The hope I’m taking from the overall result is two-fold:

1. Palace players ALREADY having an eye on their Europa Conference League Final after the Premier League has finished.
2. I saw a message from a journalist on the socials that Glasner made a comment about Glasner linking City’s rotation last night, as they prepare for the cup final this weekend, to their own preparation for their own cup final.

On the second point, if they do rotate against us, he’d be well within his rights to cite last night’s game, so that’s my initial hope for us, that we get a rotated Palace team with one eye on the final and certainly not looking to stretch for that extra ball, or make that extra sprint. Some of the post-match stuff I’ve read from last night is that it was a little too easy for City throughout. Let’s hope that is true week after next on the final game of the season.

Who am I kidding though? Palace will 100% be better on their final game of the season and I fully expect it to be nervy, worrisome, hand-wringing, edge-of-the-seat stuff for everyone involved with The Arsenal. It’s just how we do things. Nothing is easy.

Now, back to The Arsenal, annd because our game is on Monday night, it feels a little weird to start looking ahead at Burnley. I’m gonna do my usual stuff where I look at their recent performances, what the data tells us, how I think they might play, but it feels a little too soon to start thinking about it, right? I mean, OF COURSE we’re all thinking about it, but it just kind of feels a little odd to me to be obsessively looking at every single bit of info on a game that isn’t even in this calendar week and still has another four full days ahead of it. There’s also the whole ‘Burnley are down’ thing, which becomes an unknown factor, but also makes you wonder if any of the analysis is worth it. They will be a bit down, they know their time in this division is drawing to a close, their fates are sealed. But does that give them an extra freedom to just say “screw it, let’s have a go”?

If they do, then it feels like it could be a very interesting game indeed, because it would leave plenty of space for Arsenal to potentially profit from quite heavily. Or, is there an element of “professional pride lads, let’s low block the sh*t out of this game and see if we can frustrate The Arsenal”? That’s certainly got to be a consideration. Wolves did the same at The Emirates in December. Burnley could very well look to follow the same blueprint.

It almost feels as though the overall season data sets that exist right now are kind of irrelevant, based on my hypotheses above. I guess the only real data points you can take into account are the Leeds game they lost 3-1 at Elland Road, and the Villa game at home, which they drew 2-2. I’ve just had a quick look at the Leeds game and watched a quick match recap, and by all accounts, Leeds battered Burnley. Some of the defending was a bit haphazard, too. So that’s a positive sign. In the game at home to Villa, Villa dominated possession, went down to an early goal, clawed it back and went ahead, only for Burnley to equalise. But it was a very ‘Emery -end-of-season’ game. Villa clearly had its eyes on a European prize and some of the defending and goalkeeping on both fronts were pretty shoddy. Dubravka palming balls into the centre of the six-yard box, front post corners flicking in, route one balls from the goalkeeper to Watkins for his straight line running goal, all of that kind of play I can certainly do with on Monday night!

Arteta will take to the media tomorrow and we’ll get an update on the team news, but what I’m hoping for today is news of players looking good in training, maybe the odd training ground snapshot, then some kind of positivity over Timber’s availability. We now know, thankfully, that Ben White doesn’t require surgery, which is great for him, but I still suspect it keeps him out for the next month. Does that leave him open to the possibility of getting on the plane for England? I hope so. It would be a really nice story for a guy who has suffered so many injury setbacks in the last couple of seasons. He’s had his end-of-season run of games and potential impact on a title run-in taken away from him, he’s had a potential start in the Champions League Final taken away from him, so to have him get out to the USA would be a nice little bonus for us Arsenal fans, and certainly for him.

Right, I’m going to leave it there fore today, I think. I’ll be back tomorrow with a more detailed look at Burnley’s season, as well as how their fans are viewing this, and the pundits too. 

Catch you all then.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Arsenal General Update

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

Contender for POTY? Serious shout…

— HandofArsenal (@HandofArsenal) May 11, 2026

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

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

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

Get well soon Benny Blanco.

@SamiMokbel_BBC has confirmed the below.

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

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

— Magic hat (@themagic_tophat) April 28, 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The players know it, our supporters know it, it’s an early kick-off, so get up early, have an early breakfast, bring your lunch, bring your dinner, and let’s all go together for it because it has to be a big day.

I went out and had a skinful last night, before and after watching Sue Perkins at the Soho Theatre, deep in enemy territory in Walthamstow. I’m up early because I couldn’t sleep. I’ve got a banging headache, but do you know what? Come 12.30 pm, I am going to be fully ‘game face on’, because those Arsenal players need all of us today.

I’ve talked about Bournemouth and the threat they pose already. I’ve had a look at how their fans have been feeling. I’ve perused what the media and pundits think about this game. The talking is almost done. Now it is time to do the business on the pitch.

The team news from Arteta’s press conference yesterday was mixed, but there are some positives in there from some of the people ‘in the know’, including the fact that Pierro Hincapie has been included in the preliminary squad for today, according to the well-known source ‘HandOf Arsenal’. That’s a big boost, because one of the question marks is Calafiori, and whilst we have Myles Lewis-Skelly there who can play if needed, it does feel as though we need that steel available in such a tense game as this.

And it is tense. It is scary. It is a worry, and it is a match I’ve been thinking about for a long time. Bournemouth are no mugs. They are on a long unbeaten run (again, as I’ve already mentioned on the blog this past week), and they still have Europe in their sights. A win for them, or even a draw, keeps them in contention, so we aren’t at the point in the season yet where a team in 13th has nothing to play for. They absolutely do. So we need to be ready for them.

So, to a possible starting XI, which I feel is going to be tough to predict, given the number of question marks we have over some of our players. Thankfully, as we’ve all seen, Eze is back, but Arteta wouldn’t really be drawn on who is fit out of Saka, Odegaard, Timber, and Calafiori. If I were to stab at a guess based on players out and trying to feed certain players back in to the team, this is the line up I ‘think’ Arteta will go with today:

Raya

Timber   –   Saliba   –   Gabriel   –   Hincapie

Zubimendi

Eze   –   Rice

Saka   –   Havertz   –   Martinelli

I think the fact that Bournemouth is a more open team, a team that does give up chances, means that Martinelli is preferred on the left. I also think that Arteta will be managing Trossard’s minutes, and I think Leo starts in the Champions League in midweek. I think Havertz being used as a sub was telling, because I think he’s been earmarked to start centrally, and I think that is the right call. Martinelli and Gyokeres haven’t really seemed to connect, but Havertz can do with the Brazilian, who, if given more space through a transitional game as Bournemouth presses forward, will give him space to open up his stride a bit more. Havertz feels like a player who will also be a little more effective in a game like this, plus he’s more rested than Big Vik. I think Saka comes in because I am hoping he’s rested enough from his injury. Let’s not forget that he wanted to play for England just over a week ago. He reported to training and was sent back like Rice. I have no evidence, no insider knowledge, but I just have a ‘feeling’ that he has been given extra time to rest and recuperate after carrying something, and I think he’s been earmarked to come back in for this game. Because it’s massive. It’s an opportunity to go temporarily 12-points clear and that, as an incentive to deal a psychological blow to Man City, is huge for the players. They have to be ready to take it.

In defence, I’ve gone with Timber and Hincapie to return, but perhaps Timber is the one I’m not sure about. He’s been out for a while now, he could be quite rusty, but I don’t think that means White comes in, so maybe I’m wavering on that one and it’ll be Mosquera who is given the nod. And if that happens, I think most of us are ok. Hincapie on the other side might be one that is more likely to start, because he’s been out for a shorter duration of time, and therefore he might be somebody who can pick up match fitness quicker.

For Bournemouth, they don’t have such injury question marks, as Iraola has said they are in a ‘good place’ with players returning from injury. Tyler Adams, Ben Gannon-Doak and Julio Soler are all back, as well as Alex Jimenez and Junior Kroupi, who has bagged goals this season from the bench, including against us in January. They have had time off, so they are well-rested, which I think means they are going to be intense in the press and put us under a fair bit of pressure today. So these Arsenal players need to be up for it. They need to move the ball quickly, smartly, with purpose and precision. And if we do that, this Bournemouth team might be able to be moved about a bit.

I don’t think any of us are under the illusion that this will be a walk in the park today. It’s going to be gruelling, it’s going to be scary, but that’s what this time of the season is all about. Those Arsenal players need to heed the words of their manager and embrace this challenge. We’re at the proper ‘business end’ of this season. We can’t afford not to show up today.

Right, that’s it from me I think, as I need to drag my sorry arse out of these PJs and get my game face on for this kick off.

See you all tomorrow.

1. I predicted the line-up spot on
2. Max Dowman

Perhaps you could also point to the impact Viktor Gyokeres made from the bench, following up his goals for Sweden with a smartly taken finish to draw us level in that second half at St Mary’s Stadium, but the rest of the evening was pretty disastrous, if we’re all honest with ourselves.

There were some proper stinkers of performances. I mean, some really bad ones, that could effectively crystallise in Arteta’s mind who he will rely more and more on for the remainder of this season. For example, Gabriel Jesus, who was utterly anonymous on a day in which I had held some faint hope that he would seize this moment to have his manager ask questions. But the only questions anyone should be asking of Jesus right now are:

How on earth are you STILL earning that much money?

He and Martinelli stunk the place out from an attacking point of view. It was one of those Martinelli performances for which those who advocate that he’s a super sub and that’s about it, are people you can hardly argue with, because he made it quite obvious that he doesn’t deserve a start against Sporting on Tuesday.

But weirdly, unacceptably, whilst the misfiring attack (Dowman aside) is something we have seen a fair bit of, of late, what we haven’t seen is a shaky defence. Mistimed passes (Mosquera’s horizontal one in the second half that led to a chance springs to mind), unforced errors (Myles Lewis-Skelly massively overhitting another horizontal pass to the full back on the other side), and mistimed headers (Gabriel, then Ben White for their first goal) were rife in yesterday’s performance. That is very out of character.

I’ve taken a few pelters for a message I put on social media at the time of their first goal, but I will stick by it again this morning, because Alan Shearer had said Southampton deserved to be ahead. The numbers told a different story. It was their second shot, and first on target, when they scored. We’d had 11 shots and their keeper had made good saves. We were the better team up until that point. The only difference was that they took their opportunity, and you have to say that’s what it is all about, so fair play to them.

Arsenal’s response was not what we had wanted, and Southampton troubled us with long balls that we didn’t deal with. I thought that we were sloppy, half-hearted in the duels, and that is something that Arteta will be infuriated with this morning. You have to give Southampton credit, because their game plan was pretty spot on; get ahead, then tuck in and see if we could break them down. Even after we equalised, they were content to play on the break and that worked for them. They deserve to go to Wembley. We do not.

And we are left to lick our wounds again. For the second match in a row. I’m torn between being really worried about this performance, coupled with the one against City, and recognising the specifics behind it. No doubt we were poor against City in the League Cup, but some of our absences forced us to do something that City were able to counter. Last night, because of some of the absences, we were again forced to do something different, because I don’t think Arteta wanted to risk this competition, as he had his eyes on Sporting Lisbon on Tuesday.

One thing for certain, there are a few players out there who will only be used if there is injury or extreme fatigue now, I think. Kepa, White, MLS, Norgaard, Martinelli, Jesus – all of those players will, I think, be spending a fair bit of time on the bench now. We have two games left to play this season, and I think Arteta will obviously ring the changes for Tuesday and Bournemouth at home in the Premier League.

And that needs to bring about a change in performance, too. We can’t have that many errors from an Arsenal team going for big trophies. Yesterday showed us that when you do make that volume of mistakes, you get punished. It is even more acute in the Champions League and Premier League. Arsenal need to change a few things.

The Gabriel injury is a worry, too. I am crossing everything this morning that it is a “if you feel anything, just come off” situation, and he was rubbing that knee that has caused him some problems. Arteta invariably said afterwards, “I don’t know” when asked about the severity of it. If Gabriel is out for the season now, all our faith goes into Mosquera. He wasn’t amazing yesterday, but he’s shown how good he can be. The only worry is that with Hincapie also potentially injured for a while, we’re getting to a point where we’re going to have to rely on those understudies. Yesterday, they showed plenty of flaws for players who hadn’t played much.

Either side of the international break I had thoughts about how these few weeks could define our season. We’re 0/2 on season-defining results now. That has to change.

I feel sad that we are out of this competition. But I am going to feel a lot sadder if we put in another performance like that against Sporting, then follow that up again against Bournemouth next weekend. If I heard that some of the absent players yesterday were rested and will be back to 100% by Tuesday I’d probably start to feel a little easier about this result, because the Premier League is everything and the Champions League is the second jewel that we want to try to snaffle. But at this stage, there are still a lot of question marks over who will be available. Let’s hope that tomorrow, when Arteta talks to the press, he can provide some crumbs of comfort.

I’m going to try to end on a more positive note. Max Dowman. Wowsers. I know we need to temper our superlatives and let the boy grow in to this team, but he once again showed he’s ready to make an impact. He can play in that wide right position. He is ready. Southampton look like a Premier League team in waiting and he was great against them. Like he’s been great in all of the performances he’s had this season. He showed somebody like Martinelli what you should be doing as a wide forward. I think he needs to be considered as a ‘next one up’ if Arteta wants to change things in attack now. What a talent we have. Let’s hope we use him to more effect for the remainder of the season – it could be our ‘ace in the hole’, as they say in cards.

Catch you all tomorrow as we try to forget yesterday’s mess, and look towards Sporting Lisbon.

What it means for us, as we suspected, is that the team news is sketchy at best. We know that Noni and Ebs are out, but we all pretty much knew that already, so that’s no surprise. The fact that Mikel confirmed that Madueke was ‘days’ is a boost, though; he’ll surely be available for Bournemouth, and that means our attacking pains are short-term in terms of options. Eze was a little sketchy on, and I just hope it is because he didn’t want to give too much away, and the player is not fit for the next week or so. The rumours have been Man City at best, which I think is what we have to hope for, but if it is Sporting at home, I think that takes us to around a month, which was the original prognosis, so we have to say that timeline played out as expected.

The other news in which there was definitely more clarity was Timber and Odegaard, which Arteta confirmed are ‘in contention’ to be in the squad today. That is the closest you’ll ever get to an Arteta press conference answer of ‘they’re fine’, so I hope we can see at least one of them tonight.

And that one is Martin Odegaard. Timber is somebody we need for Sporting and Bournemouth, and so giving White the minutes this evening, having made two appearances for England last week, helps to continue his return to form, so I think (and hope) that makes sense for Arteta to do so.

With that in mind, and having already stated some initial thoughts on social media yesterday on what lineup I think he might do, I think I’m flip-flopping a little on what the starting XI might be. I do think he’ll stick with Kepa (there was a bit of fun on naming his ‘keeper yesterday that I enjoyed from the manager), plus I think one of Gabriel or Saliba might play. My thinking on those two is predicated on the fact that Calafiori got 120 minutes for Italy in midweek, and Hincapie’s update from the manager was not good. All he gave us on the Ecuadorian was that it was a ‘serious’ one, and suddenly you start to think his season might be over. Hopefully not, but you hear things like that from the manager, and you wonder if we’ll see him again this season. And if that’s the case, we’ve once again had ourselves an international break in which a player comes back broken. It feels like every break for the last two years has been like that, going back to last season with Odegaard for Norway in the autumn internationals. And I find myself saying, once again, that international football can go f*ck itself.

With that update from Arteta in mind, I think he’ll give MLS a run out, and suddenly, you’re looking at a player who had found game time limited, to be a guy who may well suddenly get a lot more minutes this season. Calafiori can’t play two 90-minute games in a row, I don’t think, so that means you need to start looking at Myles as the de facto understudy again. Imagine if he finds himself playing regularly, as a late shout for England? Highly unlikely, I suspect, but still, he might well think that a door has opened up for him, and a game like today could be a perfect opportunity.

I think Arteta will surely give Norgaard a chance in the starting XI. The Dane can replace Zubi to give him extra time to recover for Sporting, but because Norgaard has been decent enough for us when he’s given the opportunity, this needs to be one that we get him in to continue his stable place in the team.

He will have a look at Odegaard for at least half, maybe 60 minutes, I would have thought. I also think that Gabriel Jesus will get the nod, given Big Vik played twice for Sweden and Kai still hasn’t completed 90 minutes for us. But the rest of the team will be, I think, up for grabs. So here’s my stab at a starting XI for tonight:

Kepa

White   –   Mosquera   –   Gabriel   –   MLS

Norgaard

Odegaard   –   Havertz

Dowman   –   Jesus   –   Martinelli

There are a few in there I’m not sure on, if I’m honest with you, especially in those attacking positions. Havertz and Odegaard together as attacking ‘eights’ could be a little too much of a gamble for a manager who is inherently more conservative in certain instances. Whilst Dowman on from the start, I think it is a big question mark too, given his age. I’d like to see it, and I don’t think many Arsenal fans would disagree with me. He’s exciting, he’s expressive, and he will have a go at a Southampton defence that, as I mentioned yesterday, has had challenges defensively this season. There may be space for him to operate, and I think that he could be a real ‘x-factor’ player with his dribbling ability if he’s given the space to do so by the Saints’ back line. Martinelli, on the other side, is one I’m not sure on either; Trossard is very likely to also be selected, given that Gabby Martinelli did a fair bit of travelling in midweek, getting back from Orlando on Thursday at some stage I’d imagine.

As I mentioned yesterday in the blog, I have the feeling that Southampton will come out and have a go at us tonight, because a) they have nothing to lose as the underdog, b) they still have plenty to play for at this stage of the season, and c) it’s a night game and their fans will have had a few beers and will be well up for it. We need to be ready for that, and Arteta will have told his players accordingly to treat this one like a Premier League game, I think. Next season, it could very well be one.

Amanda and I will be podding tomorrow, I think, so I will be back tomorrow with the blog and maybe some pod thoughts on what might transpire ahead. See you then.

And double kudos for them this morning, after they beat Chelsea, for which we remind ourselves that in any walk of life, Chelsea are the bad guys/girls.

It is ALWAYS good when Chelsea and their fans are sad. Let us remind ourselves of this.

In the men’s game, they are also the side who have posted the biggest loss, as well as paying out the most on agent fees. If Todd Boehly were playing Moneyball, I think he didn’t get the purpose of Brad Pitt’s movie. Because that ain’t it, mate.

Why am I bothering to talk about them on an Arsenal blog? Well, partly, because I think it means something for their next Premier League game. Because they play Man City at home on the weekend that we have Bournemouth at home, and we really need Chelsea not to be sh*t. And Todd and his CFO need them not to be sh*t too, because if they miss out on Champions League money, posting up the biggest loss in Premier League history is going to be very problematic for them. As a reminder, going deep in the Champions League is worth three times more than the Europa League.

Chelsea are currently one point behind Liverpool in the Premier League, in sixth. I believe that the likelihood is that fifth place will be enough for a spot this season, so Chelsea needs to keep on Liverpool’s coat-tails. On Saturday, Liverpool are at home to Fulham, which I think most of us expect them to win, so if Chelsea don’t get something against City on Sunday, then with six matches to play, they might be four points off Liverpool, and qualification is looking bleak.

That is good for us. It means Chelsea will not be a side that is starting to check out next weekend. They simply cannot afford to: Literally. I know the players will not be thinking about the financial ramifications of non-qualification for Europe’s premier competition, but they will be aware of the club’s financial needs, as well as their own sporting desires.

So my hope is that, providing we can overcome Bournemouth (not an easy task), we can really ramp the pressure up.

But here I am, already looking at the Premier League when, in fact, we have a certain in-form Southampton team that stands between us and another trip to Wembley. And having looked at their form, they have every right to feel quite bullish going into this one. For one thing, it’s a sort of ‘free hit’ for them. They have an important game in midweek next week against Wrexham that could cement their place in the playoffs with six games to go for a win, so they can’t really afford not to be giving 100% in that one, especially as it is away. So I will be really interested to see what Tonda Eckert has to say about the game. Is he going to give hints of a bit of rotation that is needed as the season draws towards a climax? Or is he going to see this as an ideal opportunity for a very big scalp and a proving ground for why Southampton can qualify for Premier League admission and hold their own by playing their best team?

We’ll have to wait to see when he does his press conference tomorrow, but today I decided to have an early look at how their fans are feeling. Here are a couple of select quotes from one of their forum ahead of the game:

I’d rather lose in regulation time than win in over time. Our priority has to be returning to the Premier soccer ball league

And:

I want us to go strong for this, as surely we do have a chance, albeit a slim one. We arent some League One/Two team who are just here for a fun day out and play teams like this once every 100 years. We were in the same division as them (and have been most seasons) until last summer. Only 10 months ago we drew 0-0 at home to Man City and lost narrowly (1-2 to an 89th min Odegaard goal) to Arsenal themselves.

I think Southampton fans are realistic, but depending on how the news comes out about our players who withdrew from international football, that might turn their heads a little bit and give them a bit of a confidence boost. We won’t get anything from Arteta, but I bet there are some back-channel comments on social media from reliable sources like HandOfArsenal or the likes. So I suspect we’ll get something either Friday night or during the day on Saturday.

Whatever the situation, though, this squad has been built for games like this, so some of those players who have had less game time will need to be ready and prepped to deliver. I’m talking the likes of Lewis-Skelly, Mosquera, Norgaard, Gabriel Jesus, et al. They need to prove that the manager can call upon them, and with a week to prepare for this one (mentally, I mean – I know MLS, Mosquera, and Norgaard have been away with their respective national teams), knowing that they will probably start, I expect them to be ready.

Right, that’s it from me today. Back tomorrow as I start to look at what some of the pundits, commentators, and ex-pro’s are predicting ahead of this one. Catch you then.

Phew.

With him returning, having played an hour in the first game and 45 in the second, one would hope that you could chalk this Interlull up as a very positive one that has put minutes in the legs without beasting our hybrid midfielder/forward. It means he can make the relatively short flight back home today, maybe have a rest tomorrow, then get back in training on Thursday and Friday and be ready for selection on Saturday against Southampton.

I’m not sure whether he’ll start, though. If we’re thinking about the matches that lie ahead for us, I think Havertz getting some minutes, but not starting against Southampton, makes sense. Perhaps he comes on as a second-half sub and does 20 minutes or so. This is a guy who returned from a year out earlier this calendar year, played a couple of matches, then broke down again, so I suspect Arteta and the medical team will be acutely aware of this and the need to build him up. He’s played 14 times this season and has just 524 minutes to his name for Arsenal, with his recent performances being:

• 66 minutes against Man City in the League Cup
• 21 minutes against Leverkusen in the Champions League at home
• 61 minutes against Everton in the Premier League
• 16 minutes against Leverkusen away in the Champions League
• 62 minutes against Mansfield in the FA Cup

From those numbers, you can clearly see that the club has been very carefully managing Havertz’s minutes. There’s been a clear pattern that has developed. It does make me wonder, though: When will they feel he’s ready for 90-minutes?

Arteta was very vocal in his praise for Havertz just over a year ago, describing him as a ‘powerhouse.’ The football gods saw fit to absolutely make him eat those words, because it was literally a day or two later that he picked up that injury which basically kept him out of the team for the rest of last season. Since then, his ‘robustness’, as Arteta put it, has been blown away by all of these injuries he’s picked up. It means that Arsenal inevitably have to be careful with him, but there must come a point soon at which he’s asked to play a full 90.

If I were to guess, I would posit the theory that they are building him up for that City game. He’s just played an hour for Germany and then 45 minutes. That’s two in a short time frame, and certainly, when you look at the numbers above, it is more than he’s been playing with Arsenal within a week since returning from injury. That’s why I think he will be used sparingly against Southampton, maybe as a sub, with the idea of him being built up to play in the Bournemouth and City game. It’s just a hunch, but I get the feeling that Gabby Jesus is told to start against Southampton and see if he’s still got something to give for us against a Championship opponent, then Big Vik is told to start the two legs against Sporting, in the hope that Arteta leans into the ‘vibes’ like he did with Eze and the Scum. Then, for Bournemouth at home and City away, either side of the Sporting home game, Havertz is the man. I’m projecting, of course, there’s no way it will pan out exactly like this, but I am imagining him playing around the 70-80-minute mark against Bournemouth, then also doing similar numbers against City a week later.

And I think that seems like a very sensible thing to do.

Elsewhere, Thomas Tuchel had his press conference yesterday ahead of England’s meaningless friendly against Japan, and he clarified the situation with Rice and Saka. Unsurprisingly, it is those two who are getting heat from certain members of the gutter press, and Tuchel was pressed on it yesterday, for which I was pleased that he spoke out about the fact that both had been sent home. Both wanted to play; both were disappointed not to be able to; but the interests of player welfare by an England manager have been taken into account, unlike the previous incumbents of that role. He also used his words very carefully, being very deliberate in describing the Saka and Rice situation as ‘narrative’. Because that’s what this has been since they were sent home; we’ve all known they’ve been in the fabled ‘red zone’ for a while, but there are corners of the British press who hunt for stories and mischief-making angles, regardless of the reality. The reality is that the England manager has realised there is no benefit in risking these players breaking down with a few months of the season to go, so playing them in a meaningless friendly and risking a fatigue injury that could keep them out for a few months benefits absolutely nobody.

I do think the Noni Madueke situation probably strengthened Arsenal’s hand a little in telling the England camp that it might be best to return. Thankfully, Tuchel confirmed yesterday that it doesn’t seem that bad, and we got a HandOfArsenal message on the socials last night that also confirmed it. Apparently, he’s aiming for Sporting/Bournemouth and given one’s first thought when they see a player in a knee brace after the game is that his season is ‘done’, this is a real bonus. Eze too, in that same message, was thought to be hopeful he could return earlier than is expected. I suspect they’ll be looking to see if they can have him ready to play a part in the City game, and if that is the case, then that too is a bit of a bonus. I don wonder if that means that Odegaard might get more minutes this weekend coming that I originally thought, but let’s save that prep for the Easter weekend countdown.

For now, I will bid you adieu for the day, and I’ll be back tomorrow as we start to look ahead at that Southampton match up and hopefully the healthy return of those players still with their respective international teams.

Laters peeps.

At this point, you just have to laugh. Because the latest guy to return to London Colney is Pierro Hincapie, who limped off against Morocco on 72 minutes, and I have to wonder what the actual eff he was still doing on the pitch at that moment. If he’s playing 45 to 60 minutes, I guess you have to say ‘fine’, but he’s on the pitch until the 72nd minute, and given he’s one of the best players for Ecuador, one has to wonder what the point of this was. Does the coach need to get an extra look at him? Of course not. This was pointless and now we have ourselves another player who could be crocked.

Honestly, at this point, it is just farcical. And then I check the sports websites and newspapers to read that Martin Zubimendi has also now been withdrawn with a knee injury.

What the frigg is going on?

These players should never have been called up to these pointless international friendlies. They should have been told that their place is secure and they should be resting up.

Of course, you now have a raft of opposition fans who are bleating about Arsenal withdrawing their players, but as a team, we are still fighting in three competitions, and these players are clearly knackered, so this should have been a decision taken out of their hands. All of them should have been told that they were fine to stay at home and not report for training. The only players who should have been called up are those who need the minutes. The White’s, the Norgaard’s, the Havertz’s – all fine. But Zubimendi? No way he should have been told to report.

And for those idiots who are now blasting out YouTube and TikTok videos calling this a disgrace – you’re a new level of moron. The players, and the clubs themselves, have to provide medical information for those players who are called up by their international sides. They have to show where knocks exist. The Spanish FA has even mentioned discomfort in the knee for Zubimendi; he’s teetering on the edge, and they’ve sent him back to Arsenal.

People are citing Ferguson, but we live in a different age now, because there has to be medical evidence for withdrawing from international duty. There is an obligation by the clubs, probably because of managers like Fergie, who have gamed the system for years and now we find a situation where players are reporting for duty when it is clearly in their interest to be resting up.

So now we have an ‘official’ injury list (in brackets because I think some players are due to come back, but that just hasn’t been confirmed yet) that includes:

• Timber
• Saliba
• Gabriel
• Hincapie
• Zubimendi
• Rice
• Eze
• Odegaard
• Saka
• Madueke
• Trossard

Just 11 players, at the most critical point in the season, who could be out. And the problem we all have as worried Arsenal fans, is that when Arteta does his pre-Southampton press conference, we’re either getting no information from him, or confirmation that a ton of players are out.

This game next weekend feels like it might now be one that Arteta basically throws by rotating out a lot of the above. And do you know what will happen if he does that? He’ll get accused of disrespecting the FA Cup.

Ludicrous.

Away from that though, because I’m beginning to sound like a broken record, I find it interesting that the discussions over Man City and the 115 charges have resurfaced over the last few days. And I thought the discussion that Tom Canton popped up on the Football London website was interesting yesterday. And I agree with Tom about his assertion on a possible points deduction happening towards the end of the season. Because if we do what we all hope we will do and win the league (fingers crossed, touch wood, etc, etc), that last thing you want is the 115 Charges being used against us to asterisk any kind of title.

Ultimately, none of us will care if we win the league, but it would be annoying to see this all unfold just at the point at which we want to be celebrating. Utopia for me would be for us to win the league, then the 60-point deduction to be applied for next season. Let’s have City start off at the bottom of the table and go from there in 2026/27, because I want a purity about the Premier League win, however, come back to me after the Bournemouth and City games, because if we lose both of those I think I’ll be taking that deduction buffer!

There’s not a lot else going on right now, so I think I’ll park any further thoughts for today. I’ll be back on the Same Old Arsenal pod tonight, as Amanda and I are doing a bit of an international break check-in, so if you fancy joining us at 5.45 pm UK time, you can do so here. Otherwise, I’ll leave you all be for today and catch you again tomorrow, when we learn that Raya has broken his fingers whilst in training for Spain.

But Saka? And Rice?

Apparently, according to the official England Football website, it is for ‘medical assessment.’ Now, there are two ways in which this has gotten to this point:

1. The players picked up knocks in England training and therefore the club and Thomas Tuchel have to send them back
2. Mikel Arteta and Arsenal have sh*t a brick at the news of Noni and has told Tommy T to pull them from the game.

I pray, for the love of all that is good and holy in the world, that we are talking about scenario 2 here. Because if it is one, then the list I spelled out in yesterday’s blog, just got really scary indeed. In fact, if those two are added to those who have knocks right now, we’re almost at the point of being able to field a full XI of injured players, such are the question marks that will now surround the Arsenal squad going into that game at Southampton on Saturday night.

I really hope to god that Arteta was like “nope, not happening, get your arses to Colney, NOW”

I’m also now playing a bit of a game in my head, which includes trying to imagine what the starting XI would be at Southampton at this moment in time, if none of the current players who are fit could play. The back line is pretty do-able, but it’s when we get to the front line that I have to really think about how we plug the gaps:

Kepa

White   –   Mosquera   –   Hincapie   –   Lewis-Skelly

Norgaard

Dowman   –   Havertz

Harriman-Annous   –   Jesus   –   Martinelli

That’s not even an ideal team, to be honest with you, because we ideally want to be easing White, Hincapie, Havertz, and Martinelli back, given they have all been away with their respective international teams. White broke down the last time we overplayed him, but I think you’d have to earmark the Southampton game as one in which he should play, because surely Arteta will have Timber earmarked for Sporting away and Bournemouth at home. Those are the two bigger games out of the next three, with all due respect to Southampton and the FA Cup. You could argue that we have a second bite of the cherry in Sporting Lisbon, given it is a two-legged affair, but I think Arteta is going to want all players fit and available for that and Bournemouth. So I think this news about Saka and Rice is one that will mean we probably won’t see them on Saturday. I think I’m fine with that. It will have meant that by the time the Sporting game comes along, Rice and Saka will have had 16 days off from playing football. Hopefully that is enough time for them to have rested an recouperated, because as much as Saka has been in and out of form this season, he is still one of our best players. With Noni no doubt out for a while now (let’s be honest, we’re all waiting for the Athletic scoop telling us his season is over), keeping him fit is even more important.

When I look at the others in that team that I’ve picked as a possible lineup for Saturday:

• Mosquera hasn’t played a ton of football (he’s got 1,400+ minutes this season so far in all comps), so he’s fine to come in, and he’ll be buoyed by his international debut
• Hincapie too, was injured at the start of the season – he’s just over 2,000+ minutes this season
• Lewis-Skelly and Norgaard will be fine
• Dowman will be looking to impress
• Jesus has been a bit-part player for some time
• Harriman-Annous has just 86 minutes all season
• Martinelli has been second to Trossard of late, so he might be alright

So it really is just Havertz, Hincapie, and White that I’d be keeping an eye on, fitness-wise, and all three have games still to play. Let’s just cross everything that nothing happens to any of them.

Anyway, let’s not end on a negative, let’s end on a positive note today. And that positive was an Arsenal heritage scoreline, as the ladies beat The Scum ladies 5-2, with an Alessia Russo hat-trick to down the tiny Tottenham. This wasn’t the hairy-scary performance that the men delivered two years on the trot back in the day, though. The ladies were two goals up within 10 minutes, then given an absolute gift by the Spurs keeper to make it 3-1. It was the very definition of a ‘Spursy’ bit of goalkeeping, that. It’s good to see that the ladies know how to conduct themselves against the old enemy – that’s by battering them wherever they go. Good work ladies. That’s 13 goals scored in the men’s and women’s leagues this season. Love it.

Right, I’m going to leave it there, I think. Have yourselves a wonderful Sunday, and I’ll be back tomorrow with some more thoughts.

I didn’t watch the game (because why would I bother?), but having listened to Tuchel on Thursday, I think most of us knew the sort of treatment he’d get. The media have played their part in this, too, big time, I’m afraid. It’s people like Henry Winter who have felt compelled to make comments like this, or Martin Samuel of The Times, quoting:

England fans like winning, but they still don’t like players who walk out on the team at a World Cup.

Well, Martin, you of all people know the story behind the reasons for Ben’s exodus, and you know very well that Ben White just didn’t suddenly wake up one day and decide he didn’t like England anymore. The good folks over at The Daily Cannon have reposted this yesterday, which I think is worth a link to. Steve Holland is clearly an idiotic, archaic, “Proper Football Man” the likes Yer Da would love. Go back to the late 80s, mate, football ain’t for you anymore.

That Telegraph article from the time leaves a few bits out, but there are also rumours that White didn’t want to discuss tactics of Arsenal whilst in an England camp, whilst the City players didn’t mind, which also sounds very plausible. But the very fact that Ben has come back into this England team and scored that goal, you’d hope that everyone will just drop it. But let’s just see, shall we?

AS for our other involvement on the night, of course we have another injury as a result of f*cking international football, as Madueke was seen after the game in a knee brace, having gone off on 39 minutes. Honestly, these f*cking internationals during the season can just f*ck the f*ck off. I’m sick of them. Players get chewed up and spat back to their clubs to deal with the fallout. With Eze likely to be out for at least another three weeks according to reports, it means that once again we’ll have to become over-reliant on players. And that has been happening all season. Odegaard is out, so Eze comes in. Eze gets injured just as Odegaard goes down. Timber plays all the time and gets injured, then White comes in and gets overplayed. It’s a never-ending cycle when you have players who keep going down. I was wondering about whether this is now worse than last season or not, so I took a little look at the ‘absences’ chart on TransferMarkt for last season and this season. I’m not counting what I would call ‘youth’ players, but perhaps any player who has played more than three times in a season. Last season we had a total squad absence of 196 match-day absences across the squad in the Premier League alone. This season so far we have lost 144 absences. From last year 37 of those 196 were because of Tomiyasu who was basically in the squad on registration only. So if you take him out, last season we had 159 by the end of the season. Depending on how long some of the current injured players are out for, we could eclipse last season, which I dubbed “The Cursed Season,” when we were in it by the end. It’s so frustrating. We just can’t catch a break and, from a position about a week ago where we had an almost fit squad bar Odegaard and Merino, the current list of players absent who have an injury is:

1. Saliba
2. Gabriel
3. Merino
4. Odegaard
5. Eze
6. Trossard

Hopefully, some of those are just knocks, and we see players returning next week, and the noises are that Odegaard will be back, but still, this is silly now.

Elsewhere, Havertz got 63 minutes and came off along with Leroy Sane on 63 minutes, as Germany beat Switzerland 4-3, so that says to me, I think he’s fine. Hopefully, Nagelsmann is sensible and keeps him on the bench for their next game. Rodri played 77 minutes in their 3-0 win over Serbia, and Zubimendi came on for the Man City knobhead, and it wouldn’t surprise me to see that switch around for their game against Egypt on Tuesday. Ideally, you want him to play no part, but clearly, he’s getting on the pitch. Kudos, though, for Cristhian Mosquera, who made his international debut last night as an 83-minute sub. 100% deserved for a player who has stunned us all with just how good he is this season, and I don’t think many Arsenal fans aren’t delighted for him this morning.

There was no place for Raya, though, which I have to say, is a bit bloody weird if you ask me. I know I don’t watch enough football, but the little I have seen of Unai Simon kind of baffles me, that our chap isn’t the main man between the sticks. I know Simon is good with the ball, but better than Raya? And in terms of shot-stopping? Is he really as elite as Raya has shown himself to be? A quick search online tells me his weaknesses are that he has lapses of concentration, technical errors in ball control and his handling is at times questioned. There’s also this article here that suggests that many believe Raya or Garcia should be the number one.

Still, at least it reduces the chances of injury to David, which is important given how much of a delta we’ve seen between him and Kepa very recently, of course.

The other guy that got minutes from our squad yesterday was Pierro Hincapie, who came off on 72 minutes, in clearly an effort from the Ecuadorian boss to appease Arteta. Good man management because the way things are going right now with injuries, I fully expect to hear that Calafiori didn’t last the first 45 in Italy’s play-off game on Tuesday night.

Look at that – I’ve managed to write 1,000 words about Arsenal players, and now I’m grumpy. I should probably leave it there. Hopefully, some kind of good news story can come out from the Athletic or somewhere, because it feels like we need it.

Catch you all tomorrow kids.

So I want to take this moment to offer a public apology to all of you guys who read my ramblings regularly: I have let you all down.

I went Uber-positive on Sunday’s blog. It was a break from the norm. I am an apprehensive Arsenal fan. I always have been since the 2006 Champions League final. I went into that so convinced we would win it. Then it broke me when we didn’t. So I turned to pessimism to protect myself and my emotions from that level of heartbreak. I figured if I think about the worst-case scenario in my head, then if/when it happens, I will be prepared for it anyway. If the best thing happens and Arsenal win, I am doubly happy about it because I didn’t expect it.

For the second time that happened to me, which is in my head, you have to fast-forward 13 years to the 2019 Europa League final. I was convinced that we were beating Chelsea. They had already qualified for the Champions League, they had that ridiculous EFL Cup final in which Kepa (I know, I know) had refused to come off, and then they lost on penalties. They, of course, wanted to win something, but our need was greater, so I was convinced our design would get us over the line. Oh, and we had MR Europa League in Unai Emery too.

We all know how that went.

On Sunday, I had that same conviction, but we all know how that went. And I don’t want to labour the point here too much, but as the dust was settling and we were starting to all think yesterday “it’s fine, we have three more competitions to go for”, the Football Gods decided to clearly read my blog and go “ooh man, we’re are screwing you royally for this”. By ‘the’, I of course mean my proclamation on yesterday’s blog:

My hope is that we don’t get any wind of news that any of the injuries that are sustained are long-term. If we’re talking players needing a solid 10 – 14 days rest to recover, then happy days – for once, an international break has come at the right time.

Famous last words, eh? Because yesterday Sami Mokbel dropped on us this afternoon, and I found myself thinking “for f*cks sake, why does this sort of sh*t always happen to us?”

I do feel like ever since we had the 2023/24 season of various media pundits saying things like “yeah, well, they haven’t had any injuries” in reference to our good form that season, we’ve had one after the other. It’s certainly coming on 18 months of injury after injury. And this one is a particularly bitter pill to swallow because:

1. Eze was starting to find some form
2. Odegaard was able to recover from injury without being rushed back
3. We have been told – and are seeing that with our own eyes – that Spring is when he comes alive.

If the timeframes are right, then we are looking at him being out until probably the Newcastle game at the earliest, and with two months of the season left, he’s missing half of it. It’s a massive blow for a player who has been so clutch for us in recent weeks and I feel has started to see his place in the team, delivering end-product with it as well.

The positive, as Sami says in the article, is that Odegaard appears to be back in training, and the club now has at least another 10 days with which to get minutes in his legs at London Colney. Whether or not he goes straight into the team for Southampton needs to be carefully looked at, though, because he’s hardly built up a cadence of games to suggest he’ll be fine to play on Saturday night and then Tuesday night against Sporting Lisbon. This season alone, according to TransferMarkt, he has missed:

• 37 days and seven matches due to a knee problem
• Eight days and two matches due to a knee problem
• 10 days and two matches due to a muscle injury
• 53 days and eight games due to a knee injury
• 13 days and six games due to a shoulder injury

Our captain has missed a total of 121 days, with five injuries and 22 games this season. Arsenal have played 50 matches so far. So Odegaard has missed 44% of ALL matches we’ve played this season. The worry now, with Eze’s injury, is that we are going to be reliant on a guy who has shown that he’s susceptible to injury all season for basically two seasons now. Last season, he missed 15 games in total. So whilst I love him, I think an Odegaard in top form is integral to the way we play, it does feel like we haven’t seen that very much at all this season and I also think it is going to take him time to get back any kind of form and rhythm.

If I’m trying to look at the positives here, I could say that we have other options. But they aren’t fully tested and, frankly, they haven’t exactly delivered amazing results. At the weekend, we had Kai in that midfield role, but after he signed and then switched to playing up front, we all spent the time saying that he wasn’t a midfielder and didn’t do that job as well. He wasn’t great on Sunday, although he’s still coming back from injury, so he’s building his fitness up after a year out. Saka centrally has the possibility of being exciting on paper, but his form is such that we haven’t seen too much of what his potential is for that role and on the weekend, he wasn’t great in it before Noni came on either. That could be the circumstance of that situation; we were just abject on Sunday in that second half anyway, so perhaps we just have to accept that and move on. Perhaps Saka could be something that works there, but with the season reaching a crescendo, it’s hardly optimal that we’re discussing untested options at such a crucial time.

As I said yesterday, and I’ve quoted above, perhaps the other good news is that Arteta and his coaching staff have the next 10 days to think of how they react to this Eze injury, and how they plan an approach that will get Martin Odegaard’s engine up and running again. We are going to need him, plus some of the other options I’ve mentioned, between now and the end of the season for sure.

Catch you all tomorrow.

Of course, there are two sides to this coin, with an upside and a possible downside. I don’t believe that Arsenal could get away with just chatting to international managers this close to the World Cup, and having an almost unanimous verdict from most that they will leave players at home because their World Cup places are secured. So, whilst the tone of today’s blog will be “good, players will get some rest”, I do think we have some knocks to be worried about.

For example, Big Gabi is not going to Brazil, good stuff. But the statement from the Brazilian FA, which talked about imaging showing that he has a problem in his knee, that’s bad stuff. I’m going to choose the upside, though, which is that the statement from the Brazilian FA also said that what is required is a period of rest to recover, and we certainly have that.

Our next ‘big’ game is against Sporting. Southampton in the FA Cup is important, but let’s get some real talk going here; if we have to, we have to play a heavily rotated team to get those first-teamers rested. The Southampton game is Saturday, 4th April. As of today, that is 11 days away. Sporting Lisbon is 14 days away. A solid two weeks stand between us and our next big one. I want to win the FA Cup; I love going to Wembley for the semi and the final, but if it means we are risking players, then as of right now, I’m saying “nope” to players who are carrying knocks.

I want to see a myriad of warm-weather Instagram snaps from all of the players who have withdrawn from international duty this week. These players have all looked fatigued, Declan Rice even admitted to it post-Leverkusen, as I’ve already mentioned in a previous blog, so we just have to sit as many down on deck chairs and sun loungers as possible. No training, no heavy lifting of furniture or anything like that – tell the wife that the trip to Ikea will have to wait, as there are bodies that need healing ahead of the final part of this season.

Trossard, Eze, and Odegaard are all out. Big Gabi is out. Saliba has withdrawn from the French team. This ain’t no Fergie situation though; these days you have to provide evidence to support issues, so Arsenal and these respective players will have done just that. So the order of the day right now is that every single one of those players needs to stay at home, or get themselves on a plane to somewhere like Portugal – it’s 21 degrees and sunny in the Algarve this week – get yer arses on the golf course!

The worry from the weekend was the clear lack of a creative eight to collect the ball from the back four, but I’m less worried about that, because it sounds like Odegaard was back in training, so I suspect he’ll be staying in London Colney to build up his fitness. But I’m already thinking about that rotated XI over the Easter weekend and, based on needing to sit players down and rest them, here are my initial thoughts based on the little we know:

Kepa

White   –   Mosquera   –   Calafiori   –   Lewis-Skelly

Norgaard

Odegaard   –   Dowman

Madueke   –   Jesus   –   Martinelli

Give Kepa a chance to still feel part of the team after his howler and overall poor performance on Sunday. Ben White needs minutes; he’s not going to play all of the football for the international team, but he does need some minutes, and so this call-up will boost him, so that’s all good. Mosquera, too, hasn’t played a ton of football, plus he’ll have got his first international call-up, so he’ll be buzzing as well. Calafiiro need to build up his cadence and momentum, whilst we all know Myles hasn’t played enough. The same is true for Norgaard. Dowman is an X-factor player, and playing against a team a division down would be good for him, whilst Odegaard getting a solid 60 would be useful. Madueke for Saka feels like the right move, whilst Jesus in so you can have Gyokeres as full power against his old club, feels about right for me. Martinelli hasn’t been favoured for Trossard of late, but he and Jesus have those connections, so it makes sense.

I know it is just under two weeks away, but that lineup for 70 minutes means you don’t put too much into the legs of Zubi, Rice, Saka, Gyokeres, Saliba and Big Gabi. It means you keep Timber out, who hasn’t gone to the Netherlands, and so will also have had more than two weeks out by the time the Sporting game comes along.

My hope is that we don’t get any wind of news that any of the injuries that are sustained are long-term. If we’re talking players needing a solid 10 – 14 days rest to recover, then happy days – for once, an international break has come at the right time. But we need those players who are going – the likes of White, Calafiori, Saka, Rice, Zubimendi, Norgaard, etc – to all come back in one piece. Get through this set of international games, then come back and sit yerselves on the bench for the FA Cup.

It feels a little scary hearing those announcements of players withdrawing from international duty, but none of them feels like they are ‘big’ injuries. Areta’s diagnosis on Eze didn’t sound great, but even if he’s out for two weeks, as I’ve said above, the return of Odegaard is timely for our current situation and the current period we have for the next two weeks, including Southampton.

As the dust settles, I’m going to do more ‘vibes check’ posts about how I’m feeling, and sure, I need to see those Instagram snaps of players resting up. Until we get those, or rumours of players being ‘fine’ from Athletic articles where an agent has fed them some info, there will always be nerves. But as it stands, I’m pretty chilled about the situation.

Back tomorrow with some more thoughts.

First up, let’s give some credit to Mansfield, because they played the occasion well, they gave it their all against clearly superior opponents, whilst managing 18 attempts and five shots on target. And they got their moment of happiness through Evans’ equaliser on 50 minutes. It was a mistake by an otherwise decent 16-year-old Marli Salmon that led to the goal, perhaps Mosquera could have done better by reading the pass and not being flat-footed, but the finish was tidy, and for at least 16 minutes, it made for awkward watching as Mansfield held us at bay whilst also creating one or two chances.

We weren’t great at all as a collective, it has to be said, but we should also acknowledge the mitigating circumstances. The pitch was an absolute bog. There was grass in the corners, and that was about it. The argument of “both teams have to play on it though” doesn’t hold up for me; one team plays it every odd week (and probably more like it in League One), whereas the other essentially never plays on a pitch like that, and the fact we had two players come off with injury should probably give a bit of an indication on the state of it anyway. Thankfully, it sounds like both Trossard and Calafiori’s injuries are minor, with Mikel describing them as ‘little niggles’ afterwards.

That’s just as well, particularly in the case of Trossard, because based on Martinelli’s performance yesterday, he ain’t seeing his name on the team sheet on Wednesday night in Leverkusen, that’s for sure. There were some positive performances that I will get to, but Martinelli and Gabriel Jesus were absolutely shocking. I’ve already mentioned the issues with the pitch, but both of those players should have done more when they got the ball. Both were wasteful, both were hiding in plain sight at times, and in particular, I thought Jesus’ performance was an absolute shocker. We can all bemoan Gyokeres’ lack of involvement in games, but when the other option is a performance like that from a former Brazilian international footballer, you have to ask serious questions about the front line.

The attack, in general, just didn’t really click yesterday. Madueke got a fine goal, but he also lost a few balls in the car park, and it felt at times as if he was just coasting along in the game. His control was weak at times, which again could be the pitch. But he should have done more. Especially so when you have a 16-year-old kid in midfield who looked like he was running the show.

I thought Dowman was excellent. It’s a shame he didn’t score that early chance he got from the Mansfield keeper’s poor kick out, because I think if he had, this game might have ended up being a bit of a cricket score match. Often, you get these Sliding Doors moments, in which games shift, and after we didn’t score that early chance, Mansfield fashioned one or two of their own. Our setup – with three at the back – left far too much space for direct long balls in behind, and once or twice our back three were caught out by that direct long ball from deep when a transition happened. The injury that Trossard picked up – which sounded precautionary from what Arteta said – actually helped us I think, because it forced the change and shift to a back four, and you could tell straight away that the team were more comfortable with it. So much so that just three minutes after the change, we were ahead through Madueke, whose finish was very smart I thought. He’s such a frustrating player, is Madueke, because he spent half the game shanking balls into car parks, whilst the other half was spent beating his man (as James mentioned on the Same Old Arsenal pod we recorded this morning, sometimes too often, to be honest) and looking like he’s having a worldie. He was the brightest of the three forward players by some distance, so it was good for him to get on the score sheet, I thought.

At that point, I don’t know about you, but I was thinking we’d start to rack up the goals. But to their credit, Mansfield didn’t let their heads go down, and the goal they scored five minutes after the restart was a decent finish. Salmon won’t be too happy with his pass, Mosquesra was too hesitant, and Kepa will probably feel he could have kept that ball out of the net, but Evans struck it pure enough, and for 16 minutes those Mansfield fans had something to shout about.

Inevitably, Arteta had to make changes, which he did on 62, and just four minutes later, it had an impact. I was pleased that Havertz got 60 minutes under his belt, and we must be getting close to the moment in which he will start in a crunch game up top, but his replacement, Eze, showed that this is why people say it is this part of the season in which he comes alive. His finish was a rocket from the position you always want Eze to be when you think about how he can influence a game. James and I looked at some of the attackers and some of their goal contributions this season, and Eze isn’t actually performing that bad. He had eight goals and six assists now, and you’d probably say if he racks up 20+ Gs and As by the time the season finishes, then he’s had a good season. Alright, most of them are against the Scum, but they all count and you can’t deny he knows where the goal is. We need to see more of that between now and the end of the season, methinks, especially given Odegaard appears to be out for at least another week or two.

So we’re through into the next round, it’s another win, it’s goals 100 and 101 for the team this season and although it wasn’t an amazing performance, we were able to rest and rotate some players, as well as giving game time to others. It won’t be remembered as a classic, but we don’t need classics right now, we need results. We got that. On to Leverkusen in midweek.

Catch you all tomorrow.

So I think I’ll unload a little more of my concern with that impending two Premier League games on the horizon that, I think, might have a massive say in how we’re going to see the remainder of this season unfold. There’s a few reasons why I think this:

Building momentum back up again

We talked about this last night on the Same Old Arsenal pod, but my concern from the Brentford game didn’t come from that game in isolation. Instead, it comes from our 2026 form so far, which has been patchy. Draws to Liverpool and Forest, a defeat to Man United, and some sluggish football at times until we scored the first goals against Leeds and Sunderland. We haven’t looked as imperious as we did around November time. The defensive lapses, the lack of a creative spark, the injuries – all seem to be compounding themselves. So if we can go to Wolves and put on a good display, then follow that by any kind of victory – good or otherwise against the Scum, then I think that will be a massive adrenaline shot in the arm for this team. Declan Rice sounded kind of okay after that Brentford draw, and Mikel Arteta seemed calm, too, but those players must surely know that now is the time to go on the run. And unlike in 2023/24 when we all saw things sort of clicking in front of our eyes around this time, I’m not really getting that vibe right now. That has to change.

More away games knocked down

By the time we’ve played the Scum, we’ll have 10 games left, with six home games and four away. That feels good. That those games include a North London Derby and a Brighton side that are always decent against us feels less splendid, which is why I think these next two away games feel massive for us. We have been good at home, you’d hope that we could win all of those home games. I think with 12 games to go, we probably need to win 10 of the 12 to pretty much secure it. Maybe we could get away with nine. If we win our six home games (fingers crossed), then you’re talking about three away wins needed. If we beat Wolves, then go to the Toilet Bowl and also somehow pick up a win there, I will be in a much better place than where my nerves are at the moment, because it will feel like we’re back on track and getting there. Win the next two Premier League away games, then you would say that West Ham away should be winnable and then you have to go to Brighton and get something. IF we do that, then even a defeat at the Etihad is fine if we keep up our good home form. I get it, lots of ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’, but at a time like this, I am trying to sanitise the emotional side by thinking about the practical elements of what we need to do and where we need to get our points.

Marker in a big game (NLD)

If City’s win at Anfield was the shot in the arm they needed to kick-start the run, the North London Derby could be the same for us. Don’t let The Scum’s terrible home form fool you, they will not play like the team who have been a shambles in front of their own fans all season. I am going to be super nervous ahead of this one, because this game feels like it has more riding on it than ever before at that horrendous Toilet Bowl of a stadium. They have a new guy in charge in Igor Tudor and when you look at what he’s tended to be pretty good at in Italy, it is breathing life into teams at this stage in the season. He can’t manage for any prolonged period of time, he falls out with owners and staff, he gets binned after he’s done an escape job when he first comes in, but he has been able to inject a bit of something into any team he’s joined. For the Scum, that ‘New Manager Bounce’ is needed more than anything and I really fear that. And I don’t think that will go away as we get closer to that match.

Their fans simply won’t stand for performances like Newcastle a few days ago. Those players know they basically need to leave everything out there next Sunday. We need to be ready for it.

If I’m thinking about a positive upside, it is that they are decimated with injuries right now. There’s no Romero because of his sending off, but they are also expected to be missing Odobert, Maddison, Kulusevski, Bentancur, Kudus, Davies, Bergvall, Udogie, Danso, plus they are sweating on the fitness of Richarlison and Porro. If both of those players are confirmed to be out…well…if they weren’t the Scum you’d sort of feel sorry for them. We’ve had our fair share of injuries this season, but that’s a decimation. One just hopes that we do actually step up with all of those injuries and we don’t get the old Neil Mellor syndrome that haunted us all those years ago.

Right, I think I’ll leave it there for today. Still got more work to do, so will get back on with my chores before I treat the missus to the football tomorrow.

Catch you then for a match preview.

I watched the first part of the Villa v Brentford game before heading off for some dinner, so I didn’t see Villa stumble in the second half, then when I got back I saw that the Scum were rolling over and having their bellies tickled by Man City. I commented on social media that there’s no way in hell they’ll be as bad as that when we play them in a couple of weeks’ time, but I guess City must have felt that in the game as a whole. Because imagine my surprise to see that, once again, we’ve gained ground on those closest to us with both City and Villa dropping points.

Six points clear. Feels good, eh?

And yet, this morning as I was doing my run, I couldn’t help but think about how glorious this could all be if we hadn’t wobbled a little bit in previous weeks. I know, I know, that kind of thinking can send a football fan mad. But I just replayed that 0-0 with Forest and the 3-2 with United in my head again and again and started to dream about the parallel universe in which we’re now 11 points clear with 14 games to go.

But we’re in this one, we’re still six points clear, we’ve restored a bit more distance compared to last weekend, and when next weekend comes around, we play before City to make it nine points. They have a hard game away at Liverpool, so the hope for next weekend will be that the Scousers can at least do something, because I would Kevin Keegan-esque “love it” if we can get a little further ahead again.

We’re going to do it with Merino, though, who the club confirmed yesterday had gone through surgery and will be out for ‘an extended period’. They said that he’d be back to training before the end of the season, but that statement says to me he’d probably be done until at least April, by which time even getting back to full fitness means he’ll most likely only be a bit-part player for us between now and May.

That’s a real blow. He is a scorer of big goals. He scored to equalise against United last weekend. He scored to equalise against Newcastle at St James’ Park, plus the equaliser at Stamford Bridge. He is an aerial presence. He is a guy who is a dual winner, and I think in the fullness of time we’ll look back at him as one of those real unsung players of the Arsenal squad under Arteta. He kind of reminds me a bit of Ray Parlour under Wenger. Ray was never what you’d call a regular; if you think about that XI that was the Invincibles starting XI, we can all reel off the names. But Ray isn’t one of those names. And yet he was a guy who always played plenty of football (he made 37 appearances in 2003/4), always got goals (think the FA Cup final against Chelsea in 2002) – and often big goals too – and we all loved him. Merino feels like that kind of guy who can always be relied upon, and if we win trophies this season, he will absolutely have earned his medals. Mikel Merino has made 33 appearances, scored six goals, and made three assists. He’s a vital cog in Mikel Arteta’s squad, and the manager will be frustrated at yet another injury for us, just when the full bill of health was there for him. There have even been calls to get him playing up top with our other forwards misfiring, such is the value that we, as Arsenal fans, have all started to realise he has. He’s a difficult one to read because he doesn’t fit into a specific ‘style’ (traditional striker, duel-winner, technical passer, etc) but instead kind of does a little bit of everything well. He even filled in at six recently, so you can tell why Arteta absolutely loves him – he’s a ‘plug-and-play’ footballer.

Speedy recovery, Mikel.

The other question we’ll be waiting on – which I’d imagine we’ll find out today when Mikel has his press conference ahead of tomorrow night’s League Cup Semi Final- is the fitness of Bukayo Saka. Arteta described it as a ‘little niggle‘ after the game, and I would hope that ifthat’s still the case, we resist the temptation to play him tomorrow night. He’s not a player – despite his lack of goals of late – who we can afford to have out for too long. Madueke was good on Saturday, it’s great that he has been credited with his goal from a corner, but we’ve all seen his lack of consistency and so I just worry that whilst he will be good over short bursts of matches, to rely on him for any prolonged period of time might cause us issues.

Martinelli could be an option on the right too and he did well with the assist for Big Vik’s goal on Saturday. But he’s flattered to deceive over previous attempts on the right so, again, I’m not sure it’s a viable solution. Hopefully, they were just taking precautions for Saka and he’s good for at least Sunderland next weekend. We need him.

I’ll leave it there for today. I’m on holiday in the Maldives for this week, so I’m going to get out to that beach and cook myself for a bit. Have yourselves a good one, whatever you’re doing, guys and gals.

All this preamble is to say that, from an Arsenal perspective, thankfully, there isn’t a ton of stuff going on. We’ve got the game on Thursday, for which the build-up probably really only starts tomorrow in the media, but the club and players will have been preparing for that since yesterday I suspect. Light training, followed by video sessions and a look at how Liverpool have been playing, but also how they played against us earlier in the season. I remember watching a video of interviewers outside the ground in the aftermath of that match, and it was Liverpool fans explaining how easy it was, how it was typical negative Arsenal, that they got what they deserved, etc, etc, blah, blah.

The reality was that on that day, both teams really spent a fair bit of time shadow-boxing one another. Liverpool were mindful of our threat and strengths, but we were equally mindful of both our poor record at Anfield, as well as the quality of the opponent. It was so early in the season, too, that nobody could really look at the result and say in what direction the season would unfold. It was still match week three, but that didn’t stop Liverpool fans parroting things like “same old negative and defensive Arsenal”; when in fact their team had been just as defensive. Now, half of them seem to want Slot gone, whereas we’re in a good space – albeit a precarious one with City still on our tails ahead of another set of midweek fixtures.

I guess that’s the thing about this time of the season; larger points leads might feel lovely, but when you are at a stage of the season in which they can be quickly eroded because of the frequency of matches, it can be a bit of a misnomer. We could quite easily drop points to what is still a very good Liverpool side, whilst City will probably still win against a Brighton side who have won just one game (against Burnley) in their last seven. If we lose to Liverpool at home, they beat Brighton at home, suddenly the online and media discourse flips all over again, and City are ‘chasing Arsenal down’ having had two matchweeks in which we’ve gathered a bit of distance whilst they have dropped points. City also plays 24 hours earlier too, so whilst we’ve been able to strike the earlier psychological blow with our wins, the boot will be on the other foot by the time we kick off on Thursday, I suspect.

I’ll start doing the usual stuff ahead of the game on Thursday from tomorrow, but for no,w a quick scan on what else is happening in the Arsenal world doesn’t really bring up too much. I saw that HandOfArsenal has said we’re after some lad from Blackburn, but for me personally, that’s not piquing too much interest because of: 1) his age and ability to impact the first team right now (one for the future), and 2) the depth of the squad we already have. It’s so interesting because I think this is the first ever window – January or summer – in which I’ve genuinely not wanted us to sign a single player. It’s a weird – but good – feeling not to be saying “we’re just short in these one or two areas”, which has felt like something Arsenal fans have been saying since…well…the whole concept of transfer windows was introduced over 20 years ago. Man, that makes me feel old, because I remember when clubs could just sign players whenever they wanted to…

But it’s a nice feeling to know that this squad is stocked with such good talent and with the news of the return of Havertz meaning that I think we might only just have Mosquera and Dowman injured in the squad if Calafiori is back fit, then you look at our strength at the busiest time of the year and it feels one’s heart with glee.

Imagine being able to field a second string against Portsmouth that includes Kepa, White, Hincapie, Calafiori, Lewis-Skelly, Norgaard, Merino, Eze, Madueke, Jesus and Martinelli and STILL be scratching your head about how to fit in a returning Havertz and young prodigy Nwaneri into it. Yes. Please.

And this is all whilst City appear to be having mounting injuries to their team, with Gvardiol confirmed to have had a fractured tibia in his leg, as well as Ruben Dias out too. I’m sure when we were facing the injury crisis that saw us go to Villa without Gabriel or Saliba, the City fans had plenty of sympathy for us (not), so you’ll permit me to hold on to mine, given they will just probably go and spunk £0 – £40million on Guehi to alleviate their problems at the back. When that happens, as I saw somebody suggest, it will mean City will have spent more than £500million in a calendar year on players. I seem to recall plenty of online City fans crowing a year ago about how much Arsenal had spent with Mikel Arteta during his tenure, whereas they’d won their titles having hardly spent a bean in recent years. Arteta has spent £900million+, but he’s done it in six years – an average of £150million per year. Where are you online City fans now, eh? Because your chequebook manager has been flexing his financial muscles, so don’t come to me with your chirping about ‘net spend’ now if City go and drop a wedge of cash for Palace’s captain. I won’t hear any sob stories from 115 FC, that’s for sure.

Ok I think that’ll do it from me for today. I need to get cracking for another day of desk jockeying, so I’ll catch you all tomorrow as we start to look ahead to that big Liverpool game on the horizon. See you then.

Who’s our ‘red hot’ form player right now?

I’m not sure we have one. You could argue that Declan Rice has been amazing and yes, he certainly has delivered some imperious performances in the heart of our midfield, but I’m not sure I would describe it as being in ‘red hot’ form – would you?

Perhaps there’s a positive angle to spin on this, because it’s just that Rice has been so brilliant, so consistently, all season, that you don’t think of his form being that amazing – he’s just always amazing and on Saturday evening I think there’s a big argument to be made that he was our best player and the best one on the pitch. He just oozes class and the way I watch him glide through games is phenomenal. I love seeing him pick the ball up, turn one way, then the other, then just stride out away from players as we move up the pitch. Seeing him gallop away is just brilliant and I think Gary Neville is probably right to say “if they lose Rice they might have some problems”.

However, why isn’t anyone saying that about Haaland or Rogers? Is it because Haaland basically never seems to get injured? He plays pretty much all of the time and is pretty much always available. But then so is (and I can assure you I am touching wood as I type this) Declan Rice, most of the time. He has missed some pweriods but up until this point he hasn’t been out of the Arsenal team for any prolonged period. I just had a look at Morgan Rogers’ injury record and guess what? He’s also hardly ever injured, having missed 27 days and three matches for Villa two season’s back in 2023/24. It appears these current ‘streak’ players also have that ability to stay fit in their locker too.

I think what it also points to, which is probably symptomatic of our season, is that our ‘red hot streak’ player isn’t one who is bagging goals at the top end of the pitch. Rice has two goals and six assists so far, which is a decent return, but I think we probably need to see one of our forwards hit some kind of ‘streak’ form in the coming weeks. I think if you were to ask any Arsenal fan who that is most likely to be, we’d all point to Bukayo Saka, who so far this season has seven goals and four assists in all competitions. He has missed 26 days and six games for us which, given his consistent form throughout his Arsenal career so far, feels like he would have a better G+A tally if he were fit for those games, but as we reach the halfway point in the season, I’d be lying if I were to say to you that I thought he would be on those numbers and not many more. He’s our Starboy, he’s the one we often look to for end product and he is the one who last season still got 12 goals and 14 assists whilst also missing 25 games in all competitions for Arsenal and England. If you do the ratios on it and extrapolate up what those extra 25 games would have given us in a season if he were to have stayed fit, the numbers suggest he’d have been on course for 20 goals and 24 assists last season. This season he’s trending at just under 20 goals and 11 assists if he gets around the 60-game mark. We’re at the halfway stage and he’s played 22 so far, so that suggests he probably won’t get there, but if we go deep in multiple competitions, he might get close to 50.

What do all of these numbers tell me? I think it suggests that even Saka, for all of his end product and what he’s done so far, is probably a little bit behind what we’d hope for from this season. And that probably rings true when you think about how we haven’t been swatting teams aside much. We’ve become a low-scoring side in a low-scoring sport and Saturday night was another example of that. We had the chances to double our lead, but we didn’t quite take them.

Is it a cause for concern? Maybe. I don’t think our attack has looked amazing this season and some of that could be down to the shiny new forward who doesn’t play like any previous forward we’ve had. But I also think we do need more from our wide forwards too. We haven’t quite seen enough that unlocks teams and the only one that has been continuing his good form throughout this season is Trossard. But we need others now. It’s that time of the season where I need to see more from Martinelli, more from Madueke, more from Eze and more from Saka too as I’ve mentioned.

There’s no need for a panic up, because we’re top of the league, but it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t all be voicing any issues if we feel them. We have time, we have the quality of players, we have the manager who has shown the ability to solve these puzzles. And that work needs to start as soon as possible.

I think I’ll leave it there for today. Arteta will have his press conference today ahead of Palace tomorrow night, so I’ll have a run through and preview that this time tomorrow. Catch you then.

Thierry Henry – you are a true legend.

Back in today’s world of Arsenal now and last night we got some news filtering through that despite Kai Havertz being rumoured to have been targeting a return to first team football before the year is out in the next few games, he has apparently had another setback which will see him out until mid-January. At this point you just have to laugh at this. It is crazy the level of injuries we’ve had to deal with and then when you see details like this emerging from Sky Sports about the volume of injuries since the beginning of last season, you have to wonder if our ‘injury curse’ has basically just carried on from last year. Last season I called it The Cursed Season but you look at that chart and realised that you might even call this one that same situation too. In that same time Man City have had 18 fewer injuries, whilst Liverpool have had 33 fewer injuries and so it is actually a remarkable feat that we’re still in there fighting for the title, let alone leading the table going in to match week 15.

Havertz’s setback means that he’ll essentially have missed half the season through injury; it’s a bitter blow for a player who hardly ever got injured before last season and who Arteta described as a ‘machine’ just before he picked up his knock. And given his injury last season, as well as his injury this season, I am starting to wonder if we will ever get back the same Havertz. He might come back fully fit, for sure, but we have all heard stories about the psychology of players being out for so longer and never really fully recovering mentally for it. Robert Pires famously always seemed to run a little differently after his injury, I’m pretty sure Rosicky has talked about the impact of these injuries that kept him out for a long time, so what sort of player will Havertz be when he gets back?

Hopefully he can find his old form from when he was fit, because at the start of the season I seem to recall saying on one of the Same Old Arsenal pods that he was on course for a 20-goal season in the early stages of the season. He played 36 games in 2,800+ minutes last season and had racked up 15 goals in all competitions. I’m pretty sure he’d have got to 20 with another 15 games that season to do it. So it was a real shame when and how we loist him and it’s been a massive shame how we haven’t seen him since the opening day against United.

What his extended absence does do is give Gabriel Jesus a chance though. I think for sure he’ll get some more sub minutes against Everton tomorrow, but then I also think that he’ll get a start against Palace. If he can come through 60 or 70 minutes against the Eagles, then I’m 100% convinced that he’ll be making a start in one of the Christmas fixtures, which is not something I think any of us thought at the beginning of the season. His return to the team means we have cover and options to rotate in the absence of Havertz providing the Brazilian doesn’t have an impact, which feels massive, given the context of these next few weeks, as well as the calibre of opponents.

And that run of tough games starts tomorrow away to Everton, which as I mentioned yesterday, isn’t a place that we’ve had such a great time of inj recent years (one win in our last seven). We then play two games over Christmas that we drew at home last season in Brighton and Villa. Let’s also not forget that this time of the year hasn’t always been a happy one for us; two season’s ago we lost at home to West Ham and then away at Fulham. Admittedly we then went on a mega-run of winning game-after-game, but the Christmas period has always felt like a slog for The Arsenal and I’d be lying if I said to you that I don’t have any apprehension. Man City have an easy time of it; a pretty shoddy West Ham team tomorrow who they will batter, followed by a Forest Team who are currently in 16th and have lost eight games, not exactly looking anywhere near the same side as last season, followed by a Sunderland team who despite being in eighth right now, aren’t exactly flying when it comes to underlying metrics. It feels to me like they’re running out of momentum a bit (even though they won the derby last weekend) and by the time they play City on New Year’s Day, I suspect the momentum and vibes they’ve been channelling will probably be running low.

So what all of this means is that at a period in which our rivals will most likely get an easy ride, we’ll have to conquer some demons. And do it with one of our star strikers missing when we thought we’d be getting him back. The hope is that we have ourselves some better news over the festive period at the back, with Big Gabby rumoured to be looking at one of the games over Christmas as a possible return date. If he’s back for Villa, that will be massive because it will mean we hopefully get that main central defensive pairing back up and running for the new year and with Bournemouth away and Liverpool at home on the horizon in January, having him return to the heart of our defence gives not only confidence amongst the fanbase, but also amongst the players as well I suspect. We’ve been able to cover so far, I think Hincapie has come in and done great and hopefully will continue to do so, but there is no substitute for Big Gabby and his return will be very eagerly anticipated for all associated with Arsenal.

I’ll do a bit on team news, Everton, what we might see tomorrow and more in tomorrow’s preview, but for now I’ll bid you farewell for another day and hope your Friday goes great.

Catch you all tomorrow.

That’s a lot of football.

And given our injury record this season, I totally get that he might be training indoors, on a ‘light’ set of training sessions this week because as the games come thick and fast over Christmas, losing him is not something we want to countenance. And he’s also going to have to do something he’ll have never done before having never played outside of Spain until this season: no winter break. La Liga shuts down on Tuesday until 2nd January and under normal circumstances Zubi might be back home and resting up any weary bones. But this season in that same period he could feasibly play four matches:

• Palace in the League Cup
• Brighton in the Premier League
• Villa in the Premier League
• Bournemouth in the Premier League

Alright, technically Bournemouth is on 3rd January, but this is still quite a schedule and not something the Spaniard will be used to. So for him to be taking it easy and the club being mindful of the change at this time of year is a sensible one. I do wonder if they will manage his minutes at all over Christmas too. If – crossing everything as I say this and hoping for Christmas miracles – we can be winning games by a sdecent margin, I suspect he might be a candidate for an early exit in games. We have Norgaard, we have Rice, it kind of makes sense. But these matches will all be tight affairs I suspect, so I am just hoping that we can be sensible and if players look like they are struggling, we get them off.

We need some to come back though. I thought I heard some rumours that Havertz is targeting the remaining December games to be fit and of course there are still opportunities for him to train this week, but I doubt he’ll make Everton. If we’re lucky he might be good for a cameo at home to Brighton on 27th December, but given he’s barely played any football in 2025 as a whole, I suspect his minutes will be managed until the new year. That means an opportunity still remains with Gyokeres and Gabriel Jesus and they have to see this period as an opportunity they have to take. We can’t be seeing games in which Gyokeres is having five or ten touches and barely any attempts on target. Yes, we need to feed him, but he also needs to be in those positions to be fed. And he needs to anticipate better like the Saka opportunity that came across the goal in the first half against Wolves.

There’s an onus on him, there’s an onus on our creative players to spot the runs, which I hope is one of the things they are looking at this week. I’ll start to do my previews of the Everton game tomorrow, but you’d expect Everton aren’t going to play “park the bus” football at home in front of their own fans on Saturday evening. They’ll want to show that they can mix it with anyone and with 24 points and sitting ninth in the table at the moment, they’ve shown they are no slouch as a team. They’ve beaten Forest, Bournemouth, United (with a man down), The Scum, as well as Brighton at home. There’s some decent results against decent teams in there so we will need to be properly wary of their threat.

We’ve also got a pretty terrible record there of late too. Last season it was a 1-1 draw, the season before that we picked up a scrappy 1-0, but in the five before that we’ve lost four and drew one. Everton have a good record at home against us and we need to address that on Saturday – won’t be easy with the evening kick off getting the home fans all riled up and intoxicated with the last league game before Christmas.

But Arsenal and Arteta have themselves another two days of prep before they travel up on Friday, so my hope is that they’ve done all their homework, some of those things that Arteta had said had “deteriorated” through not training can be reset, then we’re in the best possible shape to do the business come Saturday evening.

I’ll be back tomorrow as we start to look ahead in a little more detail on what Everton will bring to the table from a tactical and statistical perspective.

Catch you all then.

I watched a few bits of the City versus Palace game (although I mainly watched the Tyne-Wear Derby) and from the 20 – 30 minutes that I saw, I didn’t see a City side that ‘blew away’ Palace. In the cold light of day and looking only at the result you’ll see that 3-0 victory and say they are looking imperious, but I saw a Palace side who couldn’t finish their dinner, perhaps because they’d played in Dublin on Thursday night. I didn’t watch any of the West Ham v Villa game, but I looked at the data and it looked to me like Unai Emery doing ‘Unai things’ and we’ve all seen that before as Arsenal fans; the 22-game unbeaten run in his first season was littered with alarm bells and whilst Villa have been on a superb run and you have to give them credit for it, you cannot sustain your form with scoring three goings from your four shots in a match. Football just doesn’t work like that.

That’s the problem I think I have with in particular some sections of the football media – the results-based analysis that exists these days. People look at the results on paper and make sweeping statements. I haven’t had a look at the media narratives this morning (and I probably won’t) but I suspect there will be some corners of the press who will now have them as favourites. But against Fulham, against Leeds, then again yesterday against Palace, this City side were hanging on. Conversely this weekend, Arsenal delivered their worst performance of the year against a terrible Wolves side and that has led to a little bit of fretting amongst some of us Gooners. For me though, I’ve been a little more sanguine yesterday evening as I reflected, because I don’t believe that what we saw on Saturday night is reflective of this Arsenal team.

Heck, the data tells us otherwise, as well as the eye test on how we have been through over 20+ games so far this season and given it is that time of year, why note quote a bit of Marley from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol:

“Why do you doubt your senses?”

My senses tell me that Saturday was a terrible day at the office. It tells me that although we’ve had back-to-back of those if you include Villa in the league, this isn’t the Arsenal that I usually expect, whilst also telling me that we have been patching this team together for the best part of a month – maybe even two – now as we try to get over a perpetual injury crisis. I alluded to that ‘bad day at the office’ vibe on our early morning Same Old Arsenal pod yesterday morning when we were talking about why it went wrong and although I saw a few articles (including one from Football365 which suggested it was certainly NOT hallmark of champions with what we did this weekend) that were chastising us, I am prepared to let this slide because I think we have seen a more accurate representation of The Arsenal this season and it doesn’t look like Saturday’s hot mess.

A ‘hot mess’, by the way, that resulted in us still winning and still sitting top of the league by two points.

I also think that the manner of the results this weekend have impacted some of the psyche of the Arsenal fanbase. Hypothetically speaking, imagine if we’d have scored our two goals early, dominated the game against Wolves, then conceded in the last second to make it closer than it was. I think most Arsenals would shrug, say “meh, three points is all that matter” and then even with the City result yesterday, it would be ‘move on’ and away we go. But because of the manner of how the game unfolded, coupled with the fact we came a-cropper late against Villa, I think there’s some results-based analysis (as well as timing of goals-based analysis) that is going on with some of us, forgetting how controlled we’ve been and forgetting that sometimes these types of results just happen. I remember a 0-0 draw at home to Fulham during the Invincibles season that was a bit like that. And we didn’t have the level of injuries we had that day.

Let’s remind ourselves here about who we have been missing from the weekend:

1. Gabriel
2. Mosquera
3. Havertz

We had Calafiori suspended and Arteta said that Saliba probably shouldn’t have done the 90. We lost Ben White who was clearly not fit to play but was wheeled out in the absence of others. That’s a waaaay better injury list than we’ve had, but it is still key players out. City meanwhile this weekend missed Rodri (big blow), Kovacic (squad player) and the perpetually injured (although again admittedly very god player) John Stones. They have had some injuries but are over them, we are just getting to the tail end of ours and Arteta has even spoken about how the lack of ability to rotate has caused us more problems.

A lot of what we have seen in recent weeks can possibly be put down to some of that I believe.

Villa were missing Martinez in goal yesterday, but aside from Mings and Barkley (another squad player) they’re in pretty decent health. They also played a pretty terrible West Ham away (I know, I know, Wolves, etc, etc – but I think Wolves away this weekend would have been easier than at home because they ain’t parking the bus against us on their own ground) and only just scraped by too.

I realise that so far this might all sound like an Arsenal fan clutching at straws and doing the whole “I’m not nervous, you’re nervous!” thing, but honestly I promise you, I don’t feel like that this morning. Now, if we are pants against Everton next weekend, or drop points at home to Brighton or Villa, then I will 100% start to probably have a little wobble. But as it stands, knowing that Arsenal and Arteta have a solid few days on the training ground from tomorrow to address some of the issues we’ve had, I am feeling pretty chipper and hopeful that we can tackle this Christmas period with Gusto and come out the other side of it in good shape. If we pick up three wins in a row in the Premier League, I think a lot of what a few people are feeling right now goes away.

So I’m calm, we have a week now to hopefully start having some drip-fed information about potential return of players, so let’s keep our fingers crossed for some of that before the build up to Everton away.

Catch you all tomorrow.

Of course they are.

Isn’t that just typical of this season, one in which I read somewhere we’ve had 13 injuries in 21 games.

That’s insane.

The jokes about stockpiling players in the summer are now well and truly being rowed back on, because we are getting to the stage where this injury crisis that Arsenal have had will far surpass anything I think any of us have known as Arsenal supporters.

The difference this season is that we have such a deep squad, that even if Saliba isn’t fit enough for today (Arteta was a bit vague on hism coming back, saying it was ‘days’ until he and Leo are back – which was yesterday when he said it so the plural nature would suggest not), we still have quality players who can step up. On Wednesday night for the last part of the game it was Timber at centre half and as one of the lads next to me in Block Five reminded me, he plays centre half for The Netherlands, so he isn’t exactly completely new to this.

That would mean Ben White reprising his role at right back and given he had a man-of-the-match performance against Brentford in midweek, you’d hope he’d be back and ready to contribute well again if asked upon. I suspect Arteta would prefer he didn’t though; not because he isn’t quality or capable, but having not played a lot of football this season, throwing him in to what will be another high intensity game away at in-form Villa isn’t exactly ideal for a gradual re-itegration to first team football.

But I guess we forced Odegaard into a 90 in midweek and he might start again today, so perhaps the same can be said for Benny Blanco.

So, how might we line up today given the injuries, Rice of which was also a question mark, if you believe Arteta. In the immediate aftermath of the game in midweek he said he was ‘fine’ and so I don’t know if Arteta was using the possibility of him being injured as a smokescreen to keep the Villa coaching team guessing on what might come up today, or if Arteta really is going to have him benched or completely out of the squad. I read somewhere that he’s travelled, but as we know, that doesn’t really mean anything these days. He could just be there cheering on his teammates.

I hope he is there, like we all do, but I also think if you’ve got a game to think about resting him in, it’s Club Brugge next week. We already have our 15 points, we probably just need one more win from the next three to secure automatic qualification, so if he’s fit enough to play and not carrying anything today, you play him today, you sit him at home in midweek for rest, then you get him on the pitch next weekend against Wolves.

So with that context in mind, I would think/hope we get:

Raya

Timber   –   Saliba   –   Hincapie   –   Calafiori

Zubimendi   –   Rice

Eze

Saka   –   Merino   –   Madueke

My thinking on the attacking end of the pitch is that Odegaard came back and did the full 90 in midweek and you probably want to manage his load coming back from injury, whilst Eze was on the bench, so you can rotate the two and get them to do a job-share for the next week or so. Then I’m thinking that Martinelli wasn’t exactly immense on the left, so Noni needs to be given a go on that side, having provided cover support to rest Saka in midweek. Then, up top, you surely have to just look at Merino given his form. Again, perhaps he can job-share with Gyokeres for this one, maybe giving the Swede 30 minutes, before giving him 60 – 70 minutes against Brugge on Wednesday. Merino has forced his way into the manager’s thinking and that is great and if he can do the business again today, then we’ll go a long way to winning this football match.

But to win this match we’re going to have to do something a lot of teams haven’t and nobody has since Palace did towards the beginning of the season by winning at Villa Park. We’re an in-form team, but we are second in the form table to Aston Villa, who have won all of their last six games going back to the defeat to Liverpool at the beginning of November. So there will be a swagger of confidence about them today. The hope from an Arsenal perspective is that it will mean they play a more open and expansive game, because that means we will get chances and if we do, we have to take them.

What’s weird about Villa from a numbers point of view is that their home xG is actually pretty bad, given how well they are doing in the league, with them 13th out of 20 in the league for xG produced at home at 6.9. But I guess you could say they are producing the goods because from nearly seven goals they’ve got 11 at home. Their opponents both home and away have created 18.5xG this season and that puts them 11th in the table. So pretty average for a team flying high at the top. Where they do perform like a team towards the top of the table is:

• Shots conceded – they’re fifth behind us, City, Palace and Chelsea
• Post shot expected goals – they’re third behind us and Chelsea

That’s pretty much it. They have the most passes in their own penalty area of anyone in the league, which doesn’t really tell me much other than classic Unai Emery playing the ball out from the back, with a lot of their underlying metrics looking pretty average overall. Which is why I don’t think you can underestimate the value of confidence and momentum and it feels like Villa will once again ride the way of it against us for this early kick off.

Arsenal need to quieten the crowd down pretty quickly, in that sense and although I personally hate those 12.30pm kick offs, if we can start well then maybe it takes the home crowd a little while to get going and by the time it is we have done our work.

That’s the hope, although if they start quickly and give us something to worry about early it could feel like a long afternoon.

This is a tough game, we all know that, but a win here would be massive for the season. It would mean we remain five clear at least by the end of the weekend, having already struck first as City play Sunderland at home this weekend, whilst we would then also have Wolves at home next weekend so another great opportunity to try to rack up some more points.

Come on Arsenal – do the business.

Catch you all tomorrow for some post match thoughts.

Arsenal had a job to do. They needed to avoid a banana skin. They needed to de-risk the whole evening. They needed to make this a perfunctory three points.

Brentford are not a team to be trifled with. Yes, they have a pretty shoddy away record, yes, they sit in mid table and dispatching teams like that is exactly what you do if you want to be champions. We’ve seen Pep’s City do it for years. Yet when I reflect on this 2-0 victory courtesy of Merino and Saka’s goals, I can’t help but breathe a big sigh of relief, because this was anything but ‘simple’.

Mikel knew he had to shuffle his deck a little bit. We’ve lost so many players to injury this season that ‘loading’ must be one of the first things he thinks of when he wakes up in the morning. So he rang ‘some’ changes; White in, Madueke in, Odegaard in. Zubimendi and Rice remained and given how awesome both of them are, I don’t think there was an Arsenal fan on this planet who didn’t think “yep – they have to start”.

And given his form, Mikel Merino is another one that, at this stage, has to keep his place too.

And given he helped us open the scoring in this game, it’s hard to argue otherwise, even if Gyokeres might have also feasted on such a sumptuous ball from White’s delivery. But the feasting was for our Basque makeshift forward and at some stage, I think we’re going to just have to change his Football Manager position, because he is every bit the striker and his headed goal was superbly taken to get us up and running. Mikel also referenced the fact he was all over the pitch and for a guy who most of us were a little like “wait. What is he?” his form has been so good that I don’t think Arteta can keep him out. Two goals in two games and he’s looking every bit the number nine. What a time to show your technical and physical qualities when so many around him have gone down with injuries.

The timing of the goal was enough to settle nerves, but Brentford are a tough but to crack and I thought this was a game that played out exactly how many of us would have predicted; they are organised, they don’t give away a lot of chances, they are physical and they have a guy who basically bullets in a throw in if you give him half a chance. And to be fair to them, they had a few of those chances, as well as a fair few corners as well – one of which nearly got an opening for them with basically their first shot. The mark of a great ‘keeper is to do very little all game, yet when called upon, do the hard yards and Raya was superb for Schade’s smart header that he flicked onto the bar with his hands.

If we win the title, he will have 100% have played his part, despite the fact that so often he is a bystander in these types of games. But he was alert, he was quick with his reflexes, he earned his clean sheet bonus. I do have a question about the defending though and I recall hearing somewhere that we weren’t that great with set pieces last season when Big Gabi was out. Now it is him and Saliba and when I watched a replay of that chance this morning, Schade has a little too much time and space for me on the six yard box and afterwards Mikel did reference that we conceded against Chelsea for a set piece and Sunderland’s first goal came as a result of a set piece via a long kick from the ‘keeper. So perhaps it is something that we need to be mindful of and the fact that Arteta referenced it in his post-game interview suggests he’s going to be thinking about it too when he gets them into training next. Which won’t be until tomorrow and will mean not a lot of time to work out the kinks with the early kick off against Villa looming on the horizon at the weekend.

For now though, thinking about the midweek games, we’ve had a very good one if you consider that Chelsea lost, Liverpool and Sunderland drew with each other and whilst Villa did win, they were hardly water-tight at the back. Our game felt like it was a difficult one, but as I re-watched the highlights this morning, I realised that in that second half we probably should have finished the game off and forced Kelleher into a fair few smart saves. The one that really sticks out as the goal we should have scored was Saka’s chance on 89 minutes and at that point in the ground I was thinking we’ll just need to get out of it with an old-skool ‘one-nil to The Arsenal’. But Bukayo was not to be undone on this night and his goal a few minutes later felt like footballing karma gods telling him he could have one. His shot on 89 was scuffed and gratefully received by the ‘keeper, but the shot two minutes later was certainly pure enough, but with a dash of fortune favouring the brave as it looped underneath the bar after Kelleher had parried it in to the air.

So the points were secure, the five point lead has been restored, the players, fans and manager can all go home happy. But as usual we aren’t just allowed a simple day at the office and for the next 24-48 hours we’ll all be sweating on the fitness of Mosquera and Rice for Villa on Saturday. The saving grace with the Mosquera injury is that Arteta said on Tuesday ‘a few days’ with regards to Saliba’s injury and you have to hope that he is available for Saturday to replace Mosquera. Timber came in and did well, White put in a man-of-the-match performance at right back (which I think everyone associated with The Arsenal will be delighted with), but we need to get these players back. I don’t even want to think of the possibility that Rice could be out for any length of time right now, so I’m going to park those thoughts and words at this moment. 

Arsenal move on, Merino moves on, three points down, 24 games to go. Let’s see what the weekend has in store for us.

Catch you all tomorrow for some more thoughts and a look at Villa and how they are getting on.

I thought that the catharsis of the Same Old Arsenal pod last night with James and Amanda would help me to understand my feelings over that Chelsea result, but I’m still no nearer to breaking it down. I think that’s because City ultimately beat Leeds and so it feels like they played catch up over us last weekend, but if you look at the bigger picture, we’ve stretched our lead by one point over them compared to pre North London Derby. Imagine, for example, that City would have played Leeds and won the weekend before when we played the NLD. Then they played Newcastle this weekend, lost, whereas we went to Chelsea and drew. I’d probably be seeing that as a point gained.

I guess that’s the challenge with this league and especially at this stage in the season; the games come so fast that leads can quickly erode and at a time in which City have quite a favourable run (including what I suspect will be a routine away win at Fulham tonight), we’ve had some really tough fixtures coming our way.

City fans might point to our home match against Brentford as a more favourable game too, to be fair, but looking at them this season I think it’s still going to be really tough. Their strengths lie in direct play and quick transitions with rapid players and it’s through letting their opponents have the ball and hitting them on the counter that they have had plenty of success at home all season. They’re fourth at home for home form right now, but on the road it is a very different story; they’re fourth from bottom with one win and five defeats. Having not watched as much of them as I’d have liked to so I can talk more definitively about how they will line up against us, I can’t say why their away form is so poor compared to their home form, but perhaps there is that home crowd advantage that they capitalise on. I watched the game against Liverpool at the Gtech stadium and they troubled Liverpool on the counter with longer balls in behind, as well as that impressive throw-in weapon from Kayode that they deploy frequently. If ever there’s a case for moving the advertising hoardings forward for a team, Brentford would certainly be that.

What’s interesting about Brentford from a numbers perspective, is that away from home, they have the second best xG allowed aside from us; so that tells me they sit a little deeper, more compact in shape away from home and tell teams to come at them in their low block. That bears out in the number of passes they have taken this season – only Burnley have had fewer. When you look at the type of passes they do as well, they ain’t going short much, that’s for sure. They attempt the fewest number of short passes in the league (under 15 yards) and the second-fewest medium passes (15 – 30 yards) and whilst I haven’t watched much of them as I admit today, I can already see what this game is going to shape up to be tomorrow.

Having just faced a physical battle against Chelsea on their patch, Arteta and his Arsenal team need to know that they will face the same tomorrow night against Burnley. It’s going to be long ball, it’s going to be physical, it will be a bit set-piecy and it might be a bit of a stop-start game I suspect. Arteta and Arsenal need to be ready for it. We’ve certainly show we can match teams with a physical battle and in a game like tomorrow it will be handy to have so many attacking options to call on, because I’m looking at how this game might unfold and I’m thinking we’re going to have a lot of the ball in their half and chance creation might come at a premium as they stuff their own box with bodies in order to try to shut the game down, then hit us with rapid counter and big long balls.

But that’s been Brentford’s style for a while now, to be fair, because we saw it under Frank and we’ve seen it going back to even the Ivan Toney days. Remember when David Raya was playing for them and we used to see ball after ball on to Toney to battle with our centre halves? We might see a bit more of that from goal kicks tomorrow methinks.

From a shooting perspective, it’s also interesting that Brentford have the third highest shots on target percentage in the league, as well as the second shortest average distance to goal from where they take their shots. That tells me that this is a team who doesn’t take a lot of pot-shots; when they do take a shot, it usually means that it is of sufficient quality to be on target. If Brentford get a chance or two tomorrow, they are testing Raya, so he’s going to need to be ready against his old team.

I don’t think this will be a pretty game by any stretch of the imagination, so it might be one for those attacking players who excel in tight spaces, but what Arteta will also have to contend with is the fitness and availability of players for tomorrow. We’ve been battered, bruised and injured all season and so inevitably there will be one or two that aren’t quite ready or might be feeling fatigue, but I’ll do a more in-depth look at what Arsenal might do tomorrow I think.

Until then we have to wait to see what Arteta says in his press conference today on player availability, before we can start making some decisions on who might start and how we might break down Brentford.

I’ll be back tomorrow. See you then.

At the beginning of the day if you’d have offered me a draw I’d have taken it; another tough away ground ticked off, with an injury-hit team, against an in-form Chelsea side who with home advantage would have had their tails up. But when you are up against a side who are down to ten men for two-thirds of a game, you have to be looking at it as one that should be won. This article is a little old, but look what a difference it makes to the probability of winning a football match when your team has a man advantage. Your likelihood of winning goes on average from 23.5% to 57.4%. Of course I know there are caveats; if you play against 10 men for the last two minutes of a game it is different, plus if you are already losing it is different, plus the quality of your opposition makes it different. But as a general rule when you have that advantage that we had, you have to try to go for the game.

And I feel like we perhaps weren’t quite at it enough yesterday to ‘go for it’. I think there’s a culmination of factors there:

1. Very intense week of football in which we’ve played three intense football matches against fierce rivals in one way or another
2. Injuries to yet more players meaning more rotation needed
3. Playing against a team who have had plenty of practice being down to ten men
4. Sometimes things just don’t click

And on that last point, I don’t think you’ll see any Arsenal fan disagreeing that it didn’t quite click yesterday. There was plenty of misplaced passes in that first half and in the second when we had control and the dominance you’d expect, we just didn’t pick the right pass, find the right angle or deliver the right moments to win it. We did at least have one moment to bring us back level after Chelsea scored from a corner (they’re good at that too, by the way), but other than that I don’t feel like Sanchez was really tested enough in the second half. On Chelsea’s goal, it’s a flick on that evades everyone and I know I’m old fashioned, but come on, put a man on the bloody post. We never do it, we will never do it, we are so good at set-pieces that who am I to be moaning about something like putting players on posts, but were there somebody there, they’d have nodded it away relatively easily.

Having the ignominy of being behind to ten men was bad enough, but the fact it was that horrible football club Chelsea was maddening, because those horrible home fans suddenly found their voices. And we had to find a moment of magic to bring ourselves level, which we did just 11 minutes later. Saka’s ball to Merino’s head was perfect and this guy Mikel proved once again just how valuable he is. Honestly guys and gals, we might just be at the point in which he has to start ahead of Big Vik, even though the Swede got on and is now fit enough to play more minutes. In the middle third of the pitch I find Merino a bit ‘meh’, but when he is in the opposition penalty box he comes alive. To be fair to him he’s good in our box as well, often heading away balls in on things like corners and free kicks, so his value is clear for all to see at the point ends of the pitch.

He was the guy involved a fair bit on the day, as it was he who had the Caicedo reducer on him in that first half to get himself sent off. It was a nasty one, it could have been an ankle-breaker, but eventually the right decision was reached and thankfully, Merino was fine afterwards. Taylor, having spent most of the first half happily dishing out yellows to Arsenal players in a bitty first half that was start-stop because of the fouls, finally had to send off a Chelsea player – Marc Cucurella seemingly a guy who had an invulnerability chip that he’d played to the ref before kick off.

So at that point you’re tuning in to the second half expecting us to press our feet down on Chelsea’s necks. But it never really happened. I suppose we should give some credit to them because they were a threat on the counter and I thought Reece James was a big part of that (as did most who watched), but Arsenal should have done more with the ball. We just had too many players who let the game pass them by, like Martinelli, Eze and I think Saka too had his radar off. He got the assist for the goal, which is great (especially for my Fantasy Premier League team), but I expected us to press home that advantage more than we did, with Sanchez making a couple fo smart saves but nothing major that sticks out to me. The main one that will really frustrate Arsenal fans this morning is the one in injury time, in which Timber took a Hincapie cross off Gyokeres’ head to potentially seal what would have been an amazing comeback and blow the title race apart. Could there have been a call? Was there a call at all? Regardless of that, when they re-watch, I think Timber will be frustrated with that one, but having scored against Bayern in midweek, you can imagine that a god-fearing man like Jurrien would have thought that there was some divine work going on for him to be in that position to score and win the match for his team yesterday.

So I’m back to the start of where I started today’s blog, which is that I still don’t know if I am happy or annoyed at a point. I guess we’ll know more in the fullness of time and if we beat Brentford on Wednesday and then can go to a really tough place in Villa and get a result (Villa, who are in good form too, by the way), then this will be happily consigned to the history books and we can move on. But what the performance did show is that this Arsenal team does have the occasional ‘off game’ in them. Let’s just hope it’s kept to a minimal for the rest of this season.

Catch you all tomorrow with more thoughts, or you can come and join us at 6.15pm tonight for The Same Old Arsenal pod.

Arteta wouldn’t be drawn on Havertz and Gyokeres, saying that they are both close and whilst Nagelsmann’s comments the week before last suggested that Havertz would be somebody probably closer to Christmas playing for us, we’re still a little more in the dark about Big Vik. I do think it is weird; we haven’t really been told anything other than he picked up a muscular injury which was reported as a hamstring strain. A quick Google tells you that a hammy takes anything between a few days to months for a complete tear. We know it wasn’t a tear, it clearly wasn’t what they call a ‘Grade 1’ because that takes just a few days or a week or two. But there has been no mention of a ‘tear’ at all, which puts the recovery at between four to eight weeks. If we’re ok to assume it isn’t a tear of the hammy and just a strain, then as of Sunday Gyokeres has been out for essentially a month, because the Burnley game was on 1st November.

My hope is that he is surely in contention for Sunday, but I do find it interesting that nobody asked (unless they did and it hasn’t been picked up) about the two players in isolation, because surely Big Vik is more likely to be returning sooner than Havertz? I would have hope that we can see him this weekend but if not, you’d hope that we could see him on Wednesday against Brentford, surely?

In the meantime, it might mean Mikel Merino once again reprises his role in attack and Arteta was of course happy to give some flowers to a guy who I think almost all of us now are much more appreciative of than we were a year or so ago. I remember this time last year thinking we’d bought an okayish central midfielder who would be a backup if we needed it (and it turned out we bloody-well did need it). We ‘found’ ourselves an auxiliary centre forward last season and now that he’s bedded in, he’s been acting as a fantastic deputy for our injured guys. And in the meantime, we’ve shifted our playing style and I’ve noticed our Merino has adapted too, dropping on to the right at times, tucking in to midfield at times and then rotating with either Trossard moving into the central space, or Eze taking up those positions for which he scored his goals last weekend.

If Merino plays tomorrow it will be interesting to see what Chelsea do, because I suspect they might have seen how Merino is vacating those attacking spaces and they might put somebody on him to do a tracking job. I’ll save a little more tactical thinking about how the game might line up for tomorrow, but I do think this is going to be a fascinating tactical chess match between two of Guardiola’s disciples.

There was a question asked about Gabby Jesus, who along with Nwaneri played in a behind-closed-doors friendly against Watford this week (must be bloody handy to shout over a fence and see if the lads want a kick about) and whilst Arteta wouldn’t be drawn on how available he might be soon, I suspect we might see him in a match day squad or two in the next couple of weeks. If you remember what happened with Timber when he did his ACL, the club really took their time to bring him back and he only read made the return on the last game of the season, a full 10 months after he picked up his injury on the first day against Forest. Gabby J is a few years older, so the healing will take longer, but he’s done 11 months now and so I think Arteta might be thinking about maybe an additional week of training before he’s in for match day squad inclusion. He apparently came through that friendly unscathed, he’ll probably have some sore legs for a few days, so who knows? Maybe a cheeky subs appearance in midweek against Brentford isn’t off the table?

He was asked about Rice winning the Balon D’Or, which is the type of question I hate, plus about Estevao’s quality, which of course he didn’t want to talk on an individual, but I do wonder if we have a game plan for certain players if they play or not. For example, Maresca predictably said that Palmer is back in training, having said he had ‘no chance’ just over a week ago. He hasn’t played since September so it’s a little like Odegaard for us in that regard in that you wouldn’t think he could get a full 90 from Palmer, but does Arteta plan for Palmer from the start? Does he plan for Estevao from the start? Or the bench? We talk a lot about how our squad depth is immense – and it is – but Chelsea also have quite a deep squad, having spent the best part of three years stockpiling every player they could get their grubby mitts on. If you take their attack, for example, you’ve got the aforementioned two players, but also Delap, Joao Pedro, Garnacho, as well as Gittens. They’ve even been giving Tyrique George games too, so it isn’t as if they have a ‘bare bones’ team.

That’s a challenge Mikel is going to be set tomorrow but the good news is that we’ve seen how he can spot things and adapt in-game to them, evidenced by the second half against Bayern in which we just upped the gears and showed our power against the German champions. You feel like once the game kicks off and the patterns of play start to get set, we might need to see Arteta making similar tactical adjustments when he see’s what Chelsea and Maresca are doing.

But, as I said, perhaps that is for tomorrow’s blog, so I’ll leave it for today and hope you have a great Saturday and maybe we can get another splendid hate-watch day like last Saturday.

How ready they are to start remains the key question for Thomas Frank, but that’s the same for Arteta, who as usual gave nothing away on a single player. He simply said – as we all expected him to – that there was another training session today (Saturday) and they’d be able to assess who comes in to the match day squad. Standard Super Mik stuff. He was never going to give us anything and whilst Frank was a little more…erm…’frank’ about player availability, we still have to wait and see. But as I’ve already said, I’d be surprised if there were zero players available even from the bench. Noni is one I think most of us are pretty confident on, then probably Odegaard given some of the noises we’ve heard and not far behind him, I suspect Martinelli is one we’ve all got our eyes on.

There’s obviously no sign of any hints in the training pics, but I do wonder if there’s some psychological messaging going on with regards to the number of times Saliba and Mosquera appear to be pictured together. That’s us Arsenal fans, eh? If there’s an opportunity to read in to something, we’ll jolly well do it, that’s for sure. But having listened to a few more podcasts, watched a few more videos and listened to a few more Arsenal fans and their perspectives, I’m starting to think that Mosquera in there alongside Saliba is what he’ll do. I think if Hincapie had a few more minutes as an Arsenal player at this point, there would be an element of “you are the left-centre half understudy so you’re up” to the situation for tomorrow. I think Arteta will prize continuity of performance more than the side of where we have a weakness through injury in a game like tomorrow. If it was a Wolves or a Brentford at home, things might be different, but given the size and atmosphere of the game, I just have a Saturday morning sneaky suspicion that it’ll be the Spaniard.

The rest of the responses to the questions were played with the kind of straight bat that my old man would call ‘Geoff Boycott’. He’s an old cricketer for those that don’t know and my Dad used to say he would be so boring to watch, but so effective in test matches, as he’d just defensively straighten up his bat and block anything that was remotely dangerous. He’d then only pounce when a bowler made a mistake. Mikel is a bit like that with all of his questions he asks; it is boring for 90% of them, but if there’s one opportunity to say a little more knowing that it might not come back to bite him in the arse or give fuel for the opponents, referees or pundits, only then will he have a nibble at it.

He did say that “we have everybody healthy, or most of them healthy” and I think that means most of those players – Kai and Big Gabi aside – are all in training. We’ve even seen Gabriel Jesus in full training for a few days now and it was good to see him doing a piggy back with Mikel. It’s easy to have him as the forgotten man at the club having had us sign a new striker in the summer and him only just returning to training now, but I hope we can get some more juice squeezed from that particular lemon because it’s easy to forget just how good he’s been with us when fit.

Arteta said that he needs some behind-closed-doors games to play first, so I think unfortunately that rules him out for this weekend, but if he gets two or three of those in the next week or two, perhaps he might be able to make a bench come December? If Kai is going to be out for another month, for example, then that is a big bonus for us.

There’s also been a few words for Eze said as well, which I think most of us expected, given that The Scum were so close to signing him, with a good interview with Idris Elba that you can also watch here. It’s a really nice video and his smile is just so infectious. I don’t think he stopped smiling at all and now that the dust an excitement on the transfer has abated a little, it’s lovely to have videos like this to remind you just how much this means and just how proud he is to put on the shirt every time. The North London Derby is a big thing for him and you just know he’s going to give it his all this weekend. We’ll need that I think. I’ll touch on this a bit tomorrow on the preview blog, but I think this game is going to be a really stodgy one and so it might take a moment of magic to unlock it. That is what Eze has and if you think about the fact he won Palace the FA Cup, you know he is a player who is there for the big moments, which is why I am hoping that he does indeed step up tomorrow too.

But let’s leave it there for today I think. I’m going to do a little bit of analysis on the two teams tomorrow in an attempt to work out how the game will unfold, so I’ll catch you then, if you fancy checking back in ahead of the match.

Have a good one boys and girls.

Let’s start with some positive news, which is that yesterday afternoon Big Vik took to his Instagram to get pictures of himself in training. Given how Arsenal spend so much time trying not to give anything away by clearly selecting pictures they know won’t include any players who will have had question marks over them, this will have left Arteta absolutely FEWMIN’ I’ll wager. He loves every single marginal gain he can possibly grasp his mits on, so when he’s asked today about who is back, whilst he might still be coy and say “we have some players back who were injured” and not name names, I think a lot of us can guess who.

My original guess was Noni and Martinelli, but news also emerged yesterday that Odegaard was back in training and whilst I suspect the skipper doesn’t have a place from the start, having a bench that could include him, Noni and Martinelli to give us options, is a huge boost. In a week in which we lost Big Gabi to a needless and preventable injury (thanks Brazilian national team and Ancelotti, by the way), the boost of potentially Odegaard AND Gyokeres making the match day squad is EXACTLY what we all read right now.

And having listened to a couple more podcasts and videos yesterday looking at the North London Derby, where it might be won or lost, this was just what I needed as a bit of a boost going in to what is going to be a really tough weekend and subsequent week for us.

But how are those Scum fans feeling? Welp, as is my wont these days, I ventured well into enemy lines again to have a look. And I tell you what, they are not confident at all. There’s lots of talk of just making this a physical game, of giving it their best shot, ‘it’s a one-off game’ and the like. I’m really surprised actually. It’s funny that compared to the likes of Villa, Forest, Sunderland, etc, their fans are so negative. Maybe it’s a London thing because when we were in their shoes and coming up against Chelsea in their pomp I’m pretty sure that would have been the Arsenal forums, but I’d have expected more optimism given their away form. That’s what is doing me the most nerves this morning and has been all week. I had a look and going backwards from most recent it is an away win at Everton in which 3-0 really did flatter them, a tight 2-1 against Leeds in which again they had fewer shots, less possession, less passes, corners, etc. Then there was the 2-2 at Brighton in which it looks like they edged that one in terms of dominance, which came after the smash and grab at a struggling City side who had all the possession but didn’t really create too many chances for what you’d expect from City at home. I’ve just watched that game and Marmoush should have had two before they scored a counter attack from a long ball to Richarlison, a slip by the last man and then a tap in from wide runner Johnson. That is 100% what they want to do on Sunday, by the way. I’ll have a look at the style of play and approach in the pre match blog on Sunday, but the Blueprint for the Scum is to be compact and spring long balls to get the likes of Kudus and probably Johnson running three-on-three with Richarlison as well. The second goal was an absolute shocking from City playing out from the back and that came from them having seven of their ten outfield players in or around the penalty box. It came from City fannying around at the back and then making an absolute howler rather than spotting what the Scum were doing and going long into the middle of the park to contest longer balls. Within five minutes on Sunday we’ll be able to tell if the Scum are adopting the same tactic, so I expect Arteta to be aware of this and to be planning accordingly with Raya ready to go long if needed. City did create chances though and I’m stunned they didn’t score to be fair. But what I have seen is that when the Scum were ahead, it was all the bodies in their own box.

But what about the pundits? Well, for the second week in a row in the Premier League, Jones Knows on Sky has an Arsenal defeat in mind and I can understand why. Frank is a man who loves an ‘underdog’ tag as he points out and whilst that won’t be sustainable long-term with what their ambitions are, this is exactly the type of game he’ll fancy doing that and playing low-block, scabby football against us, which I will reiterate – I do fear.

Merse is going for a 1-0 and calls it right I think when he says he thinks it will be a cagey affair. Sutton thinks this has got 3-0 Arsenal stamped on it, saying that it is their front line he is worried about, which I get but I would say to be fair to them, they’ve had almost as many attacking injuries as we’ve had this season. I cannot see that in a million years becuase there’s no way we get three goals against a low block Spurs outfit. Olly Murs said he wasn’t impressed with Spurs last time out (he was the celeb doing the predictions) so he’s said 2-0 to The Arsenal. Finally, Alan Shearer has completed the (almost) full house by saying that we’ll ‘edge’ this game.

Heck – however it comes about, I’ll take any kind of win, but what we need now is some fighting talk from Arteta and some confirmation that we have some fresh, new bodies arriving to the match day squad come Sunday. Fingers crossed.

I’ll be back tomorrow with some post-press conference thoughts from both managers. See you then.

As for the men, well, they’ll all be back now and the countdown is well and truly on to the North London Derby on Sunday. This is the kind of game where EVERYBODY has their say and, as a result, you get a proliferation of opinions, ‘hot takes’ and general vibes of how the game is going to unfold. I’ve already listened to the AOP guys talking to the Athletic bloke who covers The Scum, watched a tactical TikTok on social media (can’t find the link now) about how they need to leverage Kudus as their runner on counter, as well as checked out what Wrighty had to say with Neville on the prediction for the weekend.

I think the story of this weekend is going to be started to be told tomorrow, when the managers give their injury updates. Here’s me, all worried that we’re going to be decimated and we have a litany of problems, but then I started to have a look at them and it turns out they might have their own issues they have to deal with. You only have to have a quick look at the EPL injury table here to see how they’re getting on. We’re up to seven injuries with Big Gabi’s knock, but The Scum have supposedly 13! Maddison be know is a confirmed absence (which is good for us because we don’t have to see that annoying darts celebration if he scores). Kulusevski was one that was touted as a possible return but as of the end of October it was ‘he hasn’t started running on grass’. But you only have to look at this update (sorry) to see that actually, a lot of those 13 might be back for Sunday. That could also include Solanke, Davies, Dragusin, Bissouma, Gray, Bergvall, Kudus, Romero and Sarr. So suddenly you’re looking at 10 of that 13 possibly being back for this weekend. Whether they’re fit enough to start remains to be seen, but I suspect The Scum and Frank have been spending a fair bit of time behind closed doors putting those players through their paces so they are as close to being match fit as you can possible get.

But that could also be the same for us. We probably won’t even fully know tomorrow, as Arteta never rules anything out and will probably just give us something cryptic like “maybe we might have good news” or something like that. We know that Big Gabi is 99.9% out given the news. We know from Nagelsmann that Kai is probably also 99% out. Madueke feels like the one most likely to return and we got some noises before the international break that he could have potentially have played against Sunderland but they didn’t want to risk it. Gabriel Jesus is training, but I’ll be stunned if he even makes the bench give all the time he’s had out. I have a feeling and a hope that Gabriel Martinelli might be back, so immediately if you’ve got Madueke and him in, that gives us attacking options and depth on the flanks. But it’s through the middle that I worry, as Hand of Arsenal has already said:

Viktor Gyökeres remains a doubt for the weekend.

— HandöfArsenal (@HandofArsenal) November 18, 2025

See, now this worries me, because as admirable as Merino has played up front, we have seen his limitations compared to Gyokeres and if Kai is out, Arsenal aren’t risking him, so I think we’re going to end up having to use that as a solution on Sunday and I don’t think that stretches Romero and Van der Ven enough. That’s where I have my initial big fears ahead of this game. I fear that those two will have an easier afternoon if it’s Merino than if it’s Gyokeres, although perhaps that’s just me with my inherent and traditional biases? After all, what type of game do those two defenders like? They like a channel runner in attack like Big Vik because they can keep pace with him, do battle with him, win their duels against him. Merino dropping in and vacating space they normally occupy could force them to think differently and if that creates space for the likes of Saka, then great.

I’m also building up my irrational fear of the Scum away from home. They haven’t lost yet! It comes to something when part of me wishes we were playing this at their ground, because they’ve really struggled on home soil this season. Historically I always think of that game as the worst in the season and I hate it, but given their away form and propensity to sit in a low block and counter, I have some very real fears going on in my head.

It’s a little too early for the pundits predictions to start filtering through, which I suspect will be from today, as well as some of the forums in which there isn’t too much bubbling along just yet. That will all start kicking off and I’ll have another look along enemy lines tomorrow to see what that filth are talking about. But until then I’ll put a pause in today’s proceedings and I’ll be back tomorrow with some Friday feelings.

See you then.

***Quick post blog publish update***

Forgot to talk about the ending of the ‘Visit Rwanda’ deal. Jolly good stuff. It never quite sat well with me or a few of my match-going mates, so hopefully Arsenal do a better job in finding a more brand-aligned partner when that ends in the summer of next year.

*A few moments later…*

Yeah, that was basically me last night as, post making and eating dinner, I had a little scroll on my timeline to see:

Arsenal continuing to assess Gabriel amid concerns 27yo could miss 1-2 months through injury sustained on international duty. Initial indications suggest #AFC centre-back set for spell out but tests ongoing
W/ @gunnerblog.bsky.social for @theathleticfc.bsky.social
www.nytimes.com/athletic/681…

[image or embed]

— David Ornstein (@david-ornstein.bsky.social) 18 November 2025 at 17:18

“Great” I thought. And just bloody predictable. But the night wasn’t done there, with Fabrizio then appearing on my timeline with:

Nagelsmann: “Kai Havertz had minor relapse on his injury, but overall he’s doing well”. “He is expected to return towards the end of the year”.

[image or embed]

— Fabrizio Romano (MIRROR) (@fabrizioromano.yopro20.com) 18 November 2025 at 17:29

Super stuff, if true and to be fair, he’s just repeating the words of the German national team coach. But honestly, this news bloody sucks. I think a lot of us were hoping to have some exciting news regarding a number of players, but this Havertz stuff is a massive blow and as my mate Cookie pointed out on his social media last night  the amount of time Havertz has missed in 2025 is mental. Given that about a week before he picked up his first big injury at the beginning of the year we had Arteta talking about how Havertz is a ‘genetic powerhouse‘ it makes me feel like sometimes we are bloody cursed. It’s like we’re not allowed to say anything, or think anything, because it could literally manifest itself into existence. The injuries we’ve had in the last year and a bit have been crazy and by the sounds of this – as yet to be confirmed by the club – series of setbacks, it shows no sign of abating just yet.

Just let us play football with our players. Please. It’s getting mental now.

Let’s not sugar goat this either; Big Gabi out for one, or two months, is huge. We’re on 19th November now, if it is worse-case scenario, he misses out until mid-bloody-January. There’s so many games during that time, it’s crazy to think that he’ll probably have missed the equivalent of a third of a season’s games if it’s the worst-case scenario.

It means that we need to find a solution and that solution, thankfully, comes in different guises. Piero Hincapie – who I’ll admit I wondered where and when he’s get game time – is suddenly a guy we’re all looking at and by the sounds of it he had a bit of a blinder for Ecuador last night. He played the full 90 so hopefully he’s back and ready to go for the North London Derby and given he comes across as a guy all built up as a warrior centre half, there can probably be no better option than having him in our defence on Sunday. I wonder if that’ll be as a left centre-half, or as a left back?

I seem to recall Arteta saying that he prefers not to disturb too many positions and shuffle people around (back when he said that I think it was related to Ben White playing centre half instead of right back) and given the positive news about Calafiori, perhaps the Italian will stick in at left back and we’ll have either Hincapie or Mosquera in to replace Gabi?

The good news is that I don’t think any of us could remotely predict who, but equally that either would be a very able deputy for the Brazilian. Mosquera has come in on a number of occasions, filled in on the left and the right of the centre half pairings. He’s proved good on the ball, with good distribution, an ability to ride tackles and a strong presence about him. Hincapie looks every bit the ‘warrior’ I already mentioned and whilst Mosquera might get the nod, I do have a sneaky suspicion that Hincapie will be the one. It kind of sets the right message too; he’s the left centre half understudy and Mosquera is nominally the right. He’s the guy who ‘feels’ like the better option to me, although I wouldn’t be unhappy with either. And that’s the good thing, right? Big Gabi is out, yet we have two defenders who look ace and who will see this as an opportunity to step up and prove their credentials. I don’t think we’ll be as solid as we are with Big Gabi, we’ll certainly not have the same goal threat in the opposition penalty box I don’t think, but I think defensively it hopefully won’t be as big a step down as the dark ol’ days of poor ol’ Rob Holding, bless him.

And so for today’s wrap up I think I’ll say only this: I am nervous as I always am with the North London Derby, I am rueful about the injuries sustained and the ‘setbacks’ again from another ludicrous international break, but I am hopeful and positive for a response this Sunday. We will need it.

Back tomorrow with more musings.