And yet, in the cold light of day, when you look at the numbers, think about the chances, and consider the overall match, it was actually a comfortable performance from a team now just one win away from the Premier League title. Our first in 22 years.

I’m not sure my nerves will survive next weekend.

Arteta named what I’d predicted in the morning, with a lineup that screamed ‘I’m going for it’ by having Havertz up top, Trossard wide left, Saka on the right, Eze and Odegaard as the attacking eights, and Rice mopping up. Mosquera was there as the third-in-line-to-the-throne at right back (despite Timber being spotted on the team walk earlier in the day) and I was bullish (albeit nervous) before a ball was kicked. And when Trossard hit the post on 15 minutes, it did feel a little as if “this is fine – it’s only a matter of time” was the phrase going around the stadium in my corner of Block Five. It was a great effort, ricocheted off the post and straight to a Burnley player in the box, which felt a little unlucky. Perhaps it was, but Burnley had not come to be expansive, merely to limit the damage, and throughout the night, there were far more Burnley players inside their box than outside of it. Or at least that’s what it felt like to me.

And then not a lot happened until the 35th minute. We had plenty of the ball, Burnley were content to let us have it, and we once again struggled to break down a low block. Until a great ball into the box saw Saka fouled – and yes it was ABSOLUTELY a foul, having watched the replay – and VAR said no. I’m sorry, but Saka is behind his man; he is winding up to take a shot which would be a tap-in, and his foot gets clipped. It’s a penalty. If Saka isn’t fouled there, then he’s touching it in. He has been denied a goalscoring opportunity. It doesn’t matter how minimal the contact is; if the player impedes Saka inside the six-yard box, it is a foul and a penalty. That goes in, and who knows, maybe we take the extra 10 minutes before halftime to get that second. Thankfully, just two minutes later, we were in front, so perhaps the point is moot, but it’s still frustrating that it wasn’t called.

But perhaps we should be grateful for non-calls last night? After all, Kai Havertz should definitely have been sent off. His challenge on the Burnley defender in the second half yesterday was nasty. There’s plenty of bleating from City-biased media and fans on that, whilst ignoring Foden’s worse challenge on Bassey of Fulham earlier in the season, but let’s not try to cancel this out from a title race perspective. Let’s call it for what it was: A red card, and Havertz was taken off almost minutes after that ‘tackle’.

He’d done his work earlier in the game, though, with a superbly timed headed goal from a Saka cross. Cue the inevitable “Set Piece Again Ole Ole” raucous chants from the crowd, and it felt like we were on our way at halftime. The second half needed to be where we stamped our authority on the game and made this a bigger score line than it should have been.

Except this Arsenal team has a real habit of not doing that. We were up against a Burnley side behind, not really creating anything, not having too much by the way of ideas, and yet too often we squandered opportunities. Whether it was not beating the man, taking too many touches, or just overcooking that final ball. Eze had a shot off the top of the bar – saved by the ‘keeper but not given for a corner – but that felt the total of the big chances in that second half. Eze was really poor; he just didn’t affect the game – that chance aside – and we just felt really wasteful with the ball in the final third. Arteta rang the changes on 73 minutes which, for me, was too late. Ultimately, we got over the line, Burnley didn’t (in hindsight) threaten a ton, but it was clear from about 55 minutes that we should have made changes earlier than we did. Gyokeres came on and instantly caused that Burnley back line to think about more things. I thought Hincapie’s cameo was decent (even if it was a little x-rated with his arse out after a fall inside the box), whilst Myles looked assured when he came on. But it shouldn’t have been a game in which we were so nervous.

And that, in itself, has made me even more nervous now, annoyingly. The 1-0 win means that effectively, goal difference isn’t going to become a thing when City win tonight – which I think they will. It will mean that at the weekend, when they rack up a cricket score against a Villa side that just don’t give a shit with nothing to play for, a draw at Selhurst Park for The Arsenal just won’t be enough. It’s in our hands, it is ours to lose, but I just don’t see a world in which this coming Sunday isn’t excruciating for us. It feels pre-ordained. And if we do draw, we’ll have lost the Premier League title on the final day, having led it for practically the whole season. That would be the cruelest of jokes to play on us Arsenal fans. And the players. And Arteta.

Would I have taken where we are at right at the beginning of the season before a ball was kicked? Of course I would. But right now, as I type this, I have a nauseating feeling in my stomach even thinking about that game. And it’s only Tuesday.

Who knows – maybe Bournemouth can do something tonight. But I won’t be holding out much hope, and I certainly won’t be watching it.

Back tomorrow. Have a good one boys and girls.

How is this becoming MORE stressful each week?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Last night was one of them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Phew.

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

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

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

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

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

Catch you all tomorrow.

I’m in Portugal and, to try to completely forget about the stress of football, I asked the parents and The Management if we could go out and have a lovely lunchtime meal in Tavira, where my parents’ place is. They obliged. Two bottles of white and a couple of large Super Bocks later, and I’m heading back to their house to watch what was to transpire in N5 yesterday evening. The stress was such that the need for alcohol to dumb the senses went too strong, and I ended up drinking well into the night. Before the game, it was nerves, during the game it was nerves, after the game, it was drinking in celebration.

Because Arsenal were superb yesterday. This was easily the best performance of 2026 so far I think, and I include the win at the Toilet Bowl against The Scum, because they are terrible. Fulham are not. Marco Silva is an astute tactician, and I don’t think there would have been many Arsenal fans putting their pennies at the bookies on a 3-0 victory before the game yesterday. But here we are, the day after, and we get to talk about an Arsenal performance that will have every Arsenal fan merrily skipping their way through today as they go about their business.

Arteta rang some changes, as we expected, but I think the inclusion of Myles Lewis-Skelly in midfield was not one that any of us thought we’d see. The absence of Odegaard clearly meant that Arteta needed somebody who had the technical ability to keep the ball, so he turned to Myles, and boy did our young Hale Ender deliver. I thought he was superb yesterday. He was able to wriggle his way through the Fulham midfield; he rotated with Rice superbly, he was controlled and calm in possession, and he fully deserved the big hug he got from his manager at the final whistle. We’re at a crunch point in the season, and at these times, sometimes you get performances from players you didn’t expect, and this was certainly one of those from MLS, for which I think we’re all very grateful.

But it wasn’t just Myles who stepped up against a Fulham side who had an outside chance of qualifying for Europe. Many players stepped up, I thought. As I talked about with James on the Same Old Arsenal pod this morning, Trossard was really good yesterday, getting an assist for the third goal and as James reminded me, he could have had more if Gyokeres had’ve scored when in on goal when Leno saved his effort. Calafiori was back and unlucky not to score to make it 2-0, and Rice was his usual imperious self. But the two goal scorers will take most of the headlines at the top end of the pitch today.

At the beginning of the season, I always said that if Gyokeres gets 20 goals in all competitions, then he’s done his job. For £55million you aren’t going to get a Thierry Henry regen these days. It just doesn’t happen. So for that kind of money, you need a guy who will put the ball in the back of the net against a mid-table team, which is something we just didn’t do enough of last season, so his goal that set us on our way was exactly what the doctor ordered. It was a fine ball in from Saka, and what you want from your striker is to get in front of his man and into those spaces. The pass from Saka did all the heavy-lifting, but Gyokeres was there to profit, and boy, weren’t we all glad.

When the two combined for the second goal, I did sense this would be a good afternoon, so to have Gyokeres be the one assisting Saka felt right to me. There’s been a bit of talk about how these two players don’t seem to pass enough to each other, maybe that Saka doesn’t trust Gyokeres, but yesterday it felt like their combination together was enough to dispel any such rumours. Saka’s finish felt very ‘on brand’ for the forward. He’s a guy who sometimes makes the very difficult look so easy. When Gyokeres reversed-passed the ball into him, he still had plenty to do, but his finish to Leno’s near post was cool, calm and collected. And needed.

And although Saka wasn’t involved in the third goal – from Leo to Big Vik for the header – there was something in the commentary that Alan Smith said that has stayed with me: “he’s had such better service today”. Both Trossard and Saka put chances on a plate for the Swede, and he reacted exactly as you want your centre forward to – with goals. That’s 21 goals this season, with a few games still to play, and if he gets himself to 25 goals, you have to say this has been an excellent season. There are times in which he looks a little rough around the edges, his control sometimes lets him down, but when he’s put in the penalty box with opportunities to score, he does it. Last season, we missed that and our title challenge never really materialised. This season, we’re going to take it to the wire, and ultimately, you have to say that Gyokeres has done his part.

Three goals in the first half meant Arteta could rotate out some key players, which will have been music to his ears to see those players all doing the business early, so we could bring the likes of Saka and Rice off to preserve their legs for Tuesday night. On a weekend in which Diego Simeone has basically given his players the time off, Arsenal couldn’t afford that, but the fact they could afford to bring guys off with 30 minutes still to play is huge. And I think we’re all relieved ahead of Tuesday’s semi-final.

There’s still more work to do. We all know this. But waking up this Sunday morning to a comprehensive Arsenal win feels good. Real good.

I’ll be back tomorrow as we start to look ahead to another big one in just 48 hours.

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday, boys and girls.

I am convinced of it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The verticality of passing has returned!!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Catch you all tomorrow.

Well, having stood in Block Five yesterday, I will tell you this: Those Arsenal fans in my area of the stadium absolutely brought their dinner. By the time I got home yesterday, I had little voice left. Part of that was because I was screeching at the woeful performance in the second half, but before that, there was support and desire from the home fans to be that extra man for a very much makeshift Arsenal team.

And it felt like a very tired, leggy, and makeshift performance. Bournemouth may have had three weeks to prepare for this one, but that is no excuse for those Arsenal players to do just the basics all very wrong, as Arteta also admitted afterwards. White getting done in behind by the wide-forward (maybe Madueke should have tracked too) is one thing, but MLS just watching as Kroupi just ran past him to tap it in after a deflection as just bad defending. I don’t think that goal happens if you have Calafiori or Hincapie on the pitch. We all love MLS, but the performances of last season are a distant memory. He looked every bit the young and fallible player in that moment.

Overall, though, he didn’t actually have the worst game in comparison to some of his teammates. Martin Zubimendi, for one, has regressed so much that in my WhatsApp groups, there are genuine calls to change something now. Honestly, people, Zubi is starting to scare the sh*t out of me when he drops to collect the ball from Raya, which happens an alarming amount of times, I’m afraid. There was one moment in which it was a simple pass to Ben White in the first half that he just massively overcooked and knocked it out for a throw-in. Where’s the vertical line-breaker from the first half of the season? It can’t be down to fatigue when you’re doing that for 15-20 minutes. He’s just woefully out of form. I am wondering if some of my mates are right; perhaps we do need to drop him completely and get Rice into that six role.

Mind you, if he’s there, who is playing in the left eight spot? Maybe Eze, who wasn’t fit enough to do 90 yesterday, but certainly not Havertz. When he signed for us, Arteta tried him there, but it didn’t work, and as somebody has already pointed out on social media after the game yesterday, that’s three defeats out of four with Havertz playing in midfield. Of course, it’s not all his fault that the team has lost those three games – there’s a collective failing of multiple players that has led to this – but I think none of us believe him in that position is a viable one.

If you’re going to be kind to Arteta, you’ll say it’s because he has once again been robbed of key players. Still no Timber, Calafiori not in the squad having played on Tuesday, no Eze from the start, no Odegaard, no Saka, and a left-wing position with which whoever starts these days is utterly toilet. Honestly, Martinelli can get in the bin with performances like yesterday, then Trossard coming on did little else, unfortunately. But that’s being kind on Arteta, because he has to shoulder some of the blame after this one, too. After all, he’s the one who motivates them; he’s the one who needs to assess the opposition and set a team up to exploit our strengths and the opponent’s weaknesses, yet it felt like he just set up the team because of certain players being the ‘next one up’. For example, in Madueke, Martinelli, and Gyokeres, we have three runners. We’ve already seen that it doesn’t work. So why not go with Trossard? I know he’s been crap in 2026, but he has a better working relationship with Gyokeres than Martinelli does. Could we also have gone with Mosquera instead of Ben White? White has been playing a lot of football lately, and I just feel like Mosquera’s recovery pace is better than White’s. Could he have made a difference on that first goal? Maybe, maybe not, as I think the situation is still recoverable if the left back does his job.

But it wasn’t just players who were coming in a little colder. Gabriel and Saliba looked shaky, too. How Bournemouth were allowed to ghost in and just waltz through our defence for that second goal was ridiculous. It was pathetic. Spineless. Lacking in energy, cowardice. There are so many adjectives I could throw at such a shambolic performance.

Even after we went behind for the second time, there was still time for there to be a fightback, but this team looked inhibited. They ran out of ideas, and I saw the xG stats. We had 2.3 overall, but a big chunk of that was the Gyokeres penalty. In that second half, Big Vik was unlucky not to be onside with his run for the disallowed goal for offside (which it clearly was), but I don’t remember us forcing Petrovic into a load of saves.

This was an Arsenal performance for the ages, in a very bad way. It was not a performance of a team that is as far ahead on points in the league as we are right now. It was the performance of a team of players scared of their own shadows. And simply not acceptable.

I’m not really sure what else there is to say. Simply not good enough, City will beat Chelsea today, then next weekend looks like one of those that feels like a foregone conclusion based on that performance and effort from those players yesterday. We need some good news regarding some returning players now, because we can’t have that team, with that lack of balance and creativity, to play again in that set-up. We’ll fall apart if we see that again.

Doing a pod this morning with James. It won’t be fun. Then the football and social media are off for the day.

Catch you all tomorrow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How on earth are you STILL earning that much money?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another League Cup Final, another defeat in it, and at this point, it feels like that competition is as cursed for us as the European ones are.

Simply put, Arsenal only showed up for one half, on a day in which there were hopes that we could get a trophy monkey off our back.

I have lots of emotions going on right now; lots of thoughts that might be worth picking up, given that we now go into an interlull, but for today, let’s just pick on one or two of the key talking points from yesterday.

Firstly, I don’t think any is getting away from the fact that the goalkeeper question was a primary reason why we lost yesterday. Kepa is a fine backup. We discussed it in the pub before the game, and I said I was ok with him starting, but hindsight is a wonderful thing, and clearly it wasn’t the right move. The delta between Kepa and Raya is quite large, it seems, and I’m not only talking about the rick that our keeper made in the game to give City the lead. His passing range is not as wide as Raya’s, and his box presence isn’t the same, which I think also leads to a little bit less confidence in the back line. The first goal we conceded yesterday will be one that will give him nightmares. It was proper chocolate wrists stuff, and whereas at the other end, Trafford gave a decent account of himself in the first half with a couple of saves, when the pressure was on us in the second, our goalkeeper folded in that key moment. And that’s what we don’t get with Raya. Sure, he’s had his dodgy moments like the end of the Wolves away game, but in the main, he is solid, and even with little to do, he still has the concentration in key moments that Kepa just doesn’t have (think that great save against Leverkusen at the end of the game last week).

I don’t blame Arteta for starting Kepa, because as I said, I think this was one that he felt he could do. But I don’t think we’ll see the Spaniard in between the sticks if we get to the FA Cup final. And his error yesterday kind of gives Arteta the licence to sit him down if that happens and say “sorry mate, not after what happened last time.

This was one of those cliched ‘game of two halves’ kind of matches. I thought we bested Man City in the first; we limited their chance creation, whilst we got in behind at least once, and Kai probably should have scored. That’s what you occasionally get with Kai, though; he isn’t always the most clinical. Ironically, if Gyokeres had been in that position, it might have been different, but he was somewhere else on the pitch, not getting those chances. But it fell to Kai; Trafford did his job, which we didn’t see from Kepa in the second half, which was also the half in which we failed to respond to City’s approach. They pressed in the right spaces, they were able to control more of the ball, and whilst they hardly troubled Kepa until his mistake, they were definitely edging it. And I think Arteta will do a re-watch of this game and realise that he probably should have made the changes a little earlier than he did. Kai didn’t have a great game, Gyokeres was pretty anonymous, Saka’s poor form continues, and Trossard was left pretty much neutralised and quiet. In that second half in particular, the attack didn’t click, and we simply could not string together enough passes or get enough of a rhythm to cause City any problems.

That second half was woefully short of the ‘standards’ that Arteta and the team set, and unfortunately, in 2026, it’s not an isolated incident. There’s plenty made about the fact that not pressing Arsenal’s defenders is a good way of neutralising them. I think that’s only part of the story. History is always written by the victors, and City fans and the stats people have already been clipping up short videos of City sitting back whilst 1-0 up and us playing the ball across our back four. But game state is everything. I said yesterday morning that the first goal would be pivotal, and I think that’s exactly why yesterday felt so flat in the end, but that’s how it turned out to be. And I don’t want to make this all about Kepa, because so many other players didn’t play remotely to their potential, but in these tight games, there’s nothing more frustrating than a mistake leading to a goal. If a player puts the ball in the top bins from 30 yards, you just hold your hands up, but when the important goal you concede is entirely avoidable, it is doubly hard to take.

I do think the absence of Eze and Odegaard had somewhat of an impact, though. Eze has just found some form, and now he’s injured, which is really frustrating. Arteta said that we have to leave it seven days for a scan, but we have to pray that it is just a short-term thing, because whilst he can rest up for a week because of these internationals, ideally we want to see him on the road to recovery for Southampton in two weeks. In his place Havertz looked at first like he might link up well with Big Vik, and there were a couple of moments where, from my vantage point, I could see us almost playing with two up top, but he faded quickly after a good opening half an hour and the lack of that creative 8/10 hybrid felt like it began to take its toll.

So City draws first blood. Seeing the dejected Arsenal players wasn’t a fun sight afterwards, but the hope has to be that they use this as fuel, because after this international break, there is a great opportunity to get back on the wagon and on to winning ways with an away game against Southampton.

This was the least of our priorities, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t sting, for which I thought Declan Rice summed it up well when describing the mood after this match. Now there is an opportunity to just take a beat, for the players to go away with their respective international teams, which hopefully will provide enough of a reset, before we get back to the proper football over the Easter weekend.

As I said above, I might do a bit of a deeper dive into some of the problems we’ve had in attack over the coming days, given that I have no interest whatsoever in the international nonsense going on from now until the end of next week.

So I’ll catch up with you back on here tomorrow. Up the Arsenal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He comes to maybe one or two games a season, max, and so I could see where he was coming from. Heck, I even said beforehand that it would be an attritional game, and Mark – who helped me with the tickets – also said the same in the concourse before a ball was kicked. We all knew what Everton would bring; it was going to be a case of whether we could get over the line.

The line was well and truly ‘gotten over’ by the end, though, eh?

Effing football, eh? Effing Arsenal, eh? You will be the death of me, as much as you are the life of me.

I had mused on some way through the second half that the ball just doesn’t seem to be dropping to an Arsenal shirt when it comes to the loose ones. There seemed to be an Everton player there every time. That was, of course, until Big Vik Gyokeres was there inside the six-yard box to tap it home.

Pandemonium. Limbs. Hugging. Relief. Arsenal had done it. And all it took was a 16-year-old kid to send us wild. It was Arteta’s ‘Hail Mary’ and boy, did it work. I know we’ve been saying it for a while, but how has a 16-year-old got that much talent at that age? It’s extraordinary. He breathed fresh air into our attack; he unsettled Everton, so much so that I think Jordan Pickford’s flap for our first goal was a result of him being on the pitch. Maybe that’s a stretch, but it was a good ball; close enough to the keeper to entice him to come out, far enough away that he couldn’t get to it. Big Vik touches home on 89 minutes.

Football. In those moments, I love you.

There was still time for us to all be nervous as hell, though, and Everton – who had been pretty defensively resolute and not really an attacking threat in that second half – suddenly were here to spoil a party. But commeth the hour, commeth the…ma…erm…boy?

We now hold the record for having the youngest ever Premier League goal scorer to add to our record books for this season. It’s fair to say it wasn’t the hardest of goals at the end, but to get to that position, Dowman has to show composure, poise, and a fabulous header and touch to set himself off and us two points clear.

We had the joys at the end, and ultimately, the job has been done, but it wasn’t all sunshine and daisies overall, was it? We struggled to break down Everton; they created a few chances in the first half, and McNeil was unlucky not to score from his effort that hit the post. Raya also made a good save with his feet from Beto in the second half. I thought tactically Everton set up quite well; compact shape, difficult to break down, go long where you can, hit on transitional counter when you can. And we struggled in both halves. There was a period between the start of the second half and around the 60-minute mark where it felt like we were starting to exert pressure that might pay off, but after Everton rode that out, we started to look edgy. It wasn’t quite working, Arteta made the subs and, ultimately, I guess you have to say that it paid off.

We did create a few chances ourselves, but not loads and loads, with the Eze effort that just curled wide of the post being one that definitely sprung to mind. But our attack wasn’t clicking. Kai was ok, should have had a stonewall penalty and how VAR has given it I’m not really sure, but I guess it’s one of those that they probably looked at the ‘way’ in which Kai went down and thought he was over-egging it a little bit. We never got to see any replays in the stadium, and VAR seemed to say ‘no’ far too quickly for my liking, but I guess ultimately we got what we deserved, and that was the win. And I think it was a deserved win when you look at the stats. 25 shots, 65% possession, 2.59 xG toi Everton’s 1.07, 249 passes in Everton’s final third, compared to them having 85 in ours – this was a game that Arsenal should have won, and did, ultimately, win. 

We’re just in ‘win’ mode now. We’ve overcome the latest hurdle by hook or by crook. It wasn’t particularly convincing, but I think given all the context and given how deep we are into the season, I think we just have to accept ‘this is who we are’. We’ve probably got another seven of these types of performances to come in the Premier League. Bournemouth will be the same, as will Fulham, Newcastle, West Ham and Crystal Palace. 

The fabulous news kept coming, though, because City dropping points to West Ham was as awesome as it was surprising. That gives us a nine-point buffer, albeit with a game in hand, but that buffer gives us all a bit of relief as we head into a mini break away from the League with the Champions League and then the League Cup Final against Man City. Who knows, maybe the psychological blow from the Real Madrid first leg, then dropping points yesterday, then maybe an exit for them in midweek, can have an impact on how they play against us next weekend? Let’s hope so. 

James, Mark and I are doing the Same Old Arsenal pod this morning, so if you fancy it,  you can catch our thoughts here. Otherwise, I’ll be back tomorrow as the big games keep on coming – with Leverkusen in the Champions League to come on Tuesday. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Catch you all tomorrow.

A huge one.

On a night in which Nottingham Forest amazingly managed to pick up a point at The Etihad (bonus hilarity watching can be had with Bernardo Silva’s whinge at the end of the game yesterday – mate, you’ve had all the decisions go your way week-after-week since Rodri moaned at Spurs), Arsenal found a way to ‘win ugly’ at a very difficult Brighton side, to extend our lead at the top and build back a mini cushion with eight games for us to go.

We should focus on the key moments of the game, of course, but before we do that, let’s talk Fabian Huerzeler. What a dislikeable and odious character he is. Much like what we see these days, where a narrative is spun in the media and it is pulled into the common vernacular by those within the game, Huerzeler used his post-match press conference and interviews to cry ‘foul’ over Arsenal’s supposed delaying tactics. He whined about it being ‘not football’ and how nobody wants to see a game like yesterday. He moaned about David Raya going down three times and said you never see a ‘keeper do that.

Yes, we do. Emi Martinez. Regularly. Jordan Pickford is known to stay down a little longer to take pressure off his defenders. Goalkeepers have been going down and time-wasting at The Emirates for decades. Tim Krul was a master of it.

Huerzeler’s deflection tactics about the quality of the game are laughable. Brighton played well, right up until our box, in which Gabriel, Hincapie, Timber, and Mosquera (replaced by Calafiori) were imperious in ensuring this game ended as a shutout for Brighton. Arsenal didn’t play well, our attack was once again not really functioning, and Martinelli and Gyokeres were pretty anonymous (the whole ‘Martinelli/Gyokeres can’t play with each other’ discourse feels like it is really starting to become a ‘thing’ now, unfortunately) throughout the game. But to call us ‘boring’ and ‘not football’ – as will be the case by all of the ‘pundits’ this morning and for the next few days – is disingenuous. Brighton are the first team to actually outplay us for a very long time; most teams just sit in a low block and counter. So Why don’t we focus on that and how Arsenal had to dig deep to secure the points today?

The team was pretty much as I think most of us would have predicted; Martinelli in for Trossard, who was poor on Sunday against Chelsea. Saliba picked up a knock, and so Mosquera came in, whilst the rest of the team remained unchanged. And we got off to the perfect start. Saka’s goal in the 9th minute made me think that we were in for an impressive Arsenal away day, but after that initial deflected goal, we never really managed to assert control on this game. Brighton were good. They popped the ball around well, had more possession than us, kept us pegged back into our own half, and we struggled to find outlets for our attacking players. Gyokeres had another one of those games where the ball didn’t stick, and by the time his number came up for Havertz, he’d registered just 20 touches and had lost the ball 13 times. Not good enough. He needs to shape up, and if I’m Arteta, I’m thinking about doing 45 minutes for him against Mansfield, as well as 45 minutes for Havertz, because I think we need to start looking at Havertz slowly taking over more of the work up top as we reach the crunch point in this Premier League season.

Martinelli did his bit to demonstrate that maybe he is just a really good impact player, offering practically nothing on the left flank, whilst Eze had another game that sort of half-passed him by. What I mean by that is that at times he looked like he couldn’t get on the ball, but I saw other times in which he was popping it round quite well. There was one moment in thefirst half, for example, in which his quick touch set Saka in behind, only for him to flash the ball across goal to where neither Big Vik or Martinelli were ready to pounce.

I thought Saka was quiet, but on his 300th game for the club, with the winning goal scored, you have to give him a pass in terms of performance. The front end of our team just didn’t function.

That’s certainly not true of the defence or the midfield, though, and one Raya brain-fart moment aside right at the beginning of the game, I thought to a man our back line and two anchoring midfielders were excellent. Declan Rice and Gabriel, in particular, were rocks for us and this game felt like a throwback to the earlier part of the season, in which the Arsenal team defended like their lives were at stake. It was the type of performance that has felt like we’ve forgotten how to do in 2026, so whilst I am disappointed in us going forward this morning, I am pleased that the muscle memory at the back appears to have kicked back in for our defensive line.

I’m not sure what else there is to say, really, because there wasn’t a ton of other stuff going on in the game. Raya only made two saves all evening, whilst Chris Kavanagh seemed to offer Brighton players just about every free kick they wanted. The yellow Mosquera got was fine, if you’re applying the same rules to all players, but Brighton players seemed to get away with a fair few more challenges than Arsenal’s did. Which is why the bitching by Huerzeler was so ironic.

But hey, we got the win, we got the three points, this midweek has turned out to be a bit of a blinder and we now have everything in our hands once again.

Let’s hope it stays that way for a long time yet.

Back tomorrow as we start to preview Mansfield away in the cup. See you then.

That Arsenal made it look a lot harder than it probably should have been after Neto’s sending off in the second half probably needs to be consigned to history, now that the points are in the bag. But it doesn’t help my general stress and anxiety levels when we make these types of games feel like such a slog.

The chatter in the Greek beforehand was about how this game would be a really tough one for Arteta’s men. Chelsea is a decent side, a side that, as I pointed out in yesterday’s blog, hadn’t lost away in the league for nearly three months. This is a side that went to the Emptihad with a caretaker manager and nicked a point off City. So we all knew they wouldn’t be a pushover. The question was how Arteta was going to line us up, given he has a near fully-fit squad to select from. Well, all except Odegaard, whose knee problems appear to have flared up again. When I saw the leaked team news before the official stuff came out, I suspected that it meant that Eze was keeping his place on merit, but it appears it is more of neccessity, because of this injury. Let’s hope it is nothing too serious for the captain.

The return of Kai to the bench made for good vibes as the tifo explained why the world had only come to see the Arsenal, and I thought we were in command in that first half for pretty much most of it, underlying the tifo message with our ball dominance. I don’t think Chelsea dropped off, but I do think they recognised we would be the ones to drive the narrative of the day, given we were the ones at home. And we did. I thought we might even get a nice early helping hand from Sanchez, too, with his miscontrol within a few minutes, but unfortunately, Gyokeres couldn’t profit from a ‘keeper who then had the crowd making excited noises every time he touched the ball thereafter. He is really not a good keeper, and I am very glad that Chelsea places little value in trying to get good keepers, too. He complained about the second goal, for what reason I have no idea, but despite how poor he is, there wasn’t really a lot he could do with our first goal.

Somebody said to me that it was Saliba’s first goal of the season, and that shocked me. I was like “no way! He scored when we…oh…wait,” and I think my mind has just grouped our centre-halves together in terms of their goalscoring prowess, when in fact it is Big Gabi who is ‘the guy’ when it comes to the opposition penalty box. In fact, when you look at Saliba’s stats, it reads thusly:

• 25/26 = one goal, one assist
• 24/25 = two goals
• 23/24 = two goals, one assist
• 22/23 = three goals, one assist

So Big Bill is not the guy who regularly notches up the goals. When you compare that to Gabriel, it’s chalk and cheese, because this season alone, the Brazilian has four goals and five assists. The latest assist of which was, of course, his knock back into the box for Saliba’s goal, and having watched it back again, trying to find out where Chelsea went wrong, I think I’m just inclined to say it was a superbly worked Arsenal goal. We can go whipped to the near post, we can get it right under the ‘keeper, we can go to the back post; this Arsenal team has so many different clubs in its set-piece bag that it keeps opponents guessing and continues to be such a massive threat for us as a team. Long may it continue.

And overall, it was fair in the balance of play. Chelsea were content to have a bit more of the ball in that first half, but there wasn’t a ton of chances created for either side. So when they scored right on the brink of halftime, it felt slightly against the run of play to me. I know there are a few people who have said we were lucky to get away with not conceding a penalty on Rice for the ‘handball’ on the goal kick before the one we conceded, but I’m not having that. It was on his shirt sleeve that the ball hit him, and if you’re a City fan (or another fan, given that so many seem to want that financially doped football club to win the league), crying about that this morning, go have a look at the Leeds v City game and see that handball. Bet you weren’t crying over that yesterday, were you?

It left a bad taste in the mouth at halftime, but thankfully, that bad taste only lasted around 20 minutes in the second half. Step forward, Set-Piece FC again, and step forward Jurrien Timber, who not only scored the winner but also gave my fantasy team the kind of boost it needed this weekend. Double bubble delight for me. Again, as mentioned already, Chelsea players complained about a push, but that’s a stretch. In both boxes throughout the game, players were grappling with each other all game, so this one was never going to get ruled out. And nor should it. But you always have those few seconds after the goal where you’re wondering what VAR will try to see to knock off a goal. Not this time, though.

So with the lead regained, you’re looking at Arsenal consolidating for five minutes and not conceding a silly goal or doing anything stupid. Thankfully, the same needs to be said for Chelsea, who obliged us via Pedro Neto’s utterly mental lunge on the floor at Martinelli to get himself sent off with a second yellow. Honestly, how on earth can somebody be so stupid? You’re on a yellow mate, you can’t go to ground like that, but we’ll take it.

And at that point, I think most of us were pretty happy. We could control the ball, make use of the extra man, move Chelsea around, and maybe go and get one more. But not for the first time this calendar year, we seem to just retreat into our shells again. And whilst we ultimately hung on (and we really did hang on, with Chelsea having the ball in our net only to be ruled rightly offside, then that Garnacho cross saved by Raya at the death), I think we are right to be a little concerned about how we didn’t manage the game well after we went up with a man advantage. It didn’t feel to me as though we had that advantage. Chelsea held the ball; they were starting to get forward, and by the end of the game, if you look at the stats, it felt like a very even one. They had more possession than us, the xG was practically the same (1.09 to their 1.07), they created an extra big chance than us, with our goalkeeper making one more save than theirs.

At the end of the day, the points were all that mattered, and with nine more cup finals to go, we have knocked down one of the hardest. But we have to be better than what we showed in the second half after we scored. We have to manage those key moments better, and Arteta referenced that in his post-match too. This is becoming a bit of a pattern, and we need to nip it in the bud. We need to see more like the North London Derby style of game, where the end of the match is more of a slow march to the whistle, feeling comfortable.

We play Brighton on Wednesday, and it is a Brighton team who have just had back-to-back wins and will be feeling themselves on a ground in which we’ve struggled for a few years. We will have to be better than the performance showed yesterday. But above all, we have to pick up all three points.

Right, I’ll leave it there. Amanda and James did a duet on the Same Old Arsenal podcast yesterday, so if you fancy a bit more of a debrief from them, you can do so via YouTube here. Otherwise, I’ll be back here tomorrow as we prepare for the quick turnaround against Brighton. See you then.

But as the saying goes, “It’s always darkest before dawn,” and our dawning moment came yesterday at the Toilet Bowl Stadium.

I’ll get into the “whys” and “wherefores” of the game itself in a minute, but before that, I want to talk about what this means. Yes, Tottenham are terrible, yes they have a ton of injuries, and yes, they haven’t won a game in 2026. When you put it like that, a team at the top of the league should absolutely beat a side very much in the relegation mire. But this is a North London Derby. This is the most horrible fixture of the season. This is the one in which they get up for more than anything else. When you play The Scum at that Sh*thole, you’re not playing a team who are towards the bottom of the table, you are playing history, you are playing a cup final, you are playing a side who will perform much more than their league form suggests. So for Arsenal to go out and do what they did yesterday, in the way they did (and it wasn’t perfect, which I will come to), really speaks volumes for me on these players.

I hope that this is Arsenal’s “Anfield” moment, like City had a few weeks ago. I hope that the adrenaline and the stature of this big game, as well as the manner in which we dominated it, will have these players remembering what 2025 Arsenal looks like, not the one that has stuttered at the start of 2026. They will need to, because Chelsea at home next weekend is another massively tough game that they will have to overcome.

And so to the nuances of the game itself. And my-oh-my wasn’t it an interesting game to watch, eh? Arteta played it, I think, brilliantly with his team selection by bringing in Eze. One of the things we saw from him at Palace last season was how he a) is a big game player, and b) comes alive towards the latter part of the season. Well, here we are, and here he was, putting on what I think is arguably a man-of-the-match display, even though Viktor Gyokeres got it.

Eze was a key component of everything we did right yesterday. The time and space he found were devastating. Everyone rightly looks at the goals he scored at critical moments in the match, but it was other parts of his game that I loved. He was finding pockets of space in between lines and feeding the likes of Saka and Big Vik with ease. His heatmap looks like the archetypal ‘number 10’ in that his positions he took up were just outside of the D, but I also saw him on the left and the right linking with Trossard, Saka, Rice, as well as the aforementioned Gyokeres. He created one big chance, he had two key passes (a pass leading to a shot), and importantly, he felt a key part of the game with 41 touches in total. I really hope this is the point at which he really kicks on, and I think it must be giving Arteta food for thought for Chelsea next weekend.

But it was Big Vik who got the plaudits and the little yellow Premier League trophy at the end yesterday, and I guess with the two goals and all-around play he got, you could see why. That first one he bagged was the archetypal goal that we have seen on the highlight reels; he finds a bit of space, then absolutely leathers the ball into the net. It was a fine and clever pass from Timber to get it to him, but his first touch was good enough to set himself up, and then the finish was brilliant. We all know his flaws; he goes missing in lots of games, but this was a big game in which he stepped up, and I don’t think there will be many unhappy Arsenal fans with his performance yesterday. If you can just deliver that on a more regular basis, then we won’t care as much that you don’t seem too involved, your technique isn’t very aesthetic on the eye, and at times it feels like you are wading through treacle. Your job is goals, Viktor, and I’m pleased you did the business yesterday. What is also kind of weird is that whilst we have struggled in 2026, he seems to have found some form, with five goals in the last five Premier League games, eight in all competitions in 2026 so far, as well as getting himself up to 15 goals and two assists so far this season. I have said that what we need from him is at least 20 goals this season. He’s on course for that, but if he carries on with his 2026 form, he might end up with closer to 25 in all competitions. It seems weird to say this, given how, at times, we’ve wondered what we have actually brought, but if he ends up with 25 goals this season, you’d have to say that, despite all of our reservations, he’s absolutely done his job. There’s still a way to go, but this is a positive sign.

This wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, though. We should probably acknowledge that, even though we’re all feeling pretty happy this morning. For one example, we did shoot ourselves in the foot despite the total domination of the team in that first half. Tottenham offered nothing in the first 45, yet they still found themselves level after Rice’s uncharacteristic mistake. Quite what he was thinking dribbling the ball out from the back like he attempted is beyond me, but as Arteta pointed out afterwards, his character to step up and have another great game thereafter is a testament to his mentality. Trossard too was, I thought, rather poor overall and I was surprised he stayed on the pitch as long as he did. It just felt like he flitted in and out of the game, with some of his shot-selection efforts feeling rather poor, too.

I don’t really want to dwell on those moments, though, not on a day which has been ultimately very positive. Arsenal took the disappointment of not leading at halftime and doubled down on their total domination from almost the first minute of the second half. That has to be praised. And that’s where I think I want to leave it for today. It was a great win; the team now has a week off before Chelsea at home, which means they can rest up and prep themselves for what will be another really tough game. I wasn’t feeling great yesterday so I didn’t do the Same Old Arsenal pod, but you can check it out here if you want to get some more Arsenal content going. I know I will.

I am starting this blog the night of the game. I never do that.

This was an unprofessional Arsenal performance.

This was a disgraceful performance.

I am embarrassed.

This is falling apart.

Two wins in nine.

This is a football side who have spent two-thirds of the season being a dominant side, the best side in the league, the ‘Champions-Elect’.

Nope.

This team is crumbling and they are – collectively – falling apart.

That second half is one for the ages. In a bad way. Players lumping the ball. Players hiding in plain sight. A manager who – in his instence to keep Martinelli on the pitch – showed that maybe he is also feeling the pinch and not recognising when difficult decisions need to be made.

I don’t even want to go into details on this game. It was shit. Arsenal were shit. They played a Wolves side who spent most of the game passing the ball to us.

And yet they have found two goals to draw level with us.

Who cares about analysis at this stage? Arsenal just fell apart and our form is a real problem right now.

I don’t want to hear about the others. I don’t want to hear about the fact we are five points clear. City win their game in hand and beat us – which feels certainly feasible, nay – realistic given our record up there – and they are in the driving seat.

This Arsenal team could have turned this Premier League season into a procession. Instead they are delivering unto us torture.

Name me one player who has stepped up in that Wolves game. I can’t. I see scared little boys who played what might end up being the worst team in Premier League in history.

Shame on so many of you Arsenal players.

What’s the point in analysing it? Arsenal were awful. Wolves were awful. Two awful teams played out what felt like a relegation scrap.

Normally, I write 1,000 words for this blog. But what’s the point at this stage?

The North London Derby – against a terrible Tottenham team – could bring more misery. Because if Wolves can do that to us on their own patch, why can’t a Tottenham team with plenty of rest, as well as the incentive of seeing an Arsenal team falling apart.

It feels like a horror show waiting to happen. And right now – I feel like I don’t even want to watch it.

Sorry – you’ll get no positivity from me today.

I’m going to stop now. I’m going to save this as a draft. Then I’m going to wake up tomorrow and look at this again. I don’t think I’ll feel much different. But at least before I post I’ll have a night’s sleep. How much sleep I’ll get I don’t know.

Shambles.

************************************************

The dividing line is the difference a sleep makes. I didn’t get too much sleep. I am still utterly apoplectic with rage. I have re-read my semi-drunken ramblings from last night and I still feel the same. This Premier League season is imploding in front of our very eyes. It is pathetic.

It’s a football media and social media lock down for me now for at least 24 hours I think. SO it’s also debatable whether I’ll blog tomorrow morning too. I probably will, but right now, I just don’t feel like it. And the North London Derby on Sunday is the absolute WORST game to be playing right now.

Laters people.

Arsenal still needed to do the job, though. There was still a need for professionalism from those Arsenal players. And that was as professional a display as you are going to get. There was no slaughter of Wigan, just a first half that ensured this tie was dead by the time the first Asahi hit the punters’ lips, with a couple of half-chances in the second to extend the score without really extending ourselves. In many ways, Arteta would have been delighted. Sure, as fans, when you race to a four-goal halftime lead you want to see eight’s, nine’s, or ten’s, but let’s be realistic; there’s no need to over-stretch for a ball that could mean you are out for a few weeks at a crucial time in the season.

Arteta named a slightly stronger squad than I thought he would, although Calafiori was once again injured in the warm-up, which meant Saka had to come in, and the MLS as a midfielder test-run was deferred. It’s a shame, because with Merino out, Dowman still very young and Nwaneri on loan, there may well be an argument to see Myles there as an option in case one of our existing guys goes down. Zubimendi and Rice play A LOT of football and I think most of us do harbour concerns over what happens if one picks up a knock. That’s why you could see Arteta keeping both out of the starting XI, although Zubi did get on for 10 minutes at the end, which I wasn’t 100% happy about. Saka, thankfully, only got 45 minutes; save him for other matches, Mikel, so happy that you pulled him after he’d completed a pretty solid 45 as a centralised number 10.

It was the turn of the rotated squad to show they can do the business and yesterday it was just too much to ask a Wigan team low on confidence to compete with an Arsenal side stocked full of internationals. Kepa, White, Saliba (again, wasn’t too sure about that one, but he appears to have got through it all ok), MLS, Norgaard, Eze, Madueke, Saka, Martinelli and Jesus – all have been capped at full international level – and you could see the gulf in class immediately.

A lot of it was, I am pleased to say (and we were all pleased to see), marshalled by the excellent Eberechi Eze. Yesterday morning, I had said that this game feels like one in which he has to take control, and that he certainly did with two great assists. The first no-look pass to give Madueke his goal was perfectly weighted. The second ball in behind for Martinelli meant that the Brazilian still had a little more to do, but he took his goal well and now has 11 goals and three assists to his name this season. If he gets to 20 goal contributions for the season, he has 100% done his job on the attacking side of the pitch.

Back to Eze, though, who I think we can all agree needed this, with all of the noise around him and a couple of his recent performances. He needed to play yesterday to give his confidence a boost, but then he needed to play well to show he belongs here. And he certainly did that. I thought he was lively, he was getting on the ball, he was taking shots – it was like the Eze from last season and the one that showed flashes of it towards the beginning of this season. With Odegaard out injured, this was exactly the tonic. If I were Arteta now, I’d even be tempted to start him against Wolves. Let’s see if a little run of games can unlock a player we will need on top form before the end of the season.

There was also time for our old friend ‘Own Goal’ to step up and add to their tally, as well as a really well-taken Gabriel Jesus dink over the ‘keeper that was the kind of nonchalant finish that makes you scratch your head when he misses chances with the increased volume that he does. He’s another one with whom I think most of us thought might just be relegated to token minutes this season, but for Gabby, that’s now five goals and one assist this season. If he gets to 10 G+As this season, he’s also done his part for this season’s campaign.

As already mentioned, that was basically that at halftime, with the second half feeling like two teams just playing out the remaining 45 because of the rules. If there was an opportunity to ‘throw in the towel’ and simply say “we’ve had enough, let’s head home”, I suspect Wigan would have done. Arteta wouldn’t have minded it either, I suspect, but the football formalities must be obeyed, so we got a second half in the rain that was pretty uneventful. Gyokeres hit the post, Eze hit the side netting, but that was about it, really. We headed home knowing our name was in the hat for round five, whilst those Wigan fans trudged back up north knowing that they still have a league season they have to rescue somehow.

The draw takes place this evening at 6.35 p,m and I think from an Arsenal perspective, there are a few ways of looking at it:

1. A lower-league side at home that we can rotate (Wrexham, Mansfield, Norwich, Port Vale/Bristol City)
2. An away game with a big allocation, so a few of us can go

The games are played around the weekend of 7th/8th March, in which we play Brighton in the midweek, then Everton the following weekend, but we’ll also have a Champions League first leg away before we play Everton at home, so I think I’m leaning more towards the first option above, ahead of the second option. We need to be able to rotate in between those games, and I think a home match against lower-league opposition would be good. Maybe we finally arrest the demons of 92 by beating Wrexham on our own patch this time?

I’ll save any of those thoughts until we know what the actual draw is. Until then, have a great Monday. I’ll catch you tomorrow as we prepare for the trip to Wolves. See you then.

They’re a good team. A physical team. A team who know their strengths and is good at reducing its deficiencies. The data nerds may well raise an occasional eyebrow at how well they’ve done this season, but having watched them frustrate us and stifle us in the first half yesterday, I have to admit I’m surprised that their away form has been a bit, well, pants.

It took a bit of Zubi magic to unlock them, which then also meant they would have to come at us a little more, but I was still impressed at how hard we had to work. Zubi’s scored more goals than he’s ever done so before, but I bet if you asked him, he’d tell you that his highlights reel for this season has never looked as impressive. I love a goal that cannons in off the post and that one just before halftime felt particularly aesthetically pleasing. A real ‘have it!’ moment and worthy of winning any match alone.

It’d been tough going up until that point though. I thought Calafiori looked oddly at sixes-and-sevens at points in the game, perhaps still getting up to match fitness, but there was also a couple of weird moments in which Raya was a little sloppy too. Thankfully we weren’t punished, and in fact we did what we tend to do with these kinds of games – we basically locked out Sunderland for most of the match (Opta had their xG for the whole game as 0.17). Apparently Sunderland had three shots on target, but I’m struggling to remember whether Raya was troubled by any of them. Last weekend Daniel Farke spoke about how they essentially just don’t get a sniff and this week whilst Regis Le Bris didn’t exactly say the same, I’ll bet he was thinking it.

One-nil to The Arsenal at home earlier in the season felt like ‘job done’. But in 2026 so far we’ve conceded a few goals despite being ahead, so it did feel as though the stadium might get a bit antsy if that scoreline remained until the dying embers of the game. But thankfully we have a striker in form in Big Vik, so him bagging that goal on 66 minutes did make me feel like the game was essentially done. He’d only been on the pitch for six minutes, but his introduction clearly proved to be a master stroke by Arteta. His replacement Gabriel Jesus had hardly been in the game, same as Madueke, but the two coming on will have made their case to start against Brentford in midweek quite clear with their end product. Martinelli on the right is an interesting one; he’s barely ever been utilised there during Arteta’s time, but finds himself getting a few minutes here and there this season. Hey, if he can deliver like he did for Vik’s second in stoppage time, maybe Madueke shouldn’t be the defacto ‘next man up’ when Saka isn’t available.

It’s probably more to do with game state though. At 2-0 on 66 minutes, Sunderland are goingt o push forward a little more to see if they can unsettle us, plus with the fact that they are already basically safe, this one becomes a bit of a Hail Mary free hit of a remaining 25+ minutes as soon as we get the second goal. So perhaps that kind of game, where there is space, where there are moments in which Martinelli can run in behind like he did on 93 minutes, are perfect and the reason that he’s looked so good when coming on as a sub.

The same can probably be said for Gyokeres too. I really liked his first finish. It was instinctive. It was poachy. It was a good strike and a big to relief to all involved. At the start of the season I was very much minded to say if he gets 20 goals in all comps, then he’s done his job. That’s 13 now I believe, with plenty of football matches left to play, so if he keeps up this form, he’ll get to his target. We still need the other attackers to step up, for sure, but at least we have a goalscorer who will be feeling himself a bit after bagging a fair few goals over recent weeks.

Now there’s an opportunity to rest up, for those players to have a solid few days of light training, before a really tough away game to an in-form Brentford team on Thursday. This league is relentless, the same intensity will be needed and Arsenal will need to keep up the winning ways, despite being nine points clear. It feels great this morning, it’s handy that Liverpool and City play this afternoon and we know those Arsenal players have done their job. But if you ever want an example of how relentless this competition is, we play away to Brentford and away to The Scum in back-to-back Premier League matches. If City win today, that buffer we’ve built up could very easily be eroded, so it’s game faces on now and focus on the Bees next week.

Back tomorrow with more musings.

So to see one of their castaways, a guy who we all love and has become so integral to our squad, bag the winner to send us through to the League Cup Final, felt poetic to me. It felt like vindication. It was a visual manifestation of our superiority and having missed out on a few semi-finals in recent years, it felt like what we deserve for what this season has been so far.

We haven’t ‘won’ anything. We’ve got to a cup final. That’s it. But for some years now this team has been knocking down milestones. The final one has been to start winning trophies. And to do it against a team that really are quite odious and reprehensible as an entity – that was lovely.

There’s also nothing more lovely than a last second goal. Chelsea were pushing, they were probing, they left the back door open and Kai Havertz walked through it by rounding Sanchez. Oh, and Kai, the touching of the badge? “Chefs Kiss” my friend. Chef’s Kiss indeed.

I kind of predicted how this game was going to unfold yesterday morning, but I didn’t think it would be the level of cagey from Chelsea that essentially meant nothing. They offered basically nothing. We didn’t need to go and win this game. We had the goal advantage. We had the home advantage. We have the best defence in the country. So the onus wasn’t on us to go and force anything. Was I surprised that Chelsea were just happy to stay in their shape and offer little in that first half? Not really. We, of all fans, are aware from Anfield in 89 what you can do in a second half when the clock is ticking down. Rosenior had, I think, tried to invoke a little of that George Graham spirit; keeping it tight, make the first half a bit dull, let Arsenal force it, then pick them off on the counter.

The only problem with that, is that Arsenal were happy not to force it, we didn’t need to. So why turn this into an emotional game? Screw the neutrals. Screw people switching on to ITV and wanting to see a basketball match of end-to-end stuff. That’s not Arsenal – have you not been watching? We can – and do – have the ability to shut games down. Arteta has been trying to master this for some years now. Control, dominance, possession, minimise jeopardy. Sure, Enzo taking a shot from 30 yards produced a bit of something for Kepa to do, but if you’re relying on outside-of-the-box efforts from the likes of Marc Cucurella as your source of attempted joy, you’re going to be in a bit of trouble playing this Arsenal side.

We had our chances (Hincapie’s early effort was decent and maybe Martinelli could have made more of being put in behind in that first half), but this was a professional display that, personally, I loved. That’s because it felt like – and I put the Leeds game into this bracket when I say this – the Arsenal from earlier in the season. You know the one that just shut teams down and bagged themselves a clean sheet. Of late, we’ve seen us concede a few too many sloppy goals. Sure, there’s been some golazo‘s in there with the two United scored, or the second one from Kroupie at Bournemouth, but we’d let complacency creep in, and now it feels like those kinks have been ironed out. Arteta spoke about doing a bit of a reset a few weeks back. He talked about how some bad habits had started to emerge. But clearly this team has decided that our defensive identity, which has been such a feature of this season, needs to be restored, rather than the slightly helter-skelter results that we saw in parts in January.

It’s been a really testing period for these players, but they’ve come out of it with a cup final to look forward to. Declan Rice said in an interview afterwards that he’s ‘knackered’ and given Arteta went pretty strong with his starting XI yesterday, I can understand why. But I think we probably need to be mindful of that in the coming weeks and Arteta probably needs to be thinking about a bit of rotation. We now have four days until we play again on Saturday at home to Sunderland, so I think there is enough space there between matches for those players to refresh themselves. But after that it starts to pick back up again, because we play Brentford on Thursday, before Wigan on Sunday, which will 100% be the opportunity to sit some players down again. The good news thereafter is that we’ll have a solid week until we have to go to the Toilet Bowl to play the Scum, so I think that will be on Arteta’s mind as he and his staff start to plot the approach for the next block of games we have.

But for now it is job done, Kai the hero, Chelsea vanquished and another impressive Arsenal victory in what has – up until this point – been a great season so far for us. Let’s just hope it continues all the way to May.

I’ll be back with some more thoughts tomorrow as we prepare for the visit of the Mackems. Speak then.

All talk pre-game was about the fact that this could officially be classed as a ‘wobble’ if Arsenal do not win. Three without victory, two goalless draws, a team that can’t score open play goals, etc, etc, blah, blah – you know the drill as well as I do. So when we also got the news pre-kick off that Saka had pulled up in the warm-up, you could forgive any Arsenal fan for being a little more apprehensive. His form in terms of goals may have dried up, but he’s still a talisman in this Arsenal team, as Odegaard been seen in times gone by too. But he was unexpectedly dropped – an acknowledgement from Arteta methinks, that his captain’s form hasn’t been great – and didn’t see any minutes until the game was practically won in the second half. A sign of things to come? Maybe, maybe not, because it was Havertz who replaced the Norwegian, and I think Arteta will have Kai earmarked for more attacking roles at the spearhead of our attack, when his fitness comes back up to the required level for him to be able to play a full 90.

Side note: I actually think Odegaard played really well when he came on. There was a definite verticality in his passing; it was almost as if being dropped had shot a rocket up his backside, and he realised how effective he could be.

The game itself started a little stodgy, though. Leeds got on the ball, the home fans were in good voice, they were keeping us at bay for at least the first 20 minutes, I think. And although we completely restricted them – as we often do to teams – in terms of chance creation, we weren’t getting in behind too much and creating loads of chances. It’s funny though, because for me personally, when the game goes on, I find myself seeing games differently to how the commentators do. I was watching on Sri Lankan TV and they had Lee Hendry and some other dude talking about how dominant we were, but until that first goal goes in, you’re always wondering if it’s going to be a game like that Forest one.

We have Martin Zubimendi to thank for the fact that we did get that all-important first goal, although Noni Madueke might have something to say about his role in the proceedings. I don’t know about you, but seeing him celebrate, I got a feeling that he celebrated that a little harder than normal – perhaps last weekend’s mistake was still playing on his mind? If that’s the case, much like Big Gabi at Newcastle last season, the best way to respond is like that. The ball from Noni was great (another guy who had a very good game in terms of delivery and end product – assist-wise), his header was well met and sometimes those bullet headers straight down the ‘keepers throat are really difficult to save.

1-0 to the Arsenal. Lovely. What you then need before halftime is that second to really make your dominance count. So of course, it was going to be a set piece that did it. I have seen Man City fans, Liverpool fans, as well as some of those scummy Spurs and Chelsea fans, talk up how we are anti-football. I couldn’t be happier to read it. They can moan all they like, but you don’t get half a goal for a set piece. You also have something in your locker that terrifies teams, which is the only explanation for why Karl Darlow flapped one in his own net. Of course, queue the Match of the Day and Sky Sports graphics talking about how ‘Own Goal’ is now our top scorer.

Cry me a river.

Lately, a 2-0 scoreline hasn’t felt like it was the ‘sure thing’ for an Arsenal win, with goals against us for Bournemouth and United, as well as two for Chelsea in the League Cup, which is probably why I felt a little more nervous than usual in that first 10 minutes of the second half. Leeds were always going to come out and ‘have a go’; their home fans would have demanded it. And again, whilst I personally was quite nervous, I think with the benefit of hindsight, the Arsenal players just took control and rode out the mini storm with relative ease in the end. A final nail in the coffin by way of an Arsenal third was all we’d need.

Did I mention the narratives about ‘Own Goal’ being trotted out? Well, step forward, Big Vik, who decided that on this day, that narrative was going to be quashed somewhat. Now, it wasn’t a scintillating performance from the Swede (he should have taken his shot on from a great ball from Trossard in that first half), but I think we’re all coming to realise that we just aren’t going to get that from him. He was fine, strong in places, held up the ball ok and I think his connection with Havertz looked good. What I will say, though, is that his goal was EXACTLY the sort of finish I thought we’d be getting from him this season. Odegaard’s ball in behind to set Martinelli racing was a little wide, but he did well to get on to it, and his left-footed cross in was begging for some good movement.

We got it. Gyokeres used his strength well. He got in front of his man, his finish was a bit of a shinner, but who cares? He’s there to do exactly that, and much like Zubi, you could kind of tell that he was very happy with that ball hitting the back of the net. He needed that just as much as Zubi must have felt he did.

Job done. But whilst we’re having fun, why not get a cherry on the cake, which Gabriel Jesus decided he wanted to be in on the action for? His goal was the pick of the bunch from a build-up and finish perspective. And it was a very ‘Gabby Jesus’ type of move. The type of goal where you think “if you could do that every week, you’d be an absolute legendary superstar”. We don’t get enough from him on a consistent basis (he was pretty crap against United), but he is still showing that he can have an impact this season.

And I wonder what impact this comprehensive win will have on the team? After a little wobble, we’ve scored four goals, some open play ones too, we can put the recent blip hopefully behind us and we go into a semi-final against Chelsea at home in which a win would get us to a League Cup final (probably) against Man City.

A good day’s work. Let’s build on it.

I watched the United/City game, and I just assumed United would be pants and City cut our lead, not the other way around, so by the time kick off came for our game, I was buzzing.

There’s nothing like a Sean Dyche mid-block slog-fest to quell any excitement, though, eh?

Let’s do some real talk here, though, because I don’t blame or accuse Forest of anything in terms of the game. They are sitting in 17th, they need to pick up points, so having the visitorsto their gaff who are currently top of the league right now was always going to mean they would have to grind something out. So in no way do I mean my Sean Dyche comments as a slight on them. But we’ve seen him do this to us before, and we really should be able to have an answer for it.

When I say “do this before,” I mean Everton at home last season, in which Everton kept their shape, kept their discipline, said to Arsenal, “go on then, see if you can break us down,” and we had no answer that day.

And it appears we had no answer yesterday, although I think that is more on us, than it is on Forest. Because you look at all the data points, you look at the eye test on some of the chances we missed, and this was a 1-0 / 2-0 game in which we were once again profligate on goal.

• Martinelli missed an open goal
• Zubimendi puts wide with a half-cross, half-shot
• Gyokeres put in behind, and Murillo blocks
• Rice hits a shot into the tur,f and Sels palms it wide
• Sels makes a wonder save from a Saka looping header
• Merino heads a Rice ball into the box just wide

By the end of the game, depending on which statistical model you use, we’d created enough xG to bury two chances. But we come away with a big, fat, zero, and I have to look at our attacking display and say it feels like it was just all wrong yesterday. I said pre-game on social media that I didn’t think that Martinelli is quite the right choice for what I suspected Forest under Sean Dyche would do. Here are my words in the morning on the blog:

Martinelli is fresh off a hat-trick last weekend, so he might be a good option, but if Forest sit in a compact shape when we have the ball, Martinelli might be reduced to that kind of game we all dread for him: hugging the touchline, no space to run in behind, touch-touch-touch-byline-cross to nowhere.

As it was, he wasn’t reduced to hugging the touchline, but he didn’t have a great game, wasn’t involved much at all, and when his big moment came to make himself a match-winner, he fluffed his lines at the back post. It was really poor from a guy who is our top scorer this season. But herein lies the problem; Martinelli, as our top scorer, shows that sometimes, we just lack that clinical finish in front of goal. Games like yesterday showed this. We score goals, we all know we do, and we’re one of the top scorers in the Premier League, but games like yesterday are where you go from being in a title race to shutting down a title race. Last season, Liverpool had the likes of Salah, who would just bag in a game like this. Haaland tends to do that too, and that’s also why City won the league two seasons ago. We’re in great shape, we’re seven points clear (although that will be reduced to four today with Villa sure to beat a pretty average Everton side on their own turf), but if we had a monster in front of goal, I think that lead would be so unassailable, that we’d all be wondering what we were going to be wearing to the victory parade in May – even by now.

As it is, because of games like this, as well as the failure to capitalise and frankly, just be better in that second half against Liverpool, we find ourselves seven points clear and not able to really pull away from the chasing pack.

There is, of course, some introspection needed. We ARE seven points clear. But it just doesn’t ‘feel’ to me like we’re acting like champions-elect. Yesterday, we had so many players who were off the pace. We slowed everything down (and not for the first time this season). We allowed Forest to keep in their shape because of the way we slowed everything down. Odegaard dropped an absolute stinker, and, as somebody who is supposed to be our cornerstone in this team, we can’t be having that. I thought the balance of the attack was wrong, and having Gyokeres playing with Martinelli and Madueke on either side just feels pointless. Gabriel Jesus offered nothing when coming on either, so he’s hardly the answer, so perhaps having Merino in there would have been a better call. Certainly, at halftime, you can make those changes. Odegaard dropped a stinker, was hooked before the hour was off, but I think the move was to swap him for Eze and then Gyokeres for Merino. Merino played well when he was on. He offered more threat than Viktor, but giving a player like Eze 11 minutes plus stoppage time to do something isn’t enough. He’s the kind of guy who needs to ‘feel’ his way into the game.

Arteta got his approach all wrong. His assertion that Saka was carrying something doesn’t wash for me. If that’s the case, don’t play Saka in midweek; the Premier League is more important than the League Cup, and Arteta played his strong hand then when he should have been playing it today. I’ll tell you one thing right now, I REALLY hope he doesn’t go strong again for Inter. We have daylight in the Champions League, we have another home game against a Kairat team at the bottom of the whole league, and we can rotate heavily and still should be beating. And if we do that, then that’s 21 points confirmed, even if we lose to Inter and it confirms a top-two spot. There should be no reason for playing a strong team in midweek. Manchester United is priority number one, and seeing them with their new manager bounceback yesterday, we need to make sure we are ready, because they will have a whole week to prepare for us.

I’ll say a final word on the penalty incident. Firstly, you can’t be relying on the referee to get you out of games like this. We needed to have taken our other chances, and then this would have become an incidental situation. But that’s a penalty. I’m not sure how you can cup the ball with your hand to try to keep it in play inside the box and it not be a penalty. When VAR looks at that and says, “It came off his shoulder first,” I have to just laugh. He LITERALLY tried to keep the ball in play with his arm. You can’t say that hitting the shoulder should have any distance. No doubt we’ll have some Dermot Gallagher gaslighting on Ref Watch tomorrow, but it’s a penalty; we’ve been shafted a bit there. But we shafted ourselves by not taking our chances.

Unfortunately, I’ve said I’d do a post-game show with Amanda and James in which we talk about this game, which was hardly a classic. But if you want to join us, you can do so – click here at 1 pm, where we’ll be going live.

So why do I not feel completely sated this morning?

I think it’s probably the feeling that this tie could – and probably should – be practically over. We outshot them. We had more big chances. We won more duels. We had more corners. The only thing Chelsea had over Arsenal on the night was greater possession, but, as the eye test showed, that was a little more sterile for us. It felt like we gave Chelsea a bit of a lifeline with the goals we conceded to a Garnacho who I personally think is one of the most overrated players in the league. The goals he scored felt avoidable:

1. Garnacho at the back post, unmarked after Neto had been allowed to float the ball in from the other flank
2. A poorly contested corner that went through a sea of players as Garnacho semi-mis-hit his goal attempt.

This game felt like one that we should have taken a 3-1 lead back to the Emirates on, something I know Mikel Arteta also believed, based on his post-match comments. It felt like a game that – despite Chelsea getting a few chances throughout – was one that we were in control of. That feeling helps when you score early, and Ben White’s headed goal from one of the first corners of the game certainly did its bit to calm any initial lingering nerves I had. It was pretty shocking defending, though; if we’re going to say that we could – probably should – have done better on our conceded goals, I think Chelsea fans waking up this morning will be feeling a lot worse about the concession of their goals.

That applies to the second goal we scored as well. Sanchez won’t want to go back into the video room for this match this week, that’s for sure, because it was he who allowed the ball to slip through his palms for Big Vik to break his drought and put us two up on the night. And as I said on the ol’ socials, boy, did the Swede need that. He cut another solitary performance at first last night, and the stats guys who run the graphics on screen are never going to be his friend, with last night’s number on screen in that first half saying that he’d by far had the fewest touches of any player on the pitch.

It doesn’t matter if you score though

That’s what we’ve been saying for a while, so if I’m going to have choice words to say when he doesn’t score and looks forlorn like Liverpool this time last week, we have to hand out some flowers to the big guy when he does. Right place, right time, hopefully this helps his confidence.

And at that point, you’d expect Arsenal to shut up shop. We’ve been good for quite some time at closing down games, but Mikel Arteta will be a little disappointed in the concession of those two Garnacho goals. That’s happened a lot over the last six weeks or so. I think most of us Gooners have put it down to Big Gabi being out at the start, but he’s been back for a couple of weeks now. Yet, we’re still not keeping the back line completely water-tight, which is something I think Arteta will be looking at today and tomorrow when they do their analysis on this match ahead of Forest on Saturday.

From a tactical perspective, I really liked how high we pressured Chelsea in their half of the pitch. When Sanchez played the ball out from the back, it was never long, and Arsenal clearly knew this would happen, because there was always a guy in the midfield picking the ball up in their own half, which forced several high turnovers and presented a few opportunities. Rice, Odegaard and Zubi – all had their moments in which they did that, and you could tell it was clearly instructive. Arsenal had Chelsea’s number on the night, which is also why I guess I’m a wee bit frustrated, because it felt like we easily had the beating of them and were the better team on the night.

I definitely felt that when Zubi scored. What a player he is, eh? He does the six role to perfection, but he’s also been given the licence to go forward more than he ever did at Real Sociedad, which is resulting in goals for him too. He has four goals in all competitions this season already. Last season, he scored two. In fact, across his career, he has only ever managed a maximum of four in a season – he has only scored 10 goals in 236 games across seven seasons previously, so he’s already matched his best, and we’re only just halfway through the season. This is a guy who has very quickly become an integral cog in this Arteta machine, and you can see why Arsenal pursued him through such a long campaign as they did last year. He is a superstar, and I love that he plays in our red and white. I’ll also take this moment to say ‘props’ to the team themselves, who worked the ball really well for that goal, including Big Vik, who gets himself an assist on the night too.

The job isn’t done, as Arteta was pointing out afterwards, but we have ourselves a one-goal lead to take to our own gaff in a couple of weeks’ time, and that is good. Whether it will mean that players are rotated, I doubt, because that is quite a slender lead for you to be doing mass tinkering as we did against Pompey. But there is at least the breathing space, and Arteta was at least able to make a few subs last night too, bringing on Merino,Jesus and Havertz for Rice, Gyokeres and Odegaard. Martinelli got on too to keep his engine running as well and perhaps the subs made us a little less organised as those players came up to speed with the game, but I do just wonder if we just switched off a bit with their second goal.

Hey, I’m nit-picking though because let’s be honest, we’re in a good position, we scored three goals and should now be heavy favourites to go one better than last season. And you have to take that. All eyes now shift to Forest away on Saturday, which will be a really tricky game against a Sean Dyche who loves to spoil the mood, so let’s hope those players have those game-faces back on immediately, because we can’t afford any Premier League slip-ups, having had a bit of a hiatus from it over the last week.

Back tomorrow as we build up to that one.

Nevertheless, I caught up with the goings on at Fratton Park yesterday, and with Arteta ringing the changes for this one, it felt as though there was a real opportunity for some of those rotational players, as well as a chance to see a returning face in Havertz. I don’t think anyone was too disappointed with the starting lineup, with perhaps a question over whether Gabriel should have started. However, given that we still have a few players out, including Hincapie and Calafiori for the game, I wasn’t surprised to see either Gabriel or Saliba. Big Gabi it was, which I think makes sense, because he’s the one who has played fewer minutes than Saliba due to his injury. I wonder if for Wednesday night’s game Saliba might come in?

But for this one, he went with our big Brazilian, and other than that, we pretty much changed the whole team, including a start for Nwaneri, which certainly had myself as well as a lot of you guys also happy that the kid would be given his chance. We’ve got a lot of minutes to be played in January, we need every member of the squad active and having had some run-outs, so I was really pleased that Ethan was able to get a start and managed to rack up a solid 70 minutes. I thought he also played well; he moved the ball around, he looked comfortable on it, if not spectacular. But the way the game kicked off, there wasn’t a lot of spectacular stuff to talk about, including an early goal for Portsmouth that put us on the back foot. That sort of stuff can always happen, I guess, because you’ve got a home crowd who are super excited to have a Premier League team back on their patch, as well as an Arsenal team that has made a lot of changes, which means cohesion is going to be an issue. And for that goal, Portsmouth scored, Kepa will probably think he might have done better with his parry, perhaps. But he was important thereafter and had a good game overall; he made four saves in total, and although he conceded, I think he can consider this a good day’s work.

The upside of an early goal is that it gives you enough time to respond (the most perfect FA Cup example of that is the Hull Cup final back in 2014), and I think the fact we responded so quickly plays a big part in the game state too. If a game like this wears on, the opposition gets more and more emboldened defensively, which turns into the deepest and most difficult of low blocks. But we were behind for just a few minutes before our old friend Own Goal stepped up to bring us level. Had the defender not got a touch, however, I think Norgaard puts it in, so although on paper this was another OG, in reality, the pressure of Norgaard did enough. And it was another set piece, for which the numbers we have racked up this season are absurd. I saw a stat from Orbinho that said something like 17 goals we’ve scored from set pieces this season. We can all talk about the striker situation at the moment, but set pieces are a massive part of this team’s success this season, and when we are up against those aforementioned low blocks, set pieces and corners are an important weapon in unlocking stubborn defences with many players in the box. So it was the case for our second goal too – the first of the Martinelli hat-trick – and we got a reminder of the fact that Martinelli is actually very good in the air. I remember when he first broke in to the team under Emery all those years ago; Martinelli scored a couple of good headed goals in Europe, I remember, and it’s what led several Arsenal fans to say that perhaps he’s a guy who could be playing centre forward in future.

Obviously, that evolution to number nine never happened, but if we are getting back the Martinelli who had his best-ever goal haul in 2022/23 with 15 goals in all comps, then I think we’ll all be more than satisfied with his output this season from the wide positions. In fact, with this hat-trick, he now has nine in all comps – well on track for his best ever season at The Arsenal. I have spoken with mates about how I wonder if that Martinelli from 2022/23 was the outlier, as opposed to the player he really is, but if he can continue to bag important goals for us between now and the end of the season, I might need to update my priors on that one.

Before his second Set-Piece Again Ole Ole goal to put us 4-1 up, there was a pretty terrible open-goal miss at the back post, but I’m not minded to bag on him too much given he’s scored a hat-trick and won the game for us. And although that final goal from the set piece was the cherry on the cake for us yesterday, for me, Martinelli’s second goal and our third on the day were the best of the lot. There was just something so smooth and silky, the way Gabriel Jesus slid the ball across the goal and in behind all the Portsmouth defenders for Martinelli to slide in at the back post. We’ve all talked amongst our WhatsApp groups, in the pub and online about the Gabby Jesus and Martinelli relationship, but this was it here on full display, and aesthetically it was the best goal of the lot.

His hat-trick goal was another testament to good set-piece delivery from our team (Madueke in particular), although I don’t think it looked like a particularly spectacularly ‘worked’ goal. Martinelli got in front of his man, flicked the ball goalwards, and the game has a gloss on it that suggests this was a little easier than it was.

Job done, into the next round, plenty of rotation completed, an eventful game (I haven’t even mentioned Noni’s penalty, which was a pretty poor effort but won through his own trickery), but it wasn’t a flawless performance. Portsmouth got off more shots on target than us, Kepa made more saves, and we didn’t control the game as much as the scoreline suggests. But it doesn’t matter. We got through, and tonight’s draw will have our names in it, as opposed to the last two seasons, so that’s good. It wasn’t vintage, free-flowing Arsenal, but we did enough.

Because I wasn’t around James and Amanda did a post-game review on the Same Old Arsenal pod yesterday, which you can watch here, if you’re that way inclined. Otherwise, I’ll be back tomorrow as we count down to the Chelsea League Cup semi-final. See you then.

Arsenal had an opportunity to really lay down a marker against an injury-hit, beleaguered, and not really in form (despite what the ‘unbeaten run will tell you) Liverpool team.

And they just didn’t take it. The opportunity was there, and no such marker was laid down.

Arteta named an unchanged side, and I don’t think there were any surprises, but for Liverpool, there were, as Ekitike didn’t even make the bench. And so there was optimism. We were playing well in the run-up to this; we had a strong bench, we’d just seen Man City draw yesterday, so the opportunity was right in front of us.

And in that first half, after the first five minutes of Liverpool knocking the ball around, we started to get hold of it. We created some half-chances, Saka looked as though he had the beating of Kerkez, Liverpool didn’t really look like they were going to create anything.

Then, in one moment, with a couple of Arsenal players out of position and miscommunication between Saliba and Raya, Liverpool hit the bar out of nothing.

But it’s ok – we survive – the second half plays out, the talk in the concourse was about building on that for the second half, no harm no foul.

Boy, were we all wrong.

I actually don’t really know what to say about that second half, but I’ll bet Arteta did in the dressing room, because what we saw from minute 45 onwards was not great from those Arsenal players.

Now, if I’m going to sprinkle in a wee dram of positivity, it would be that ultimately, the tone of this blog sounds like we’ve lost, when in fact we have still kept ‘par’ with City’s result, and we’ve knocked off another really tough game off the list. So ultimately, there’s no major damage, other than to the egos of some of those Arsenal players. Because in that second half, they got a schooling from what was a good – but not great – Liverpool team.

On 60 minutes, I turned to Nick, who stands next to me in block five, and said “I don’t think we’ve been in their box yet”. There was just zero threat from Arsenal whatsoever in that second half. I’ve just looked at the stats – that second half doesn’t make for great reading:

• Zero big chances created
• 65% possession to Liverpool
• Out-passed – 308 to our 166
• Out-xG’d

Now, what I would say is that the fact we were ‘out-xG’d probably had a lot to do with the game set up, in which Arteta reflected afterwards, as Liverpool set up to flood the midfield and not give us a sniff. But basically, we were second best to everything in the second half, and in the cold light of day, I’m still really frustrated with the performance. We were at home. We should have imposed ourselves on the game more in that second half, and we got absolutely nothing from it – performance-wise, I mean. We offered little threat going forward but for me the most worrying thing was how bad we were both on and off the ball. Liverpool players were able to dance around us. Meanwhile we couldn’t – it felt like – string more than three passes together. Every Arsenal players were guilty of it and honestly, we were so bad, it’s probably a testament to how good we are that we’ve even got a point out of that game. Because the performance in that second half was one of a team that probably should have been on the end of a defeat.

From an individual perspective, we lost Hincapie early in that second half and whilst he wasn’t having a blinder of a game, you can see why he is favoured above Myles right now. Because when MLS came on, Liverpool targeted him and I got nervous every time they got the ball to Frimpong. He looked off it and some of that might be down to the fact he just hasn’t played many games and we’re still playing one of the best teams in the country, but if that is the case it ain’t getting resolved any time soon, because Arteta and Arsenal can’t afford to play players back into form. The squad is too deep.

The other player I think we need to point out is, unfortunately, our big Swede up top. He’s now played 19 games in the Premier League, nearly 1,300 minutes, so I think we have a big enough sample size. And I’m starting to feel like this is just what we have – a striker from Coventry. We all know (and knew) he wasn’t going to do the level of output from his time in Portugal, but his movement isn’t great, he doesn’t affect games enough and last night I saw a guy basically just standing around for big chunks of the match. There was one passage in the first half where he broke out from between Konate and Van Dijk’s grip to receive the ball from Gabriel to feet. He one-touched it straight to Big Gabi, then tucked in between the two centre-halves. Then, two minutes later, he did the same again. Look, it’s a nothing moment, but the problem is we’ve got a guy who isn’t getting into those poaching spaces in the box. He’s not making the runs in behind the defenders enough and whilst I’m not in the Lacazette zone I got to for the last year of his time at the club, I am starting to get worried that this is all we will ever get from Gyokeres. We’re challenging for a title and we really can’t afford to have players putting in anonymous performances on too many occasions. Something has to change. You could say similar to Eze yesterday, but I’m prepared to just let that slide; he came on for about 12 minutes plus injury time in a game in which Liverpool flooded a midfield and came for a point, so perhaps it was a mini ‘Hail Mary’ from Arteta to see if he could larup one in from 25 yards, so that you’d be hard pressed to get in to for too much detail. But Big Vik needs to start showing us more guys.

ON the Liverpool thing, I do think it’s interesting that Liverpool were lauded for their second-half display when, as Slot pointed out afterwards, they didn’t have a shot on target in the second half and spent a big chunk of the game slowing everything down that they could. They came for a point and they got it. Fair pay to them. And I think you do need to mention that time wasting and game management to talk about the context for which Martinelli is now the world’s most evil person apparently, for pushing Conor Bradley off the pitch. Gary Neville went in on him, the media has gone in on him, rival fans have gone in on him, but as I said on social media last night – let’s all put our fainting couches away now, shall we? He was silly, it was stupid to try to push an injured player off the pitch, but he did make a motion to move back on to the pitch and I think you can see that’s what Martinelli was gesturing about. Let’s not forget we’d seen Frimpong go down in the first half to try to claim a penalty and not get up, yet as soon as the play was stopped, he was up and waiting to get back on. There was gamesmanship going on from Liverpool (goal kicks, etc) and Martinelli picked the wrong moment to take issue. It wasn’t right, but let’s not pretend he’s tried to injure a player on purpose, should we?

So the evening ended in less than fun fashion, I was absolutely sodden, we didn’t get that win and revenge we all crave, but ey, we’re top of the league. We’re six points clear. No big psychological damage has been done from yesterday, but I think most Arsenal people today will be have a feeling of ‘what if’ had we been more like the Arsenal we’ve seen for most of this season in the second half. 

It’s a mini break from the Premier League for a week now, as we go into both FA Cup action against Portsmouth on Sunday at 2pm, followed by Chelsea on Wednesday at 8pm in the League Cup. It’ll be a chance to rotate a few players around and what I’ll be looking for over the next five days is that Arteta gets some rest in to a few legs now, because we have to get back to winning ways away to Forest in just over a week’s time. We can’t let last night’s draw become a ‘thing’.

Catch you all tomorrow.

I know I am. I must admit that on 11 minutes of the game after Gabriel had played the most hospitally of hospital balls across his side of the 18-yard box to gift Evanilson a tap in, I did not have that good feeling. Nor did I have that same feeling after Kroupi Junior had worldie-struck his shot past Raya to make it 3-2 on 76 minutes. But upon reflection there are so many positive things to take away from a game in which Arsenal managed the right moments and ultimately have done enough to find themselves seven points clear as of Sunday morning (even if not by Sunday evening, because I give managerless Chelsea zero hope of getting anything against City, unfortunately). Job done for this weekend.

Arteta kicked off the evening with his team and, perhaps unexpectedly, he engaged in a bit of rotation in attack. I certainly didn’t expect to see Martinelli and Madueke come in for Saka and Trossard, but given that this is a hectic Christmas schedule, some of these players have barely played minutes (mainly Madueke), it makes sense for there to be a little change here and there. You have to be able to trust your squad, because otherwise, what’s the point in having such an expensively assembled one (a penny of Eze’s thoughts right now)?

So rotate he did, also bringing in to Rice and I think the move to bring in Madueke clearly worked a treat. The England international really needs to invest more time in shooting drills, because he ain’t the greatest on hitting the target, but what he is possibly the best at doing in this squad is beating a man in a one-v-one duel and yesterday he had whoever he was up against on toast all night. Even before Bournemouth’s belated Christmas present from Gabriel, Madueke had beaten two men and blazed over and whilst he did that again at least once in this game, he also used his super power to help us win all three points. For our first goal he just kept driving and kept driving until he was ready to cut back and whilst eventually the ball found its way to Big Gabi for his redemption story in this game, we probably should have finished it off even before then in that move with Martinelli too. No matter though; we scored, Big Gabi neutralised his earlier error, Arsenal could start to take hold of the game and search for the win.

At least that was my assumption. Bournemouth had been on a winless run stretching back to October, they had shipped a fair few goals when you looked at the Premier League table and the ‘goals against’ column, they should leave space for us to capitalise. Except the only problem with that line of thinking is the it belies just how good they are at home and when I started to look at halftime how their home and away form stacked up, I could understand that when the halftime whistle had gone, they were the better side. Or at least they had just edged the game. They pressed high when out of possession, tried to force us in to errors and, in that first half, that’s exactly what we did. Zubi was guilty on a couple of occasions, Martinelli too, as well as Big Gabi of course. We looked like our usual rhythm was being displaced and Bournemouth were countering that with a few decent chances, shots from distance and going long on a number of occasions when they could.

The second half felt like we were able to recalibrate though and I thought we were much the better side overall. The stats will tell you Bournemouth had seven shots in the second half – the same as us – but in reality we limited them to more distance efforts and their xG in the second half was just 0.22, which tells me that they really didn’t create too much of note other than a one-in-ten effort that went in from 25-30 yards for their goal. Conversely, we were fashioning plenty of chances and I thought we were easily good value for not only the first Rice goal, but the second too.

On that first goal, let’s give some props to a few players in the build up, because Martinelli won an aerial duel that set Big Vik in, he muscled his way past four Bournemouth defenders, which also drew them on to him and allowed Odegaard to slide the ball for Rice to slot home. Odegaard will get the assist numbers, but Gyokeres and Martinelli need to have a tip of the cap for their involvement too.

On the second goal, this time the stats will favour Bukayo Saka for the assist, but it was Odegaard’s perfectly weighted ball in behind that did the first part of the damage and whilst Rice still had a bit to do to place the ball in the right place to make the goal happen, Saka gave him the perfect weight on his pass to make it as easy as possible for Declan. Declan Rice, in red and white, I like it, uh-huh, uh-huh.

And at that point, under normal circumstances, I think most Arsenal fans are happy that we’re taking all three points, were in not for that aforementioned wonder-strike. I have mixed feelings on it. Yes, perhaps Odegaard could have closed down a bit quicker, but how many of those normally beat a ‘keeper of Raya’s quality? I don’t think many at all. Then there’s the aftermath post-goal, in which Bournemouth and their fans are feeling a bit excited about an upset. But with the benefit of hindsight and a night’s sleep, I recall that Bournemouth really didn’t offer much at all from minute 77 onwards. Those Arsenal players just shut the game down and on a night in which there were one or two mistakes made early on in this match, the way these Arsenal players controlled the second half will have ultimately pleased Arteta.

We now have a solid five days between this game and the visit of Liverpool to The Emirates. That means these Arsenal players can get back to London Colney, get some training in, do some analysis ahead of what will be a really tough game, so that we’re ready for a really tough encounter against last season’s champions.

We did a post match pod on the Same Old Arsenal podcast this morning if you fancy listening in here. Other than that, I’ll catch you all tomorrow.

• The Great Arsenal underperforming data machine
• The Great Aston Villa overperforming data engine

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, Villa have been a weird team from a data point of view, kind of defying the statistical models. Given they’d just gone through an 11-game winning streak, they rocked up at The Emirates in very good form and perhaps an expectation from their fans that they could very well cause an upset on our turf.

I felt it too, to be fair, because Villa had picked up a draw last season, and the season before that, they’d done us with a smash-and-grab, scoring two late goals. This could very well derail our season and I was very apprehensive ahead of it.

To add to that, the fact that the news emerged a few hours before kick-off that Rice wouldn’t be fit to play in this game, compounded the nerves. Arsenal would need to do this without our most in-form player of the season. But there was some positives that could be taken, with Big Gabi restored to the line-up, as well as Jurrien Timber and given that Hincapie was now getting into the team more regularly and had acquitted himself very well at both centre-half and left back this season, this was a back line that should be able to sure up any potential issues that Villa might pose.

But the absence of Rice was certainly felt in that first half and Villa caused us some challenges in midfield with one particularly impressive Tielemans ball through the middle of our team that Rogers nearly got the run on through on goal. Thankfully the back line spared our blushes, because in that first half Villa had the more presentable chances and, sadly, once again those half-decent chances fell to Big Viktor Gyokeres who didn’t take them. I’m not here to bag on him though; perhaps he could have done better with one of his headers, but he isn’t know as a striker who has a great scoring record with his head, so unlike the early chance against Brighton, I think those were a little tougher. But he’s still not getting into those positions and that continues to be a concern.

So was the gamesmanship from Villa players who, I thought, were playing from time and slowing the game down from the early parts of this game. I don’t blame them; they were content to frustrate a home team and crowd and given our record on our own patch, if they could slow everything down by taking time on the ball, going down a lot, then they’re entitled to do so. And let’s not forget that a fair bit has been made of Unai’s tactical subs in the second half and they certainly looked more impressive in the second half against Chelsea, so they obviously thought they had a blueprint they could adopt.

So Arsenal would have to change something in that second half and boy, did they, because we were out of the traps quickly and were ahead within three minutes of the restart. I’d read a Villa blog in the run-up to this game in which the author talked about how Martinez has some fantastic games, but he does get a little too preoccupied with opposition players and that sometimes causes him trouble. That happened against Chelsea and it happened last night too. His complaints about Big Gabi having fouled him were half-hearted at best and although it was hardly vintage stuff from the Brazilian, his mere presence unsettles all defenders and goalkeepers and he showed it last night. If you ask me, he’s the best central defender in the world not just because of his threat in the attacking box, but his presence at the heart of our defence too. You could tell the relief from the crowd when he came on as a sub against Brighton and today he showed his value at the attacking end too.

One goal hasn’t felt enough for Arsenal for a while now though, so the most important thing those Arsenal players needed to do was to get themselves a second and when you do that within a few minutes of the first, there’s always a big sense of relief and belief that this could go on to be a great game. What I liked about this goal was that it had everything the first half did not. I mentioned the Tielemans pass in the first half that split our midfield – well, this was an example of what happens if you press higher and win the ball back higher up the pitch to stop that kind of pass and move being made. Odegaard won the ball high – something that we know we are good at – his pass to Zubi was inch-perfect, the Spaniard’s flick over Martinez was done as if he was our centre-forward, it was 2-0 to The Arsenal and suddenly it felt like there could be more for us here. Villa, who had been getting away with it from a stats perspective for a few games now (if you listen to the data nerds), looked like the regression to the norm was upon us.

We were all over them from the beginning of the second half, but unlike in recent weeks, it was time to offer a beat-down to a team, and although we had to wait until the 69th minute for Leo to bag another goal and really seal this match up, we still created a ton of chances and I thought we were 100% value for that third goal. I have to confess I thought it would be ruled out for offside, but the good thing about offside is that it’s a little less subjective than things like a foul or a handball call, so once the technology had been checked and the goal was given, the relief could really set in.

And that relief just turned to joy with the goal from Gabby Jesus, who you could see was over the moon with his slot home to turn this in to a proper statement win. And it really was. The Watkins goal took a bit of the gloss off, but Arsenal played an in-form team (albeit missing a couple of key players) and took them apart. The narrative of recent weeks have been that Arsenal are wobbling, but this didn’t feel like it. This felt like an adrenaline shot for a team that is ready to go to the next level.

There’s no time to rest though. Bournemouth away was a place that we suffered last season, and so Arteta and his charges will be well-aware of the threat they pose, having lost last season. More on that in the coming days as we prep for that game on Saturday. For now, happy New Year’s Eve, with me off for a Cotswolds walk ahead of a boozy afternoon and evening.

Catch you tomorrow – hangover permitting.

Yesterday the requirements were:

1. Play well
2. Win

Arsenal did both of those and yet I don’t think you’ll find an Arsenal fan alive today who will tell you that felt easy. It very much didn’t.

The first worry came with the absence of both Calafiori and Timber, as this season and the constant injury problems continue to plague Arteta and his squad. I mean, honestly, at this stage it is laughable the number of injuries this team has had. Every single week, something happens, to the point at which we’re no longer waiting on team news, we’ve just accepted that something bad will happen with somebody that we’ll find out about one hour before kick off.

The good news was that at least we had the positive squad news that big Gabi returned to the match day squad and he even got on the pitch for the last stages of the game, which was met with a racuous cheer from the home fans. We needed that at that moment, for reasons i’ll come to shortly.

Because before that cheer, we had gotten ourselves into a commanding position by the hour mark. We absolutely dominated Brighton in the first half and had 15 shots, six on target, a fabulous Odegaard finish from outside the box and some really presentable chances pretty much from the first minute; Big Vik will be pretty disappointed with his tame effort in the opening stages and I think most of us were pretty frustrated too – this was the kind of chance that we’d seen him tuck away time and time again in Portugal and whilst we can all ask questions about how the team need to feed him more, he has to do better with the chances he does get. That wasn’t the finish of an elite marksman and with Kai returning and Gabby J getting more and more minutes, he might start to find his chances starting to dwindle.

Thankfully, we were ahead pretty quickly in the game and Odegaard’s finish was like that of the Martin we saw from a few season’s back, which we need to see more of for the second half of the season if we’re going to have a successful end to it. But on this day he did his job, he got us off the mark and at halftime, the question was whether we’d be able to finish our chances in the second. we’d already had a brilliant opportunity with the Zubi flick and Trossard instant shot over the bar straight from that chance, Saka had flashed a ball across the goal, Merino had an effort blocked too. But we did need that second. So when Declan Rice got himself obliged by Ritter’s head to bag us yet another own goal, the fear of relaxation and relief in the stadium was palpable.

As a quick aside, how about that Declan Rice fella, eh? Honestly, he can play anywhere and be brilliant and filling in at right back yesterday, he played the role to perfection. If we have striker problems that continue, I feel like he could probably be the answer to our problems, because this guy is absolutely elite.

So it’s 2-0, we’re all happy and earlier in the season it would have been a case of “shut it down” and Arsenal would have suffocated a Brighton side who had created zero chances in the first half. But this current iteration of recent weeks hasn’t been able to keep games locked down like earlier in the season (some of that inevitably because of the personnel changes brought about by injuries) and so when Brighton got one back with basically their first chance of the game, there was a feeling of inevitability about a potential equaliser.

And there probably was going to be one, were it not for David Raya pulling off one of the saves of the season. It was a worldie and Minteh must have thought he’d scored. But Raya – who’d basically had nothing to do all game – earned his money with that one save alone and we were able to close out what was a tense encounter in the end.

We talked about this on the Same Old Arsenal pod this morning, but it’s funny (not funny) how we are all reacting to what is ostensibly a run of games where we’ve been winning. We won against Wolves, Everton and now a good Brighton team, are top of the league and at present managing to keep City at arms length. The Everton and Brighton performances have actually been really good too. But some of the battle scars of previous seasons, plus I think the late goals we were conceding of late have, I think, coloured the reality of the situation. And that is that Arsenal are holding firm at a time in which it isn’t 100% clicking. In addition, we’re looking at City and thinking they are ‘back’ but, as Amanda pointed out on the pod this morning, their fans are hardly crowing at how amazing City have been.

We do need a spark though. We need something. We need a statement win that has us scoring lots, winning well, performing like yesterday but doing it in a way that has people using words like “inevitable” or “imperious” and alike. It’s not quite there at the moment and that has us feeling a little bit like this is a slog that is unsustainable in the long term.

With Villa on the horizon I can’t see it being that game, but I do think we will need to be better than yesterday to overcome a team who won at Chelsea yesterday and continue to surprise a lot of people. I think the return of Big Gabi at the back will help us – but I also think that we need that attack to spark to life – sooner rather than later.

Back tomorrow for some more thoughts as we start to look ahead to Villa at home. See you then.