Argentina – you should be pretty disappointed with your national team players. They let you down. However, after some of the pictures and videos I’ve seen of Argentinian fans, perhaps some of them are not?

I’ll be honest, though, I was definitely thinking “bad guys do often win” when the game went to extra time. Spain had dominated possession; they’d had all the chances (Argentina didn’t even muster a shot until extra time – pathetic), they’d had a perfectly good goal ruled out for an invisible foul on Mikel Merino, and after Enzo Fernandez was sent off for doing Enzo Fernandez things, you just knew it would make Argentina retreat even further into their own box. England and Tuchel rightly got pilloried for the tactical disasterclass in the second half of the second half of the semi final, but Scaloni and team should also receive the same treatment, because it was clear even before Enzo was sent off in stoppage time, that they had no intention of having a go at Spain. It was all about trying to fein injury, fall to the floor, kick players, then if touched, fall to the floor and try to buy free kicks. To be fair to the referee, I think ultimately he managed to keep a bit of a handle on the game, although he probably could have dished out a few yellows a little earlier.

This was meant to be Messi’s last hurrah. The Argentinians all thought it was destiny; they were pre-ordained to win this competition. But you have to actually play football to win, and they did nothing of the sort, with the whole world watching. And as a result of their antics, I think everyone was a Spain supporter for last night. They certainly were after the game had finished and the shameful scenes that unfolded. I’ll come to that in a second. Because first, we should talk about how Argentina have basically sh*thoused their way to this final, they’ve ridden the coat-tails of some VERY favourable decisions, and as I’ve already said on this blog, have a team of very unlikeable players – bar Messi.

But even Messi was at it yesterday. I think Cucurella is a little rat bag, but asking for him to be sent off because he put his hand to his mouth to explain to Messi where the Spanish player was hurt…man, Leo, that’s low mate.

But don’t worry, others could stoop lower in that team. Simeone Junior was his usual twattish self, Enzo was ridiculous with his foul for his second (deserved) yellow to send him for an early bath, then Paredes…wow…what a Class A wrong’un you showed yourself to be. Grabbing people’s throats, throwing punches, plus you should have been sent off during the game anyway! The Argentinians will have made no friends based on their World Cup showing, and I couldn’t have been happier to see their team crying. You thoroughly got what you deserved.

As for Spain, you have to say congrats, as they’ve shown they are clearly the best team in the tournament, and we even got to see a bit of Zubimendi get on the pitch too. I watched a little bit of the trophy celebrations afterwards, but didn’t get to the end of the lift, because giving Unai Simon the ‘best goalkeeper’ award, when he’s not even the best one in the Spanish team, was laughable. Still, there’s a nice picture of Raya, Zubi and Merino all together, which I had to steal for today’s blog image. Nice stuff.

Now it is time for rest, and time for transfer pre season stress to kick in, in earnest. Because once the dust settles after today, I think globally there will be plenty of consternation on the faces and in the minds of Arsenal fans. We find ourselves just under two weeks from the first pre-season game away to Girona, and there still isn’t a new signing in (Hincapie doesn’t count, neither does Meslier – not really). Tzolis will probably provide a little transfer window injection when he arrives this week, but having listened to a number of the regular Arsenal pods that are out there yesterday on my run, there’s a lot of concern about the Morgan Rogers stuff. I still stand by the fact that I’m pretty calm about it, but we do need to start hearing noises about names that we’ve looked to pivot towards. I saw Fabrizio Romano talk about Diomande at Leipzig, which sounds cool, but all the noises so far are that PSG wants him. And that is apparently true in return, which all makes it seem a little Julian Alvarez to Barca-like; if we’re playing second-fiddle to these teams by players, it hardly sends that great message about how we only pick players who are 100% hot on Arsenal and Arteta’s project. Players who view us as a second choice? That’s something we haven’t had since the Wenger ‘Top Four is a trophy’ days, and I think we all thought we were beyond that?

Let’s see what starts to shake out now. Players will all be on holiday, but I suspect they’ve all kept their phones on in case they get calls from agents, so I expect we’ll start to see a concentrated period of noise as the ITKs go into overdrive with the season about a month away.

Back tomorrow. Enjoy your Monday, whatever you’re doing.

I think I speak for us all when I say:

Help us Mikel Merino, you are our only hope.

I had this in the game they played against Egypt. Even before a ball was kicked, the management asked why we want Egypt to win ahead of Argentina, to which I said “Messi aside, just look at the roll call of absolutely horrible footballers they have in their team. Emi Martinez, Lisandro Martinez, Romero, Simeone, Enzo Fernandez – they’re just snidey and horrible little SOBs”

And that sort of played out at the start. snidey fouls, falling to the floor, the worst kind of gamesmanship. Horrible team. I have no love for Spain, but they are most certainly, surely, going to be most neutrals hope for the final. Sorry Leo Messi, but you’re surrounded by dickheads.

England themselves kind of have themselves to blame too. After they scored it was proper retreat into your own box and the managers reaction – to literally go “ALL DEFENDERS ASSEMBLE” was the sbolute worst thing that he could have done.

But hey, it’s only England, so whilst I wanted them to win, I certainly didn’t lose sleep. In fact, as I as on my run this morning, I was reflecting on how I felt after England went out in late, dramatic fashion, and how we drew away to Wolves in February earlier this year. That night I was apoplectic with rage, I got about two hours sleep and I think it took me two days to recover. This situation I find myself in, I’m basically a bit ‘meh’ less than 24 hours after the event.

The only thing that has got me frustrated today, is the news that William Saliba is expected to be out for between four to five months. We’re at the end of July nearly. That means we aren’t seeing him until between November and December. Then he’ll need to get up to speed. So that’s January before we could get Big Bill back on the pitch. And THIS is why I f*cking hate international football. He’s had that problem, everyone has known about it, he’s never not going to want to play for France. but Deschamps and his bunch of twat coaches and medical staff were probably like “f*ck it, we’re all off after this tournament, let’s just use him until he breaks”. Wankers.

If you add to that the fact that Rice is clearly knackered, plus we saw no sign of Saka last night, which is a worry in itself. He’s clearly in a bit of pain too, because there’s no way Tuchel doesn’t use Saka if he’s not fit. I think we’re all just waiting for the inevitable from Mikel as he’s interviewed ahead of the first set of friendlies “Yeah, Bukayo will be out for a while we think. We need to manage his Achilles problem”.

Yes, it will mean an opportunity for others, and maybe Madueke can see this as a chance for a regular run of games at the beginning of the season, but we’ve got to see more from him than he’s delivered in this World Cup. Which hasn’t been much.

Who knows, maybe Max Dowman has the opportunity to knock on the door. Or maybe there’s a chance for Ethan to step up? I know Arteta seems reluctant to play him wide, but we’ve already seen he can do damage, so why not have him doing the role during pre-season, as you get to have a look at him and see if he can evolve his game. My reading on that situation was always that the club thought he was better centrally, but also that he’s not as switched on to play out wide. If you think about how Arteta likes his forwards to operate, they can effectively become auxiliary full-backs when we’re out of possession; dropping in to the defensive shape and helping the actual full-backs to either double up, or tuck in. Why can’t that sort of thinking be trained into somebody like Ethan?

There is going to need to be some work done for the start of the season though, because very quickly it’s going to feel like we’re going to go into this one without some of our best players. If you look at those first five games, it ain’t exactly easy, is it? After Coventry it is Villa away, Chelsea at home, Sunderland away and then Brighton away. That takes us to the first international break (FFS) and that is a really tricky run that could very easily see you drop points and already playing catch up if you want a proper title charge.

It also means that the need to strengthen the squad is even more acute. We can’t afford to be waiting around until 31st August. We’re now at the point where most players are not at the World Cup. So there needs to be some movement, and we need to see it now. The club are going to have to think about a centre half, I think. Sure, we have Mosquera, but if he breaks down? It hits home even more that we simply can’t afford to let Ben White go. He knows the club, he knows the way the manager wants to play, he looks fit and frankly, we are going to need him.

All of a sudden, the distration of the World Cup matches has now hit home how we need to be moving in the market. And quickly. We play Girona in just over two weeks. Yeah, it’s a friendly, but you need to give your new players a bedding in period. Arsenal need to move. And move now.

Vack tomorrow for some more thoughts.

Or maybe, they were talking about where they’re going on their holidays. For Martin, that is obviously a priority closer to now than Declan, as the Norwegian team will probably be on their way home today I’d imagine. For Declan, that won’t happen until at least coming up to the weekend, which also made me wonder about the Community Shield and the first Premier League game of the season at home to Coventry.

Who could we realistically see, based on their participation at the World Cup?

In my mind, depending on the player, you have to give them at least two weeks’ holiday. Then, they’ll need at least two weeks of pre-season training. For some players, I suspect an extended holiday is needed, then perhaps an easing back into action. Somebody like Declan Rice, for example, needs to be getting a minimum of three weeks on a beach. With that in mind, I thought I’d spend today mapping out a team for the first Premier League game. I could do the Community Shield, but let’s be honest, it’s just a glorified friendly, so I thought I’d focus on the more important stuff.

So, who could realistically start for us on that first game on 21st August? Here’s me doing what me mammy always said re: showing my workings (A-Level maths teacher). And, because I’m a traditionalist, I’ve gone one to 11, thinking of traditional numbers for each player. For example, the full backs are 2 and 3, the wingers are seven and 11, we have a four and five at centre-back, a six at the base, an eight and 10 in the middle and a nine up front.

1. David Raya – Fairly easy one to kick us off. He’s basically been given a first-class seat for Spain’s games on the bench in this World Cup. Quite how he isn’t the number one is bizarre, because he’s clearly lightyears ahead of Unai Simon, but hey, he’s got less chance of being injured and that’s an easy one to start me off today.
2. Ben White – Ben is training already, he’s looking ripped, he’ll have had a full pre-season in him, plus he has a new friend to make him extra happy in Illan Meslier. We thought we’d lost him at the end of last season, but I can see him having a very important early impact for you. And that couldn’t make me happier.
3. Riccardo Calafiori – I had to have a think about this one, because originally I thought that he might play as the left-centre back, with Hincapie at full back. But I saw Hincapie limping once or twice during the World Cup, so I’m going to play it safe by having Ricy in there, having had the summer off to party and hopefully a pre season which see’s him take out his non-World Cup summer on Coventry City when he crops up in between the left winger and centre forward to smash the ball home for the opener and our first goal of the season – just like he did last season.
4. Gabriel – yes, he’s been at the World Cup, yes, he’s played a load of games, but my thinking here is that continuity at the back is key. With the suspicions about Big Bill Saliba remaining (which is a hint as to my next pick), I think you have to tell big Gabi to get himself out there for the season opener. Brazil were knocked out to Norway on Sunday, 5th July. Big Gabi was probably back in England by 8th July, then off on holiday this past weekend. Give him two weeks from then, you’re talking about getting him back on 25th July. That gives him a solid month to get his head back into the Arsenal game, which feels like ample time to me.
5. Christian Mosquera – He’s not gone to the World Cup, he’s Big Bill’s understudy, he had a great breakthrough first season, this feels like a bit of a no-brainer to me.
6. Martin Zubimendi – a little like Raya, he’s been a virtual spectator this World Cup. Yes, he’ll have had to train, so he’ll need to be given a bit of a holiday, but given he lost his place towards the end of last season, I think he’ll be chomping at the bit. I think we also need to all remember what a revelation he was for us in the first half of the season. Why couldn’t he be that again?
7. Noni Madueke – he’s actually played more football than I thought he would this World Cup, but his injury problems aren’t the same and, regardless, I think he’ll now find himself as a cameo appearance guy for the semi final and final if England get there.
8. Martin Odegaard – was getting back to his old self for Norway, is the reason I’ve written this piece today, because I think he’ll get enough time off and will be ready for the big kick off. Get the skipper back in the side and let’s see if he can continue the form from the World Cup, but in Arsenal colours instead.
9. Kai Havertz – Went home even earlier than the Brazilians. Even if he was given a month off, he’d still be back by the beginning of August, which gives him three week’s to get ready for the new season. Came back towards the end of last season haing had an injury-hit one, so I think he’ll be absolutely desperate to get back on the pitch for The Arsenal. Plus, he’s our best centre forward.
10. Eberechi Eze – come on, let’s see the Odegaard and Eze combination for the Coventry game, can we? Ebs is another one that hasn’t racked up a ton of game time for England, so he’ll be ready and raring to go, plus I think against a newly promoted side that might employ a low block, this is the kind of player you want in your side.
11. Gabriel Martinelli – Trossard’s impending exit kind of makes this a default position, and given Gabby Martinelli didn’t start every minute, didn’t play a ton of minutes for Brazil, plus has the same situation as Big Gabi, it feels natural that he’ll be the one to be given the nod. Of course, depending on when they get the Tzolis deal done, Arteta could go for the new guy, but as of right now, it feels a little silly to put in a player who hasn’t actually signed. Even if we do have him, however, I’m guessing Arteta eases him in, rather than chucks him in.

So that’s my starting XI, as well as justification on why they start. But here’s the good thing; that’s a good side. It’s a side which I’d be excited about. And barring no injuries to any of those players, it’s a side that I think can see us through the first few games. I didn’t even put MLS in there. For sure, he could be given the nod over Zubi, but just for now, I’m trying to remove recency bias and remember what a difference the Spaniard made for us when he first joined. But regardless, I haven’t talked about Gyokeres, we still don’t know about Timber, we have Max Dowman who is a year older, plus there’s even Gabby Jesus who hasn’t left the club yet. For a team with which we’re all worried about the players not being in the right shape to return, I’m pretty happy with that squad kicking us off the new season – even before we’ve signed anyone.

But what do you think? Let me know in the comments.

Are we still calling them that these days?

Regardless, his two goals were enough, on a night in which two teams duked it out who were clearly on equal footing to each other. In fact, if I’m honest, I thought Norway were slightly the better team. After England dominated the first part of the game, Norway gre back into it, got a flukey goal, but after that goal it felt like they deserved it and probably should have gone on and got at least one. The Robot will be FEWMIN’ with Sorloth for not squaring to him when Norway had a counter.

The Arsenal boys were, I thought, a bit ‘meh’. Maybe I’m being harsh on Saka, who I thought showed some sparkles of the real Saka, but I’m still putting it down to him not being fully fit. How can he be? There’s no way Tuchel benches one of his best players in a quarter-final, unless he knows that he can’t get a full 90 out of him. And if a player can’t do the full 90, well, he ain’t fit, is he?

Rice, like Saka, clearly was off the pace, and the fact he couldn’t beat the first man was all the evidence Tommy T needed to hook him. Hopefully, that illness bug is all it is. If that is the case, maybe it is to England’s benefit that he came off, because it saves his legs, because if he’d have played the full 120, you never know what might have happened in terms of him breaking down. At this stage now, as with some of the noises around Saliba, it’s feeling like it’s a case of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’ with Rice, which I’ll be honest and tell you, I’m very nervous about for next season. I was born in England, I live in England, I (loosely) support England and want them to win the World Cup, obviously, but there was a little part of me watching last night who was calculating when the English lads would be back home and resting up for the new season, should they have gone out to the Norwegians.

Noni was Noni, and you have to say he hardly set the world alight with his overhit crosses and general absentness, but then again that was a classic Harry-Kane-In-Latter-Rounds-Of-International-Tournaments too, so it wasn’t just Madueke who was off colour. I also thought that Rice for Eze wasn’t the right move, a decision that I think Tuchel realised after he then brought James on at 71 minutes for Gordon, shifted Ebs wide left and then had James in the middle of the park. I get why he did it – Eze is a ‘moments’ player; so you wouldn’t be surprised if he cropped up on the edge of the box and leathered one in from 25 yards, but he struggled to influence the game. We’ve seen that ourselves last season. I feel like sometimes you can just tell if this “is going to be an Eze game” or not; the two NLDs, the Palace home game, the Newcastle home and away games last season – we was great in all of them. But there will be games that it just don’t seem to be ‘his’ game, and that felt like one last night.

It was more of an ‘intriguing’ game last night, rather than an exciting or interesting one. Norway was disciplined; they moved the ball well, and I thought Odegaard looked quite lively in the first half. He looked ok in the second, but despite Norway being more dominant and playing better than England in the second half, it didn’t feel like he influenced the match as much. He’s played well for Norway in this tournament so far, looking much like the old Odegaard, and weirdly if you’re looking at it from an Arsenal perspective, we probably could have done with him going further and the Arsenal boys resting up, but hey, he’ll now head home and let’s see if we can have him ready for the start of the new season.

And that’s pretty much it from the game. Oh, actually, one more thing – Thomas Tuchel. I kind of like the spikiness of his post match interviews. It shows the exacting demands he puts on the team, and it’s why he’s been a winner where he’s been. I think Neville said in his post-match commentary that he likes it too, so aside from the fact I’m agreeing with Gary Neville, I do agree that the mentality of continous improvement from the German is exactly what this England team need.

And that’s because they’re up against Argentina on wednesday night, which is a game that, if I’m honest, I don’t think England can consider themselves heavy favourites. Yeah, Argentina have the Messi factor, but I also look at that England back line and I remain to be convinced in the slightest. Very shaky indeed.

Right, got to head off, as I’m off to watch my niece in a play this afternoon.

Have a good one peeps.

Catch you all tomorrow.

I remember him scoring a headed goal at Euro 2024 against the Germans in the July of that summer. He would go on to sign for us about six weeks later, but by then we sort of half-knew that he was of interest to the club. What we didn’t know, is what a big game player he is.

I’ve already spoken about it just four days ago, after he got a late winner for the Spanish against the Portuguese, but last night he was at it again. And I think at this stage, people like me need to sack off statements like ‘underrated’, because he’s a bloody superstar. I bet back home in his native Spain, he’s already a hero after the Euro’s, so now he’s just cemented his greatness in their eyes.

What we need, is a full season of Mikel being fit and contributing, because unfortunately for him, he’s had two significant injuries in both season’s that he’s played for us. Because if he is, I think he’s getting A LOT of game time next season. And given how clutch he comes up when he plays for Spain or us, you wonder whether Mikel Arteta might be thinking that in reality, Merino could dislodge somebody like Gyokeres for the second striker role. I am, of course, suggesting that Kai Havertz is our main striker, but I do think it’s a tough call between Gyokeres and Merino. And I think Merino would edge it.

Think about it; last season, according to TransferMarkt, Merino played 11 times as a centre forward. He scored four goals, got three assists. That’s a ratio of 0.64 g+a per match. Gyokeres, by comparison, got 24 g+a in 54 games, which is a ratio of 0.44. If Merino played 54 games as a central striker, by those maths, we’re talking 35 goals and assists in total. He’s probably a 25 goal and 10 assist striker we’ve got, playing in central midfield.

You could counter-argument that and say “small sample size”, but we have two data points, because last season he also got a stint as a centre forward. He got nine goals and three assists in 12 games. that’s a 0.75 contribution per 90. Over two separate date periods. If you even put those together, you get 10 goals and siz assists in 23 games.

This guy is an output monster.

And when you look at the fact he’s done it for Spain at multiple competitions, and in qualifying too, suddenly you start to realise that this isn’t a hot streak like Joe Willock had when he first went to Newcastle on loan, this just is who Mikel Merino is.

Guys, I’m thinking he might even be our best striker next season, although I’m still probably edging towards Kai. But Mikel Merino is massively in the conversation now. We can’t deny that. His goal yesterday was classic strikers instinct. Even before the goal, he makes an intelligent run in between the Belgian centre halves. What’s that phrase that Neytiri says in Avatar?

I SEE YOU…

Mikel Merino, I SEE YOU…

Now I/we just need to see him fit.

The other good news, is because he has only just come back to fitness for this World Cup, and didn’t play much for the last few months of the season, he should be good to go come the beginning of our season. And given all the question marks about some of our players like Rice, Saka, Saliba, etc, all the good news stories about players like Merino being fit and ready to go, is a warming sight.

Tonight it’ll be England versus Norway, and the good news is that at least one Arsenal player is coming home. That means, come 13th July, you’d hope that player(s) is back with their family and getting a few weeks off. If it’s the England lads, I suspect they might get a bigger break, but hey, it will at least mean one week less at the competition.

Elsewhere there’s still the Bruno G stuff rumbling along, and I had a few chats with some Geordies on social media last night, who are leaning in to the ‘burned bridges’ vibes. I get it, Ornstein drops an Ornbomb and you pretty much take it as read that it’s fact. David doesn’t do spurious. He’s pretty black and white (pardon the pun) with his messaging, so it’s clear Bruno wants The Arsenal. Newcastle are briefing their journos that they are a bit puzzled because there hasn’t been an offer, but I suspect Arsenal will make one soon. The problem might be, that Newcastle ask for a crazy figure. If they go in at £100million as what they want, it wouldn’t surprise me to see Arsenal walk away. This isn’t the same as Rice; Rice was four years younger, a solid eight years at the top ahead of him, plus there was a bit of a bidding war. Like Isak last summer, this doesn’t seem to feel like much of a bidding war. That doesn’t mean to say other clubs won’t have a sniff, but I can’t see too many dropping a ton on Bruno Guimaraes at 28-going-on-29. It just doesn’t feel realistic. Even in this market.

I still also feel like this could be a big bumper payday for Bruno at the end of it though. And by staying at Newcastle. HandOfArsenal put an update out, and the final bullet on the update said that Bruno doesn’t want this being protracted; he wants it sorted before pre season and won’t do an Isak. So that means Newcastle can dig in, insist on an over-the-top price, because they know Bruno will go on pre season, he’ll just carry on, then stay at Newcastle if Arsenal don’t mean Newcastle’s demands.

I have no intel, I have no idea, but I’m just going on gut feel, having seen this sort of situation play out before. Remember Morgan Gibbs-White going to the Scum? If I’m right, I seem to recall there being talk of handing in a transfer request, before suddenly he signs a new deal and does that weird “Mr Marinakis” video after the new contract was announced. That could very well happen here. Obviously I hope it doesn’t because he’s a very talented player, but I just have that feeling, you know?

Anyway, we’ll see what shakes out, because if Bruno is true to what he apparently said about the pre season stuff, this should all be sorted out within the next two weeks.

Right – I’m off to buy some masonry paint. outdoor wall painting awaits me.

have a great Saturday.

The Egyptians went nuclear afterwards, with their boss hinting at corruption by saying that the game was stacked for Argentina to win, and with a couple of those decisions, I do think they have a bit of a point. But I doubt it’s a conspiracy. The problem is, after the stuff with Balogun, Trump and the USMNT, you’re going to get that with this competition now. There’s an easy direction in which you can point your fingers because of FIFA’s actions, so this game and the situations that unfolded were always going to draw some attention.

For Zico’s disallowed goal, I think you probably do have to give it as a foul. There’s a shirt pull, and if the Argentinian player doesn’t have that, he probably wins the ball back. It’s slightly soft, but it is foul. But this is where it gets murky, because there was at least that level of foul that happened by Mac Allister just before Argentina scored the winner. What should probably have happened is that the goal was disallowed and a penalty was given to Egypt in stoppage time. What a dramatic end of a dramatic game that would have been!

Sadly not, however, and we find ourselves with our quarter finals now decided. It’ll be France against Morocco, England versus Norway, Spain against Belgium, and Argentina against Switzerland, after they zeroed each other out in what I’m assuming was a bit of a snooze-fest.

If I’m picking a route from here, I’d probably say the bookies’ choice for a pathway would be France, England, Spain, and Argentina in the semi-final, then I’d probably go with France and Argentina getting to the final to duke it out. France still feel like outright winners to me.

Champions, if you will. Which reminds me to remind you that the Premier League Champions – The Arsenal – are about six week’s away from kicking off the defence of their title at home to Coventry. And what shiny new players do we have to ready ourselves for that defence?

None. Nada. Zip. Zilch, Zero.

We can argue the toss over HIncapie if we want, but he was with us last season, so it isn’t a new face. And it seems like the only new face on the horizon right now is Illian Meslier, who is joining us on a free, which will apparently enable Tommy Setford to go out on loan. This is a weird one, because Meslier has tasted first-team football, and Premier League first-team football at that, so why would he want to come in as a potential number three? It’s so far removed from actual playing time, that it really only makes sense to give a guy the third-choice ‘keeper role the gig because he wants to train with the first team and be given a Champions League seat on the bench, owing to that weird rule where you have to have two back-up ‘keepers in each matchday squad.

He never made it on to the pitch for last season, and for a lot of it he wasn’t even in the match-day squad, so Leeds didn’t think him good enough to be a number two, so why should The Arsenal?

I suspect we don’t. I suspect he’s the ‘in case of emergency’ offer if a club comes in on deadline day and activates Kepa’s £5million release clause. I’d expect that to be fair; Kepa did make a high-profile error in the League Cup final last season, but in the season before that, he did well for Bournemouth, so I’d expect him to be able to find a club interested in his services this summer. And at just £5million for a guy with his experience, for the right club, it’s going to be a no-brainer.

So I guess my question is whether Arsenal has a backup contingency in place, in case of the Kepa situation, seeing his clause triggered. I would hope that part of the agreement would have some kind of failsafe; imagine a club like Wolves, or Ipswich, deciding on deadline day that they wanted to trigger the clause, leaving Arsenal without a recognised and experienced number two? We can’t have that happen. We simply shouldn’t. So I hope those failsafes are in place. I personally would be fine seeing Kepa as the backup next season. He’s going to get early rounds of the FA Cup if it’s against lesser opposition, a few League Cup games, maybe a Champions League dead rubber. I get it – if Raya gets injured, we have a challenge – but given how he’s generally been plenty fit for us so far, I don’t see that not continuing for next season.

All of this ‘keeper talk, and yet we still have less news about outfield players. There will be more and more heading home now that we’re in the quarter finals of the World Cup, and whilst some will take a little holiday now, my gut feeling is that we’ll start to get more and more movement now. We kind of need it. We’re playing Girona in three weeks, as the pre-season friendlies kick off. Let’s hope we have a shiny new outfield toy for then.

Catch you all tomorrow.

Or did it?

Because let’s face it, because of FIFA, because of Trump, because of the circus that followed the ‘bending’ of the rules for the USA, a lot of the post-match discourse was whether the US actually performed below par. You can see why. What’s that Mitchell and Webb sketch where both are German Naxi officers and they say “wait…are we…the bad guys?” – well, that’s probably how the USMNT felt yesterday. The media storm that had been whipped up because of Infantino and Trump’s actions meant that people like me were behind Belgium to win, not the US, which I think is a real shame. That USA team would have been underdogs anyway against the Belgians, I would have thought, but it flipped some of that narrative, and what ended up happening – by the sounds of it and reading the reports – was that it hampered the US players and empowered and emboldened the Belgium players.

I think I’ve said this before, but having a host nation go deep into a tournament is a good thing, because it keeps the vibes in the country still so pumped. I wonder if now we’ll see the US public revert back to more of their national sports and the World Cup takes a back seat, as US sports fans find comfort in defeat, but watching another one of the 12-million baseball games that seem to be on a season.

I said it yesterday, too, but I also feel sorry for Flo. He was the poster boy for this USMNT. He’d already bagged goals; his ex-Arsenal connection meant that all of us Gooners have a soft spot for him, and I wanted him to do well. But he found himself in the middle of a political storm that should never have existed.

It’s done now, though, and the Belgians advance to play Spain next, which I just can’t really see them getting past. They made it hard work for themselves against Portugal, until Luis de la Fuente realised that he had an international cheat code available to him:

Mikel Merino

Honestly, that man is a force of international football nature. Do you remember when Welbeck was with us? And every time he seemed to go away with the England team, he’d have a blinding game, and because super prolific? I was going to say the same about Merino this morning, but I’ve realised the error of my ways, because Merino IS a clutch player for us, just like he is for Spain. He doesn’t exactly have the same goal ratio for us as he does for his home nation, but if you think about the impact he makes for The Arsenal, you start to realise just what a player he is. The first goal that comes to mind is his equaliser against Newcastle last season, but I also have Liverpool at home from the season before in my mind. 11 goals in 48 appearances for Spain is a record that most strikers might be ok with, so the fact he gets goals from midfield is really something. All whilst being criminally underrated.

I think it’s probably because he doesn’t ‘stand out’ at anything in particular. He’s not the fastest; he’s a very good passer, but you don’t think of those eye-of-a-needle passes when you think about Merino. He’s not a dribbler that can beat a man. His key traits are things like duel-winning, or ground duel/tackles from midfield. So when I think about a player who is good at those attributes, my mind instantly goes to a more industrious style of footballer who is better suited to sit in front of a back four and break up play to redistribute. But Merino is not that guy. He’s kind of good at everything, but his intelligence in the final third shines through, and the run he made for the goal last night shows it. You can see why he works as a centre forward; that was a centre forward’s run and finish to win the game in stoppage time for Spain. After the end of the season and the injury he suffered, it was lovely to see our lad come out and bag a winner for his country. Fair play, lad.

Because he isn’t a speed merchant, or a winger, I could see him being very valuable to us well into his 30s too, I reckon. He is an expert at positioning himself in the right places in the final third, and I bet we see him coming up with more important goals for us next season as well. One of my new season’s resolutions needs to be to appreciate him more. He will deliver for us.

From an Arsenal transfer perspective…well…there really isn’t anything. Certainly, nothing we should be entertaining. When the BBC is reporting that we’re monitoring Wan Bissaka as an option should Ben White leave, you know it’s time to put down the gossip column reading and just stay away.

And so I shall. Got a couple of meetings in the City to attend to, so heading off there and I’ll be back tomorrow with more of the usual waffle. Catch up then.

To be fair, I missed a cracker, so I re-watched it this morning, and although it’s not the same jeopardy when you know the score, it was still an entertaining watch. Those England players really did everything to put their bodies on the line. Also, that first England goal had Arsenal DNA all over it:

1. Declan Rice’s lung-busting run
2. Bukayo Saka’s perfect cross

Superb stuff. Then, for Bellingham to score so soon afterwards, I bet all the people locked in the pubs at that time were having a whale of it. Me, I was fast asleep. It’ll be Norway in the next round, and that’ll be an interesting match too, I reckon. They’ve proven themselves to be a good side, they have our skipper skippering them, plus the best goalscorer in world football up top, so I think England are going to find it hard going.

That is, of course, unless they can get some kind of hotline to Gianni Infantino. Apparently, if you have his ear, you can just change the rules to suit your own agenda. I am, of course, talking about the decision to rescind Balogun’s red card, so he’s able to play against Belgium in the early hours of the morning tonight. Honestly, at this point, I think we all have to just give up and go home. The hydration breaks have been a joke; a fiscally-driven attempt to line the coffers of the broadcasters in the US and FIFA, too. Infantino has long been a horrendously corrupt individual, and he showed his contempt for everything and everyone football-related back in Qatar. Now he’s just doing it in plain sight. The absolute cajones of the man to essentially rewrite the rules because he’s chummying up to world leaders like Donald Trump. It’s beyond scandalous at this point – it’s morally bankrupt. Blatter was a disgrace, and we all have seen the documentaries about how corrupt FIFA was. They don’t even hide it anymore.

The Norwegian boss Solbakken had some good words to say, and I agree with him. Tuchel also made a good point in his post-match press conference about appealing for everything now. Infantino’s actions (he got a call from the White House about this decision) have effectively napalmed any level of sporting integrity of this competition. It’s not enough that they have expanded this tournament to too many teams. It’s not enough that they’ve changed it with these ‘hydration breaks’. It’s not enough that they have got their greedy mitts into the club-level side of football by creating that pathetic Club World Cup expanded tournament last summer. Now they are just rewriting the rules for those with the most power.

I just googled the definition of the word ‘corruption’:

Corruption is the abuse of entrusted power or authority for personal or private gain.

That is it. That is Infantino. It stinks. On a day in which we’ve watched arguably the best football match in this horrible tournament with the England v Mexico game, the competition itself feels like it’s a bit pointless, when rules can be re-writen favouring those Infantino is looking to curry favour with. I saw somebody put a message out on social media saying “Has FIFA told us what the score of the USA v Belgium game is yet?” and whilst that Gallow’s Humour is setting in online, there is no doubt a sad reality to how people are feeling.

I feel a bit sorry for Balogun in this. He just wants to play. He picked up a red, he said afterwards he has to accept it, and yet now he’s at the centre of some of the most murky football-related goings on that I personally think I’ve ever witnessed in the 43 years I’ve been on this planet watching football. Even if the decision was a bit of a dodgy one, the VAR also corroborated the decision of the referee. You cannot change the outcome after the dust has settled like this. It also makes a mockery of the referees. They will probably all be feeling undermined as a result of this action. What’s the point in having a person in the middle officiating when it can all just be overruled like this? It stinks.

I’m going to leave it there for today, I think. I really don’t think I want to talk much more about football for now.

Back tomorrow.

I’ve got no love for France, from an England perspective you probably want them out, but not to Paraguay. Football like that can’t be winning out.

In the other game we have ourselves our first hosts who are heading home and, with Morocco looking like they gave a proper schooling to Canada, you have to say they look like a good side. They’ll give France a proper match when the two teams meet next week.

The other final set of round of 16 games is tonight and, with a lot being made of the altitude stuff, I think we’re going to see Mexico progress against an England team who haven’t really impressed at all during this competition. There was one half against Croatia that looked alright, but that’s been about it. We talked about the World Cup and the altitude stuff yesterday morning on the Same Old Arsenal pod, amongst other things, and my assertion along with Amanda’s was that it will definitely have a material impact, coupled with England’s unimpressive form. Last night I had a dream that Stuart Pearce was sitting on a park bench round the corner from me, and I asked him if he thought the altitude would make a difference. He basically told me that England had ‘no chance’.

So there you go. Cheese dream Stuart Pearce has spoken, and so I’m debating whether it’s even worth watching the game to be honest with you.

In the Arsenal world, the big talking point is Leo Trossard potentially heading off to Turkey for £17million. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, for a guy who turns 32 in December and with one year left on his contract, that’s not a terrible fee. His profiling at the World Cup will inevitably help, because he’s been the Belgians best player, but that in itself has me pausing for reflection. He finished the season really strongly for Arsenal, he got the all important goal against West Ham, and the next day we were crowned champions as City drew with Bournemouth. Crossers has his place in history as a Premier League winner and he’ll have that forever in the history books.

His profile is going to be a tough one to replace too. Very good in small spaces, a guy who can turn a man on a sixpence, plus he’s come up with big goals against big rivals. He will definitely be missed for sure.

It’s a real conundrum because you can make the case either way.

This exit does at least confirm that the club are going hard for a replacement. I suspect it also probably means that Martinelli is the one to stay and duke it out. Given his age, his contract length, that probably makes sense to be fair, but his contribution in the Premier League was pitiful last season, so we 100% need to see more.

I wonder if – when this deal is confirmed (probably after the World Cup) – we’ll see clubs doubling down on their asking price for their players when Arsenal come knocking. It does feel as though we’re being given inflated numbers in this market, but when clubs also know we have a need, there’s suddenly an opportunity to try to get an extra couple of mil out of us because they know we have to pull the trigger on a wide player. Who that player is, beats me, because the only big link we’ve had is Morgan Rogers. He’s a good player, he has played on the left for Villa before, but to my mind that’s always been as an auxiliary option, rather than his best position. Maybe Andrea Berta has a left-of:field (pun intended) option that nobody has heard the details of yet?

I’d take that Kroupi lad, and not just because it appears Spurs are courting him, and it would be funny. No, I’d take him because he’s rapid, he’s good on the ball and he showed twice against us across two games, that he knows where the goal is. He even made a joke about winning us the league after his goal against City, so I suspect that he might have a soft spot for The Arsenal.

If Arsenal want to move, however, you do wonder if they’ll have to do it relatively quickly. There’s a few reports out there suggesting The Scum have already held some preliminary talks with the player and his representatives. Whether that’s true or not is kind of irrelevant; if Arsenal want a player, they showed last season with Eze that they can move quickly to get him. But I wonder if they’re looking at that fee and thinking they can get somebody like Barcola for similar, and given that Barcola has played at the highest level already, and is part of the current French World Cup squad, Arsenal might be waiting for the dominoes to fall with other players coming in to PSG first.

All a lot of “ifs” and “buts” though, and having drunk a shedload yesterday at a bbq, I don’t think I want my brain having to work through those kind of permutations on a Sunday morning. So I’ll put a pin in thinking about Arsenal speculation for today, and I’ll come back tomorrow with some more thoughts.

Catch you all then.

From an Arsenal perspective, the Women announced the signing of Georgia Stanway, which is a pretty big coup, and, given there have been a few high-profile exits this season already from the ladies’ team, this will be a boost to the squad.

On the men’s side, all is still quiet on the western front, although I think the natives (Arsenal fans) are starting to get restless on social media. It doesn’t help when you hear that the young lad from Leicester – Monga – is now going to Man City. By all accounts, he looks like a wonderkid, but Arsenal weren’t willing to go the £10million+ for him to sign, which I think is fair enough. Yes, he’s a very good talent (so I hear), yes, he plays in a position we are all looking at as needing a pathway and evolution, but the reality is that he’s 16 and there’s no way he’s impacting this Arsenal team for the immediate future.

And that’s what we have to be looking at now. We need to make proverbial hay while the sun is shining. We are the champions, we have a bunch of teams around us who all have uncertainty and new managers, and there is a lot of change and transformation happening. Chelsea is having to reshape their team under Alonso. Iraloa needs to work out how to turn Liverpool back into a title-challenging side. City doesn’t have Pep, Bernardo Silva, and there are questions over Rodri. Villa looks like they might need to sell before they buy. Bournemouth have a new manager and another bunch of players who have exited. Then, at the bottom, you have The Scum, who have picked up some decent signings that will probably help to lift them above mid-table. We are in a ‘now’ moment, and so we probably need players for ‘now’. It’s why the Guimaraes signing makes sense, although I suspect it is incredibly unlikely. With Tonali and Gordon both gone, their fans will have the pitchforks out if they let the Brazilian go, so I suspect that one will be dead in the water. But going back to the original point, Monga from Leicester isn’t going to be a player whom we need to bring in to strengthen. He’s for when this particular project reaches its natural conclusion.

I did see the Telegraph linking us to Ezri Konsa from Villa, but I think that feels like a Berta “casting the net wide” jobby to me. He’s just turned 28, he’s a right-sided centre back that can also play right back, and he’s got a deal that runs until 2028. Villa might be tempted to cash in on him, but given how much they’re asking for Rogers, they’d also probably want the earth and the moon for him, too. Plus, there’s the English premium to take into account. Add to that the fact that he’s not overtaking William Saliba for that position. We have Mosquera as the deputy to Saliba, who can also do that, and besides, isn’t that just who Ben White is for us? He’s converted to a right back who can play centre half, whereas Konsa is the other way around, so this one doesn’t really feel like a deal that has any real value in it from an Arsenal perspective.

And yet…we know Arteta loves a defensive signing…so I guess we can’t really rule it out.

Other than that, there’s not a lot really going on, unless you count Marcel Desailly’s words about Saliba moving to Real Madrid. To be fair, he did say that it would happen ‘one day’, but with the way Madrid are right now, and having just got Mourinho on board, I couldn’t think of any club worse to join. When you also factor in the point Desailly made about Gabriel only being the player he is because of Saliba, I guess I probably shouldn’t have even brought this conversation up! But, when it’s all quiet, we’ve got to talk about something together, right?

Ok, that’ll do for me for today. We’re gonna do a bit of a ‘check in’ pod tomorrow morning on the Same Old Arsenal pod at 9.30 am UK time, so if you fancy coming along and saying ‘hello’ – pop in here.

Firstly – and quickly, as I didn’t watch the US game last night – you’ve got to feel for Flo Balogun this morning. The man has been building up to this as his World Cup ever since he declared for the USMNT back when he was an Arsenal player, so to have it (probably) cut short is a bit of a kick in the balls. It’s a difficult one, that one, because in real time it doesn’t look like anything. Then it looks clumsy on the replays, but you can’t be raking your studs down an opponent’s legs and not expect there to be any repercussions. The US went through and now plays a Belgium team, who I wonder if they’ve used all their ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ cards in one go based on last night’s game. They were, frankly, a bit crap. But Senegal’s keeper had a mare for the second goal they conceded, and within five minutes the Belgian’s had been gifted an extra 30 minutes of this competition. Even then, they got a contentious pen to see them through. I have no skin in the game for either side, but it feels like karma and justice didn’t quite go the way you’d want with that Tielemans late penalty.

As for England, well, that wasn’t too impressive at all, I have to say. The Management asked me if England stood a chance of winning the whole thing, before a ball had been kicked last night, and my response was “probably not – France look too good”. My response has changed a little this morning; it’s not that France, Spain, or Brazil look so good that they will thwart England, it is that England looks so crap that they might thwart themselves. At first, for that first goal of the game for Congo, I thought that Spence was at fault. I’ve softened that stance a little bit, but the fact that Spence is playing right back at the World Cup is kind of bonkers. He’s just been part of a terrible Tottenham defence that nearly got relegated last season. He’s good going forward, but can’t defend for his life, and was part of an England back line that was all over the place.

The fact that Harry Kane bailed them out leaves a very bad taste in my mouth, but as I said to my brother after he’d hammered in the winning goal, maybe it is time for me to admit that he actually is a bit good. I’ve spent a very long time convincing myself that, for England at least, he is a master stat-padder with all the penalties he gets, but both of his goals last night were those of an elite marksman, so fair play there.

As for the Arsenal boys on display:

1. Rice – Thought he was decent enough when playing in midfield. Against an opponent like that, though, I would have liked to have seen either him OR Elliot Anderson, not really both on the pitch. Congo surprised a lot of people by not just sitting in a low block and showing no adventure. They were impressive going forward and could/should have buried the game with Wissa’s shot off the post. That’s a real sliding doors moment that I suspect he’ll be having a few nightmares about for some time to come yet. When Rice moved to right back, he actually looked good. Having Saka in front of him and Eze playing in the right eight position probably helped that, because the Arsenal connection was enabling those players to build on the relationship they already have, but whilst the press are now speculating whether that is the answer, I doubt Tuchel will see it as a viable long-term solution. It didn’t really get the best out of Rice on the couple of occasions he played there previously, so I’m not sure it should be considered now.
2. Madueke – A very Noni game, that one. In patches looked good; in patches, he just ran down blind alleys. He’s one of these guys that you think, “If he can just do x, he’ll be an elite superstar,” but, as I think Arsenal fans found out last season, I wonder if this is just him. His inconsistency drove Chelsea fans nuts; it had a little impact for us last season, and I suspect England fans who don’t watch enough of Arsenal will probably be feeling it too.
3. Saka – On for Noni, and you can just tell that a not-fully-fit Bukayo Saka is still better than Madueke, even if it is just 30 minutes that he can do. He just does the simple things so well, or he at least makes complicated things look simple, and although he won’t be credited with the assist for the first goal, it was his involvement to dig the ball out to Gordon that made a key impact yesterday. His jobsharing situation with Noni probably works well for both England and Arsenal, but it is a shame that Saka can’t play the full 90. I think we’d have seen a lot more joy on that right-hand side if he did.
4. Eze – Not a ton of things you can say. He came on, got a few touches on the ball, but other than a nice little interchange with the Arsenal boys on that right-hand side for Kane’s first goal, I can’t remember too much. I’d probably have to re-watch the part where he came on. Which I have very little intention of doing!

And that’s about it, really. England go through, but I can’t see them making it past Mexico at the Azteca stadium, where they play at altitude, and Mexio have lost like two games in something crazy like 50 years. But there you go.

So, to wrap up, a little on the transfer stuff, as Tonali is on the verge of joining the Scum for £100million. Decent player, would have been good at The Arsenal, but I just cannot fathom that price tag. It;s an overpayment of around £30million. I’ve seen a few Arsenal fans getting antsy because they’ve spent over £200million already, and there’s rumours they’re after Kroupi too, but I don’t think any Arsenal fan should be looking over the garden fence at that lot. If you are, then just remind yourself that this Scum team finished a point above relegation last season. They have bought some decent players, but we are talking about the need to be elite to challenge for the Champions League spots, and I just don’t see that from what they’ve purchased. And if they go after Kroupi, I suspect Arsenal will go and have a chat to Bournemouth as well, so we’ll just have to see how that tree shakes out. It’s early days yet.

Right, I’ll be offski. Have a good Thursday and I’ll be back tomorrow with some more musings.

Yesterday, we got Matt Law telling us that Villa view Rogers at £130million, whereas the French outlets are also signalling that they want similar monies to the Elliot Anderson fee, as the tax for being an English club starts to kick in following City’s move.

It’s a funny one, because part of me thinks in conspiracy theory, and thinks that the reason City have gone this early and this high on Anderson, is because they want to over-inflate the market and make it difficult for other clubs. It is not outside the realms of possibility; they approach legal situations like the CAS stuff a few years back, as well as the 115 charges situation, by throwing as much lawyer money to jam up the system as possible, so why not try to hike up the transfer market?

It feels a little like the summer of the Neymar transfer to PSG in 2017. That was around £200million then, and the knock-on effect was that everyone benchmarked transfers against that fee. Barca used that money – albeit a year later – to sign the overrated Philippe Coutinho for a staggering £108million – a price he was never worth in a million years. But that is what we are seeing unfold right now in the early stages of this transfer window. PSG are briefing that they want mega money for a guy who is not a regular in their side, won’t sign a new deal, plus has question marks over his ability and physicality for the Premier League. There’s no doubt he’s a talent, but is he a sure-fire hit? That’s what Declan Rice was, which is why we paid £105million for him. I don’t think you can say the same about Barcola.

Equally, Villa briefing to the press that they want £130million for Rogers is an example of another player who is very talented, but never worth that kind of cash. I do find it amusing, though; clubs say “he’s not for sale” one week, then the next week they’re briefing a price. Hang on a minute…wasn’t he ‘not for sale’ a second ago? So you’re now saying there IS a price?

It’s all just postering, as we all know, and it’s always just clubs trying to save face. The reality is that if Rogers wants Arsenal, if Arsenal wants Rogers, then a deal can be made to happen, and at a fee that suits both parties. Villa have the control on paper, but we all know that players can make life difficult if they need to, so we’ll just have to see how that shakes out. Personally, I’m still not convinced, because I just don’t think his style and where he plays is right for us. We need a better left-winger option than what we have right now (despite Gabi Martinelli being the hero and scoring last night for Brazil in injury time).

That goal that Martinelli got might help inflate his price a bit, but whether or not we have a buyer remains to be seen. I’ve always thought that one day he might head over to Spain and to Real madrid – just a hunch I had – but ith Vinicius Junior and Mbappe playing on that left-hand side of the attacking positions, that clear isn’t going to happen. But that doesn’t mean that there might not be a fair bit of interest from other clubs. Maybe Atleti fancy it? Or one of the German or Italian clubs? Martinelli could be a very good player in a team that has more space to counter attack in to, so maybe a Premier League side like Newcastle, or dare I say it, Aston Villa? I bet he’d be brilliant at Everton, for example. The question would then come down to fee and wages.

Elsewhere in the World Cup yesterday, both of my surrogate teams (due to family connections), The Netherlands and Germany, went out on penalties last night. I don’t get it, as somebody who was born in England, I’m used to penalties being the exit stage. But to happen to my second team Germany? They LITERALLY never go out on penalties! Honestly, with this, plus these ad breaks turning football into quarterly games, I’m about getting done with this bloody competition

The Germans were crap too. misplaced passes, overhit crosses, Muisiala losing his mind in extra time. The only good thing about it was Kai getting on the scoresheet, then getting to go home and prep himself for the new season. The German team will get back to Germany probably today/tomorrow, then it’ll probably be a ‘get your heads down for a bit, lads’ for a few days, then he probably gets two weeks off. If you think that by mid-July, he’s probably ready to get back into the swing of pre-season training with The Arsenal, that timing works quite well. And although Jurrien won’t be happy that his country went out, and that his brother missed a pen, maybe at the back of his mind he’ll be thinking “well, I wouldn’t have been in the tournament that long anyway!”

That’s about it for today I think. Ivory Coast against Norway could be an interesting one to watch later this evening, whilst the winner of Ecuador and Mexico will have some interest for England fans, because if we beat DR Congo (I keep calling them ‘Doctor Congo’ in my head every time I see it, like some kind of evil Bond villain), then that’s who the England team will be up against next.

Back tomorrow with some more World Cup / transfer window musings.

This morning, I had a look, and it seems Brazil versus Japan is the first game on, which actually kicks off at a very reasonable 6pm. That’s being played in Houston, Texas, which means it’s five hours behind and a 1pm kick off, so I will definitely whack that on tonight as I’m prepping dinner. Feels like it could be a fun one. Big Gabi, future Arsenal star Bruno Guimaraes ( ) and maybe even a sprinkling of Gabriel Martinelli too, perhaps? Of course, we’d have to deal with Cunha, Alisson and Casemiro, but at least there’s no Richarlison at this competition. That frigging chicken dance is too much for one man to take.

Japan impressed a lot of people when they came to England and tidied up a bit after themselves, but their football is pretty good too. I suspect they’re probably going home tonight, but you never know. An upset could be on the cards.

Actually, how often are there ‘upsets’ these days, when it comes to the finals? I just had a look at the 2022 finals to see, and low and behold, the Japanese dumped out the Germans in the group stages of the last competition. Belgium were also yanked from the competition at the expense of Croatia and Morocco, whilst in the knockouts, Croatia did over Brazil and Morocco overcame Portugal. So I guess there are upsets to be had. I just assumed that in the World Cup, a bit like the Champions League, the bookies are usually spot on.

At the moment, the bookies are saying France, Argentina, Spain, England, Brazil and Germany (in that order) are expected to go the distance, and when you look at the French side, you can see why. Big Bill Saliba at the back, Mbappe, Olise and Dembele up top…sheesh, that’s a good side. I don’t like Haaland one bit – I think he’s an incredibly arrogant twat – but his candour when he said “they’re probably gonna win the whole thing” was appreciated. Most of the players at this tournament know that they’re probably not making it to the latter stages.

As for England, I’d be surprised if they get to a semi-final again. I just don’t see it. They should have enough for Congo, and to be fair, also Mexico, despite the home advantage they will have. I don’t see them getting beyond what will probably be Brazil in the quarter finals, though.

All of this World Cup waffle, and I’m nearly 500-words in without a drop of Arsenal goodness. That’s probably because I’ve not seen much going on, to be honest with you. The Bruno G stuff has a slight angle to it, which is that his agent has been using Arsenal’s interest to secure a new £200k-per-week, which I think is fair enough. A few peeps are speculating that the Diomande stuff to PSG will set the chain-reaction for a Barcola exit, but I think it’s probably a little too soon to be going into the weeds of that one. Both players are still at the World Cup, although the Ivory Coast play Norway tomorrow, so if Odegaard et al progress, perhaps Diomande’s future gets sorted and he does head towards PSG. I remember Liverpool’s pursuit of Zubimendi, though, which ended up with him joining us a year later, so despite what’s being read right now, it does feel like that deal could have a few swings to it.

If it does swing that way, I expect Barcola to probably have a look at his situation, but what’s interesting is that Diomande spent most of his time last season as a right-winger fro Leipzig. He played 25 times on the right and 10 on the left. PSG have Doue on the right, who played 24 times on the right last season – so would those two be sharing positions? Both players can play on both sides, but you tend to find players have a side that they are preferred in, or that they perform better in. Just look at Martinelli. He’s better on the left, but he has had some games for us on the right wing. If a side wanted to buy Martinelli, but they already had the left-hand side sewn up, so they wanted him on the right, do you think that would be a good move for the player and the buying club? I don’t. So I wonder if the same needs to be said about the Diomande/Barcola potential exit. Just because Diomande could arrive, I don’t think it necessarily drives an exit for the Frenchman.

If it does mean Brcola wants to move on, the good news about Arsenal is that we have shown that we are willing to move if the player is right. Just look at the Eze situation; that shifted almost overnight from him joining the Scum to joining us, as a result of the Havertz injury. Five uears ago I’d have been concerned that if somebody like Barcola came on the market, a club like Liverpool could steal a march by just acting quickly. Now, I’d back our boys at Highbury House and London Colney to act if they needed to act. So let’s see how this one shakes out.

Right – that’ll do me for today. I’ll be back tomorrow with some more musings – be interesting to see if any Japanese players stand out tonight.

Catch you all tomorrow.

Tuchel said that as the opponents get better,  so will England, which I suspect will happen. But I still doubt they’ll be better than a Spain, Argentine, Brazil or France.

The next game they’ll have will be the Democratic Republic of Congo, for which England will of course be favourites, but I suspect what we’re also going to see is a game akin to the Ghana and Panama matches; England will dominate territory, possession, attempts and field tilt, but Congo will get one or two chances and if they take those it could be an uncomfortable evening for the Three Lions.

My family background also enables me to claim a stake in Germany and, loosely, the Netherlands. For the Germans it’s Paraguay in the next round, which I suspect they’ll overcome quite quickly, before probably playing France in the Round of 16. The Netherlands have a tricky time of it next, with a game against Morocco, but if they overcome them, I think they’ll get through one of Canada or South Africa quite easily.

As for the Arsenal news, I didn’t get the chance to pen any thoughts yesterday as we were busy for most of the day, but the big talking point is Bruno Guimaraes, as I’m sure you already know and have been thinking about like I have. At 28, going on 29, he’s at the upper end fo the age bracket, and I keep flip-flopping on how I feel about this. I think ultimately I’ve landed on this being a good deal, but probably based on the fee. You can’t be paying north of £80 million for a guy of his age. He’s a very good footballer, very talented, but that represents a hefty ol’ outlay for a player who will soon be knocking on the door of 30.

There is another way of looking at it though, and that’s when you think about the lifespan of this current ‘Project’. Arteta has been manager for six-and-a-half years now. He’s done a great stint, I hope we get a few more years and a few more trophies, but if he has the longevity of Pep at City, that’s ten hyears, which means he only has another three or four seasons before he probably starts to think about doing something else. If we have one more trophies in three years time with Arteta at the helm, I think it is almost inevitable. But he’ll have a bunch of his players who have grown up with him, all getting to the age in which renewal will be needed. Rice will be 30 in three years, Odegaard too. Saka will be 27, if we kept Martinelli he’d be 28, Big Gabi will be 31 and Saliba will be 28 as well. So for me that ‘feels’ like the duration of ‘The Process’ will reach it’s natural conclusion.

So, that being the case, Arteta and Berta might be thinking “do you know what? This guy is good for three seasons, so let’s have him”. It feels like it would very much be a signing to ‘top off’ this current project, rather than build for the next five to ten years. It would certainly make our midfield more imperious, and if you think that Rice has just spent some time for England with a big strapping on his calf, this Bruno potential signing is perhaps an acknowledgement from the manager and the club that we can’t keep flogging Dec with 4,000+ minutes each season. Sooner or later, he’s gonna break.

Do I think if you’re looking at this potential deal through the lens of ‘great player who adds to the ‘win now’ attempt at getting another Premier League or two, in addition to perhaps getting us over the line in the Champions League, you’re probably taking that.

A lot of this is conjecture though, because it is Newcastle we’re dealing with here, who will want to play hard ball despite note being able to offer Champions League – or any kind of European football, actually – to their players. But I doubt they’ll allow their team to be purged, and with Tonali probably off to The Scum, I don’t see the Mags letting us have their captain as well. They’ve lost Gordon too, so there’s no way they offload both of those midfielders.

But it’s a good start in terms of the vibes of the players we are after. Of course, we need to start seeing things go a little more concrete, but we can’t complain too much with the calibre of player we are after.

Right, that’ll do for today I think, as I’ve got a fair bit of gardening to be getting on with. have yourself a lovely Sunday, and I’ll catch you tomorrow – might be later in the day as I have a few more bits and bobs to be getting on with.

Ciao folks.

The truth is, I just haven’t had time in the last week or so, because I’ve been getting up early each morning to sample the delights of what the Canadian Rockies had to offer, before spending a bit of time in New York at the beginning of this week, before arriving back in Blighty yesterday mid-morning. So for me, normal service resumes from today, although admittedly I’m a little later than usual on my ramblings, on account of a bit of a lie-in related to jet lag.

So, what’s been going on since I last spoke to you, my friends?

Well, we all know the World Cup is now well underway, and I have to say it’s been rather handy having the games on during normal times for me over the last 12 days or so. matches basically on from around 1 pm each day and, because of the fact that this competition is happening over different time zones, you never quite know when there might be a kick off. But what I have noticed is that both Canada and New York have actually embraced this more than I thought. There’s advertising everywhere, there’s plenty of attention being paid by the people of the cities I’ve been in, but there’s also been plenty of interest in the press. I thought they’d be a bit ‘meh’ about it all, but no, it appears “soccer ball” is having a positive effect.

I do think the volume of games is a bit ludicrous, though. This competition should never have had an expanded format, and as for those intolerable ‘hydration breaks’, I mean, come on, let’s just admit what they are: An opportunity for US TV to cram in more adverts. I’m absolutely loving the booing of the breaks that is going on. Please do more of that, fans at the games, not that it’ll make much difference to that horrendous human being, Infantino.

I’ve, of course, focused on Arsenal-related involvement, most of which has happened with England, although I was in New York for the Ghana game and decided that a wine bar was a better option. I think I got that one right, because looking at the highlights, it was hardly what you’d describe as a ‘cracker’. I also managed to catch the Ecuador game against Curacao to see our boy Hincapie play, but it was hardly one for the ages. The Canada vs Qatar game was better, although mainly just to see goals, because up until that point, my short bursts of watching games (normally 20 minutes here or there whilst The Management has been getting changed) haven’t exactly borne much fruit for me.

I don’t think the quality of this World Cup has been great, and I think a lot of that can be put down to the fact that a lot of these players are knackered. Especially the ones that play in England and go deep in competitions, so seeing the likes of Rice in a heavy strapping is not surprising at all. Last season he played 55 matches and had just under 4,500 minutes of football in those legs. He got just over a week off and is now expected to do 90 minutes for England twice in a row. It’s not ideal. Tuchel appears to be somebody who is very mindful of the fitness of his players, with Saka being used sparingly so far, so my hope for the game at the weekend is that we don’t see Rice take to the field at all. England can’t afford to break him, and if it means he gets a rest and can recover from any knock, then it’s just as good for them as it is for us. Having done a very basic online search, it appears as though the next England game – if they beat Panama – would be on 1st July, with Sky Sports suggesting it could be Cape Verde. If that plays out and England win the group, then we’ll be talking about a solid 8 days between England’s game against Ghana and their round of 32 game. That’s a fair bit of time for recovery so let’s hope Tuchel is sensible with Rice and his rehab.

As for the other players, Kai seems to be doing alright, Brazil dented Scotland’s hopes of qualifying so Big Gabi and Martinelli progress, whilst I enjoyed seeing Martin Odegaard bang a big drum for Norway the other day. Leo was the best player on the pitch for Belgium when they drew with Iran, but that doesn’t really say a lot to be fair. I managed to catch a lot of that game and the Iranians will be kicking themselves for not making more of the man advantage that they did. Belgium are one of those weird teams; I look at the stars they have and think that they might go far, but I guess when you look at the age profile of those stars, it’s probably not going to be a team that goes too deep in this competition, I don’t think. They’ll probably go through in second place after they beat New Zealand, but I think that’s probably as far as they’ll get – just the gut feel I have.

And that’s about it for me for a bit of a re-introduction into the blogging stuff for today I think. I’ll get back into more Arsenal-centric stuff tomorrow as I get back into the swing of things, but for now, have a great day and if you’re in the UK – STAY HYDRATED PEOPLE!

Perhaps this feeling was triggered by the Jurrien Timber news, which I spoke about yesterday, or maybe it was the news from Tommy Tuchel that Bukayo Saka is still suffering from the Achilles problem that plagued him last season. Those two bits of news within two days of each other have me spooked. I’m not going to lie to you, and given our boys played more than any other team last season in Europe, I have genuine fears that we’re going to get some breakdowns.

I certainly think we’re not going to see a load of them for the start of the Premier League season, which means the fixture lists, which come out on 19th June, will have an impact and a bearing on our overall season. For sure. Think about it – if Arsenal, Man City, and Liverpool all have players who are still recovering having gone deep into World Cup competition, then they are not going to be ready for mid-August. So the clubs will have to bed their star players in later, probably for some only really getting them up to fitness for September. Now think about who we played at the start of this season – United away, Leeds at home, Liverpool away. Man City kicked off with Wolves, Spurs, and Brighton. Imagine the same happens again this season, in which we get three really tough opening games, whilst still bringing players back, whilst Liverpool and City play two teams expected to be down there towards the end of the season.

It has an impact.

So don’t let anyone tell you things like “everyone has to play everyone twice” as if that makes it some kind of level playing field. It isn’t. Arsenal playing Brighton away on a Saturday, having half the squad injured, following an away Champions League game in Azerbaijan, for example, would be very different from City playing Brighton away in April if the Seagulls have nothing to play for. It’s the same principle for games at the start of the season if you have players missing.

That’s why I’m praying for a relatively easy start. Doesn’t tend to happen for us, though. Didn’t happen last season, the season before, in our first four games, we had to play Aston Villa away, Brighton at home (that joke of a draw in which Rice was sent off) followed by the Scum away. In 2023/24 we had the sort of kick-off I would take in a heartbeat: Forest at home, Palace away, Fulham at home. That’s the sort of thing you need for your early games in the season, especially if half your players are crocked coming back from a World Cup, with the other half shattered.

Back to Saka, though, and I don’t know about you, but it does make me wonder about how his Achilles problem gets solved. Is it simply a case that he needs rest that he just hasn’t had? What you don’t want is for this to become a regular ‘thing’, i.e., he plays three or four games, then is out for three or four games. And how long has the club known about this? Has this been going on for over a year? Have they been managing it for longer than we all know? If it’s an Achilles tendonitis that he’s suffering from, then in reality, he probably shouldn’t be at the World Cup at all, but there’s no way that you’re going to stop Saka from being there. If he needs three months of rest, then that should have started after the Champions League Final and finished in August, with him ready for September.

One thing I will say about Tuchel, that I certainly didn’t feel the same with Southgate and that twat Holland, his assistant, was that I trust him to manage Saka’s fitness and be sensible with it more than Southgate, who would happily be flogging him in whatever friendly England have next before they kick off their World Cup campaign.

I do wonder what the news about Arsenal sacking the club doctor abruptly, and then bringing in this guy from Villa, has to do with some of the injury problems and challenges we’ve faced over the last two seasons, will do for us. I seem to recall a Palace fan or two saying “good luck with the muscular injuries” when the previous doctor came to us from Palace. So perhaps there’s been a bit of a review internally and they decided that his methods weren’t quite on the nose. There’s a lot of talk about how Arteta beasts the players in training. We’ve heard that Eze had a word and that made Arteta reign in some of his training sessions towards the end of the season, but if that’s the case, then there needs to be a strong voice that tells Arteta where we’re at when players get to that fabled ‘red zone’. Arteta may be a man of his own mind, but he’s proven he’s willing to listen to people if they are good enough in communicating their message.

Ultimately, we won’t really know how this appointment impacts the team until we get into the thick of next season. We countered it this season by stockpiling in all positions – is that just what Arsenal need to do from now on because of the volume of games? Maybe.

Right, i’ll call it a day, although not before I point you in the direction of James’ lovely video documentary he released yesterday. It’s a great 12-minute watch here.

It may be Erikson’s livelihood, his job, his identity, but health has to come above everything else, and when you put yourself in his position now, I’d personally have to say he has to surely be hanging up his boots now. It will be a shame for such a talented player, but at 34, he still has a massive part of his life in front of him, and so now I’m sure he’ll be thinking about prioritising his wife, kids and family.

It did make me think about my own stresses this season, though. For some reason, this has felt the most stressful season I can ever remember. I don’t know whether that is because when we won the league last time, I was just 21 and at Uni. I’d started supporting Arsenal around 1990, and so my childhood had been a League title in 91, a double in 93, the Cup Winners Cup in 94, the Premier League title in 98, 02, an FA Cup in 03, followed by that historic Invincibles season. So from the age of eight until 21, I’d pretty much seen us win everything domestically, including one European trophy. When you’re that young, you don’t think about time, about history, you just…well…live it. That’s what I did, and so I never really got that stressed because I always thought that there would be another trophy around the corner soon enough. And yeah, we won those FA Cups in 2014, 2015 and then 2017, but by then it felt like it was merely a light relief for the itch that needed to be scratched. As I got older, as I became more obsessive, writing and podcasting about The Arsenal, my emotional attachment has grown, but running in parallel with that, so has my anxious nature as a fan.

For a few years now, I’d started to think things like “Will I EVER see Arsenal win the Premier League again?” or in the Champions League case, “EVER?” – and that seeps into your footballing experience as a fan. The result of which is that the worry and anxiety build up – especially when you get so close three times in a row – which feels like, from a stress point of view, you’ve kind of built up a bit of a pressure valve in your mind. Well, that’s my experience, anyway. And as a result of this, this season has made it even more stressful. That pressure valve was at maximum, so for it to be released this season in the way it was, felt like a massive weight had been lifted.

The wife tells me it is not healthy for me to live like I had been living; worrying over the results of not just my team, but others too. I have a Fitbit, and it tracks my heart rate – I literally burn more calories when Arsenal are on and during the normal season. All of a sudden now, with the Premier League over, my average heart rate has dropped. I feel at ease. This weekend has even felt like it was a longer one than it was – because I wasn’t worried about The Arsenal.

I think social media has had its part to play in this too. The benefits are that I have basically met all of my Arsenal mates through the likes of Twitter. I have several different people I see at games. I was at a conference a few weeks ago and bumped into one of them, which was amazing to chat and catch up in a non-Arsenal work setting. But equally, for all the good it has done for work connections, it has also increased exposure to fans of rival clubs, as well as a generation of people who video themselves ‘hate watching’ other clubs just to get clicks and hits and monetise other people’s misery. It’s a pretty shameless existence if you’re doing that to weaponise ‘banter’ as they do. And as much as I personally try to avoid it, it always pops up on my social feeds somehow. And because this approach does generate clicks and hits, it bleeds into mainstream media, and platforms idiots like Agbonlahor, Cundy and O’Hara. And because you get exposed to it, because you get tired of having to see it, you (I) end up becoming emotionally invested in it. As soon as we won the Premier League, I looked up all of the ‘banter’ I’d been sent by rival fans over the last year and started ‘cashing in the receipts’. It was fun, I enjoyed sticking it to people who have stuck it to me or us, but in reality, why did I feel the need to do it? I was almost as happy to be sticking two fingers up to people as I was that we’d won the Premier League. And so the next day I said to myself, “focus on the joy, rather than the one-upmanship” – and I’ve been trying to do it ever since (not always succeeding, mind). When you focus on the joy in life, the stress easily melts away.

When people say “It’s only a game”, you think to yourself “, yeah, ok, but you don’t really get it” – and of course, they don’t. But when you hear the news about Erikson, when I think about my own relationship with football as a fan, and when I reflect on what stress it puts me through, I do think to myself that perhaps it would be healthier if I did say that phrase to myself a little more once in a while.

Doesn’t mean I’ll stop – I can’t, because Arsenal is my drug – but at least recognising and being mindful once in a while could be a bit more useful to my overall stress levels.

Catch you all tomorrow.

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.

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.

Because Last night he helped to get his Swedish team into the final of the World Cup playoffs with a hat-trick, all of which felt very much part of his MO. First one, a tap-in after a good move on the left, with the striker basically touching in to an empty net. Think Everton at home a couple of weeks back. The second one was a transitional moment in which defenders were backtracking, and he shifted the ball inside the box, to then slot into the corner. Think a little like the Leeds goal at home he scored at the start of the season. Then the third was a penalty he roofed into the net.

It’s good for us because it means he’ll be feeling uber happy and confident after the disappointment of the League Cup. We all said that we needed this break, but if it gives a double boost of positivity for players like Gyokeres to come back even more fired up, then I don’t think there’ll be a Gooner around who won’t be satisfied with that. He now plays for Poland, and apart from Kiwior – who is basically an Arsenal player in name only at this point – we have no Polish players that we really need to see boosted, so my hopes are now for Sweden to go through next week and Big Vik to come back feeling 10 feet tall.

Riccardo Calafiori will also be feeling pretty good, as he saw his Italian team go through at the expense of Northern Ireland and, more importantly, he managed the full 90 minutes. Given how he hasn’t played too much of late, that’s not too bad, but I hope the staff are mindful of his injury record this season, and of all the players on injury duty, he’s the one that I have my fingers crossed for the most. I’ve already shown my hand earlier in the week by talking about an early possible team for Southampton away next Saturday, but when I look at the fact that Calafiori may well play another full 90 for Italy, possibly even more if Bosnia send them to extra time, you do wonder whether he’ll be asked to sit that one out if he plays too many minutes whilst on international duty.

I think some of the games coming up mean I’d like to see Calafiori in there from the start if he can stay fit. The City game away, for one, is one I’d have him earmarked for. He played well there last season. He looked good and gave us more dynamism when he came on in the League Cup last weekend, so if I’m Arteta, that’s definitely one I want him fit for.

Christian Norgaard was on the scoresheet for Denmark, who now have to go to the Czech Republic to get themselves to the World Cup in the summer. Again, another player who hasn’t played as much and whilst I absolutely detest international football during the domestic season, getting minutes into his legs is probably a good thing for the context of the remainder of our season. Hopefully, he gets the good vibes and progresses as well, because like Poland, we have no skin in the game when it comes to the Czech’s.

Martinelli got 63 minutes for Brazil in France, who lost 2-1 to Les Bleus, but it seems he was fine when coming off, so that’s another one thankfully ticked off the list.

And so to the remaining players on international duty, and let’s start with Benjamin White, who Tommy Tuchel admitted the player will have to speak to his teammates about his absence. For his part, I think Tuchel has played it well, because he’s said he doesn’t care about what happened before, he has seen White do well in training, and that he’s a good lad. I suspect if Ben plays tonight at 7.45 against Uruguay, he’s going to be roundly booed by the England fans. That’s to be expected from some of the twats that will be in the crowd. Instead of asking the question: “Why did he leave the camp under Southgate and Holland and not return until he was asked by the new manager? I wonder if it was the old administration that had anything to do with it?”, they will bleat and whinge and sing ridiculous things like “you let your country down” and nonsense. But to anybody going tonight that boo’s, if I were able to speak to them as an individual and say, “Have you ever had a line manager who treated you poorly, didn’t look after your interests and made life horrible for you at work?” If the answer is “yes”, then perhaps those idiots who boo would take a second to have a think about what more than likely happened under the last manager. Because if Ben White hates playing for England, he ain’t picking up the phone and returning the first time he’s asked to under the next manager.

As for the others on duty, we have to hope that Madueke sees some minutes and is fine, whilst Saka and Rice are, I believe, not going to be selected for this game. Raya, Zubimendi and Mosquera will most likely be in the squad tonight, but given it is a friendly, I hope the Spanish manager is sensible about his minutes. I hope that Rodri gets a ton of minutes and Zubi is on the bench for both, but I suspect he might alternate. He’s another one that, if we’re all honest, probably needs a week off when he returns from international duty, so I wouldn’t even pick him in the squad for the FA Cup.

HIncapie plays in Morocco tonight, then Eindhoven on Tuesday, which hopefully can be a good thing, because it’s a very short flight back from the Netherlands, and so the long trip back to the UK from Ecuador isn’t on the cards. Martinelli is the one who will face the longest trip, because he’s in Orlando in the early hours of Wednesday morning, so I wonder if that puts pay to any possible start he might have next weekend?

There’s not a lot else worth talking about at this stage, though; we just have to cross our fingers and hope that no player picks up a knock. We haven’t been very lucky with that so far in these international breaks this season, so I’d like the football gods to at least cut us a break this time around.

Famous last words, eh?

Instead, what I want to focus on today is the consequences of what happened last Sunday, specifically with regard to Mikel Arteta, who I think will be delighted that there is an international break. That’s because it affords him time to analyse what went wrong and how to fix it.

And Mikel Arteta is a fixer.

There are plenty of people outside of Arsenal circles who don’t like him. They don’t like his demeanour, they don’t like his arm-waving on the touchline, or the fact that he strays outside of his technical area (which is, frankly, bloody weird given that every Premier League manager does it). There are a minority INSIDE Arsenal circles who don’t like him. This isn’t a referendum blog on his character, though; this is a blog for me to state my point of view on how he is going to sort out what went wrong against Man City.

And I 100% back him to do that.

Arteta will be using this week, with his coaching team, to pore over every detail. Every Arsenal fan knows that. He will watch, re-watch, have the analysts watch, get one or two of the players till at home and not on international duty to watch (probably Clockwork Orange-style, too), all with the intention of learning how to answer the questions that Pep and his City side posed on the day. Forget what he says in the post-match, forget what he will say in his pre-match, because as Arsenal fans we all know that he doesn’t give even 10% of the detail that he goes through, out to the media or public for consumption. Practically every player, past and present, has said that the level of detail and analysis that he does on his own team, but the opposition too, is crazy. We hear that from them, so we all know that when he gets a period like we’re in now, there’s absolutely no way he’s sitting in garden (might be a bit too cold for that in London right now, to be fair) with bis feet up trying to mentally get away from it all. No way. He’s looking at our next opponents, he’s looking at our past opponents, he’s thinking about different ways in whcih we overcome Southampton, Sporting and Bournemouth, when the proper stuff kicks off again.

Arteta is a learner. He will 100% be learning from what happened last weekend.

And that fills me with positivity. It gives me confidence that he’ll have a plan when the players return from international duty and he’ll know how to approach the upcoming games. It doesn’t mean we’ll win them; football is a game of variables and it only takes one moment where a player slips, or a ref gives a dodgy pen against us, and suddenly his best laid plans go out the window. But as Arsenal fans we must take comfort in the fact that our manager has answers to the questions that have been most recently posed.

The response to defeats this season have shown this (in all competitions):

• Our record after the defeat to Liverpool at the start of the season = Win, win, draw, win, win, win, win, win, win, win, win, win, win.
• Our record after the defeat away to Villa = Win, win, win, win, win, win, win.
• Our record after the defeat at home to Man United = Win, win, win, win, draw, win, draw, win, win.

That’s a lot of ‘W’s there kids. So my hope for this defeat is that it is the galvaniser that Arsenal use to spearhead a multi-winning streak. If, for example, we win our next five games in a row, that last one will be away at City, and I think we’re all looking at the close to the season being a very exciting one.

Now, I know that what has been, doesn’t not reflect on what is to come, but we have enough data from this season to suggest that Arteta will learn, he will work his arse off to change a few things, and hopefully we will get back on track after what was an admittedly very tough afternoon at Wembley to take.

We are not perfect. We have flaws. We have injuries. Southampton are in a good run of form. We could very easily be looking at being dumped out of the cup in back-to-back matches and that could have an impact on subsequent games. But at this point in time, I am looking at where we are at, and I’m putting my faith in the hope that Arteta will be able to course-correct what went wrong with the City non-press. Heck, if anything, maybe we learned more about what City might do against us at The Etihad. What did they learn from us? I would wager ‘not a lot’. Because as many have pointed out on other tactical blogs and podcasts, this fabled ‘Man City four-man offensive non-press wall’ that was lauded, doesn’t work with Raya in goal. He clips over that wall and we have four of their players out of the game. I doubt Pep will do that again, but if he does, then it will be very interesting to see how much space we get.

So I find myself this morning in quite good spirits. I think Arsenal are in good hands with Mikel Arteta, tucked away at London Colney with time on his hands, working out our plan of attack for the remaining games of the season. The international break might not give time for some of the players to rest and reset, but for Arteta, he will use this time well. I am sure of it.

Back tomorrow with some more musings.

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.

I watched a short clip of Martin Keown on that national radio station that has become a click-bait fest these days and he seemed optimistic that he might be fit for the North London Derby, but there’s absolutely no way I can see that happening. He was hobbling off when he picked up the injury, he spent the whole of the second half with ice on his groin (that’s an unpleasant enough experience for anyone!) and then there are pictures of him milling around by the team bus later whilst hobbling. This isn’t a mild knock. It’s an injury. With the North London Derby a week away from the date of that game, I just can’t see how he’ll make it. A quick search on Google brings up this:

An adductor strain can take from 1-2 weeks for a mild (Grade 1) strain to 3-6 weeks for a moderate (Grade 2) strain, and up to 3-4 months for a severe (Grade 3) strain. The exact healing time depends on the injury’s severity, and recovery requires rest and physical therapy, with a gradual return to activity to prevent re-injury.

So I think the best we can probably hope for is one of those Grade one strains that means he’s back for Chelsea. But knowing our luck (and I really hope I don’t speak this in to existence) it’ll be a two or a three and we won’t see him until the new year. I don’t expect when Arteta is asked about him, that he’ll give anything away and if anything, I suspect he’ll make it sound like there’s an outside chance. Remember last season? I’m pretty sure it was the North London Derby then that we heard him talk about Odegaard and how he wanted to play the week after an international break. There were people wondering how on earth he could play, but that ended up just being a bit of a red herring from the manager; he missed 14 games in what turned out to be the biggest injury spell out in his career and we ended up not seeing him until the beginning of November 57 days later.

What we have to hope with Big Gabi is that it isn’t that bad, but even three weeks is massive in the context of this season. As you’ll have already heard from other podcasters, listened to on the radio and probably read in other articles, Gabriel Magalhaes is more than just out best defender; he’s our most ominous threat from set pieces too. Even when he doesn’t score, he’s occupying sometimes two or three defenders, which gives other players opportunities and to have that taken away from us in a meaningless friendly is frustrating beyond words. I get that he could have picked up the injury at any stage right about now – training, Arsenal match, etc – but firstly, he didn’t, and secondly, the rumours that he was already in the fabled ‘red zone’ only makes it more maddening. His manager for Brazil and the coaching staff need to be the ones to take responsibility there; players will never say they don’t want to play, so you need to be the one to say “we’ll sit you out for now”. What would have been wrong with him sitting that out, getting rest, then playing in their next friendly against Lille? I know he was playing at the Emirates and he would have been desperate to get out there, but sometimes teams need to just take the decision out of the players hands.

Speaking of decisions being taken out of our hands, how about the fact we got news yesterday that Michael Olivier is going to referee the North London Derby this Sunday, eh? When was the last time we saw him I wonder? Oh yeah, when he completely wrongly sent off Myles Lewis-Skelly against Wolves last season. But Michael Oliver has now got a rap sheet against us. Check this stat out from Scott from January – 13% of matches that Michael Oliver has refereed involving us have a red card in them. When you think about that volume going back those years, that is a carzy high stat and includes Man City and Trossard’s farcical one from last season too. It includes the Martinelli ‘double yellow in one action’ that we haven’t seen before since, as well as the ‘non sending off’ of Kovacic, which Howard Webb later tried to fob off as ‘not wanting to ruin the game’ or words to that effect. Of course that wasn’t the case when Trossard was sent off last season, but we got another ham-fisted reasoning from Webb that following week too, so we shouldn’t really be surprised.

All I want is a game without controversy. Don’t make it about you, Oliver. Referee the game as everyone see’s it. Last weekend the game felt refereed differently with you on VAR desperately searching for a reason to rule out Liverpool’s equaliser. Don’t give us reason to think there’s a Michael Oliver-shaped chair sitting in the blue half of Manchester. Ref it fairly, ref it equally, if there’s the right call to be made, then make it. I am tired of talking about sh*t refereeing standards from the PGMOL. I want to talk about the football and if Arsenal deserve a red card, then fine, or if we concede a penalty through our own stupidity, then ok. But I don’t want to find myself shouting myself hoarse because you’ve done what you did on the aforementioned incidents. Please.

Just to add a sh*te cherry on a sh*te PGMOL cake, we’ve got Attwell on VAR, who we’ve also got previous with him and until September this season he hadn’t refereed a game for us in nearly two years because of the debacle at St James’ Park a few season’s back. So theres something for us to look forward to…

I’ll leave you stewing on that one like me! Have a good one folks and i’ll be back tomorrow.

Why the HELL is Saka playing the full 90?

Rice was taken off on 65 minutes, so that’s good, plus Ebs got on and scored a pretty decent goal from that left forward position (more on that in a sec), but Saka shouldn’t be knocking down 90s in a game like this. I hope on the game on Sunday he’s given rest time.

I will say that Tuchel appears to be more mindful of the players and their minutes compared to the horror that was Gareth Southgate. He’d give Saka the full 90 in an international friendly against Gibraltar, was such his ego needing stroking (funny how he has taken no managerial opportunities and instead is just content on releasing a new book, eh?), but at least Tuchel thinks and acts like an elite manager and is mindful of loading minutes of players. That’s my hope anyway when it comes to Saka, because he’s clearly decided that Rice can have an earlier sit down last night.

Gattuso and the Italy coaching staff are doing the same with Calafiori, who was left out of the team to face Moldova but might be in the squad when they play over the weekend. There’s apparently nothing to worry about, but that’s a clear sign that they know that he has a chequered injury history, that he’s played a lot of football this season and if he can have a few extra days off whilst still training (albeit alone) with the Italian National Team, then that is something. In a weird way, if he plays over the weekend that might be a good thing, because it shows that he’s ok. Italy play Norway on Sunday evening and if he plays a part, then he’ll have from Sunday until Sunday to recover and that is hopefully enough time (assuming he doesn’t pick up an injury) to be ready for the North London Derby.

Saliba also played for France in a game in which he will have basically been a spectator in most parts given their dominance over a Ukraine side that had zero attempts on goal or on target and just 33% possession. Talk about dominance. I looked at his numbers in that game and it was 62 of 67 passes for France and 29 of those attempts were in the opposition half, so I think he’ll be feeling fine off the back of that win. He normally averages around 67 per game for Arsenal so this feels like a pretty standard Saliba outing, which is good news.

The rest of the players are action in their first matches either tonight and tomorrow and I do wish Brazil would have played their games a little earlier. Big Gabi is off with them and they don’t play until tomorrow and then on Tuesday, but here’s the good news:

1. It’s a friendly and so hopefully he’s rotated
2. It’s in Lille, France – the borders of Belgium

A quick check on Google tells me it is a one hour and 22 minute flight from London to Lille; that’s like taking the trip to Inverness in Scotland, so he’ll be back and hopefully wrapped up in cotton wool by Wednesday night, meaning Arteta can have a look at him on Thursday and by Friday he’ll have had three full training days before the North London Derby on Sunday. Great stuff. Providing he doesn’t pick up an injury, that is.

I mentioned I wanted to touch on Eze today and I wanted to have a little look at where he featured for England. He came on for Rashford on the left wing position and a look at his heatmap showed he very much occupied the kinds of positions you’d expect from that position. But in the 26 minutes on the pitch he was very much not playing like a winger who is hugging the touchline and asked to drive at his man. If we think about how Martinelli plays that role, Eze feels a lot more analogous to Trossard as more of an inside forward in that position and the superb goal he scored last night was scored from that sort of inside-left position too.

We haven’t seen too much of that this season due to the injury to Odegaard and Eze has been obviously asked to play a little more centrally, which I think a few Arsenal fans have been left feeling like there’s a little more that Eze could give us. But I think that’s in part due to the fact he plays the ‘Odegaard role’ different to Martin. Odegaard is a pressing trigger for us and he is quite an intense one; Eze presses, but not nearly as intensely as Odegaard – can you remember many times when you see him closing down the ‘keeper like Odegaard does when we are out of possession? I can’t. But in my mind I can visualise Odegaard doing that every game. Odegaard also drops deeper to receive the ball than Eze does, as well as picking it up in different positions too, so when we are missing Odegaard it’s great we have a player like Eze who can look to perform that role, but I wonder if he’s been the victim of the fact that expectations are that he would be similar to the Norwegian. That’s simply never going to be the case.

Eze has to carve out his own niche in this Arsenal team. That means from a central position when he’s playing in for an Odegaard, or maybe even if Rice or Merino aren’t available and he slots in at left eight, or even if Rice slots in to the six with Zubi out. We almost got to see that against West Ham but Odegaard’s injury reduced it to just a glimmer of a showing. So the return of Odegaard might see Eze put in positions more like he was in last night and if he delivers end product like that, I don’t think many of us will be complaining, that’s for sure.

The challenge Eze will have when Odegaard returns is the form of Trossard in that position, as well as the competition of Martinelli and Madueke as the rapid, touchline-hugging wingers to offer something different. I for one am glad we’ve had him and his contribution with all those attacking players out has been valuable at this time. But perhaps he needs to find a way how to do the different roles a little differently to the others, to absolutely cement his place as a regular in Arteta’s Arsenal first XI.

back tomorrow with some more thoughts.

**Quick Shakespearian ‘aside’ to give some props to Saka for his fantastic goal as well last night. Good work Starboy – keep on doing that for us when you get back!**

I have a few feelings on this. Firstly, the lad is 19-years-old. This isn’t a season pro who has starred for a decade in the first team. He broke through, was excellent, we all love him and he’s found game time a little more difficult to come by due to the ongoing fitness of Riccardo Calafiori and the fact that Hincapie has emerged as a left back option this season. Naturally Thomas Tuchel is going to say that he wants players in his squad who play regularly to make the final. He has his job for England and he’s going to say that. But for Sky Sports to go in on reporting this feels a little like a major media outlet trying to flame any potential fans of discontent.

Of course clubs will be interested in Myles. He has shown an electric burst of pace, he can beat players and glide past them with ease (as evidenced by the goal he set up for Martinelli against Atletico) and all of us feel like he has a bright future at the club. Who wouldn’t want to be interested in him? The report does say Arsenal aren’t looking to sell and I do think this has been designed to get the player and representatives to perhaps make some uneasy noises towards the club.

Here’s the thing though – Myles is VERY well represented. We all know about how his mum has been such an influence on his career, how she places high value on mapping a path which is right for him at his age and how she also helps young players and their families in helping to develop careers with their kids. She will be well aware of the situation and I would be surprised if, having just worked with Myles and others to secure a five-year-deal in the summer, she will suddenly be knocking on the door for ‘showdown talks’ on his Arsenal future.

He has an Arsenal future. It will be a bright one. He will find plenty of minutes and now, with a quarter of the season gone, he’s played 463 in all competitions. Last season he made 2,543 in all competitions – 237 of those were in the Premier League 2 and EFL Trophy – which are youth team competitions. So first team minutes last season was around 2,300+. He’s currently on track to hit around 1,850 minutes for the season. That’s probably a little lower than he would have ideally have had, but we haven’t really faced any injury problems at the back so far. We are about to go into a period in which we play A LOT of really tough matches and there’s no way that he doesn’t see more minutes. Myles and his mum will know that.

I also think they’ll be well aware of his trajectory and how in his own career pathway, he’s probably about a year or two ahead of schedule. Last season, because of the injuries, he broke through and I think that was a surprise, because he wasn’t playing at all for the first half of the season. Last season will have been a “see if you can get to 500 – 1,000 minutes in total” season. He made almost triple that. I suspect if all would have gone to plan, this season would have been a “get to between 1,800 to 2,000 minutes” season – which he’s on track for. Then next season would have been a “be a first team regular” – which he’s already on course for. Finally, that “get in to the England team” final step might have been in 2027/28 thing. He was fast-tracked through all of that process in about six months. It’s a massively rapid ascension and that sort of stuff can scupper a career if not managed properly. Emile Smith Rowe made his England debut at 21 years old. He’s played a total of three times and never quite kicked on from the height of his situation back in 2021. Eddie has just the one cap, as does Carl Jenkinson. Making the England squad is not the end game here – making a career is – so trying to search for that admittedly lofty and exciting opportunity does not have to come at the expense of making rash career moves.

For what it’s worth, I doubt anyone at Arsenal or Myles and his camp are worried too much about this. They will know he’s at a club who are fighting towards the top of the league. That comes with competition for places and they will have been well aware of that when they signed the new five-year-deal in the summer. He is an Arsenal boy, he will want to succeed at Arsenal first and foremost, which will also mean he’s more-than likely to also want to give it the best possible shot. At 19 year’s of age he probably has a solid three more World Cup’s after this one as well. He could still get to 100 England caps with ease at this rate. David Beckham was 31 when he got to 100 caps and he made his debut at age 21. Harry Kane too. Steven Gerrard was 20, but he got to 34 before reaching 100 caps. So some of the best England footballers of recent generations didn’t really even kick off their England careers until they were in their 20s. Myles doesn’t hit 20 until next September. So he will be well aware of the fact he has time on his hands.

Where he’s at will be good for him. It will inspire the fight in him, to drive him to improve, which will be good for us if he only gets better and better. He’s already operating at a high level, but if he can go supernova, there isn’t an Arsenal fan alive who wouldn’t be delighted to see another Hale-Ender make it. But he has to put the work in, he has to suffer the sting of not playing, to make him stronger. I think by the sounds of his character that’s exactly what will happen and I for one couldn’t be more happy about that. It means we have yet another winner in our ranks who will do everything to make this season a success for The Arsenal.

I’ll leave it there for today and be back tomorrow. I was going to say some words about this rumoured Italian scout from Napoli that we’re supposedly in for, but perhaps that can wait for tomorrow and i’ll do some digging in the absence of any other real football going on.

See you then.

City, conversely, are being touted as ‘on the march’ now and you can sort of understand why Sky Sports want to hype it up. They don’t want any team having a procession to the title, but Guardiola certainly has shown he can be a force to be reckoned with previously.

The humbling City handled to Liverpool has a lot of people proclaiming City are ‘back’ and I must confess I gave a few little nervous feelings in my tummy, but if you look at what is happening to Liverpool, you do wonder whether them being close to ‘done’ in the title race is no big problem either. Certainly some of their crowing online fans being a little salty this morning is amusing. Their manager and his ‘no excuses’ or ‘excuses on injuries are for teams who don’t win’ is now looking rather amusing I have to say. But we do have to use Liverpool as a cautionary tale as to how things can swing so differently in this competition. We are four clear at the top which is great, but after the international break there are some really tough games and it isn’t inconceivable to see that gap eroded away if we don’t get back on the winning wagon almost immediately after the players come back from international duty.

And it’s not as if they are absolute gimmie games either. I know that no game in the Premier League is, in reality, a ‘gimmie’, but The Scum are going to be tough to break down, tough to beat (they are much better away from home playing the under dog than at home under the watchful gaze of their own home fans) and as it’s an NLD all bets kind of go off. It only takes that game going the way of a draw, then Bayern getting a result against us, then the same at Chelsea and the season suddenly looks like it’s in trouble. When you’re at the top you’re only a couple of wrong results away from a crisis and Liverpool are finding that now.

It’s why I really hope there is some magic happening in the treatment room at London Colney over the next 10 days or so. We really do need those re-enforcements in attacking positions. those who have been on the pitch  have coped admirably, they’ve done what is required to get us in this excellent position, but we need to see the return of at least two of the current injured players for that derby game because the bench did look decidedly light on Saturday evening.

I do think we will see at least couple make it. I saw a couple of people speculate that Arteta could be deliberately not playing players because he doesn’t want them to go away on international duty. I’m not sure that’s 100% true because he’s a guy who wants to win every game and I don’t think he’d be thinking long-term when he still had that difficult Sunderland match to overcome. But can I say that it is completely unlikely? No I can not.

The guy I stand next to at The football – Nick – occasionally gets tickets to be in one of the boxes at The Arsenal and at the last game he was in them – Atletico – he said Madueke was in the box next to him. Said he was a lovely fella, really humble, seemed to be genuinely chuffed to be there and when he made a joke to Noni about making himself a hero at the NLD, Madueke just smiled and said “that’s the plan”. I think he might be one of the guys they are expecting back. I also hope/suspect that Viktor’s muscular injury is just a short-term one, so I’d hope that’s another option. Whether Odegaard, Havertz or Martinelli are back in remains to be seen, but I do feel like we probably need one  of Big Vik or Havertz to be fit and ready to play. The challenge with Havertz is that he’s had no time to build up his match fitness. If Gyokeres is ready, then he’s been playing all season, he’s missed just a couple of games, he’s been able to rest the muscle injury and hopefully it’s healed without too much loss of match fitness. So hving him start and perhaps Havertz coming on (if he’s back) will be massive for us. It means we have so many options and with Bayern also on the horizon that week, it means players can be down for some job sharing, which hopefully keeps them fresher for longer.

So all eyes will already, inevitably, be on any news breaking over the next few days on players getting out on the training pitch at London Colney. We need an Ornbomb to drop this week to get us excited for the squad getting back to full health. Something like that this week will be a lovely little antidote to the poison that is yet another international break.

Right, I think I’ll leave it there for today, such is the inevitable lack of Arsenal news given the media attention on this impending interdull. Have yourselves a great Monday and I’ll see you all tomorrow.