The Arsenal Women are, as they got back to winning ways with a 2-0 away win in Benfica, so hopefully that is a sign of a glorious Arsenal weekend ahead of a trip to Fulham on Saturday evening for the men’s team. And as is my wont ahead of these games, I had a little tiptoe over to some Fulham fan sites to see how they are feeling ahead of this one, as well as how the pundits are thinking this one stacks up.

Firstly, those pundits, who I don’t think any of us will be surprised to hear that they are pretty much suggesting this is an Arsenal win. Ignoring the fact that we haven’t beaten Fulham in our last two visits, this is clearly one in which most are suspecting we keep up our success so far this season in keeping clean sheets and Merse is predicting a 2-0. To be fair to him though, he does say that this is a game that we have to win if we are going to take the title and that just last season he saw games like this and West Ham last weekend in which we slipped up in. Sports Mole are also going with a 2-0 and I do like their predictions and the detail they go in to it on. Chris Sutton just gets a soundbite on the BBC and he’s also gone with a 2-0, although in a break from the rest of the pundit pack, Ol’ Jones Knows on Sky is going for a 1-0 away win to The Arsenal. He shows his workings though and talks about how we are so resolute defensively, but that one-goal, as opposed to a two-goal margin like the others have gone for makes sense to me given the fact we’ll probably face a low block tomorrow.

The managers’ haven’t been in front of the press today obviously at the time of me writing this, but given the noises around some of the injuries around Marcos Silva’s side, you can understand why the pundits are favouring us and why Jones is going for a narrowly contested contest. Last season Fulham got an early goal with their first chance and then they essentially retreated into a low block, for which we got one but were unable to secure a late winner from Martinelli. A repeat of Fulham scoring first and early tomorrow will most likely end up in a little Deja Vu I suspect.

The Fulham fans aren’t as hopeful though. Silva will confirm this later, but their walking yellow card midfield enforcer Sasa Lukic is out for a number of weeks apparently and that is causing a bit of a stir in the online Fulham forums. The first comment I read said “Personally I can’t put up an argument for us to win, let alone possibly a point” to give you a bit of insight. Another talks of a potential long night, then there’s talk of not playing well after international breaks, as well as one guy suggesting a 5-1 win is on the cards. I thought it was really unusual to come on a message board like this and see so much resignation; usually regardless of the result there are fans saying things like “I hate Arsenal more than any other club” (for some bizarre reason), or “we’ll smash those cockneys” or the like. But here there seems to be a bit of an acceptance and I wasn’t sure why. But th vibes appear to be based on the injuries and potential that their only fit striker Jimenez has a question mark over his fitness. You could see how that could be an issue and in a recent Fulham blog I read, the author spoke about how Traore may be a menace, but his lack of finishing ability really hampers them and so they are all crossing everything that Jimenez is available to play. Let’s not forget it was he who scored against us last season. But he wasn’t able to play against Bournemouth and so whilst I think he will be fit tomorrow, he might be a little rusty, which is what we have to hope. He hasn’t played a ton of Premier League football so far, racking up just 143 minutes in the Premier League across six games, which averages out as 24 minutes per game. Hence the hope of a little rustiness against a guy who has bagged goals against us before.

Regardless of his availability though, those Fulham fans in the main aren’t feeling this one too much. The game isn’t played in the ether, it’s on the green stuff, Fulham have more than enough as a Premier League side to cause us a three-in-a-row upset, but as I said when kicking off today’s blog and talking about what Merse thinks, these are the sort of games that you really do have to win if you’re going to claim to have a shot at the title.

Let’s hope that’s the case tomorrow.

I’ll be back in the morrow to give some more thoughts when we have the detail from both managers, but until then, enjoy your Friday and I shall speak to you all when a proper football match day is finally upon us.

I think from the transcript I read from the official site yesterday, there must have been at least half of the questions related to set pieces. I mean, I get it, because we beat United by scoring from two and a lot of noise had been made this season about it. Gabriel scored the winner against the Scum, we got our first goal last weekend against West Ham from it, plus against Sporting last week too. So perhaps that’s why the media have been going a little ‘zone in’ on our potency from  set pieces. But it don’t half make for some pretty boring reading ahead of an in-form Fulham team tomorrow.

I’d like to say we got an update on injury problems, but Arteta would only say that we had another session today (Saturday) before they would make a decision. I haven’t heard too many murmurings online, but gut feel to me is that I think at least one of them will be back tomorrow. I certainly hope so, because Fulham at home are a very different prospect to previous year’s. Arteta mentioned it in his press conference yesterday and said that he’s on record being very complimentary about Marco Silva and his team. There was the inevitable talk about ex-Arsenal players and of course Arteta spoke fondly of Emile Smith Rowe. I can understand why – he’s bagged three goals and two assists this season and along with Iwobi on five goals and three assists, as well as Nelson on one goal and one assist, the ex-Hale End boys are making their mark in West London.

Marco Silva will certainly be pleased with their involvement, although there’s at least one that he can’t call on tomorrow, because Reiss Nelson is out as he’s on loan from us. Other than Nelson, they also have Tom Cairney serving his three game ban for being sent off against the Scum two games back, as well as Andersen and Harrison Read. They will have Lukic back to anchor their midfield, which will be a welcome from Silva and I thought he sounded rather bullish in his pre match press conference, talking about how Fulham scored from set pieces against us last season and we didn’t manage that feat against them. He also talk about how no team is ever really surprised by another in the Premier League these days and I kind of get where he’s coming from; you have so much data and analysis in these elite clubs that they will all have detailed dossier’s on every single side that they face in the season. Even an amateur like me can go on to FBREF and find enough info about how Fulham play to get an idea on their approach (more on that tomorrow I think), so for these teams that can invest thousands on teams of people to do analysis, it’s no wonder that there are few surprises for where strengths and weaknesses are.

I do think the constant iteration and evolution of approaches is something that teams need to try to second guess though. For example, we’re currently doing this thing with set pieces where we start everyone at the back post and just as the kick is taken, the players move into position. It’s a good way of dealing with teams that zonal mark because you’re free and it creates disruption for those defenders trying to work out who they are going to duel against in winning the header from corners, but eventually teams will work out the best approach for this, which then means Arsenal and Jover will need to move on to the next evolution of how we approach attacking corners.

For this weekend, it will be something Silva is wary of, but he’ll be feeling pretty good based on his teams form. They beat Brighton at the weekend and their second goal was from a set piece. The third was a strike from Iwobi that is of a man who is enjoying life at the moment and it was a pretty tidy finish, but the game itself looked like it had Brighton creating lots of chances. That’s what we have to hope for tomorrow because last season we were rubbish on New Year’s Eve. It was one of the few uncharacteristically poor games from us and I remember at the time saying that our Premier League title hopes were over that day. Thankfully we went on a monumental run to pull ourselves back in to the fight, but with Liverpool absolutely nailed on to beat Everton today at Goodison, I think anything other than a win for us tomorrow probably is curtains. You can’t keep slipping up if you’re not the team with the buffer that Liverpool have – our margin for error has basically been close to zero for a couple of weeks now.

And over the international break when we were looking at this run of fixtures, I feel like a few of us Arsenal fans (me included) were looking at it as a favourable run. But when you actually get to the eve of the game it suddenly doesn’t feel like it. Forest were a team in form and so that game looked scarier than it (thankfully) was. United we expected to beat, but on the eve of the game and at halftime you realised it’s not going to be such smooth sailing. Then the same has to be said about a Fulham side suddenly in sixth. They had that weird result against Wolves that has certainly blotted their copybook in recent weeks, but they’ve beaten Brighton, Brentford, Newcastle and Leicester at home this season, so they’re no slouches at The Cottage. We need to go there and lay down a marker though; that goes without saying.

Hopefully the fact they played on Thursday and we played on Wednesday means that we have a wee bit of a marginal game in terms of fatigue and Silva mentioned it in his press conference, but he said that it is not an excuse, but you do hope that it leads to a little more sluggishness from them. Think how we played against them last season – that’s how we need them to start but we are going to need to be a lot better.

I think I’ll pause for today on that note and come back to you with a little more on Fulham and what we’re up against tomorrow. Catch you all then.