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

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

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

We all know how that went.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Catch you all tomorrow.

We know what people think about set pieces, about how it’s “ruining the game”, but I’m not going to even remotely posit that notion this morning. Brentford have weapons, and they use them very well, not least those throw-ins, which are essentially corners in themselves. And we suffered from it with the equaliser they scored from. It’s funny because on the balance of the 90, you have to say that it was the least they deserved, but I thought in that second half we had bested them for most of the opening period and about five minutes after we scored through Madueke’s goal (which I thought took an age to actually drop into the net). So half of me was thinking that Brentford scored against the run of play, but on balance, it was just in that period of the game, because Brentford had the most of it.

It’s fair to say we weren’t really at it yesterday. The early seeds were sewn within a couple of minutes when Big Gabby passed the ball out of play for a corner. Raya had one or two wobbly moments too, including a ridiculous roll out to Rice for which Thiago nearly scored from the cross that came in. But the odd thing about Raya, right, is that he often does this – he’ll make a cock up, then instantly redeem himself with a worldie save. So you don’t know whether to be pissed off at him for his error, or delighted for him at his brilliant save. Just do the latter more than the former, mate, alright?

That first half really pissed me off, too. I’m starting to get wound up by how we just give up halves of football. It’s happened so many times this season; the first half is reduced to a kind of non-event, with the only real chance being Thiago’s header, which shouldn’t have happened in the first place. Brentford ended the first half on 0.41xG and I’ll be all of that chance creation probability came from that one effort. Conversely, we created one shot in that first half, as we just let it pass us by. That’s not what Champions-elect do. They go to a ground like last night, into a difficult night atmosphere, with the crowd up, and they bore the f*ck out of them by scoring early and shutting the game down. But we just couldn’t get players on the ball in the right spaces. Eze was anonymous. Gyokeres was okayish, with the most ludicrous yellow card I’ve ever seen in my life, whilst Madueke looked like he didn’t know how to best Rico Henry. One thing you have to say about Noni is that he knows how to beat a man, but last night I thought he struggled with Henry’s touch-tight man-marking. You have to give the Brentford left-back some props for that. The thing Noni isn’t good at is delivering end product, so it was weird that on a night in which is primary asset was nullified, he was the one who actually delivered end product. Weird. If you could just combine the two from now on, Noni, that’d be grand lad.

Brentford closed the spaces we wanted to be in, then left big gaps in the middle of the park and we just didn’t get into those spaces. I guess that’s because they go from back-to-front so quickly and they don’t really need the middle of the park because they go long so much, but you’d have thought Arteta would have had a plan to answer that. Perhaps he did and the team just didn’t execute, because for the 15 minutes after halftime and until we scored, we pretty much dominated. Most of our chances came then, except the Rice chance just after we’d scored, which he probably should have put his laces through it instead of trying to find Big Vik. Brentford defended stoutly and deep into their box as I’d said in my pre-match blog, the chance therefore went a-begging.

But after that we retreated again. If we cock up this Premier League campaign, we won’t specifically look back at this one as one in which the title was lost, but we will lament those times we couldn’t get that second goal to see off a game. We did that last weekend against Sunderland, but certainly in 2026 so far, it really feels like we just haven’t done enough to kill off a game. That leads me to another point of discussion: Our 2026 form. Brentford have more points than we do this year. We’ve drawn three, lost one, won two. It’s patchy. It’s stodgy, a bit like our football in the first half and were we a little more authoritative in games like this, I wouldn’t be as worried as I am. Which sounds mad, right? I mean we’re four points clear at the top, 12 games to go, we’re rightly lauded as the best team so far’ this season and we suffered an off night. Normally you have a game like this and you say “ahh, it happens”. But Liverpool in the second half. Forest away. United at home. Now Brentford away. It’s the patter of these performances that worries me more than the actual result itself. If we’d played last night, hit the post, ‘keeper has the game of his life, we create chance-after-chance, Brentford hang on and we are left ruing missed chances, then you can say that. But that didn’t happen. Brentford probably created the better chances than us, save for the one right at the end with Martinelli. In the moment I was like “you have to score those”, but on watching the replays, it was a good save from the Brentford ‘keeper, so perhaps you have to give it.

1,000 words in and I’m still no further in my thinking as to whether I’m still grumpy or I want to do a little ‘Perspective FC’ tonight on the Same Old Arsenal pod. Join in and listen at 6pm UK time if you want to find out.

I’ll be

Tottenham Hotspur.

HAHAHAHAHAHA.

I fully realise their next game is against us. I fully realise that there is absolutely zero chance they are as dire as they have been at home all season. I fully realise that there’s no way they will be as terrible – conceding 2.48xG to Newcastle, 21 shots, five on target, two big chances missed for the Geordies – against us. I also realise that we may have to face our old foe, New Manager bounce, because Thomas Frank sounded like a beaten man in his post-match presser. But if you can’t laugh at this situation, when can you?

I saw somebody on Sky Sports say it would be so Spurs to get relegated – or finish close to it this season – and go on to win the Champions League. That made my heart skip a beat for a second, but then I had to remind myself about their ‘run’ to winning that thing:

• Woeful Man United last season in the final
• Bodo/Glimt in the semi-final
• Frankfurt in the quarters
• AZ Alkmaar in the round of 16

The Champions League will throw up tougher challenges, so hopefully they can get knocked out of that as soon as possible, and Thomas Frank remains in charge for the foreseeable future. Please.

The only downside – which also has an impact on the relegation situation – is that West Ham were denied a win against Man United; a Man United side who, I was reading yesterday, are quietly confident that they can make a late charge for the title. Yesterday I thought ‘stranger things have happened’ and they’re ONLY 12 points off us. It’s 11 now, but if we can beat Brentford tomorrow night, it moves to 1,4 and that should be that for any notion that they are a competitor. I’d prefer it to be City in their position and United to be in City’s position, but there you go.

There was some amusement for the Chelsea draw at home to Leeds, but with them 12 points off us, see Man United for where they are at and what their possible title charge could look like.

Tonight, our title challenge gets a little more squeaky bum as Fulham get dispatched at the Emptihad as they perennially do, but as I said yesterday and the day before, we just have to handle our business. That business will be Igor Thiago first and foremost, and whilst all season I’ve enjoyed his goals for Brentford as he’s in my FPL team, this match week I hope he is as quiet as a mouse.

That’s not how the fans are feeling, for obvious reasons, because Brentford are flying, sitting fifth in the form table guide – above us in seventh! They’ve won their last two games, which included two really impressive away wins at Newcastle and Villa. I saw some of the highlights from that game at St James’ Park and they probably could have had a penalty before Newcastle initially went ahead through some poor set-piece corner defending, but they should have been two-up before Brentford got their good first, and then their penalty, which looked a bit of a dodgy and fortunate one for me. So Newcastle created plenty of chances, and you’d hope that we can also do the same. The thing we will have to watch is Outtara. He is rapid, he’s a good finisher (as that game showed), and he is the kind of guy who works perfectly in a system where his team doesn’t have a lot of the ball and goes from back-to-front very quickly. There will be plenty of pondering over the next 24-36 hours as to who starts for Arsenal tomorrow, but with that in mind, I don’t think you can look beyond Jurrien Timber at right back. He’s the guy who is think is probably better suited to tackle somebody like Outtara.

Anyway, I mentioned their fans, so what are they saying? Here’s a few select quotes from one of their forums – Griffin Park Grapevine:

They are not going to know what’s hit them.

And:

I have a good feeling…

And:

Only Arsenal have more points than us in the last 10 games, we’re playing some of the best football we’ve ever played, we’re at home and the team spirit is unbelievable. KA is proving he can mix it up with unexpected changes so let LegoHead worry about how they can contain us.

There are other comments in there that, dare I say it, are pretty level-headed and respectful about us. I have seen none of that from Wolves, Forest, Leeds, Aston Villa threads, but the Brentford fans in the thread I watched talked about our squad depth and how we will certainly field a strong team tomorrow night. That goes without saying, but it’s interesting to see them acting pretty normal and not just chucking insults our way like most of these threads do from other teams. I’ve always liked Brenrford. Just not tomorrow night.

Bit of bonus reading that I did beforehand on the official site – nice interview with Eze talking about his first six months at the club. It’s a nice read, but a common thread for a new player, much like we heard from Rice. He talks about the level of information he’s had to take in compared to the rest of his career; he is working under a manager who demands a lot and drills so much tactical insight into his team, that we see on the pitch how versatile this Arsenal side is. I think a few of us have voiced very minor concerns about his lack of game time of late, but if you take it in the context of a player who is having to learn and adapt to a completely new way of training, playing, taking on info and instructions, perhaps it makes more sense. Arsenal and Arteta are also in a position where they have a deep squad and many players who have been in that environment for some time, so to have the luxury of being able to give a player like Eze points in the season in which he can take a beat, might be better for his long-term adaptation to The Arsenal way.

I do think he’s got a massive part to play in the latter part of this season. Not least because last season he came alive in the run-in, but also when you look at where he seems to come alive, it is in big games. He scored for Palace in the FA Cup Final and Community Shield. He’s scored a hat-trick for us against the Scum – he’s a player who relishes the limelight I think and every game is going to start getting massive if you think about how we’re now at what is known as the slightly cliched ‘business end of the season’.

I back him to get more minutes, as well as more important moments, for us still to come this season.

Back tomorrow after both press conferences have been done and we can start to think about how we might line up.

It is not exactly a ‘must win’, but certainly you want this Arsenal team to go out there tonight and deliver the kind of performance that sends messages to the rest of the world that we are ready to take the next step and get ourselves to a cup final.

Mikel was asked about whether this was the most important game of the season so far and his response was predictably “yes, the most important game because it’s the next one”, which you’d expect, but the team do need to get over the line in something and whilst a few week’s back I was happy with the 3-2 win and half a job done at Stamford Bridge, now that this game has come around, I feel a little more apprehensive.

This tie should have been buried at their ground. We outplayed them, we created better chances, more chances, we looked in control, yet they were given a couple of opportunities by our silly play defensively, so now they have something to fight for on our turf. We need to nip that in the bud early tonight I reckon.

I suspect the opening salvo’s from both teams will be relatively tentative. There might be a bit of shadow-boxing going on, because Chelsea will know that the tie can be taken out of their hands if they go too gung-ho and allow Arsenal to score early. They will also know that with one goal in it, if they are still level with us with 20 minutes to go, a game can be nicked. I remember that horrible Champions League tie in 2004 where Wayne Bridge scored. It was against the run of play, they didn’t deserve it, but they got the goal and they went through, whilst we crashed out to a team certainly nowhere near as good as ours was back then. We can’t allow that kind of situation to unfold tonight and for that reason, I do think Arteta will think hard about how strong his team is. I do think he’ll give Kepa the nod, I think Madueke starts against his old club (and hopefully with enough of a chip on his shoulder from the away game in the League earlier in the season), but there are lots of questions that could be asked about midfield and defence I think. Personally, given we do need to rotate this squad, we need to be leveraging some of the players who didn’t get on against Leeds, so my take on a team I’d put out for tonight is:

Kepa

White   –   Mosquera   –   Gabriel   –   MLS

Norgaard

Odegaard   –   Eze

Madueke   –   Gabriel Jesus   –   Martinelli

Hopefully, given that Arteta said Saka is touch and go for this game, we just don’t risk him. Noni will be full of confidence following his performance up at Leeds and given the heckles he got from Enzo and that rat-bag Cucurella, I think he’ll have some extra motivation to perform. He’ll also be doing it on our home turf, so he’ll get more love and the backing of the home crowd, albeit a reduced one because of the bigger allocation the organiser’s give to away sides. Havertz has started two in a week and so I don’t think it’s prudent to start him, Timber and White are perfectly interchangeable, plus I think Mosquera has done enough to show he can be a perfectly good deputy for Saliba. Big Gabby offers the stability at the back and can support Myles, who I think needs some more game time. I also think that him starting this match, a big match, will hopefully allow us to get more confidence from him; we want to see a return of last season’s MLS and I feel like for big games he does tend to step up. Let’s hope so today.

I’ve also gone for the two creative eights in Odegaard and Eze. I think I’m not really in full belief Arteta will do it though; Chelsea rested a lot of players at the weekend against West Ham, so they are going to go with Caicedo and Enzo for their physicality. which means I suspect he’ll start Rice instead of Eze. But I just have a hope that we can see more of those two. perhaps the game against Sunderland at the weekend would be something where we’re more likely to see Martin and Ebs start, rather than tonight.

And speaking of physicality, I think the home crowd has a part to play too, because Chelsea are a horrible team who come to kick people. If they do that on our turf, those home fans need to be on them. We need to be howling at every challenge they make, putting the referee under pressure to act, because that’s how they will set up to kick lumps out of us, so we need to be able to react in a professional way – be the better team and just show that by outplaying them.

Three week’s ago this felt like a formality. Now it feels a lot closer. Those Arsenal players can show the gulf in class, but with the recent 3-2 defeat to United on our own patch still ever-so-slightly lingering in the background, it’s a good opportunity to vanquish that by getting a good home win.

Right, I’ll call it for today I think, so I’ll catch you guys tomorrow when we are all aware of our fate. Speak then.

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

Six points clear. Feels good, eh?

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

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

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

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

Speedy recovery, Mikel.

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

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

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

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.

• The Scum lost to a last-gasp winner (and the manager tries everything, including being given an Arsenal cup and told to drink from it because they’ve ’bottled’ some of Mikel Arteta’s tactical ju-ju in there
• Man United can’t hold off Burnley
• Chelsea lost a West London Derby
• Villa held by Palace
• City surprisingly held by Brighton

And that last one really was a surprise, because I never thought for a second Brighton would get anything. I didn’t watch the first half, but caught a big chunk of the second, I have to say, City looked so open and ragged. I’d heard people say that a couple of times this season, but this is the first time I saw it on full display. And it reminded me of us nin 2007/8 after the Eduardo leg break. After that, 2-2 against Birmingham is where we lost the title that year, as we drew to Villa, Middlesbrough, then Wigan, and those additional dropped points basically ended our chances.

I don’t think City’s draw does that, because our dropped points back then were in March, not January. So there’s still lots of football to be played.

Including tonight.

And tonight’s one feels like the significance has just been ratcheted up, too. Liverpool comes to town, and there are so many narratives at play, I don’t really know if I’ll be able to do them all justice in one blog today.

There’s the revenge narrative, which I’m sure Arteta will be drawing on tonight. If he isn’t using phrases like “we owe them one” after the cagey game earlier in the season, then I’d be really surprised – we all saw the All or Nothing documentary, and we all saw how he used Ivan Toney’s “Nice kid around with the boys” tweet. Arteta will be using all he can to pump these boys up for this evening. The home crowd will do their part too; there’s a fan display, it’s under the lights, there will no doubt be some beverages drunk, and a raucous home crowd, further buoyed by last night’s results.

And those results last night segue nicely into the Incentive narrative, because City and Villa’s draws mean that Arsenal have an opportunity this evening to move eight points clear at the top. That’s a decent chunk of a gap with 17 games to go. It’s not big enough to really claim we’re getting close to it being done, because there is so much more football to play, but it would go a big way to giving this team the confidence and even more belief that, if they keep up this form and they continue to push and remain focused, then good things could await at the end. 

Which leads me nicely to the Champions narrative. Dominik Szobozlai has done an interview this week, and I think it got a few people’s backs up because of the headlines, but ultimately, all he does is state facts: Arsenal are not champions. We haven’t won anything. Liverpool are champions; they won it last year, so there’s an opportunity for Arsenal to make a statement against the reigning champions that they are ready to (hopefully) take over that mantle by winning tonight and sending a message to the rest of the Premier League.

That won’t be easy, though, as I talked about yesterday, because this is still Liverpool. They are still a very good team, with very good players, who still have the firepower to hurt us and have scored against us with alarming regularity over the last five to ten years or so. I think they will again tonight, and despite Slot trying to play the Arteta card with Ekitike, there’s absolutely no chance he doesn’t play tonight, I don’t think, or at least make the bench for impact in the second half. They need to show the world that last season’s Liverpool is still there. They need to show that their recent unbeaten run is sustainable and they need to prove a point, so what better way to do it than the team who are clear at the top right now.

What I am praying for is that this Arsenal team takes its opportunity tonight. Last season was characterized by Arsenal not capitalising almost every time Liverpool dropped points. What we’ve seen over the Christmas period is that Arsenal – this season so far at least – have – taken advantage when our rivals have dropped points. We need to do the same tonight, and I think for all of us – fans especially – we’re all waiting for those mega ‘statements’ that make us all believe this could potentially be our year. Beating the current champions, at home, to go eight points clear, is a perfect way of doing that. A draw just ‘saves par’ this evening, but can you, as Arsenal players, go one better at such an important and busy time in the season?

I really hope so.

From a team news perspective, given that we have had five days since our last match, I think Arteta won’t make too many changes from the Bournemouth game last weekend. I think Saka and Trossard will come back in, but suspect the rest of the team picks itself. And that means a super strong bench to call upon, which I really do think will need to be used tonight. A Liverpool fan commented on the blog yesterday that they think this could be a battering, but I can’t see that for two reasons:

1. Liverpool will be defensively resolute to make sure that doesn’t happen – even if it means sacrificing some of their attacking impetus
2. Arsenal is not a high-scoring team

On that second point, you can of course point to seven goals in our last two Premier League games, but I think when you look at us over the course of the whole season, there’s a reason why the bookies give shorter odds for Arsenal games with under 2.5 goals – our matches are usually low-scoring affairs.

So I think this will be tight, it will be cagey, we will concede chances and probably a goal, but the big question is whether we can take advantages of any lapses by the Lverpool team. Which to me means our wide forwards, once again, need to be on it. Saka and Trossard are doing the business, and then perhaps a job-swap for fresh legs to keep the Liverpool fullbacks on their toes. And then it’s probably about dominating the midfield. Those Liverpool fans haven’t been impressed with their midfield this season, whereas ours looks like it is starting to purr. We need to show that tonight and, if we do, then I think we’ve got a great chance of taking all three points.

I’ll be there tonight, in the cold, wind, and rain, hoping that by the end we all have nice feelings to take us into the weekend.

Catch you all tomorrow for a debrief.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s a lot of football.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Catch you all then.

On the international stage, Jurrien Timber came off after 62 minutes of a 4-0 win over Finland and there doesn’t seem to be any talk of any kind of knock or injury, so hopefully that’s him sorted and he can return to us and prepare for the trip to Fulham on Saturday early evening. It doesn’t sound like he had a load to do, but he was filling in at centre half and so his 66 touches of the ball and 95% passing accuracy hopefully meant a relatively trouble-free night for him alongside Van Dijk. As an aside, I wonder if Van Dijk gets the same pass on fouls, kicks, etc, as he does in the Premier League?

I think Timber was the only Arsenal involvement (Kiwior too, I guess, but given he’s effectively one foot out the door with Porto I’ll not go in to too much detail) from yesterday, but one of the things I forgot to mention was that Calafiori played and starred in the Italians 3-1 win over Estonia on Saturday. SofaScore had him at a 7.7 with a full 90 under his belt and when you don’t bother watching the international matches like I don’t, reading that feels like both a blessing and a curse. The fact he played the full 90 means he came through unscathed (the blessing). But the fact he also played the full 90 means that he didn’t get much rest into those decidedly fragile bones of his (the curse). He played well though, at least, with five clearances, 107 touches and 92% passing accuracy. Looking at his heatmap for Italy you can clearly see his licence to roam like he does at The Arsenal isn’t there. Check these bad boys out:

Sorry for my shoddy cropping on my phone, but this hits home just how much Calafiori is asked to do a different job for his club team as he is for his international team. Part of it is obviously the stylistic set up; Italy play with a back three and he plays on the left of that, so you’d expect less likelihood to roam than as a left back. But I think the personnel makes a difference too. I don’t know who the regular partner is in the centre of that back three, but I bet he ain’t as good as Big Gabi. The way we set up too means that big Gabi effectively covers two positions for us when Riccy goes a’ wanderin’, so the heatmap for The Arsenal obviously results in more licence to drift.

It’s a key feature of our play this season. Calafiori has long talked about how he likes to be in different positions, with him even saying earlier on this year that he wants to learn to be a midfielder. Well he’s certainly going to get that chance playing ‘left back’ in an Arteta team, that’s for sure!

He’s already popped up this season in the right wing slot, he’s scored goals like the one against City from just outside the D just over a year ago and his very specific type of hybrid role he’s been given at The Arsenal often makes him the ‘free man’ when we’re playing. There’s a lot of talk about left eights, right eights, tens, etc, but to ringfence Calafiori at The Arsenal as a ‘left back’ is to call the mounting evidence like the above heatmap Fake News like some kind of mental US sitting President. The things that the Italian game heatmap does show, however, is that he is a very capable – and very good – centre half or left-sided defender if needed. And I think that is to his credit. When Myles came in towards the end of last season I have to admit that I personally wondered if Calafiori’s career would go the way of the Debuchy. We’d seen a young whipper-snapper in the shape of Bellerin come in and make the right back slot his own. I was also very wary of his patchy injury history which appeared to have come true for us last season with his multiple absences for multiple lay-offs during the season. But the versatility of the Italian has already been shown so far this season and (famous football cliche coming up) – if he stays fit – then I think it’s going to be tough for Myles to stake a claim in the same way he did last season. Calafiori’s form has been imperious for both club and country; in this game for Finland I’ve already mentioned the solid stats he racked up and in the West Ham game playing as a nominal left back he had three clearances, three tackles, five ground duels won and two aerials won. But it’s that added extra in an Arsenal shirt (hitting the post from the right hand side of the D just before halftime against West Ham, anyone?) that he’s giving us that is allowing us that extra man in attacking positions that is freeing up space for us to hit overloads so far this season that is so good. Imagine trying to put together a game plan for such a random outlier as Calafiori:

Ok John. You’re up against the Italian left back today. Man mark him. I don’t care if you’re a right winger, if he ends up on the left hand side of our pitch by our defensive corner flag you go with him. Oh, and if the ball turns over and we win possession, here’s a teleporter to get you instantly back into the right wing slot for a transitional counter.

Calafiori is giving us the ‘X-Factor’ that I’ll be honest, I thought most teams had figured out from us since the Zinchenko days. But the Italian does that role differently. It’s further up the pitch, rather than a standard inverting left back that sits deeper. He occupies zones in between the opposition midfield and defence that are, frankly, random and weird to an untrained eye such as me. But it appears to be working so far, so let’s hope it continues for a long time yet to come.

I’d better leave it there today. I’ll be back tomorrow with some more thoughts on the internationals, etc, but for now have a great Monday.

I’ve been alright, actually, thanks for asking. I filled my day yesterday with ‘other stuff’ and didn’t even switch on Sky Sports once for an extended watch of something. I’m going proper old-skool today and going to the circus with the management this afternoon (No, not Old Trafford).

But what of our travelling players, eh? How have they all got on?

Well, Zubi started in midfield given Rodri pulled out of the Spain squad and he was replaced on 81 minutes, but by the sounds of it he came off fine and it sounds like he had a good game too. I thought that it was his involvement done for the week but I’ve just seen that the Spanish have Bulgaria on Tuesday, so that means he’ll be back on Wednesday and in to training on Thursday, which I think is the same for most of the other players too. Certainly Mikel Merino, who also made a start for Spain, had five shots on goal and has started his last three games for Spain. You can see why after his stellar September display with four goals in two games, but if we take into account that he’s really been seen as more of an impact player – a little like at The Arsenal – then it shows how much faith his national team boss has in him.

It’s the same with Arteta though. I think most of us were looking at our squad and scratching our heads as to where Merino would get game time this season. With Big Vik coming in that meant his likelihood of resuming a centre forward position would be diminished and certainly this season Arteta has preferred to play Big Vik in every possible minute, other than in the game against Port Vale, although Merino was popping up in midfield positions in that game. But he has been granted plenty of minutes so far and I don’t think it’s just because of the injuries we’ve suffered. I mean sure, when you look at the fact that Odegaard’s injury forced Arteta to make some choices in his favour in the big games, you might say that he’d probably been limited if Odegaard was fit. But I do think it is interesting that he was the first name in Arteta’s mind for midfield in certain circumstances and clearly Arteta values Merino’s qualities in some situations. That means that I think we will see a little more of Merino than perhaps some of us thought we might. Me personally, I thought he’d be very limited because I thought:

• He’s not going to play as a striker as much (for reasons already mentioned)
• He’s not a six, so Rice and Zubi will play those, or it’ll be Norgaard
• He’s not going to be one of the creative eights ahead of Eze, Nwaneri or Havertz
• He’s not going to play in the wide forward positions (because, frankly, he’s not a wide forward)

So I did think we’d see maybe 1,000 minutes from his season in all comps (that works out to just over 11 x 90 minute matches, or five x 90s and 12 x 45 minute appearances, just for context), but here we are in October and he already has nine appearances, one important goal against Newcastle and 462 minutes played. It’s clear that Arteta wants to use him more and I think it’s good for us as fans to recognise this too, because it’s an example of how we have a different club in our bag if we need it. Merino is good in the air, he’s good in the box, he’s proven he can score goals last season and already this season, plus he is a good tackler and strong in the duels. That has a place in a physical league like the Premier League and clearly, as evidenced by his national team appearances, the Spanish recognise it has a place in international competition too.

So I am re-framing my view on Merino. Last season I thought he was ok, before he came in and did a bang-tidy job for us as a centre forward, even though he wasn’t one. He’s a player for a certain occasion and Arteta clearly needs to get that occasion just right for him to be perfect. I think in the Newcastle game clearly he played the Merino card perfectly. I think in the City game – with the benefit of hindsight and because City got that early goal against the run of play, it wasn’t played too well, but I don’t think any of us expected City to be so passive from the start. Arteta course-corrected and we got a draw, even thought we deserved a win. Merino didn’t start against Newcastle and he didn’t start against West Ham, clearly because Arteta felt that the game needed a slightly different approach. But I do think we will have ‘Merino games’ in future and I personally am going to try to be more open to it and not see it as a ‘Arteta wants a physical battle and this lacks the creative lock to unpick it’ kind of approach. I think that’s probably it for me more than anything else – when I think about the City game in particular – is that Merino is fine as long as there are the right kind of players that compliment his style. You can’t be playing ball-winning, ground-covering, strong duel-winning midfielders all with Merino. You need a lock-picker in there somewhere. Whether that’s Odegaard, Eze or Nwaneri, I don’t mind. But I think to see the most from Merino we need somebody like that in that midfield and when that happens I think I’ll be looking at line-ups from the start and probably thinking that Merino is there for his qualities, not just because of a physical battle ahead.

Hopefully I’m making sense. I am in my head, anyway, but I guess what I’m trying to say is that this is another example of how well-balanced our squad looks. The fact we can have conversations about ‘horses for courses’ games is a really positive development this season. It’s a shame that injuries have so far derailed the full ability of Arteta to truly select his ‘perfect’ horses for the right courses, but on the plus side it means across our whole squad, everyone is involved and everyone is getting minutes.

Right, I’ll leave it there for today. Have a good one and I’ll see you all tomorrow.

Arteta got labelled with too much caution at Anfield, but the reality was that both team played with caution; the free kick Liverpool scored just allowed them to own the narrative and the media naturally lapped it up. But my feelings on the set up and how I would happily defend Arteta’s approach up there to try to go for a smash-and-grab win at the home of the champions, is very different from the feeling I have about yesterday’s draw. I said it in my blog yesterday, but when it comes to these home games, you really are just trying to ‘hold serve’ and if I drag out the tennis analogy a little bit more, that means you are more aggressive on your first serve as you look to try to force the error from your opponent and positioning them in a way in which you can more easily get the point. Yesterday it felt like Arsenal’s home advantage meant we needed to set the tone from the off.

This is where Arteta got it wrong. The introduction of Merino and Trossard didn’t work and as much as you have to praise the fact he acted swiftly by making changes at halftime (I hope Madueke isn’t now injured for a while, because he came off with a knock and that would be just our luck if we now lost another player to injury), the decision to start them wasn’t the right one and I think he has to own that today when they do the debrief. It’s not that they aren’t good players; Trossard is a good finisher, he played well against Bilbao and Merino is a duel winner, he’s good at retaining possession and has a goal or two in him. But together they did not have enough creativity in our team and I think it showed. But those two aside, the set up was wrong; we were so passive in possession. We started controlling possession, we didn’t let City have much of a sniff, but perhaps Pep realised this was going to happen and as a result he decided quite early on to turn this in to a transitional game in which he used his pacey forwards to hit us on the counter. In Doku they have a guy who is rapid, can beat a man and is in form (he had a very good game yesterday) and in Haaland they have the inevitable goal machine, so to be as naive as we were defensively and push so criminally high up for the City goal, had me confused. The run Haaland made as well just made Saliba and Gabriel look like they were running through treacle; these two guys are not slow and we’ve seen they can match Haaland for pace, yet both seemed a yard off and as a result he got in and did what he does.

The symmetry in what happened at the Emptihad last season compared to this season is so weird. We played them almost a year to the day and on that day Haaland scored on the nineth minute too. There was also a last minute equaliser for the home team. There was also one team who decided that being compact and deep in their shape to see if you could grind out the win would be their Modus Operandi but, unlike last year when we were a man down and forced in to that change, City played with a full compliment; I won’t hold my breath for hope that the media give Pep and his Man City team the same chastising that we got on that day, eh?

But we were behind and at home and the onus should have been on us to got at City. Except in that first half it just felt too passive and ponderous and as a result when it came to halftime I just felt like we’d lost ourselves a half of football because of our approach. When we have beaten City and Liverpool in the recent past at home it’s because we’ve gone at them hard, fast and dominant in our attacking runs and movement. We just didn’t see that yesterday and that is leaving me with a slightly bitter taste in my mouth.

The second half was better, there was more impetus, we created a few more chances than the first, but it was a familiar story of coming up against a low block and at times City had a wall of about six or seven defenders in a line. Heck, City finished the game with six centre halves on the pitch, so that tells you what their approach was and we once again found it difficult to break through the line. Until that bit of magic from Eze came and he found the run of Martinelli who did what he does best – out to in run through the middle behind a weirdly high line that he was able to exploit and brilliantly flick the ball over the onrushing Donnarumma to salvage a point for us. That’s two in two for the Brazilian and, as I said on socials last night, he’s a streaky player and when that happens you have to think about giving him a starting birth. I certainly think he should be ahead of Trossard now, but the question will be what you do with Eze if Odegaard comes back in.

So we get the jubilation and relief of not dropping points, we managed to find a way through a low block, but I keep coming back to the selection decision and more than that, the tactically passive set up for that first half that leaves me feeling less than sated. Some have speculated that it was this difficult start to the season we’ve had that has led Arteta to setting up like this, as well as our injuries, but we saw this last season for large chunks of it, so I’m not sure that’s quite true. I do acknowledge that after the Newcastle game (which is starting to feel like a bit of a ‘must win’ now) we will have come through some of the most difficult away fixtures and a game against one of the title rivals in Man City, but it felt like an opportunity to lay down a marker yesterday.

I don’t think we took it.

The guys will be doing the Same Old Arsenal pod tonight at 8pm if you want to join them here. Otherwise, I’m back tomorrow as we prep for the visit to Port Vale.

Positive P.S. it was good to see Bukayo Saka get 45 minutes yesterday. I don’t think we want to risk him against Port Vale, but if he and Odegaard can be back for the trip to Newcastle, that makes us a heck of a lot more creative hopefully for what is going to be a really tough game. 

I do think both managers doing their team updates was funny. Mike, was talking about how he wasn’t sure about Saliba, how he was ‘pushing’ to be fit, but given he was on the bench in Tuesday I’d be surprised to not see him start. You’re up against Haaland who is arguably the world’s greatest finisher, so you need your best players and as amazing as Mosquera has been, let’s not forget how important it is to see Saliba and Big Gabi take on the Norwegian.

On the other side of the fence in Manchester, Pep was talking about how he’s not sure whether Rodri can play three games in a week, with very much a “we will have to see” narrative to the assembled press pack. Again, like Mikel, pull the other one Pep, it’s got bells on. Rodri was pulled on 60 minutes on Thursday night, clearly to preserve him for this weekend’s game, so he will 100% be playing from the start tomorrow.

On Ødegaard, Saka and White, Arteta talked about how they’ve been on modified training sessions and although he wouldn’t confirm they are out, he did admit they are doubts. As usual he said “let’s see how they are tomorrow (Saturday)” but I would be surprised if any of them are going to be fit tomorrow. Remember when Ødegaard was injured last season on international duty? I think we played the Scum away in the next game and Arteta said he wasn’t sure, but in reality he was very sure; there’s no way Ødegaard was going to get near the team bus back then and I think the same is true of certainly Saka tomorrow. He’s not played for about a month, he’s not trained, which means they’ll need to build his fitness back up. Same with Ben White, really, but perhaps Ødegaard we have a slim chance. He’s been training and playing recently, so the sharpness in his body should still be there. The question will really be about how much his mobility is impacted with his shoulder, rather than how fit he is in terms of match sharpness.

I do think it’s important he plays if he can though. I’ve listened to a couple of pods ask the question about Ødegaard, suggesting perhaps that Nwaneri is doing enough to take his place on a more permanent basis. I’m not so sure of that. Ethan has been great against Leeds and a Forest side working out who they are going to be under Ange, but Man City is a different beast. If Ødegaard isn’t fit I do wonder whether Arteta will go with the physicality option in Merino, rather than the creative dribbler in Nwaneri.

I’m not trying to bag on Nwaneri here by the way. I think he’s a sensational footballer and I really hope we can the rise of an Arsenal great in him. But he is still just 18 and he is a different type of footballer to Ødegaard. Martin is the relentless pressing trigger, but I don’t think that we saw that from Nwaneri when he came on last weekend, so I think what we have is a different set up when Nwaneri plays. In these games with the best teams in the country coming to your gaff, you need to have everyone know their role in the team precisely, because how one player behaves and reacts, impacts how other players interact with him on the pitch. Nwaneri will be a dribbler, a carrier of the ball, less of a pass-master through the lines kind of guy. So if Ødegaard isn’t fit to play, do Arsenal change their style and approach and try to be more direct with somebody like Merino? Or do they hand the keys to Ethan and lean into those strengths.

I don’t know, but regardless what happens, it is a relief to not be talking about injuries tanking our season. Gyokeres is doing well in Kai’s absence, same with Madueke for Saka and Mosquera for Saliba. But I’m not sure we’ve fully cracked the Ødegaard replacement just yet. So I’m hoping he’s fit and can start on Sunday.

Of course we could potentially use Eze in that central position, but I’m not sure Arteta will do that, nor do I think it will get the best out of him. Eze played centrally for England against Andorra and whilst I know it’s a very different game because they just played low block football – which City will not do tomorrow – I think Eze likes to start from wide positions and drift in, rather than to start from central positions when play starts to build up. Arteta could, probably should, be looking at our hybrid double pivot that we’ve been adopting with Rice and Zubimendi, but the question then remains on that final piece. Whether it’s Eze, whether it’s Ethan, or even Merino (which would probably be my least favourite approach, because I don’t think he has the creativity for that position that we’ve want), at least we have the options. That’s a positive.

The rest of the press conference didn’t really bring up too much that I think is worth deliberating over if I’m honest. Arteta said nice things about Tim Lewis departing, as you’d expect, but his message about how much it would impact him and the team was pretty much what you’d think he’d say “we move on”.

And so shall I for the day. It’s my last day in Crete before I fly back tomorrow afternoon so I’m going to see if I can relax and sit by the pool. Have a good one kids.

In the summer we saw an Arsenal side who swash buckled their way to a comfortable 3-0 victory at The Emirates with Big Vik also getting on the scoresheet in a game that we dominated from start to finish and it felt like the season was kicking off from that point, having seen a few difficult performances in Asia before that. Today of course will be much different and we will be tested in front of the Basque crowd a lot more than we were.

Arteta had his press conference yesterday evening and he spoke about how he lands in Bilbao whenever he goes to San Sebastian to see his family again, but that he’s never actually been to the stadium, which makes me intrigued to see what kind of reception he’ll get as an ex-Sociedad player. It’s the same with Zubimendi and Merino, who must be in with a chance of starting given that Odegaard hasn’t travelled.

Arteta went for Nwaneri in both home games when Odegaard came off, but in a hostile away ground, with a difficult opponent in the shape of Liverpool, he went with physicality in the form of Merino, so I don’t think many of us will be surprised to see the Spaniard. I suspect there’s also an element of ‘get one over an old foe’ and so for the Sociedad boys I think there will be a desire to get to that ball an extra step quicker perhaps, so that fire in the belly might give Merino over Nwaneri.

Personally I’d play Ethan though. I thought he was impressive against Forest, he’s quietly impressing in those central spaces and the drop down between him and Odegaard hasn’t been massively noticeable in my opinion. When Ethan got in to the team last season he stunned many with his goals, assists and his aggressive running and dribbling on that right wing slot. Moving him centrally means we’ve seen less of that, but he has still been a key trigger in our press, he’s covering ground and he’s keeping us ticking over. He’s not as obvious in leading the press as Odegaard is, he’s also not a guy who is an assist through-ball merchant, but I think his creativity outstrips Merino’s and so personally tonight I’d be going for the English under-21 starlet from the start.

The other questions will be how/if Arteta does much rotation. Kepa is from Bilbao and if we’re thinking about players wanting to impress, I wonder if he might start. It will be very unlike Mikel Arteta, but Kepa has clearly come in wanting to get game time. He’s not got it – understandably – so far as Raya is clearly entrenched as our number one, but I wonder if Arteta has said to Kepa and his representatives that there will be more game time than Neto got last season. He was essentially unused until the Champions League dead rubbers came along; I can’t imagine Kepa will be happy with waiting around until the end of the year to play other than one or more League Cup games. So maybe he starts tonight?

In defence we had the good news that William Saliba trained with the first team and whilst he’ll get his place back soon enough – certainly against City – given Mosquera’s performances, I wonder if Arteta might ‘reward’ him with one more start? If he does there’s few Arsenal fans who will have a problem with it I suspect.

Arteta was asked about rotation yesterday and he said we have players out and so it is becoming important, but as we’ve all already been talking about online, in our own respective Arsenal WhatsApp groups and in person in the pub, the depth in this team is scary and with Declan Rice rested at the weekend, he could come straight back in today with Zubimendi and provide that double pivot base we’ve been seeing. I suspect that’s why he didn’t play against Forest, because he’ll be starting tonight and against Man City, so that’s a big plus for tonight and it gives us a platform to build our play from.

Bilbao will be missing their main man Nico Williams who is injured at the moment, which is a plus for us, but there will be a battle that goes on in the middle of the park today and so we need to win that midfield battle against a physical opponent. I saw one article from the end of last season when Man United played them in the Europa League that said “Their style of play has almost always centred around bodies crashing into bodies” and “No team in La Liga is better at picking up loose balls in the middle third” – so we are going to see a team who are going to go hunting for that ball in the middle third. That makes me think that actually Merino might be preferred instead of Ethan, but I personally would like to see a little more creativity.

Athletic’s form is a little difficult to assess so far into the season too. They won their first three games and then have lost the last two, getting sucker-punched with an OG against Alaves, as well as a friendly over the international break in which they lost to Osasuna, which you can’t really read too much in to as some of their players would probably have been away with the national team.

But regardless of their form, this has to be the kind of game that Arsenal need to win. If we’re thinking that there’s eight games to play for and you probably need 16+ points to hit the top eight in the league, that’s five wins and two draws out of eight needed. That means you need to win your four home games and pick up one or two wins away. Getting one of those tonight would be a big win, a good start, something that really sets us on a good platform for the remainder of the campaign.

I’ll be watching it in Crete, but as always will be back to have a bit of a debrief on the game on here in the morning. Let’s hope we’re talking about positive performances and three points.

Catch you all tomorrow.

I’m still trying to process the summer transfer window though. I’m focusing on that because I don’t really want to dwell too much about the Liverpool result. I’ve watched a couple of good tactical analysis videos on YouTube which talk about how Arsenal were a little passive, but also that talked about they didn’t make the most of that zone on the pitch where the D is in Liverpool’s defensive territory, the one in which many would call that ‘between the lines’ space. It is something that I think we do need to consider and I do think it does show the importance of Martin Odegaard to us this season. And when I say ‘the importance’ I don’t just mean he has to stay fit and play, but also that we need him to recapture his form from two season’s ago, because he might just be a key component part to how we tick.

I think there are plenty of us who feel that last season was not a good one for the Norwegian. He has said as much himself, but I think there has been mitigating factors that have played an impact, that we can all just say “fair enough, let’s move on” from. Firstly there was the injury that kept him out for a couple of months. I’m always of the opinion that any injury that ticks you around, or just over, the two month mark, usually comes with a rehab period whilst you’re actually playing. We used to say that about Aaron Ramsey; he’d pick up an injury, but the only time we saw the best version of Ramsey was after another month after he’d returned. Odegaard was out from 9th September until 4th November last season and he was thrust straight back in to that game against Chelsea in which he did well, but that might have been one played on adrenaline, because I don’t really think he recaptured any kind of form for the rest of the calendar year. Then, at the end of January, he had that illness that might have only kept him out of one game, but nearly every Arsenal obsessive like me knows, he didn’t look well after that. He was thinner, more gaunt, not what we’d expect and I have a mate I sit near in Block Five who said his mate is a gardener (bear with me on this one). He apparently does some gardening for Odegaard and last season, for most of it, when he was at home he was permanently either strapped up or not feeling very well.

My hope for this season is that those injuries and illnesses can be put behind him. I think he already looks a little more beefed up and having had a better pre season there is hopefully room for him to have a better one, despite taking a whack to his shoulder that kept him out of the Liverpool game from the start. That is clearly just a minor one and I suspect he’ll play for Norway this week, which will mean he’s good to go – providing he doesn’t pick up a knock – against Forest when the proper football returns.

But we do also need to see Odegaard better connecting with his teammates. When I think about the best version of Odegaard, it is a guy who is interchanging those quick passes in close-confined quarters with Saka. It is the guy who is slipping balls in behind defences like the one he did for Rice when we lost to Bournemouth at home. It is the man picking the ball up slightly deeper and playing those inch-perfect balls in behind to Martinelli. That’s what we need to see and when I think about those ‘in-between-the-lines’ positions, we need to see Odegaard finding that space and quickly releasing the ball forward. No safe sideways or backwards passes, we need you to be trying more risky stuff, Martin.

He’s also going to have to do it with new personnel, both in the short and long term, too. On the right in the short term it’ll be Saka and I suspect we won’t see Bukayo until after the City game (is it me, or does it feel like we always seem to be missing Saka when we play City?), so Odegaard is going to have to recognise the different type of player Madueke is and act accordingly if he is going to naturally drift over to that right hand pocket in between opposition defence and midfield. Madueke wants the ball in behind so he can run his man; he is not going to do the right wing position the same as Saka and so Odegaard needs to be cognisant of that and adjust accordingly.

It’s the same with Gyokeres. The Swede is not Kai Havertz. He won’t get as many touches, he won’t be more of a link player exchanging passes and our captain needs to be able to respond to that. That means he is going to need to be happier to look for Big Vik’s runs and he’s going to have to release the ball quicker and into space, rather than what he might do with Kai, which is in to feet. That might be even tougher when you are facing low blocks, but it is something he is going to have to try.

Then on that left hand side, given the poor form of Martinelli, we are most likely to see one of Madueke (when Saka returns), Eze or event Trossard. With Trossard you’d have to think that Odegaard knows him a lot better and so can adapt, but Eze will drift in field more. He ain’t hugging no touchline, so Odegaard needs to be ready to be interchanging the ball more with him, to be looking at the runs and movements of the former Palace man, then adjusting his game accordingly.

Martin is our captain, there’s no doubt Arteta loves him, but he’s also a ruthless man. He loved KT. He loved Ramsdale. He admitted that Gabriel Jesus and Olekzandr Zinchenko changed our world. But none of that stopped him from upgrading to improve his team. Now, I think that Odegaard is certainly talented enough to do that and today’s thoughts are in no way designed to illicit any panic in me that he could be soon for the chop from the team. But if Martin isn’t able to adapt to the styles and approaches to the players around him, I suspect it won’t be long before Arteta starts to look at other playing options.

Catch you all tomorrow.

The ‘real talk’ bit is that as much as many of us would like to, there’ll be no rowing back if he goes to that lot, in terms of the quality of the player. Many of us have twerked for him all summer in addition to some of the big moves we’ve done, yet him ending up at the wrong end of North London is going to end up stinging quite a bit, I reckon. Sure, they’ll claim the whole ‘we beat you to his signature’, they’ll drop a couple of “biggest club in London” nonsense when we all know the reality there. But if this moves in the way it appears to be advancing, then we’ll be feeling the sting a bit when everything becomes official.

Of course, things could change, but we’ve known all along that Arsenal needed to make sales before anything else gets done. That we simply haven’t been able to shift players on probably has the biggest impact on what is happening right now, as I’ve spoken about before and even as much as yesterday where I talked about how we need to offload before we can reload. The Scum clearly know this because if the player wanted Arsenal, he’s most likely telling them to back down, but I think these moves show that the player wants Champions League football too. He’ll settle for them and he’ll easily be able to displace Maddison if he joined them, so if I’m taking my red-tinted spectacles off for a second, I can see why he’d be open to this move coming about if Arsenal can’t do the deal. If you’re player like Eze you can’t hang around all summer in the hope that Arsenal offload a bunch of players now so that you can join them. What happens if they don’t make enough money? What happens if they aren’t able to offload those players and then Palace reject the offer that is made? Eze still has two years left to run on his deal and if he decided to ‘do a Gyokeres’ and reject any other advance of any other club in the hope of Arsenal coming, he could end up missing a big chance for a big move this summer when he is ready to go.

I suspect he see’s the cautionary tale of Wilfred Zaha to Arsenal as a prime Exhibit A in that regard. We had Zaha at the training ground, Emery wanted him, Arsenal bid something in the region of £40million but Palace were asking for silly money at the time at around £100million, it put Arsenal off and we went for Pepe. Three years later and Zaha is leaving on a free transfer to Galatasaray, followed by a loan to Lyon and then a loan to Charlotte in the States. Eze will be very aware of this and that’s why I think if you’re in his shoes you need to have multiple options open and you need to be able to have a good relationship with Parish and hope he grants your wish if you get a bid in from a club playing in the Champions League. Perfect if it’s Arsenal, but Tottenham would also fulfil those wishes.

So I get it, but it’ll sting, because we want that final piece and with the likes of Reiss Nelson supposedly not wanting to leave permanently to Fulham, or the Zinchenko and Fabio Vieira moves seemingly not really progressing, this is a perfect ‘market opportunity for the Scum to take advantage of the fact we went in early for other targets.

One discussion that I do think will need to be had when the window closes and we see where the chips have fallen, however, is the timing of the deals. I have a WhatsApp group of lads I go to the football with and there was a few really interesting things that I think are worth pointing out. Firstly, we all know Chelsea needed to sell, right? So with that in mind, I’m a little confused as to why we decided to go for Madueke so early and basically pay almost what Chelsea were asking for. If we wanted Madueke and Eze, why not go for the player probably a little more in demand (Eze) than the one in which we probably could be chatting to Chelsea about right now? That’s the bit that doesn’t sound too clever to me. If we’d have gone for Eze first and then gone for Madueke, I think we’d have not only have had the fans a little more excited about the move (not that it matters too much on that from the clubs’ perspective), but I think we might have been able to even drive down the price from Chelsea a little bit.

It all feels a little strange.

Now, if you tell me the sales will facilitate an actual wide forward coming in, with the likes of Rodrygo back on the table if we sell one or two players, then I guess you could understand how the market is playing out. We’d all want an Eze, it will give us great rotation and different options for Odegaard, but if we’re getting in a top left winger to compete with, say, a Martinelli, then I’m starting to get excited. That’s because the balance of the team suddenly feels good. The challenge we’ve got, which Luke in our WhatsApp group pointed out, is that if you can get the Madueke deal done then do it early so you don’t hang around and miss out on both Eze and Madueke. Or a Rodrygo in this instance, because if Man City sell Savinho and get Rodrygo, then we’ll have been left with fewer options out there for that wide forward and maybe Chelsea go even further on their asking price.

It’s all “ifs” and “buts” at this stage. We’re not on the inside to understand the machinations of the Arsenal transfer team. But because of that, we have to just sit on and watch a player many of us coveted for a lot of the summer, go to our local ‘rivals’. That just leaves a bit of a sour taste in the mouth.

Know what I mean?

So we know that one’s in the post and I don’t know whether to ‘go for it’ and start having a look and giving some thoughts on the signing in a little more detail now, or wait until it is officially confirmed. I think I’ll go now, in the absence of any other news other than the fact it appears that Arsenal players descended en masse (sort of) yesterday at Wimbledon.

Norgaard is an interesting selection choice, but the value of the deal – reported by Ornstein as £10million+£2million in bonuses – is certainly a brilliant one as far as we are concerned too. I have already spoken about the finances in this deal making total sense compared to the wages of Partey here, but I wonder about the stylistic change that we’re gonna get between him and Jorginho, because that’s the replacement we’re getting in midfield, so my comparison’s with Partey are probably a little wide of the mark. I think it’s just because the two deals are being seen to be done around a similar time (because we all already knew about Zubimendi months ago), plus it feels like this deal was done in response to Partey not accepting new contract terms.

But in reality this is the Jorginho replacement and so I thought I’d look at what we’ll get that is different – but also what is similar – and the first thing that strikes me is that we have replaced leader for leader in the dressing room. Norgaard was captain for Brentford, he played 34 times for them last season and racked up over 2,800 minutes. So from a footballing point of view we’re getting a guy whose engine is up and running; he’s not been out in the cold and barely played, which we cannot see with Jorginho on nine starts, six sub appearances and 700+ minutes. In his time last season Norgaard got five goals and four assists and guess what folks, he’s a threat on set pieces in scoring four of those chances from crosses or set pieces. When it comes to Set Piece FC, we have ourselves another lieutenant, that’s for sure. And as this article shows, he’s a guy who will attack the ball in both boxes, either to score or to clear it.

I decided to also have a look at the two players at the same age too, because I thought to myself that Jorginho is a little older, maybe there’s a bit of a decline in there, so let’s do like-for-like. Jorginho’s 30-year-old season was in 2022-23, Norgaard’s was last season. They both played around the same number of matches (32 vs 34 for Norgaard), although Norgaard had an extra 700 minutes, which might skew the numbers more as he was on the pitch. But that aerial threat from Norgaard was clearly something that made him stand out from an attacking perspective, because in their respective season’s Jorginho only had two goals and one assist, both of his goals were penalties. That impacted his xG which was 1.9 to 4.3 in Norgaard’s favour. Clearly in Norgaard we’re getting somebody who should probably be contributing more in the penalty box.

What we’re not getting, however, is a progressive passer or carrier of the ball. In their respective same season, Jorginho made 28 carries to Norgaard’s 14, whilst passes was 179 to 154 in Jorginho’s favour. We kind of knew that already – that Norgaard was a breaker of play and somebody who anchors the midfield – but I think it is important to note because even though Jorginho wasn’t used much last season, we knew that when he was going to be used, he would be more analogous to Partey than Norgaard will be to Zubimendi, who is also a very progressive passer of the ball. This tells me we’re probably going to see quite a difference if that rotation option happens with those two players at number six this season; we need to be mindful of that I think.

Norgaard also takes waaaay more shots, again leading to his increase in threat compared to Jorgi. In their respective season’s, we see that in a 39 shots by Norgaard to nine shots for Jorginho. I can picture that; Jorginho would always look to that final pass rather than having a go himself – that great strike against Villa stands out for that very reason – he didn’t do it very much.

I think most of us knew this already, but it’s still worth pointing out, which is that Norgaard will also not be the metronomic footballer that Jorginho was, or Zubimendi is, because event will 700 more minutes Norgaard only just misses out on total number of touches (1833 to 1802) and Jorginho made nearly 200 more passes in that season compared to the Dane. That could be because Brentford go long more, whereas Arsenal/Chelsea certainly play shorter, but I do think it also speaks to the players and their styles too; Norgaard will sit, break up play, distribute to the nearest guy close to him and then reset himself back into his position whilst others do their thang going forward. I don’t necessarily think there is anything wrong with that, but depending on the opponent, I suspect we might find that we will need to change up the approach, or even not play Norgaard at all and drop Rice into the number six role. Imagine a low block, at home, where we’re having most of the ball in the opponents third. You don’t really need a destroyer sitting back. You might use his aerial threat in the box, but I personally would probably think that a Rice in there and the opportunity to play a more attacking left eight, would be a better option for me. If you’re playing a side like City and Zubimendi is not available, then sure, you’re going to use Norgaard as that extra bit of protection.

So in summary, whilst we don’t have a like-for-like comparison, I do think Norgaard brings value to the squad in terms of who is as a footballer. We just need to be mindful that injuries and suspensions to players won’t give us the same – or similar – options for Arteta like Jorginho and Partey did.

Catch you all tomorrow.

Yesterday we got the official confirmation of Martin Zubimendi’s arrival from Real Sociedad, with the first pictures of him in next season’s kit, then later in the day there was talk of the striker situation finally nearing a conclusion. Thankfully.

Let’s start with the Zubimendi transfer. Yes, we all knew it was happening, yes, it didn’t come as a surprise to many, but until it’s on the dot com you still have that last 0.1% of doubt. So to see it all confirmed and ratified and to have him talking through his ambitions was still lovely to see. He came across as quite humble, down to earth and I suspect his character is as much of a draw for Arteta and Arsenal, as his ability on the pitch. And on the pitch we have a guy who is a Spanish international, who looks at home anchoring the midfield and who we hope will be an ever-present in an Arsenal side that needs to start picking up trophies. Zubimendi even referenced that need in his interview. He is a ‘win now’ player and at 26-year’s-old we’re getting somebody who – providing he acclimatises to the Premier League well enough – goes straight in to the starting XI.

That acclimatisation period is going to be aided by the fact he’s got some old teammates who are teammates once again in Merino and to a lesser extent Martin Odegaard, as well as the fact there are a few Spaniard’s and Arteta himself who will all be able to help him settle in. But by this deal being done earlyish in the window he’ll have time to do a bit of training at London Colney, before jetting off on tour to Singapore and then Hong Kong at the end of the month. He’ll also be given a taste of home over the next 10 days or so, because according to the Met Office it’s going to be a bit of a scorcher in London for just over a week after today! Martin, trust me, it isn’t always like this mate, so don’t get used to it!

This is a superb move any way you look at it. We have a duel winner, a guy who is a progressive passer, somebody who should be able to provide us with an even more stable base and not only that, but somebody coveted all over the top European leagues. But what also shows you how much work goes into these kinds of deals, is when you read articles like this on the BBC about how it unfolded, going all the way back to the summer. I  hadn’t realised that we had spent time talking to them as they were nearly about to seal the Liverpool deal. He’s a player that I think we’d been tentatively linked with before Liverpool, but nothing concrete and I remember last summer when that felt like it was about to happen, being a little apprehensive. “This guy is a winner and he’ll be really good for Liverpool” I thought. But I hadn’t realised that Zubimendi clearly looked at wanting to stay in La Real, as well as looking at the fact he might have something on the table from Arsenal for the following summer, had an impact on his decision making. These are the kinds of stories you love to hear – to think that last summer I was worried about losing a great player to a rival, when all the time he had his eyes on us, is pretty wild really.

Welcome to The Arsenal, Zubi!

And it appears he might soon be joined by a striker signing too, after Ornstein dropped his bomba yesterday about Arsenal being in advanced talks over Viktor Gyokeres, with the clubs nearing an agreement on the fee it appears.

I’ve been pretty clear in stating my case about Sesko as my preferred option, I just feel like it would be a better move for us overall, but with RB Leipzig supposedly wanting close to €100million for the player, Arsenal clearly had to act. I think Sesko was Arteta’s first choice and I think if Leipzig would have played ball a bit then a deal could be done, but I also think that Arteta wants his business done now so he can get everyone in and acclimatised to the style of play and how we set up before the pre season tour kicks off. If a deal can be done for a reported €65-€70million plus add-ons, as opposed to €100million, then you gotta do it. Arsenal can get it wrapped up this week, he can be training with his new teammates for a week, before heading off on tour and starting to get a feel of the ball at his feet as an Arsenal player.

It’s good to see the club making a decision. We’ve had a few transfer window’s now where it has felt like we’ve had a plan A and if that didn’t come off, there was no striker plan B. I think Gyokeres might be plan B, but if you’re going to have a guy who has bagged as many goals as he has, who is a style and an approach different to Havertz that means we can approach games differently between different types of matches and game states, then that’s a-ok with me.

I have a feeling that it might be a fair few days before this saga really reaches a conclusion, so I don’t think I want to have a deeper look at Gyokeres and give too many thoughts until it is done, but I think for most of us we’ll just be glad that this saga is reaching a conclusion. Go get the Swede, get him in, then let’s see if we have ourselves a goal machine like he was for Sporting. Even the talks about waving parts of his salary to get this deal done feel like there’s a player there who has a massive desire to join Arsenal, which will please Arteta too.

That’s about all I got got you today. I suspect we might even have the Norgaard announcement at some stage in the next day or so, which will be another positive bit of squad bolstering but for now, I’ll leave you be and hope you have a great Monday.

But today is another day and I suspect we will finally get that announcement. The chain of events will probably be an Arsenal and Sociedad jointly timed announcement, perhaps from the La Real side with the player saying some kind of goodbye message posted on some socials at some stage thereafter I suspect. I doubt it will be as amazing and heartfelt as the one that Jurrien Timber posted on the Ajax site when he left, but I’m sure it will be one that expresses gratitude and love for his boyhood club.

For us, we’re getting ourselves somebody who is an interceptor, a ball winner and who was in the 92nd percentage quartile of La Liga players last season for clearances. At five foot 11 he’s not the tallest guy in the world, but I was surprised to learn that he’s in the 85th percentage of players in the league who won aerial duels. He’s a man who loves a challenge, loves to be at the heart of the build up of moves and will look to play progressive passing football through lines from deep. I’m not sure whether I’ve seen enough of him to know if he’s a quarter back though; so I don’t know if we’re going to get somebody playing long diags to the likes of Martinelli or Saka from deep to spring quick traps on opponents, but we will get somebody who will look forward at every opportunity. This is no Denilson-style crab master; Zubimendi is somebody always looking forward and always looking to get the ball into that space in between the midfield and defence of opponents.

I think Martin Odegaard is going to love him.

Last season we saw Odegaard picking the ball up a little deeper at times and I think that takes him away from where he does the most damage. Odegaard in between the midfield and defence of whoever we are playing is where I think he can do real damage. Think about the goal towards the end of the season against Bournemouth; Odegaard popped up in between their lines, he reverse-passed it to a diagonally-running Rice, who ironically took it beyond Kepa and then slot it home. Now imagine what it might mean if Odegaard is given specific instructions to occupy those positions more, because Zubimendi is going to be looking for him. That’s what I think (and hope) we’re going to get from our incoming Spanish international. There’s also the small matter of them having played together whilst Odegaard was on loan.

Don’t get me wrong, the clearances, interceptions, duels won, etc are all important. If we know anything about Arteta he gets upset when he loses a duel! So we know that the defensive side of his game will be important. But I think this move is Arteta’s way of trying to speed us up through the park this coming season. Partey was a master at receiving the ball, quickly turning from his man and then shuffling out into space so he could release it, but I felt at times he spent a little too long getting the ball moving. Towards the end of the season especially, we saw one or two too many touches and I think that contributed to the general feeling amongst the fanbase that we were too slow in build up. It was all too methodical and sometimes we needed to go from back to front more quickly. My hope is that this signing will allow us to do that more from deep and if it means we aren’t seeing Odegaard pick the ball up and travelling with it from halfway inside our box (because he’s already on the halfway line when the ball turns over) then I think all of us will be a little happier.

There’s a lot of talk about the striker this summer and I get it, I want that guy in too and soon. But I suspect the reason this work on Zubimendi got done so early, the reason that they were courting him for the last year and even more so from this winter just gone, was because I think Arteta views getting the right player in this position was his most important move for the way we want to play next season. It probably helps that Arteta knows that position so well too; he will know exactly what he needs in that role and by getting his man, his first choice, he has an exact idea as to how he’s going to deploy him.

I do think Arteta wanted to keep Partey, but I think (and I suspect most Arsenal fans do too) that the idea was for Arsenal not to become reliant on the Ghanaian and to have him serve an additional year as the Jorginho guy. Partey not wanting to do that (which I suspect is why he asked for more money just in dcase that was the situation i.e. at least he gets a big wage whilst sitting on the bench) has resulted in the Norgaard signing, which will of course probably be announced tomorrow I suspect.

Which will conclude a heck of a week of activity for The Arsenal. Feast or famine, eh?

Catch you all tomorrow

I think a lot of fans, despite seeing some of our rivals do some initial deals, have been somewhat serene on the signings situation. But for me today is the point where my nerves start to kick in. I get that today is when contracts expire, it’ll be when Arsenal announce Zubimendi (or tomorrow if they’re really teasing us), so in essence the business will start to kick in. But what we’ve had in June is plenty of “make strides towards” stuff from the ITKs, with not a lot of actual ACTION happening.

My hope is that Arsenal have everything lined up to go on a number of fronts and those dominoes will fall one after the other. So Zubimendi, then Kepa, then Norgaard, all coming in relatively swiftly. These are all the easy deals to do and I even saw one of the head people over at Brentford admitting that it’s a great opportunity to join Arsenal that Norgaard has, so that one feels like it’s pretty much sewn up. So these ‘low hanging fruit’ signings need to happen asap really. Not because we are all transfer-starved fiends who demand shiny new things to look at, but because we have genuine need for these signings to replace departed players.

With Neto returning to Bournemouth, Kepa’s arrival is the replacement.

With Jorginho having been released early to join Flamengo we have Norgaard as the replacement.

With Partey’s contract expiring today we have Zubimendi announced as his replacement.

We also have Sterling returning to Chelsea to sit in the barren wasteland that is their reserves, stocked full of expensive talent on big contracts that they aren’t using because they chase EVERY shiny new thing, so there is a replacement there that needs to be filled.

We all know about the need for a striker, needed because we had to do it last summer and in January, but also because Gabriel Jesus is probably cooked as a top flight footballer when he returns towards the end of the year.

So action is the name of the game, because as it stands, as I write this, technically speaking we are weaker with the current team than the one that ended the season. We all expect that to change, but every day that deals aren’t official, are days in which players can’t be getting more embedded with their new teammates. And as we’ve seen with the disruption of the World Cup and Euro’s years, not having a proper pre season under your belt can make a big difference to the start of the season and building up that momentum.

Of course the longer term deals – like this current striker hunt – might not be done too quickly, but I suspect Arteta will be pretty peeved if he hasn’t got the bulk of his team in for when they go on pre season tour towards the latter part of this month. That, again, is a great opportunity for embedding players and so having this situation where we still don’t know who might be leading the line next season (wink wink, we all know it’ll be Havertz to start off with, at least) will not be the kind of preparation Arteta will want. We all know that this is a man of intense and precise detail; having a striker rocking up on 1st August is not going to be something he will be happy about.

It’s a little different with the wide forward, with Eze the current name linked in the press over the last 48 hours or so, as we already have Martinelli and Trossard who occupy those positions. Both are well-versed in our style of play, I’d be happy with seeing either start the season, but Eze isn’t always a left winger as it is. So I’m not 100% sure how somebody like that fits in. Don’t get me wrong, I think it would be a good addition and certainly adds something, but are you spending £65million for somebody to be a rotation and ‘x-factor’ player who can come off the bench? Doesn’t feel like it to me. Let’s also not discount Nwaneri either. He played in Saka’s role on the right when he was injured, but this kid is good enough to play wide left, as well as centrally, so I do think we need to be mindful of that when thinking about players like Eze. Nwaneri will be even better than he was last season and if that means he goes north of ten goals next season, then we’ve got a perfectly good understudy who will get game time and give us more of the end product we’ve been craving.

Perhaps it’s just Arsenal and Berta exploring as many options and different ways of playing as possible. Either way, I don’t see it as an immediate priority, because first we replace the players who have exited, then we address most pressing concerns (striker), then we look for that wide forward.

That’s all from me today. Hopefully tomorrow we’re talking about at least one confirmation of an arrival at the club.

I wrote it on social media and that’s a commitment to print in this day and age, but on Friday last week I said that every time I go to Portugal over the summer, we sign somebody. I was here when we signed Rice, I was sat at my folks’ gaff when we announced Fabio Vieira, I was Algarve-stationed when the Tomiyasu deal happened. I could even go far back enough to tell you that we got Mertesacker when I was in Tavira that August all those years back. So I’ve been confident that we’ll get something over the line.

If I’m honest, however, I thought it would be Kepa. That deal is basically done and unlike Zubimendi’s deal being delayed at the request of Sociedad, Chelsea have no real issues about us announcing it. So I thought that would be the ‘low-hanging fruit’ transfer that would go through. So to see that it’ll be another player and one from completely left-field, I’m kind of glad that my powers remain in tact.

The player himself is a smart move for the club; they clearly wanted to tie Partey down for at least one more year, but the Ghanaian wants more money and a longer-term deal by the sounds of it. Arsenal are right to walk away. His injury record is such that you know that no sooner would the ink be dry on that contract, that he’d be treatment table bound, so finding somebody else to plug the whole in the squad is a sensible move.

And this move feels very Jorginho-like to me. experienced, good pro, has picked up a few knocks this season and last season but his overall injury record is much better than Partey’s has been over the last five years. He will know his place as the back up to Zubimendi and that won’t rock the boat. At 31-years-of-age he brings a wealth of experience and he is ‘prem ready’, but not only that, he’s the captain of Brentford at the moment. So on the pitch we have somebody who is a leader and will bring that experience to the table. We’ve just lost two 30-somethings from our squad and Norgaard brings that maturity and experience to what is still a relatively young squad overall. We may not have liked the deal, but Sterling was apparently fantastic for the younger players. Jorginho was too, so we have been missing some of that older head wisdom that this signing fills.

He’s also not going to break the bank on wages. The rumours are that he’s on roughly £40k-per-week. Arsenal will clearly give him a bump and so let’s just say we offer him a deal like Jorginho’s; that’s going to be two years long and let’s just call it something like £60k. That is £3.1million a year. So if Brentford get £11million they have a fair bit of cash for a 31-year-old that they can re-invest. The player gets a bump up in salary, the chance to get minutes in a team towards the top of the league who are also in the Champions League that he will inevitably play in. And Arsenal pay £17.2million over a two year deal, with probably the option to activate and additional ‘plus one’ on the contract length. If you think that Partey probably wanted a bump on his £200k-per-week to, say, £250k-per-week, then you can see why this is a better deal for all involved. £250k-per-week is £13million a year. If Arsenal caved and gave him a two year deal, you’re sinking in £26million into a player whose off-the-field stuff leaves an unpalatable taste in the metaphorical mouth, but who on the pitch is not going to suddenly become indestructible. It would have been a bad deal for everyone except Partey. The Norgaard deal represents the total opposite.

From a player perspective, this will obviously not be the same as a Partey or a Jorginho-type signing. Norgaard is your more traditional defensive midfielder; he’ll be the one to anchor the base of midfield and break up play. He won’t be seen as a progressive passer, but maybe that’s just because he wasn’t asked to do that under Frank? I for one didn’t think Jorginho would be as progressive a passer as he turned out to be and my Chelsea workmate told me he’s a bit of a crab-sideways passer. That’s not what we saw and maybe Norgaard – when given more licence to be forward-thinking in a side who dominates the ball for most of their games – maybe we might see him be more progressive?

We don’t know, but we do know that this deal is progressing rapidly and that appears to be the clubs first move into the market. Maybe that’s the one that starts the ball rolling on our business this summer. I think we all have to hope so.

Still, at least it gives me the opportunity to be hysterical about tomorrow, so there is that.

Of course there is the ‘leaks’ that you get access to and I’ve seen some of those. By the time you read this you’ll already know, but it sounds like another tough start for us. I’ll elaborate with thoughts tomorrow, but United away on the opening day won’t be easy – they won’t be bogged down by the poor season last season, we have a terrible record there historically (one win in the league going back about 15 years I think – will double check for tomorrow), so it’s not one to be taking for granted. Liverpool away a couple of games later and as Charlie who I follow on Twitter said – if you think these fixtures are random then you’re a silly Billy (or word to that effect).

So in lieu of me being able to talk about fixtures, shall we delve back into the murky waters of transfer tittle-tattle?

Thomas Partey

The noises are that he has rejected a contract offer from The Arsenal because he wants a pay rise. Interesting. I saw a couple of week’s back an offer from Barca might be incoming, but they aren’t in the habit of increasing wage offers to players; they love nothing more than getting players to drop their wages to play for them, so I can’t see that happening. My only thought on this one is that he must be getting some sizeable numbers passed his way from Saudi Arabia. He has said previously he’s happy at The Arsenal, Arteta has said he wants to keep him, but I guess at 31 if somebody comes in and offers you a two-year deal that doubles your money, you take it.

Partey is a contentious player for a number of reasons. I am not going to go into the rumoured off the field stuff, which needs to be a consideration in itself for whether to renew his contract, but on the field too he has never really delivered consistently. That’s because his body constantly let him down and having spent five years at The Arsenal now, the fact that just two of those five have felt like he has been fit an able to contribute, should be cause enough for concern. We can’t have him signed up for another year in the hope he would stay fit, because invariably he’d end up injured for most of it. The club are clearly moving on from him anyway with the expected and impending deal for Zubimendi, but this decision of Partey’s – if it turns out to be true – does mean that we will have to think twice about our options. Sure, Rice can play in the six as well as Zubimendi, but we saw last season that he’s best in that left eight role and whilst Merino can play the left eight, as well as Kai at a push, I think we will still need another body in there for cover. Maybe that’s MLS, but he’s got left back locked down right now, so do we really want to be making our squad smaller by not finding a replacement if Partey leaves at the end of his contract in just over a week’s time? 

I don’t like the sound of the Jorginho may not have been used much last season, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need a body. Is there an experienced centre midfielder who would be happy to play the rotation option, who has Premier League experience, that we could have a look at? I see Doucourre has left Everton, although he’s not as much of a ‘anchor the defence’ player – I also think I heard he might be off to Saudi for big cash too. So maybe a bit more work will be needed to be done by the Arsenal transfer team than they first thought.

Benjamin Sesko

I saw an interesting article on Sky Sports yesterday, talking about how Sesko won’t force a move from Leipzig and that Leipzig want between €80 – €100million for his signature. If it’s getting close to the €100million mark, you can see why Arsenal haven’t pulled the trigger, despite him seemingly being their first choice. If there was a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ in place to let him leave, it does make me wonder why these agents and players do these things. Apparent Gyokeres is pretty pissed off with the Sporting Lisbon president for the same reason. I mean, come on now guys, have you learned nothing from all of football transfer history? Forget the ‘gentleman’s agreement’ and focus on release clauses. And make sure they aren’t astronomical like in Spain. 

If Sesko is desperate for the move, however, then I think he’ll be putting pressure on Leipzig to get it done. And done at a fair market price. According to TranfsferMarkt that value is €70million, which is around £60million. I think if Arsenal go to them with a solid £65million (€76million) then that is more than acceptable. If Leipzig are messing around, then you can understand why Arsenal are still in dialogue with not just Gyokeres, but also Watkins too. And if both clubs keep messing around, it wouldn’t surprise me to hear that the Watkins deal is back on the table this time next week.

But what this does at least give us an insight in to, is that Arsenal aren’t just ‘dallying’. They might be getting messed around by these clubs who keep changing their stance. We just don’t know. All we know is that it’s mid-June and there appears to be little movement and that causes – rightly, because I feel it too – angst amongst the Arsenal fanbase. But perversely, I did find that Sky Sports article giving a crumb of comfort, when I read it. We’ve praised Arsenal for being able to quickly pivot in the past (Mudryk/Trossard, Caicedo/Jorginho) and how they stick to their guns. If they’re doing it now, we can’t criticise too much I don’t think. 

Having said that, come back to me on 1st July and let’s see how I’m feeling.

Right, better get this out the door before the fixtures do come out and make me look like a wally for believing somebody on the internet.

Catch you all tomorrow.

A boring 0-0 draw.

I didn’t watch it, but Sky Sports thrust it into my eye-line on their website this morning with a match review, whose highlights included “Messi hit the die netting with a free kick”. Honestly, I hope this tournament is as boring as possible and that FIFA are put off from ever doing something like this again.

They won’t. They’ll be back again as long as there’s a Saudi bankrolling them somewhere. Gianni Infantino gets his stage, he gets his money, FIFA line their pockets. Night follows day.

In the Arsenal world, it’s all still about Gyokeres or Sesko and I think even the ITKs are running out of ‘angles’. I’ve seen some suggest (fans, not ITKs) that we should go for both players, but honestly, I couldn’t see that happening in a billion years. Why would we do that? We have Havertz who we’ve all heard everyone at the club loves, he’s beefed himself up whilst injured and was a guy on form before his injury. He’ll be the one kicking off our season regardless of who we sign I think, so the idea that we’d go and buy two centre forwards when we clearly need to strengthen in other positions, feels a bit mental to me. And we leave that to those muppets in West London who play in blue.

I do wonder if this situation with these two players is making things worse for decision making though. I saw a few articles yesterday and this morning suggesting Gyokeres’ first choice is The Arsenal and he’s waiting to see what happens with us before deciding anything else. That sounds lovely and sure, it’s good to know we have a player waiting for us, but eventually Arsenal have to step over the line with one of them. It’s starting to feel a little like we have two lovely chocolate cakes and we can’t pick between the two, so we just keep staring at both of them, resulting in us not having any of the delicious cake.

Just pick one of the delicious cakes, Arsenal. Stop staring at them both. They’re both lovely. You’ll be very happy in the tasting of both cakes.

There was something I saw yesterday about Zubimendi’s medical booked for Wednesday, but at this stage it’s essentially the worst kept secret and I’m kind of a bit ‘meh’ about those stories because we already know it’s happening. I’ll be excited to see him in the shirt unveiling, but stories about medicals ‘booked’ don’t butter my muffins.

I have no idea what is with my food-based metaphors today.

It will be a big signing though. It’s weird, you probably won’t believe me, but I was kinda sad last summer when it looked like he was going to Liverpool. We had Rice and Partey sitting at the base, but Zubimendi was a player I thought “he’d be a good signing for us. I’d like him”. I also think that his signing for Liverpool made me very nervous in terms of how he would bring a level of quality to Liverpool’s midfield that would take them up a notch. Now, with him on the verge of signing for us, I have seen videos doing ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ of him, how he might not be as physically ready for the Premier League and I can’t help but think that I never had that thought in my mind when he was signing for Liverpool last summer. It’s funny how when you’re looking over at somebody else’s garden, you automatically think the grass is greener and everything is perfect. It’s the same with the Wirtz signing. Great player, he’s going to be good for them we all know, but because of the fee I find myself thinking they are suddenly going to have all of their issues solved. Ultimately if they have Salah go down injured, or even if he just doesn’t run as hot as last season, then Liverpool won’t get things their own way all the time as they did last season. Even with Wirtz. But as champions, having just come off the back of walking the league, spending pretty big already, everyone is looking at them and automatically projecting more glory. All I’ll say is “we’ll see”.

Anyhoo, to more serious news, which is that it was a year ago today that we lost Kevin Campbell, who died at the age of 54 years old. On this Father’s Day here in England, I am thinking about his family and children who lost a husband and a dad at an age in life that you really shouldn’t be losing your life. He was such a loveable character, I know lots of Arsenal fans who knew him and said he was the loveliest man. I never met him, but I have read and heard plenty of positive stories about him and how he impacted people’s lives so positively. Rest in Peace, big man.

Catch you all tomorrow.

I’ve already talked about the fact that Madrid have a few guys in the position that Zubimendi plays already as a potential reason as to why this might not materialise, but there are plenty of other things we can all point to that make this story today merely a click-bait exercise from Marca to stir up a story where there potentially isn’t one.

The player himself has apparently already given his word, the two clubs (Arsenal and Real Sociedad) have been talking for ages, La Real would probably ideally not like to see Zubimendi in their domestic league, plus we have to take anything that Marca say with a pinch of salt.

What I’ve enjoyed about this morning is that Arsenal clearly have their own countermeasures they are willing to deploy, in the shape of a certain Mr Ornstein, who already this morning has released a message basically saying that Real Madrid’s interest was never fully confirmed and concrete, that Arsenal are expecting him to report to training when the team gets back together. Hey, Ornstein doesn’t speak unless he’s triple-checked his workings, but when you couple that with the fact that a few other people qwho seem to be reasonably well-informed have also given us all a pre-emptive strike based on the Marca story last night, I think we can all be pretty chilled on the situation at the moment.

It doesn’t mean something random couldn’t happen, it doesn’t mean that Madrid don’t do a dirty on us, but from all of the noise that surrounds this, it feels like this is one of those “one in a million” situations, so we just need to chill. That doesn’t mean that everyone will and there will be people losing their sh*t today with this news, but I’ve listened to the odd football podcast recently and the noises about how the club are very happy with how the summer is panning out is comforting for me personally. We all know City and Chelsea are making their moves, Liverpool are edging along too, but with Ornstein also saying that this week is expected to be busy for The Arsenal in terms of potential incomings, I think we can be perfectly happy with how things are unfolding.

If by 1st July we haven’t made a single deal, then I think there’s some cause for consternation, but not at this early stage in the window.

In the meantime, we still have these tedious international matches to worry about, of which England are playing tonight and Saka is due to start. Just let the boy stay fit and go on his holidays please, Tommy T. None of us really want to see him break down at any stage. Let’s have all of our lads given a clean bill of health and then over the next week let’s seem them on yachts and beaches across the globe as they rest themselves up for what is going to be a huge season for The Arsenal.

And if you think about it, it WILL be massive, because the weight of expectation now on the shoulders of those Arsenal players are big. I was having a drink with a work mate who is Leeds fan the other day. I was recounting to him the gloriousness of that first season we finished runner sup to City. Every time we conceded at home there was a sense of “come on lads, we believe in you” and the atmosphere at The Emirates was amazing. The second season we had that run at the end of the season which really hit home just how good we were and whilst the atmosphere wasn’t quite as good as the season before, it was still buoyant. Last season it was less so too, probably because we were out of a title race early on and it felt like the world (and especially PGMOL) were against us. Last season felt like it was our season but the fates had decided against that for whatever reason. So for me, in my head, I’m already looking at this season coming up and thinking “surely, it’s ours this time around, right?

I know it doesn’t work like that. We all do. We could have another injury-hit season again. We are pretty much nailed on to get shafted on refereeing decisions because we’re not a North West-based club. But I am starting to get a feeling in my belly that we are ‘destined’ for some kind of success next season and that is a dangerous way to think. But I can’t help it. We’ve had the best defence two-years running. City are still in a rebuild. Liverpool surely can’t have as much fortune as they had this season, so surely the football gods need to align to send us towards the trophy-laiden promised land, right?

Wrong. You have to get everything right and that includes doing the required things in the summer that puts your team in the perfect position to be that best side. The players we have are all now coming into prime age, whereas a few season’s back we were still a little on the young side. But they have to get it over the line. Nothing comes to you just by you wishing it into being, you have to go out and prove it. With others around us strengthening right now it feels a little like we’re standing still, but I have faith that we’re going to start to see some movement in the next week or so and when that happens, I suspect there will be plenty of Arsenal fans that will breathe a sigh of relief and look towards getting a good pre season under our belts.

But for now, as I’ve said before, let’s stay ‘calma’.

I saw the goal as it did the rounds on social media last night and it was a well worked piece and a very fine finish from our Spaniard. For somebody who never played striker before he was shunted in to the role against Leicester earlier this year, his adaptation to that position has been quite impressive indeed. I know he didn’t play that role last night, as he was operating on the left of what looked like a 4-3-3 for Spain (didn’t watch, just looking at a few data points online), but the advanced positions he finds himself in and the fact he stroked the ball away like a seasoned centre forward is impressive.

It was a bit of a stuttery start for Merino due to that freak injury at the start of last season, but as he became an enforced regular in the side, he came up with some really impressive finishes and by the end of it I found myself thinking what a good player he was, rather than what he gives to the Arsenal team. For the first half of the season I was a bit *Alan Patridge shoulder shrug emoji* about his role; he seemed to just be a bit of a ‘fill in guy’ for when we had injuries. Which, as it turned out last season, happened to be quite a lot; he played 44 times and racked up 2,600+ minutes in an Arsenal shirt. His versatility was clearly why Mikel wanted him, but also his ability to clearly adapt and learn to his surroundings makes you realise why Mikel was so hot on him last summer. He’s played a bit as a right eight, a left eight, plus – as we all know – as a centre forward, with nine goals and five assists bagged in his first season at the club. That’s a pretty decent return and when you think he bagged five goals in the Premier League as a centre forward, he proved his value in more than what I thought he’d be – a guy who is going to box crashing and bag headed goals.

How much game time he gets next season will be interesting, especially if we’d going to sign a striker, wide forward and Zubimendi in at six. It means he might find his time a little more limited but if he continues to put in performances and if he continues to be as useful across a wide array of positions, Mikel will definitely be using him plenty next season.

One player we might sign, but won’t use a lot, will be that chap Kepa from Chelsea. My first response when I heard that rumour was “what? Another bloody Chelsea player?? WHY???” but then I checked myself a little when reading up on the terms of that deal. It’s clear that we need a back up goalie. Neto goes back to Bournemouth after a grand total of four appearances and one absolutely crazy brain-fart moment in the Champions League that he got away with. He’s 35 and basically nearly never played all season. So the reality is that we don’t need somebody to come in play much football.

Kepa has just had a decent enough season for Bournemouth, but let’s be honest, he’s a guy who has been liable to throw one in his own net at times whilst at Chelsea. That’s where my initial reservation comes in, but when I hear that he has a £5million release clause and I think about how little Neto played, I kind of feel like this feels like a sensible move for essentially peanuts, that is a decent back up and I’m kinda ok with it. The real question will be whether Kepa himself would be ok with it. He’s just played 35 games for Bournemouth and might fancy a taste of more football at the age of 30. If he comes to The Arsenal Arteta might chuck him some League Cup games and some FA Cup games depending on how far we progress, but that’s about it. So if he’s coming to us it’s really so he can hope he claims a medal or two before his career ends. He’s been in the Real Madrid (!) squad that won the Champions League the season before last, then also in the La Liga team that won the Spanish title that same season too. He played 20 games in all competitions. He was also in that Chelsea team that won the Champions league against City, although he was a back up there too. So he’s no stranger to it, but the question remains whether he fancies that at all. I have my doubts.

But if Arsenal do that deal I think most Arsenal fans won’t bat an eyelid. We need a back up, he’s experienced, hopefully he won’t play much and we can focus our transfer kitty on more important outfield places. Feels like a bit of a no brainer. Plus, there’s no faffing around with this one if the player does want to join The Arsenal; we’ve quite enjoyed not messing around and paying release clauses in the recent past, it looks like we’re doing the same with Zubimendi this summer (fingers crossed), so this is a low-hassle deal that can mean other priorities are focused on. Get it done, move on to other things, Arsenal.

What those other things are remains to be seen. We are still waiting for any movement in other bigger deals but now that Zubimendi has finished his UEFA Nations League game with Spain last night, I suspect he’ll go have his medical, get some pictures taken, then jet off for a bit of holiday before re-joining us at the beginning of July for pre season training.

And until then, we wait for other news, like a striker, or maybe a cheeky Rodrygo, although I suspect that’ll be a slow burner, if all of the noises coming out last night from different sources are to be believed. So I’m going to park that for now and wish you all a wonderful Friday. Catch you tomorrow.

**Update**

literally as soon as I finished today’s musings, Big Gabi was announced as signing a new deal!

Will get to that with some thoughts tomorrow.

What might drive any Arsenal fan to drink this summer is protracted transfers and as James pointed out in the Athletic this week, the expectation for financial reporting purposes is that he will not arrive at The Arsenal until 1st July. That’s gonna boil some online piss, for sure, if what I’ve read so far, with the window opened just four whole days. People are getting grumpy and what happens with situations like this, is that they shout into the void that is the internet, which creates an echo chamber of irritation as any slight concern any normal human has, gets amplified when they read other people’s hyperbolic views on t’internet.

The hive mentality kicks in, suddenly you have a whipping up of angst that really ought to not be there.

Most of the self-respecting journos and people who state a career on being ITKs (The Romano’s of this world, the Kike Marin’s of this world, etc) have been pretty consistent with what is happening. Even being away with the national team this week and having Zubimendi say he didn’t want to talk too much about the future, about the comments re: his medical at Arsenal not being true, as well as the fact that he’s had Xabi Alonso as his idol, hasn’t really moved many to suddenly declare Madrid are ‘in for him’.

They could make a late move. They could pay the release clause from Sociedad and we could indeed have a situation where Zubimendi is staring at a choice between Arsenal and Madrid. But even if that happens, I still think we’d be favourites to edge any signature. Hear me out on this one:

1. Arsenal have spent a lot of time on this deal. They’ve been courting him for almost a year it seems, since it became clear he wasn’t going to Liverpool. They will have been whispering sweet nothings into his ears, they will have been very clear that he’s their choice, they will certainly have been making him feel like he’s going to be loved.
2. Arteta effect. Mikel is a Basque boy, which might have a little bit of sway, but not enough perhaps to lure away from the prospect of Real Madrid and his idol Xabi Alonso. But having just arrived at Real Madrid, do you think that Alonso is going to be telling Zubimendi “mate, get your arse over here, you’re my first signing and you’ll play every week”? Of course he won’t. Arteta will have explained in great – and meticulous – detail how he expects to use the player, what his hopes are for the impact on the system. Arteta has had ample time to make this player feel like he will be a vital cog in a midfield that has just got to the semi final of the Champions League.
3. The options at Madrid. Real currently have Tchouameni and Camavinga in their side. They have a fair bit of work to do this summer, so top of their list is surely not going to be a defensive midfielder, is it? That gives us the opportunity to steal a march on any transfer.

I think I’ve said this previously on one of the blogs,  but this kind of noise that comes from transfers like this that don’t come out of the blue, are to be expected. We had it with Declan Rice and Man City, as I’ve previously talked about, but Arsenal had approached that transfer in the same way that they are approaching this one. So for me, personally, I’m not really fussed about any spurious rumours coming from fan accounts of Madrid, Arsenal or football media accounts just trying to hype up potential shifts in expectations just for clicks.

As ol’ Unai used to say:

Calma. Calma.

I think that’s going to be the same for a lot of teams actually. The movement we’re seeing right now are the ‘low hanging fruit’ as I would call it. In other words, deals that are easy to do. It’s easy to sign Frimpong when you’ve been in touch with Leverkusen for months, you know Trent is leaving, he has a release clause (I think) and you just pay it. Then, if you’re already talking to them about that, saying to Leverkusen “do you want £100million+ for Wirtz?” is another easy one to do. Bayer know he’s going, they get the cash, deal can be done. Cunha was already on his way out and had a release clause. Same as the lad from Ipswich who’s just joined Chelsea.

These are all release clause deals. Arsenal are doing the same, it’s why everyone is talking about how Zubi is basically ‘done’, because it is. There are just the formalities. So as long as those are observed and we don’t get any U-turns from the Spanish side (which would also damage a relationship that has been good on both fronts so far), or from the player himself, then this really isn’t something to worry about.

So I think we just need to let this one play out. There will be rumours and counter-rumours, but ultimately we as fans just need to chill a bit, and let the natural process of a transfer play out. If we’d heard nothing until now, we’d all be excited, but because it’s been on the radar for for a while I think that’s colouring people’s judgement on what appears to me like a pretty standard transfer process.

Just food for thought on a Wednesday morning.

I mean, honestly, what is the point in having it closed for just six days? Why not just have it open the whole time? I’ve looked at the rules on Sky Sports and the Premier League and apparently it’s due to the fact that a transfer window is only supposed to be open for 12 weeks at a time. But honestly, these days, does that really even matter? Clubs still do deals and make announcements before and after that time, they just state in their press releases that “x player will join on 30th June as part of the regulated process” or something similar. It’s all a bit silly really because it’s just paperwork related. It means only that clubs can’t officially trigger release clauses like we are hoping to hear about soon re: Zubimendi, but all we’re really talking about these days is Arsenal having scheduled sends on their emails. The hard work, the negotiations, the contracts, the agents, the discussions between the clubs, have all been done before the window ‘officially’ opens anyway. So we’re basically talking about red tape here and it all feels a little pointless to me.

Anyway, Arsenal have another eight days to do a deal if they want to on that one, or the Sesko one, but I suspect that one will be a little longer in the process. The Zubi one feels like everyone knows the parameters of the sale and it’s just a case of working through that process, although the stupid and pointless Nations League match they play in on Thursday won’t help. It means he’ll be focused on that, but I guess the agents and two clubs can agree all they need to without him, so it shouldn’t be too much that he needs to do. I saw a comment from somebody from Real Sociedad suggesting that they have told him to go away with his national team, have a think, then come back with a ‘clear head’. After what happened last summer with him U-turning on Liverpool, we can’t completely rule out the possibility that the same happens again, but you’d think that if he did that again it would have quite an impact on him as an individual. He’d look like damaged goods a bit and whilst they have also said they don’t need to sell, the player himself must be thinking about moving on to advance his career. I’m not even looking at that through Arsenal-tinted lenses. They finished 11th, there will be no European football for them, Zubimendi has cemented his status with the fans by giving it one more season and I think most Sociedad fans would appreciate that. I think that’s what happened when Thierry left us. The speculation after the Champions League final was massive and I think he was probably ready to go, but Wenger told him to sign a new deal, give us one more season, which he did and then we sold him to Barcelona after that final season of his. I think most Arsenal fans acknowledged what Thierry had done and that’s why his exit was sad but it was something we accepted. My hope is that we see the same for Zubimendi, only this time we’re the beneficiaries.

There’s one more bit of gossip that I saw yesterday that I thought might be worth a word or two on, which is that Thomas Partey is apparently wanted by Barcelona. There are some comments about how we are on the verge of having him sign an extension, which is interesting given that it has been looking like the opposite for quite some time until recently, but given what’s happened (allegedly) in his private life, given his injury record, his age, the wages he has, etc – I’m kind of thinking we need to close this chapter. It would mean we’d have to go and get another central midfield number six I think, because Zubi and Rice as the only option puts a bit of pressure on them both to stay fit the whole season, especially given both will probably play a lot of games together with Rice as the eight. So it does feel like we might need a more experienced squad rotation player to come in and play as an acknowledged back up. A Jorginho-esque signing that doesn’t break the bank but is a clear back up for domestic cup games would have to be done if Partey leaves I think. But we’ll have to see how that one plays out. I have a sneaky suspicion that the club and player might end up doing another one or two year deal here.

And that’s about it for today. I’ll be back tomorrow with some more musings based on whatever rumours start to circulate over the next 24 hours. You have yourself a good one.

I should start talking about left backs. Maybe that’ll be enough reverse-jinx for us to do a striker deal in the next 48 hours…

The reality is that it sounds like this Zubimendi deal has been a while in the making and the Fabrizio Romano and Sami Mokbel ‘scoops’ that emerged yesterday (heck, even Sky Sports started reporting it and they’re the last to usually know!) were merely just confirmation of a pretty open secret that has been around for a few months now, certainly from January, for sure.

And I’m reminded of how the Declan Rice situation played out before we signed him. We were in for Caicedo in the January transfer window, Brighton held firm on what feels like a little too much of an over price given that they paid basically what we paid for Declan Rice, then in that January I think it was Ornstein who was reporting that we were interested in signing Rice and had already been speaking to the representatives of the player. The noises we were hearing at the time were that the player was keen to join the club and whilst at the time I remember thinking “yeah right,  there’s no way we get Declan Rice” here we are a couple of year’s down the line, with him as one of our most valuable players.

The Zubimendi stuff does have one clear distinction though; Arsenal are doing this job early. For the Rice transfer we were against a West Ham team determined to hold out for an extremely high price, but also for a player who had – crucially for this story at the moment – no release clause. West Ham set the price and they could hold out for it. Even if there was a release clause, the club might have tried to negotiate it down anyway and that’s the reason we spent a good six week’s of that summer getting a little worried as we went toe-to-toe with City for West Ham’s captain.

Of course as we know it now, Arsenal had been working this deal hard, speaking to the player and making it very clear just how he would fit into the system, how he would evolve as a player and probably most importantly how he would be a regular starter. At City he had Rodri in his way or other players in the advanced positions which we now know is where we think Declan operates the best in.

That release clause is the reason Arsenal can – and are – moving quickly. We know the price, it’s not extortionate for a guy who has been described as one of the best midfielders in the Spanish national team, the deal is with a club we have done business with before (They had KT off us on loan last season, so relations are sure to be good, I would have thought) and I’m sure it’ll be announced as soon as that June window opens.

I do think back to last summer though. Real Sociedad had accepted a bid from Liverpool for him and I’ll be honest, I was very worried to see how he would line up for them in the number six position. It’s an area that they needed to solve and he would be what looked like a perfect fit. I had just assumed that the deal would be done, because why would Liverpool bid for a player, if he hadn’t already green-lighted the transfer? Whatever the reason, he decided to reject and stay at Sociedad and I’m not in the kind of mood to be trying to banter off Liverpool by saying that Arsenal is a better place to play your football, but I do wonder what made the difference between last summer and now.

Is it just good timing on our part? The player may have felt that he needed to do one more season at the club, to show his loyalty, which he’s now done and is ready for a ‘big move’.

Is it the San Sebastian connection with Arteta? Maybe. Arteta will know all about the culture of the club, he will have spoken to him as a fellow Basque from the region who has travelled abroad to ply his trade, plus he’ll have been meticulous in his explanation of just how he see’s Zubi fitting in to the team. If we know anything about Mikel, it’s that he’ll know EXACTLY how he wants to deploy Martin.

Is it the Sociedad former player connection? I suppose it can’t hurt. He’s recently played with Merino and KT in the Sociedad team, plus if you go back a few more years, he’ll have been coming through as Odegaard was on loan there for a season. Those players will be able to speak to him about the transition from Sociedad to The Arsenal, the Premier League, plus it will be familiar faces to help him bed in as he adjusts to a new life and a new league.

Regardless of the reason’s and motives, this is a great deal for Arsenal and we have to be happy that the club are moving quickly, which bodes well for the rest of the business we need to do this summer. If this deal can be concluded as soon as possible, Zubimendi goes on holiday as an Arsenal player (if he’s not on holiday already), he comes back to start pre season with his teammates, gets a full pre season to learn the style and approach of Arteta, is in the best possible position to start making an impact for next season.

He also ticks a lot of boxes for us. We should probably wait until the official announcement is concerned, but with question marks over what’s happening with Partey, with Jorginho on his way out, there’s a clear gap there that Arsenal need to fill and I can say anything more positively than the fact that the club has gone out, found the solution (we hope) and has acted swiftly.

Let’s hope this is a positive sign for the summer.

Catch you all tomorrow.

So, here’s where my head is at this Monday morning:

Still meh.

Arsenal need to get to 69 points to pretty much guarantee Champions League football next season. Second, third, fourth or fifth – it doesn’t really matter. But what does matter is that we just about get over the line as our very patchy/stuttery form towards the end of this season plays out. We’re on one win in our last six, which was against Ipswich, with four draws and that defeat at home to Bournemouth the weekend before last. It’s very much ‘end of season’ stuff and the fact that we’ve had 14 draws this season really does tell the story of yesterday’s game and also our season. You can certainly argue that Arsenal showed character to come from two behind against the Champions Liverpool, but let’s be real about this – Liverpool have been on the beach for a while now. There’s no way they give up a two goal lead if they needed to win this game, much like there’s no way they lose to Chelsea away last weekend. But equally, our patchy form has clearly been as a result of the Champions League run and that has born out by the fact that we’re limping to qualify for the Champions League spots.

But, as I say, we need 69 points. Chelsea and Villa could both win their remaining respective games and get to 69 points as a maximum, but the goal difference is such that they’d have to win both games by a +7 goal difference if we managed to get to 69 points and we’re on 68 now. So the team who has made drawing their superpower this season, needs one more just to secure it. The challenge we’re going to have is that it’ll be an in form Newcastle side we’re up against and they’ll be fighting for points, so it won’t be an easy game.

We’ll also have to do it without Merino, who was sent off and maybe even Declan Rice, who was injured and Arteta admitted afterwards “does not look good” when asked about his availability for future matches. So that’ll possibly be the following players missing for that game next weekend:

• Tomiyasu (yeah, I know)
• Gabriel
• Jorginho
• Rice
• Merino
• Gabriel Jesus
• Kai Havertz

The injury cursed season continues and once again I find myself just saying “please, can’t we just end it all now??” Arsenal’s injury list is miles bigger than any other side in the Premier League this season and once again we’ve been hit with the curse. Playing Newcastle will be challenging enough, but doing it without Rice gets all the harder too.

The silver lining is the response of the players yesterday, as clearly they haven’t given up like I have. I’ve seen the Arsenal goals and it’s a smart header from Martinelli and a really good strike from Odegaard for the second, with great follow up from Merino to head the ball in. Of course his sending off – totally the right call by the way – will have marred his own performance, but it does feel nice that we saw Odegaard actually letting rip for that second goal. One of the frustrating things about Martin this season is that his finishing has been woeful, but that one was hit with venom and was a fine shot and when you think about his effort against PSG that forced Donnarumma into a worldie of a save, perhaps we might be getting a bit more range being found by our skipper. Just needs to remember how to do that next season, because it’s not as much use to us at this point in the season.

It’s funny, having been frustrated with draws all season, I’d have taken one yesterday and I’ll take one next weekend too. Let’s just get over the line. I think we’re already close to, if not beaten, the most draws we’ve ever had in a season and certainly it will be the most by Arsenal in Premier League history. Draws…sometimes the most unsatisfactory of results and we’ve had them in spades. Draws are so ‘meh’ – so perhaps it feels very symbolic that we’ve had them time and time again.

Anyway, I’m going to clock off for today. You have a great day and I’ll catch you all tomorrow.