with three defeats, but they won 18 of their 22 games. Arsenal have won one of their first five. In 2024/25, Chelsea won it going unbeaten and bagging 19 victories out of 22. The season before that it was 18 wins and three defeats; the season before that it was 19 wins and two defeats; and the season before that it was 18 wins and two defeats. So when you look at historical data for the last five years, you have to say the chances of Arsenal doing anything now look almost impossible. They’d probably have to win every single match between now and the end of the season, and so those two draws at home to United and Palace are going to have huge repercussions. There’s just no margin for error in the Women’s game, unfortunately.

That’s on the women’s side, but on the men’s side, we’re waiting to see how big Riccy Cala gets on in Italy against Turkey. I hope that his time is limited and Mancini is sensible with him. He played the full 90 on Friday, and I hope Mancini takes the same approach as last week; we want to see him warming the bench and getting a maximum of 20 minutes tonight, if anything at all. In group four, Big Vik gets a chance away in Romania to bag more goals for his national side, and if he does it tonight, I’ll be happy to see him return and see if he can continue that good scoring form and confidence. We will need it, as many of us have already discussed, with Kai out for the immediate future. Big Gabi seems ok having just done a half against India, as did Bruno G, so I think we should be fine with those two. Then the final two sets of players that we’re focused on will be tomorrow night with England and Spain, and if we get a clean bill of health tonight, then we can all start to look forward to Saturday. Martin Odegaard’s Norway unfortunately lost away in Portugal, but he played the full 90, so that says to me he should be fine, and we can welcome him with open arms at London Colney probably from tomorrow, I’d expect.

To me, that’s positive, because his start to the season has been fantastic, and obviously we want that to continue for as long as possible. He’s been the centrepiece through which a lot of our creativity flows, and it is no surprise that his having an off game against Brighton was part of the reason that nothing clicked at the Amex a couple of weekends back.

Other than that, there’s really not a lot else going on, so we’ll just have to see how our boys get on tonight in those aforementioned international games; then we’ll get more updates as the players start returning to London Colney.

And so I shall take my leave again, wish you a happy Monday, then I will see you all tomorrow with hopefully news of a rested Riccy and a goalscoring Gyokeres to speak of. Until then.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Man City, of course.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yesterday I was waxing lyrical about Mikel Arteta’s new deal, and in that blog I talked about how we need to start looking at Martin Odegaard and Declan Rice next.

Well, wouldn’t you just know it, but Tuesday and yesterday’s news started emerging about just that. Declan is rumoured to be getting a £280k-per-week deal, if you believe what you read on the internet, and Arsenal are going to use this September international break to chivvy that one along. Lovely stuff. And it makes sense too; he’s at home with his feet up, with his ‘load’ being ‘managed’, so why wouldn’t he spend a day or two in a room with Arsenal reps talking about giving him a tasty new bump up in pay?

And he’s fully deserving of it too. He is a machine. A workhorse who also happens to be very good at The Football and, ever since we paid out handsomely for his services, he’s proved time and time again that he is worth every penny. Heck, his song is even about the value for money we got for him. He is versatile, having played in multiple positions for us, plus he is a model professional that basically nobody in the game says anything negative about. He is surely a shoo-in to be the next England captain, and there’s plenty of Arsenal fans who think he should be the Arsenal one too. He’s a guy who leads the team in so many metrics, and the one image I just had whilst I was writing about it was that game up at Anfield a few seasons back when we chucked a load of players high up the pitch late in the game – I think for a corner – and they broke with about four players and just Declan Rice as an outfield option. Liverpool hit the bar, but Rice’s positioning to stop it from being a tap-in was impeccable, and the memes of John Snow against Ramsey Bolton’s army in Game of Thrones. It embodied what Declan Rice is all about; at times, he is a one-man army himself and I personally feel very privileged to have him playing for my team. My brother is a West Ham fan, and when we signed him, he told me he was worth every penny. I was not so convinced. How wrong I was.

And it’s not just Rice who’s having contract chat, either, by the sounds of it. As our actual captain is in talks to extend too. I’ve always been a big fan of Martin Odegaard. I have seen him do things with the ball at his feet that have amazed. He found his home at The Arsenal after that loan spell in 2022; we got him in that summer, and he’s never looked back. Sure, we haven’t seen the best of him last season or the season before, but I do believe that has been injury-related, because what we’ve seen thus far has been certainly impressive and worthy of discussions. He’s looked every bit the central creator for which our good attacking play flows, and back-to-back man-of-the-match performances against Napoli and Chelsea have proven so.

He’s not perfect, we know that, and against Brighton he was pretty anonymous like most of our attack, but that one game recency bias will not cloud our judgement of how good he’s been. I also think he’s in a position where he could easily play well into his 30s. He’s 27 now, turns 28 in December, which I think, if you’re thinking about a four- or five-year deal, means we get him for absolute prime Odegaard years, so I hope this deal gets done with little fuss.

I think both will. Both players seem happy; they are integral parts of Arteta’s Arsenal, they’ve just won the Premier League and got to the Champions League final. Where else would they go? There’s nowhere in England you’d choose. PSG are in a tinpot league. If both were in their 30s I’d speculate that you could see them moving to Saudi for one last big payday, but that isn’t now. The Italian big clubs have no money, and that league doesn’t have the romance of the 90s when I was growing up, so that basically leaves the two big Spanish clubs. Real under Mourinho….really? So then you’re looking at Barca. I don’t think either of those players are closet Barca fans, and Barca’s usual tactic of trying to get a player on the cheap didn’t work with Alvarez, so why would it work with The Arsenal now?

So I’m pretty calma about these deals, which is nice, given we had the best part of a decade-and-a-half worrying about this from about 2005 – 2020. They are in a great City, at a great club; they’ve won things; they seem happy, and their manager has just signed a new deal, which ensures some continuity. There’s plenty to like about the ‘Project’ and I hope these can get sorted out sooner rather than later. Then we need to get back on that horse and back to winning football matches after this particular lull has done its lulling.

Here’s a nice little bit of bonus reading for you from the Standard to finish off today’s musings, as Saka talks about how important Arteta’s new deal is for the club. Lovely stuff. As for me, I’m off to do a bit of work, so I’ll be back tomorrow as usual to look at the weekend’s games tell you about which National Trust property I might go and visit given I have no interest in watching ENG-GER-LAND.

Laters.

While there’s no proper football,

Arteta’s contract announcement is the name of the game.

Alright, it doesn’t quite work, but it was the first thing that popped into my head as I started penning today’s musings. And it’s a big deal. Both literally and figuratively, because apparently Tricky Micky is getting a sizeable bump up on his already sizeable package. Nice work if you can get it.

And if you can do it. And last season proved he can, so this deal is entirely worth it, in my opinion. He is the most valuable asset from a playing/coaching point of view that we have at The Arsenal. A relentless pursuer of perfection, a constant innovator, a man with a steely determination to extract every possible marginal gain from his team. And last season was the culmination of ‘The Project’ or ‘The Process ‘, whichever way your tomatoes fall. He delivered unto us a Premier League title, our 14th in our history, and he is thoroughly deserving of this new deal.

It also adds an element of certainty – as much as you can in football – to the foreseeable future, and with players like Declan Rice and Martin Ødegaard currently in discussions over new deals, this kind of deal is important. It gives them peace of mind; continuity that if they sign a new deal, they’ll be ‘on the bus’ with the manager beyond the end of the season. These players have proved they can get over the line; they’ve looked very good all season aside from the recent Brighton blip, and this comes at a good time for all parties, I reckon.

It also underlines the noises we’ve heard about Arteta wanting to ‘build a dynasty’. I love that. Arteta wants to carve his name into Arsenal lore; he wants to be up there with Chapman, Graham and Wenger. He wants to Make Arsenal Great Again (One for the readers who have previously accused me of Trump Derangement Syndrome before there), and I am all in on it.

And I’m in on it because when I listen to him speak, when I see how he talks, walks, and thinks (sort of – we never really truly know that), I see a guy with a ruthless prioritisation for making Arsenal better. I kind of feel we’re starting to see it with the Big Vik stuff; we’ve certainly seen it with the Ramsdale/Raya stuff, and I think Arteta is a man who is constantly looking for improvement. He is Mr Kaizen.

I will confess that wasn’t always the case. After the Villarreal defeat, I phoned up my mate Johnny from the Arsenal Vision podcast, and we had a sobering chat about how we didn’t think he was ‘the guy’. Both of us said he would probably need to be moved on. We’d had a terrible run in the Premier League; we’d bumbled along a bit in mid-table, having been right down there over the Christmas period, and Unai had bloody gone and knocked us out of the Europa League too. It wasn’t great stuff; we had a stodgy midfield that included Danny Ceballos, Rob Holding and Pablo Mari were our centre-backs, and it felt like we were a bit listless. But to his credit, and KSE’s, they backed him; they kept him. That following summer, the overhaul began, and here we find ourselves as Champions of England. We know what we are. So yeah, I’m all in on him now.

I also think that this new deal won’t have the same effects as it has on some players. Think back to post-contract Walcott, Ozil, or Aubameyang. They got their money and then just rested on their laurels. I know they are players and this is the manager, so it’s slightly different, but I still feel like Arteta is not that type of guy. He is intense. He is focused. He will continue to look for ways to improve, and when you look back at interviews with ex-players who were his teammates, he’s always been like this.

I also acknowledge, however, that he isn’t perfect. He doesn’t get everything right. I’m not an emotionally blinded fanboy who thinks he can do no wrong. I think he got the approach wrong against Brighton, for example, but I do believe he is the right man for the job, and I do believe he is arguably the best manager in world football. Even if he does (good grief!) step outside of his technical area every once in a while.

So now, with that contract done and dusted in all but official announcement and name, attention needs to turn to the other key cogs in this Arsenal machine. Rice, Odegaard et al. need to get their Mont Blancs out and get those contracts signed. Then they need to go on and win those big prizes again. And we’ll hopefully all be there along for the ride.

That’s pretty much it from me for today. Bit of a short one, given it’s the international break, but I’ll be back tomorrow with some more thoughts. So I’ll catch you then. Have a good one, kids.

I guess we should probably start with the withdrawals from the upcoming internationals, with Cole Palmer exiting for ‘load management’. Let’s remember that this guy had a summer off, and I know that he was injured last season, but it kind of feels like a bit of a tightrope he might be walking, given he never made the World Cup squad. It’ll be interesting to see how the media reacts to this. If it was an Arsenal player in that situation, would it be the same? Possibly. I mean, we’ve got Declan Rice withdrawing from the England internationals for ‘load management’ too, so it’ll be fascinating to see how the media handles multiple exits from this extended break.

To be fair, this is why I like Thomas Tuchel, because he understands the demands put on these players. Unlike Gareth “I’ll run them into the ground” Southgate, who has never gone deep into elite-level football management like the Premier League, Tuchel knows that a broken Rice and Palmer is of no use to anyone. Rice in particular just plays and plays and plays, and has done so during the summer too. So this opportunity to give him a second rest at this stage of the season will be welcomed with open arms by the Arsenal coaching staff, but also by us, the fans as well. He can put his feet up; he can have this weekend off, then perhaps go into some light training towards the back end of last week. The blessing and the curse of Rice is that he runs through brick walls, covers so much ground, and never looks tired, so it’s difficult to tell when he might be close to ‘the edge’ when it comes to a fatigue-related injury. But Arsenal and England have clearly spotted an opportunity, and hopefully this is the best for all involved: that he puts his feet up.

I guess for Saka it is a little different. Last season Bukayo Saka did still play 3,200+ minutes across 49 appearances, but he also missed games in August/September, January/February, as well as March/April, and for both England and Arsenal combined, that equated to 15 matches across the season in total. Those injuries were spread out too, so he will have felt that his season never quite got going, and it’s the reason Tuchel preferred Noni at times during the World Cup; Saka was probably only operating at around 80%. And in elite football, that feels massive in terms of final product and what translates onto the pitch.

This time around, Saka can probably do with the minutes. It feels to me like he’s growing with each game, and whilst he wasn’t great against Brighton (nobody was), you do feel like a continuation of matches at this stage would be better than a brief pause like Rice is having. England play on Saturday, then Tuesday, then Saturday, and then Tuesday. That’s the same cadence as The Arsenal would be playing if we were in the Champions League as well as the Premier League, so on this occasion I think I’m ok with him going and getting some minutes.

It’s the same with Eze, who has found his minutes limited a little right now, and who could probably benefit from more game time. If he can play around 180 – 200 minutes over the four games, you’d say that’s pretty good. I would have said the same for Noni, but he hasn’t been named in the England squad, and having played such a big part during the World Cup, one wonders if this will have him having his first question mark over his time at The Arsenal. He’s tasted plenty of football last season with those three Saka injuries, plus there would have been times after Saka returned that he would have had to be eased in, so Noni would have played enough to get into the England side. Then, getting as many minutes as he did in the US would have had Madueke more than happy that he was getting enough game time for his club, but this omission from the squad will have had him questioning a few things I reckon. He’s been pretty much an ever-present in the squads that Tuchel has picked, so this deselection says to me that there’s been a shift in direction, and if I were to speculate a conspiracy theory, I would say that there is no coincidence that yesterday Goal ran with a story about how Juve and Atletico Madrid are interested in his services. The article talks about how the clubs are exploring a mid-season loan in January, but to be fair it also mentions that Arsenal are unlikely to sanction it. Why would they? That’s the point in the season when fatigue starts to creep in, injuries start to happen, and the fullness of your squad is tested. In August and September when lots of players have had pre seasons and are fit, you’re going to get these awkward moments when players don’t play, but come January/February, minutes get to be thrown around like confetti at a wedding.

I could see Noni exploring his options next summer if he hasn’t had as much game time – hopefully because Saka has been fit the whole season – but if that happens, I think it would be good for all parties. Noni has had flashes of brilliance, but as we’ve all said in our WhatsApp’s and online, it’s patchy at best. When you have Max Dowman coming through who will want to take minutes from somewhere, or maybe even Ethan Nwaneri, who last season played a total of 927 minutes and this season already has had 240 minutes at Dortmund so far, it feels like there will be players already at the club who could step up if this season doesn’t go the way Noni, or Arsenal fans, want it to.

That’s probably a debate for many, many months from now. For now, we just need to keep a watching brief.

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.

This is what happens when The Arsenal play – and play well – in midweek. The weekend comes around, and you’re like, “blimey, that hit us quick, eh?” I guess we’re also at the stage in the season where it isn’t a grind. The season is still fresh, young, in its infancy, so having three games in a week (or thereabouts) is kind of novel and exciting. IT’s just a shame that after tomorrow, they take it all away from us again, with a horrendous international break that I think lasts until 2038. I do feel like they probably should have let the proper football get a little more into the season before doing this; why not have this window in mid-November, for example? But her we are.

And tomorrow there we are, because it’s another away day – the fourth in a row for The Arsenal – as we visit Brighton at the Amex. As a little aside, I used to have a Sega Mega Drive II and played FIFA on it. I remember having FIFA 95 and one season when I was Arsenal, there must have been a glitch in the way the console set up the fixtures, because I played the first half of the season completely away from home, before playing the second half of the season at home. Kind of how it feels right now, eh?

Anyway, back to more relevant and current affairs, and it’s that trip to the Amex that looms on the horizon. And it’s definitely the toughest one we’ll face this season I think. I know I know, that sounds a little Wthe next one is the toughest” cliched bullshit you get from football managers, but I do think this one will be a lot harder, because:

• Coventry were newly promoted
• Villa were still unsettled, having been decimated
• Chelsea at home gave us an advantage, and I think we all suspected that their ‘title-winning form’ might just be a bit of a misnomer
• Sunderland were good, but they are not as good a side as Brighton are

That’s me showing my workings, but what do the pundits think on this one, eh? Lewis Jones has us at a 1-1, which I could very much see, although Chris Sutton thinks we’ll edge it 2-1. Sports Mole go for a 2-0 Arsenal and given that Huerzler hasn’t tasted victory against us, you could see why you’d say that as a neutral party. Of course, from our perspective, we can never even think about it. There’s also this analysis that I thought was particularly detailed and quite liked how they broke it down via some numbers. Again, I could see a draw for sure tomorrow.

What of the Seagulls fans though? Given their start to the season, their performances (I thought they were unlucky against Chelsea, even though they started terribly) have their fans a little more excited and one thing they are talking about is the depth of their squad, given that they’re currently missing Evan Ferguson, Mats Wieffer, Jack Hinselwood, Karou Mitoma and Tankuba Mintah. That’s a fairly lengthy list, but until we hear from Mikel on ours with the likes of Mosquera, White and Timber all uncertain, we can hardly get too excited. And they have the impressive Malick Yalcouye who has looked really good so far. They keep busting out these good players, do Brighton.

But they also have some returning heroes too, and I watched a Brighton fan channel called Seagulls Social in which they were extolling the virtues of Pascal Gross, who is having a bit of an Indian Summer at 35. Will he be able to keep up the momentum tomorrow, having played against United in midweek? They’re saying things like “bite yer hand off for a draw” and that YouTube contributors there were saying that they fancy a 1-1. An interesting thing that one of them said was that they would have preferred this to be a game late at night, as the atmosphere could have an impact. I can kind of understand that, and hopefully the fact we’ve got it as a 3pm kick off on a Saturday can help us out, if not the ability to actually watch the game.

I would like to see what Huerzeler says about Arsenal in his press conference though. I thought his antics for the game there last season were really weird. He spent the pre-match talking it up, clearly trying to get the home fans riled and booing every time we had a dead-ball situation, then he doubled down on time-wasting afterwards, which is ironic because I wouldn’t have to look too far to see how he has his players time-waste too. In fact, just to prove it, how about this from midweek, in which one of his players was booked for…*checks notes*…. time-wasting. Funny that, eh?

That’s pretty much it for now until we get to the game tomorrow, in which I’ll do a bit more of a deep dive on how Brighton play and what the game could look like, having also been armed with information from both managers. The only other thing I’ve seen that is worthy of mention is that Jurgen Klopp is apparently only calling Kai up for two out of the four matches over the international break. That’s great news. If he can stay fit for the start of it, then come back for some rest, I’m sure all Arsenal fans will be more than happy with that outcome. Let’s hope Tommy T is as accomodating for some of our England boys too.

Back tomorrow with another match preview. See you then.

“ProRef”….ha! If that isn’t the most ironic rebrand you’ve ever seen…

That decision by the VAR yesterday was as bad as the “forgot to draw the lines” nonsense we had to deal with at home to Brentford in 2022/23. It was a shambolic ‘process,’ and whilst United fans might be spitting feathers, we also have cause for grievance. If this season goes down to the last point and there’s one point in it between City and us, you can legitimately say that it is undermined by a clear helping hand that 115 Charges FC has been given. Forget the fact that Haaland looked to the whole world to be offside anyway, but Enzo Fernandez NOT interfering with play? Farcical.

We all like ot look for our conspiracies, and once again it’s Michael Oliver who was officiating in favour of City, but to be fair to him, in this instance, I think it’s not on him. The VAR needs to help him out here; he has no real control over whether to give this or not. He’s relying on his lino and the VAR, and whilst the lino gave the offside call, the VAR got involved, and I’m afraid it failed in its duty. Once again. So this weekend we’ve had VAR deliver a shocking decision against us for the penalty on Konsa, then our main title rivals benefit from a horrendous call that should never have stood in a million years.

Aside from that, because I could rant about it all day, I reckon what we did learn is that it is looking likely that City and Arsenal will be the two teams duking it out once again for the Premier League. Of course there’s a lot of football still left to play, we are only 10% through the season, but with Chelsea already five points off us and looking like they couldn’t keep a clean sheet if their lives depended on it, with Liverpool on six points and looking like they might have a ‘Draw FC’ season like we did when they won it two seasons back, and with Man United looking as sluggish and bereft of any kind of tactical identity unless their sitting and countering on teams, it’s already looking like some of the pre season predictions of title chases being ripped up for the tried and tested forumla of the last four years.

As for The Arsenal, it’s straight back into action tomorrow night, as Mikel Arteta heads into Suffolk to face Ipswich in the third round of the EFL Cup, and I think every single Arsenal fan on the planet knows that he’ll undertake some mass rotation. He has to. We have ourselves an opportunity to get some minutes into the legs of players who haven’t played as much football, so when Mikel Arteta does his press conference at some stage today, I suspect we’ll get hints that he plans to shuffle his deck. I’ll do a little more of a match preview tomorrow, but my initial thought about this one is that I’d love us to win it and go deeper in this competition, but only because of the size of our squad. Keeping players happy and fine-tuned when you have the squad we have feels like it is important, so playing these games as well as the others gives Mikel a chance to tune up players he would like to call on if there is an injury. So for me that means the likes of Kepa, Salmon, Hincapie, Zubimendi, Eze, Merino, maybe even Bruno given he’s only made substitute appearances, Max Dowman, Madueke, Big Vik – there’s plenty of players who need to shake off the rust, and so this is what I’m hoping Arteta hints at today.

I’d also like to know how the likes of Mosquera and White are doing, because with Timber playing a half against Sunderland, we have ourselves a fine right back returning, but we really could be easing him back into the side right now. Not for Ipswich, of course (which is why I have suggested Salmon starting tomorrow), but for Brighton next week. We can’t just wheel Timber out to play every week now after he’s only just recovered from such a lengthy injury; we could do without White being injured for weeks/months now that we have him back. They need to be sharing minutes to preserve both of them. I saw somebody suggest that they’ve never met each other, and it certainly feels like it at the moment, doesn’t it? Like Clark Kent and Superman, or something…

That will all soon become a ‘little’ clearer when he does his presser, but I’m not expecting that much clarity, given who Arteta is and how much he gives away in these things. I’ll be interested to see what questions he gets asked by the journalists about refereeing decisions this weekend. He’s not an idiot; he won’t give anyone any fuel for the fire, but I bet inside he’s seething. Especially given they’ve now released the transcript from Saturday’s game, in which the ref says, “He’s all over him at the near post facing the wrong way.” Err, no, Mr Brooks, he was looking for the ball until he had his shirt pulled by Ballard, then the VAR: “I’m happy that it’s a holding offence. The foul is confirmed. Confirming the on-field decision of penalty.” Something has to give here, surely, because now we’ve got two incidents that are so clearly wrong. I do agree with what somebody on social media said, however, which is that we all collectively need to pull tribalism out of this debate and start calling out wrong decisions when they have nothing to do with us. Obviously, the Sunderland penalty had a direct consequence for Arsenal, with the City goal an indirect consequence, but as Arsenal fans we also need to be looking at games in which we aren’t partisan, and lending our voice to wrong calls. When fan sentiment is unified and loud enough, only then will we probably see change.

I’ll leave it there for this one today, I think, and instead leave you with some bonus content if you fancy checking out Amanda, James and Scarlett on the Same Old Arsenal pod yesterday, as they did a debrief on the Sunderland win. Check it out here.

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.

10 months ago we went to Stamford Bridge, and we saw Cucurella go in on Saka time and time again. We saw Fofana leave one or two in on Arsenal players. We saw Enzo and Cucrella going in hard on Madueke and then screaming in his face. We saw Caicedo behaving like a man possessed and eventually getting himself sent off for a reckless challenge on Merino. And yet here we are, less than a year later, and I’ve read:

The fact that they’re celebrating this dirty play that led to their goal should tell you everything about them. They’ve gotten so used to cheating & referees favouring them that they all laugh thinking this is normal.

and

Last time I checked closing mouth in an argument with opponent is a red card offence.

and

I thought this decision was crazy added to Gabriel booting Martinez in the face And Arsenal seem to repeatedly get away with it

and

Not only that Pedro got hugged while chasing the ball, Rogers got body slammed, Martinez got kicked in the eye… that game was so dirty.

If you ever wanted an example of the myopia of football fans, you have it there in a very small sample size. And I don’t think I want to single out Chelsea fans, because fans of every team will do it. What’s happening with us right now, a little bit like what was happening last season at times, is that because we are so good, we are the target. The dominant United team of the 90s was the same; Chelsea under Mourinho in the 2000s was the same; City under Pep was the same. Everyone thought they got all the decisions, or they didn’t like the style of football, or there was just something wrong with the club for some reason. It is just the way football fans are programmed.

So I take it as a compliment. What it means when you get ickle Chelsea fans bleating on with comments like “everyone in the league hates them for a reason” is that you have a team that looks to be the dominant force this season. And nobody – Arsenal fans aside – wants that to happen. Heck, I said the same about City when they were in the middle of their dominance under Pep, winning the title five times in a row. I think it was probably the 2020/21 season when I bet I could go back through the SuburbanGooner archives and find a few blogs I’d written where I say comments like “this league is boring and I’m not even paying attention to the top of the table”. City won the league by 12 points that season, and there was never really any competition. I don’t think we will do the same this season, but if we do, I will expect very similar comments from fans, maybe the odd pundit who has a leaning (in support) away from The Arsenal. Yesterday afternoon I spent a bit of time playing catch-up with what the media are saying and they are all saying things like “unbeatable” and “could they go unbeaten?” and “Is this the most complete side?” etc, etc., blah, blah. Before the Chelsea game, we had Gary Neville telling us that Arteta would gladly swap the Arsenal front three for the Chelsea front three, which of course, is complete nonsense.

Of course last season Liverpool had the same stuff from the media at the beginning of the season. They were five wins in a row at the start of the season and all we heard was whether they were ‘inevitable’. We had some Liverpool fans chirping, although the reall hard-core ones knew that everything was not rosy in the garden. And I guess we all know that everything isn’t perfect, either. Just look at the Villa game. We weren’t sparkling on the day, but we did manage to do what was needed and keep Villa at bay. I guess my hope for our situation being more sustainable than Liverpool’s last season, is that old footballing cliche:

Goals win you games. Defences win you titles.

You can’t argue that we don’t have the defence to mount a good…erm…defence of our title. But as always, people are questioning the attack. They can do that if they like, but having seen Saka start the season in sparkling form, Havertz playing well and looking fit, as well as Odegaard flying and Tzolis impressing, I think we’re in a good place from a creative point of view. That’s without mentioning Merino, Eze, Gyokeres and Madueke, either. Oh, and we’ve got Dowman, too…

So we’re in good shape, but the key to succees will be avoiding injury as much as possible. And with Napoli on the horizon tomorrow night, rotation is something I think Mikel needs to think about even now in the early stage of the season. Personally, and I said this on the post-match review show on the Same Old Arsenal last night – I would be thinking about two or three coming in to protect those who had long spells on the sideline. Maybe we could give Eze and Gyokeres a start, for example? Or bring Bruno in for Rice, or Zubi for MLS? These are all options I think Mikel might consider. You don’t want to mass-rotate your team, but one or two changes tomorrow, then perhaps one or two again on Saturday evening? We have a great squad, we need to start getting minutes into legs, and with the midweek games now popping into the diary, it feels like finding the right rotational balance would be important as we set ourselves up for a long season.

Right, that’s for today – there’ll be a press conference later no doubt as the Champions League kicks off, so let’s see what Mikel thinks about our opponents tomorrow evening. Catch you all in the morrow.

Of course, that only lasted 77 seconds once the game kicked off, with Chelsea’s fast start rewarding them with what I’m still trying to work out whether their goal was preventable from our perspective, and if so, how. Firstly, I don’t think that the Konsa foul was a foul. It looked like he won the ball to me, but that’s a moot point because even when the decision is made, there is still a few actions for which we can avoid conceding. I think, perhaps, Gabriel will be slightly frustrated with himself for his part in not winning the initial header, as the ball was floated into the box, then the second header away and into the air wasn’t quite far enough or wide enough to alleviate the danger completely. Even so, the ball kind of drops into a fortunate position and in the ground and in real time I was frustrated that nobody closed Rogers down on the edge of the box, but when you watch the replay, you see that White actually does close the space, sticks a boot out, but Rogers catches it and Raya can’t quite get there. Maybe David Raya might think he could have got down a little quicker, but it was the kind of low-xG finish we came to see of Rogers last season, as well as why Aston Villa were such high xG over-performers. I actually looked at my phone about two minutes before we’d scored and saw that up until that point, that chance that Villa had created was worth 0.02xG, so it shows you just how much of a ‘everything goes right’ finish it was for the Chelsea player.

His celebration annoyed me. Right in front of us by the corner flag n’all, doing the Thierry Henry celebration, smiling and laughing at us, goading us. Up until that point there’s been no animosity between Arsenal fans and Rogers, so why he felt he needed to point at The Arsenal flag on the corner, do a little Henry mocking, cocky, so early in the game, I am not really sure. But sometimes these kinds of games need a pantomime villain and he set his stall out to be that from that moment onwards. There was the Konsa tackle that we all roared with delight at in the second half, the handbags with Declan Rice (who I see a lot of people – Arsenal fans as well – saying that it was a cynical trip by him but I’m still not 100% sure – maybe red and white-tinted specs n’all that jazz), then as he was taken off in the second half the “you should have signed for a big club” chants as he trudged off towards the Chelsea bench with us winning and time running down.

But back to that first half, and the early goal and whilst it’s really annoying to score so early, it does give you enough time to turn around any deficit. Which is exactly what we eventually did. And we really did from the second we kicked off again after two minutes. We were supertb straight away, and as I’ve already half-mentioned with the xG, by halftime we were well value for not only being level with the World’s Most Reprehensible Football Club, but perhaps being ahead. I mean, technically we’d had the ball in the net twice, so if you’re doing a Jose Mourinho, you could argue that. It was a great boost to be level just 12 minutes after they’d scored, but Konsa was clearly offside and the second that it came up that VAR were checking for a possible offside, you kind of knew that it would be ruled out. Anything other than offside has a degree of subjectivity about it when it comes to VAR, but offsides are usually quite black and white.

But we had already shown in that time that we were going to get on top of Chelsea and whilst I’ve seen some laughable comments from Chelsea fans about how a draw might have been a fair result, the reality is that this was the performance of a side who know they are Champions, know they are the best team in the Premier League, know they are the ones that are there to beat and know that they have the capacity to turn big games around.

And that’s exactly what we did.

Havertz first in the first half on 25 minutes, and whilst I was properly nervous about how the day would unfold when they got their goal so early, the fact we scored on 25 should have made me realise that actually, this Arsenal team were going to do the businss on the day. Havertz’s goal wasn’t the cleanest – I thought he didn’t strike it with the most venom I’ve seen and Emi Martinez probably shouldn’t get beaten at his near post – but the fact that it was him who scored was the most delicious. They laughed at us when we paid what we paid for him. They mocked him and couldn’t believe they’d managed to offload a player who they thought was a bit of a dud. But in The Arsenal he’s found a home, he contributes, he’s a key part of our team and he has fans who love him. And he repays us, and punishes those who formerly supported him. It’s poetic justice.

And then to Martin Odegaard’s goal early in the second half, which was another open play beauty, which is all the more delicious given that rival fans are calling us boring to watch because we “OnLy GeT sEt PiEcE gOaLs”. Have some of that, doubters. The little shimmy run from Tzolis and then pass was good, the dummy from Havertz was superb, then the finish from Odegaard was of a man full of confidence right now. It was brilliant. Just like his overall game on the day and he rightly got the man-of-the-match award on the day. He was imperious, ensuring that he dictated the play and our patterns on the ball, playing an early part in his own goal, as well as ensuring that he covered the ground and pressed as hard as he usually does. He’s already showing that this season he wants to prove a point, and for us as fans, that’s perfection.

I need to wrap up today’s thinkings, as I have a fair bit to do today, but I could probably drop another 500 – 1,000 words on other players if I had time. Tzolis was great, Konsa put in a good defensive home debut, the Gabriel/Martinez ‘kick to the head’, etc – but I will leave it there, be back tomorrow as we prep for Napoli, and hope that you and yours have a great day. We’ll be doing a Same Old Arsenal pod a little later if you fancy joining us. It’ll be from 5.45pm UK time, over on the YouTube channel here. Otherwise, I’ll be back tomorrow, so see you all then.