Today, those Arsenal players will take to the pitch for the last time this season in the Premier League; by the time the final whistle goes, they will be lifting the Premier League title. The name has already been engraved on the trophy base, and now it is time for the ceremony to make it official.

Last week we had the unbridled joy. We had the delight of knowing that, because of City’s draw away at Bournemouth, we would be able to enjoy the rest of the week as Premier League Champions. The consumption of #ALLTHECONTENT has been happening since then. I’ve listened to as many podcasts as possible, I’ve watched countless videos and comps, I’ve seen the different Arsenal players all being interviewed, as well as read Mikel Arteta’s press conference transcript. All that is left to do now is to sit back and watch the final game unfold.

And the fact that it doesn’t matter is amazing. I’m going to level with you – I was praying we could get it done early, because this weekend I have my German aunt staying with us, and later we have a family BBQ. As the game is going on, I will be firing up the coals. I prayed that I wasn’t going to make this an uncomfortable afternoon for my family, as they all sat outside, me inside in the lounge, making the air tense with nerves, the only interaction being the occasional check-in by The Management to see the score. But now, today becomes a party. The stress isn’t there. I can be jolly. Jovial. happy. I can welcome them all into the garden, I can fire up the laptop, I can interact with them whilst the game is going on, and I can be a better host.

I could not be more grateful.

I guess we should touch on the game, even if it is meaningless for both sides, given that both teams have bigger fish to fry next week. On Wednesday, Palace have a Europa Conference League Final, and I would love it if they won it. So, with that in mind, I really hope that Oliver Glasner just rotates his whole team. Play the kids, mate. You don’t need to rest anyone. The midweek action of last week means that nobody is going to question you now; get a rotated team in there, then let’s just get through this game as the most testimonial-looking, pre-season-feeling, knockabout that we possibly can.

And Mikel, do the same. I don’t care about the guard of honour stuff at the start, just get some rotated players in there, and have the key players rested for next weekend. So let’s see the following today:

Kepa

Mosquera   –   Norgaard   –   Calafiori   –   Hincapie

Zubimendi

Eze   –   Dowman

Madueke   –   Havertz   –   Martinelli

Not exactly ‘play all the kids’ from my suggested selection choice here, is it? But he’s my thinking:

1. Calafiori in – so we rest big Gabi, plus I don’t think he’ll be stretching himself too much
2. Hincapie in – because I think Calafiori starts next weekend
3. Zubimendi in – hasn’t played a lot lately, and I suspect we might go with the MLS approach for the final
4. Eze – let him get a nice cheer and a fun farewell for those Palace fans
5. Dowman – obviously
6. Madueke and Martinelli – haven’t played a lot, and we want to rest Saka and Trossard
7. Havertz – I think we should be giving Big Vik 20 at the end to run at a perhaps tired Palace defence to grab another goal before the season finishes.

That team can go out there, maybe even get the win, whilst getting minutes in their legs, and Arteta can tell them that they can all play for the opportunity to get minutes or a start in the Champions League final.

I would also think that all five subs can be used today, too:

1. Odegaard – get him on for the final 10 to be the one to lift the trophy
2. Timber – hoping to see him in the match day squad and get 20 minutes, to give him a chance for the Champions League final
3. Merino – back in training, and so surely 10 minutes for him would be useful
4. Gyokeres – as mentioned for 30 minutes
5. Saka – same reasons as Odegaard. He is the centrepiece of this Arsenal triumph. Let’s not risk him, but let’s give him some minutes on the turf.

There you go, Mikel, I’ve done the hard work for you! Just send them out there now

And go collect your prize at the end – you have all earned it, you all deserve it, enjoy the day. I know we all will.

Happy Coronation Day, one and all.

Catch you all tomorrow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Catch you all then.

But as Amanda and I reflected on yesterday in the Same Old Arsenal pod yesterday evening, all of us Arsenal fans know there is still work to do. Burnley may be down, they may be out of the league next season, but that doesn’t mean they are turning up to have their tummies tickled. There will be professional pride at stake for them, so I am convinced it won’t be a walkover. I hope it will be, but Wolves away a few months back should have been, as should Wolves at home, and yet we left it late at home, and were desperately poor in the dying seconds away.

And even though the Callum Wilson goal never stood on Sunday, they did still get the ball over the line in the dying stages of a game. And that has been something that we’ve seen a bit of this season for this Arsenal team, unfortunately. I’ve mentioned the Wolves goal, but there was the 87th-minute Man United winner at home, Ollie Watkins’ consolation goal for Vill at the Emirates, the Buendia winner at Villa Park, Liverpool’s free kick was in the 83rd-minute, and Sunderland snatching a draw at the Stadium of Light. So we’ve had a few of these over the course of the season, and that is something to be mindful of, I do think. When you have games like the Villa one, you can hand-wave it, but too often this season, there has been a very tight margin for us. Which makes moments like those we had on Sunday, where all of our hearts were in our mouths.

Palace away will also be a weird one. You would hope they would rotate and let us just have the game, but it will be in the sun (hopefully), their last home game, plus Palace always give a good account of themselves, so I don’t see that as a walk in the park at all. That sort of performance is likely to come from the likes of Unai Emery and his Villa team. We saw them against the Scum; we’ve seen it when he was Arsenal manager. If there’s one thing you can rely on, it is that Unai will roll over for City. Especially as he hates Arsenal too.

So it isn’t done, there are still far too many nerves, we have two hurdles to overcome, and nobody should count any chickens.

Which is why I, and several people I was talking to yesterday on social media, are pretty cheesed off with that absolute pleb who brought along a shirt to the West Ham game with ‘Champions’ on the back. Of course, the Sky Sports cameras caught it, and of course, he got top billing. What an absolute idiot. There’s always one that has to tickle the chin and goad the football gods. Well, I tell you now, if he’s spotted around the Emirates after the season has finished and we haven’t won it, then he’s not getting a warm welcome by any stretch of the imagination. Think of the ridicule that we gave that tosser City fan who brought along the Arsenal water bottle to the Chelsea game, then how suddenly he got filmed the next day by Sky, as well as being pictured dancing in the concourses after they beat us. He’s an idiot, too. I wanted it to be us that had the last laugh, but now City fans have a poster-boy with whom to direct their ridicule. Just keep it locked down, you absolute tool. Bring your ‘Champions’ shirt out after everything is finished, not before.

I guess that is just the social media age now. This guy brought along that shirt purely so he could get filmed. It has nothing to do with anything other than wanting to be on camera. That is the age that we’re living in. No more Andy Warhol ’15-minutes of fame’ anymore. Now it’s five minutes, but unfortunately, it means you have more and more idiots who want to do things like that. You could have tempted fate too much for all of us, my friend.

Of course, the stress we’re all still feeling, even now, is because we know that we’re nearly there, but not quite. I was having a chat with The Management about it last night. She said to me, “It’s funny how you all become expert mathematicians at this time of the year!” as I tried to explain to her that if Palace get anything tomorrow, we could win the Premier League on Monday night. I don’t think any of us expect that to happen, but if we do our jobs against Burnley, then it means that even Bournemouth away is essentially a ‘must-win’ for City.

And I can tell you now, with absolute certainty, that I have no qualms about winning the Premier League without kicking a ball. I wonder if there is any Arsenal fan who feels that way? I think even those who might have preferred to say “I want the joy of living that moment in the ground” will probably, after the West Ham game on Sunday, be thinking “nah – can somebody just confirm us now please?”, such was the stress we all went through. Palace doing us a solid, and even getting a draw would be nice, but I can’t really see that happening. So I won’t be watching that. I’ll just have a flick on my phone as full-time ticks over to see if goal difference is also going to be a ‘thing’. We shall see.

Right, I’ll park any more thoughts for now. We have a nice free week ahead of us, so I’ll be back tomorrow with more musings as we start to look at to Burnley next Monday.

Catch you all then.

And let’s be honest, so do we, with some provisios, a couple of quid pro quos, that we all want in place. Like Rule Number One: You can’t kill anybody in the squad. I.e. in January, every single first-teamer is going to need to be used. And used a lot. We can’t have any players just not seeing minutes.

Which leads me to segue nicely into the starting XI, which saw a relatively strong team put out and no sign of Ethan Nwaneri. I was in a Greek taverna just off the Seven Sisters Road as we talked about it beforehand, and the discussion was on his future, the second the team line-up was read out. Because if you can’t play Nwaneri in a game like this one, when is he going to find minutes? Portsmouth away in the FA Cup and that’s it? I know Arteta needs to play the team he thinks can win the game, which is why I wasn’t surprised to see Timber in at right back ahead of Marli Salmon, but Ethan has established himself last season as a good player and one that really we should be trying to nurture, so I’m just not sure the message it sends out and I’d certainly give a penny for his thoughts and that of his agent and family right now. They’re probably wondering if that new contract signed in the summer was the right thing to do.

And hey, I get it, he’s 18 and he has no right to demand game time, but this feels a little like a blocked pathway to me at the moment, and I worry that a very talented footballer might be forced to look elsewhere unless he’s given some kind of sniff of the first team at some stage.

But anyway, that’s merely a side note in a game in which Arsenal played – I thought – really well, actually. As I mentioned, Arteta went strong and decided Timber and Saliba needed to pay at the back, with Norgaard in that midfield anchor role, either side of Merion and Eze. Madueke and Martinelli flanked Jesus, and Arsenal were spun around from shooting the end we normally did. And it felt like the players suddenly thought it was the second half of a game, because there was no slow buildup in play. We were creating chances and dominating Palace, and Madueke was put in through on goal within the first five minutes, although his finish was pretty pants, if truth be told. But that didn’t deter him, Gabriel Jesus or Martinelli, who had his fullback on toast all through the first half (it was therefore no surprise that the right back didn’t see the second half and was hooked for Clyne).

Unfortunately for our attack, though, they came across a ‘keeper determined to make a name for himself, which is just as well because I’d never heard of Benitez before a ball was kicked yesterday. But he made a number of pretty impressive saves throughout, including two from Gabby Jesus, who lasted 86 minutes yesterday, and I think he must definitely be in contention for a start in one of our upcoming Premier League games now. He created chances, he linked play, and he was part of an attack that basically did everything other than the final piece of the puzzle and score – something none managed in the end, with yet another own goal getting us one up. And it came from yet another set piece, which is pleasing, but as Arteta remarked in his post-match presser, we really should have been three or four up by the closing stages of this game. The stats say Crystal Palace managed eight shots and two on target, but the only one I remember on target was Guehi’s goal on 95 minutes. Arsenal had absolutely dominated and in the expected goals tally we were almost at four xG (3.84) which is the sort of number you get when a team has had a drubbing, not a 1-1 draw as it finished.

And that has to be a concern for Arteta, because it’s starting to feel like a pattern. Everton away felt like a classically controlled 2-0 or 3-0 away win, yet it was nervy. Wolves scored with pretty much their only effort just over a week ago, and these late goals are starting to feel like a trend to me. That’s Sunderland, Villa, Wolves and Palace who have all bagged in 90+ minutes against us now. Arsenal and Arteta need to put games to bed more often like the Brentford games, yet we’re simply not doing it. Something has to change there and I’m not sure what it is. More shooting practice? More focus on opening up low-block teams with quicker movement of the ball? Certainly no more long thorw-ins, please, because we’re crap at them and haven’t scorfed all season from one.

But ultimately, we have to finish on a positive note, because kudos to Kepa who gets his moment in this game with his penalty save, after a string of scored penalties from all of the previous takers before Lacroix missed. And you can’t argue that Arsenal didn’t deserve to go through. We dominated almost all aspects of this game against a Palace side that was surprisingly at full-strength, showing that Glasner clearly felt an opportunity for a bloodied nose of one of the big players in this competition. It didn’t happen and as a result we now have a two-legged match up against the morally bankrupt football club that is Chelsea in January. Let’s hope we have ourselves a positive outcome from that because if we do, it’ll be an early date with Wembley and I think all of us wouldn’t mind a bit of that in March.

Right, I’ll call it quits for today. Happy Christmas Eve if you celebrate and if not, hope you have a grand ol’ day anyway.

Catch you all tomorrow.

Admittedly they were pretty terrible against a rejuvenated Leeds United side last weekend and some of the defending was pretty budget, I have to say, but I think that was the exception rather than the norm and I think we’ll get a better performance from Palace in the cup tonight.

I do think they will rotate though. They don’t have the biggest squad in the world and they’ve tended not to rotate too much where possible in the league, but the Europa Conference League and the earlier rounds of this competition has seen Glasner shuffle his deck a little and I think the same happens tonight. And we’ve got a data point to suggest that too, because in the fourth round Palace went to Anfield and heavily rotated a team with Benitez in goal (literally never heard of him until just now), Cardines (same), Canvot (again), Sosa and Uche all coming in alongside more familiar faces of Guehi, Lacroix and Kamada. So I do think we’ll see a few more of those unfamiliar names and whilst that represents a good opportunity for us, you only have to look at the fact they smashed Liverpool on their own turf to serve as a warning if we aren’t ready.

That’s been Arteta’s job yesterday and I think he will have been stressing to those players who will play tonight, that there is an opportunity to impress this evening, because I do believe he’ll take a few players out. There are some in which it is easy I think – Gabriel Jesus, Noni Madueke, Kepa – but because of our injury problems, I do think it is difficult to see how rotated he goes for it tonight. I still think there will be one or two of the familiar names to the team. And with that in my mind, my guess at a starting XI would be:

Kepa

Timber   –   Saliba   –   Hincapie   –   MLS

Norgaard

Nwaneri   –   Eze

Madueke   –   Jesus   –   Martinelli

He could play Norgaard at centre half, then maybe have that three-man midfield with Merino dropping in to the base, but I just don’t think he will and this side enables Arsenal to have a strong defensive line up, whilst rotating in some of those forward players to give them minutes. I don’t think we need to see Zubi, Rice, Saka or Trossard and I suspect we’re now at the point in which Jesus needs to start and get 60 minutes under his belt to see how his body reacts. Perhaps there’s then an opportunity to get Big Vik on for the last part of the game, or if Merino hasn’t started, he could come on up top. But I do think we need to get minutes in to legs and this team allows that. It also pairs up Martinelli and Jesus who, when Gabby J signed for us, struck up an impressive rapport in their first season playing together.

I also think you simply have to give minutes to Ethan and Myles and so I think they surely have to be a shoe-in tonight. Then, with them comes Eze against his former club and given he hasn’t started in the last game away to Everton, you probably give him the start tonight and then have Odegaard back in for Brighton on 27th. Then, behind them, Norgaard is the one I’ve chosen to anchor the midfield and my hope here is that Arteta isn’t tempted to play him at the back and then have Zubi or Rice coming in. Given he’s already spoken about managing Zubi’s minutes, it would seem mad to get him in for this game. That’s the same with Rice too; he is so important to us that if you can give him rest by having him sit this one out, then you have to do it.

What I am hoping for this evening is to see some of those players who haven’t started really make a case for themselves. Martinelli has bagged a few goals from the bench so I’m not looking specifically at him, but Noni has impressed without delivering end product domestically so far, so I’d like a big game for him. Then, of course, you’re looking at Gabby Jesus getting on the scoresheet to show that he’s back and to have people asking genuine competition questions with Gyokeres being patchy with his form. Behind them, Eze and Nwaneri probably do have a bit to prove and so I hope we get some twinkle from their toes today. At a period in the season in which the games come thick and fast, job-sharing of minutes is crucial and we need to know that these guys can come in and deliver continuity when called upon. They are all good enough, but it is night’s like tonight that you maybe just need to remind the manager that a little.

Palace will look different tonight in personnel, but their principles will remain the same; they’ll go with a back three, they’ll look to use their wing backs to create their with and get in to spaces as we try to press them high. So if they have wing backs who perform well tonight, that might be where our danger comes from. What we have to do is ensure that if we’re going to go one-v-one with wing backs and our full backs, then we need to win those battles that happen on the flanks. If Myles and whoever starts at right back (that’s why I didn’t suggest Marley Salmon to start there tonight, because I think positionally it will be seen as an area that Palace might be the most threatening) din their duels, then I think it will go a long way to us winning and progressing to that semi final that awaits in January to Chelsea.

It’s a competition that is low on the pecking order, but with the depth we have in this team it is a great opportunity to get some rotational players some minutes, whilst also making yourselves within spitting distance of a Wembley Cuyp final if you win. So let’s hope the boys go out there, do the business, but most importantly, nobody picks up any injuries.

I’ll be there tonight, then back tomorrow morning for a Christmas Eve debrief. See you then.

And as expected, yesterday’s 1-0 victory over Palace was as tightly contested as it could be, against a very well-organised and well-drilled Palace outfit. They are no mugs and as we saw with their shape, movement and ability to close their grip on tight spaces in and around the penalty box, we found it slim pickings. Saka got barely any change all game. Trossard was lively but relatively ineffective. Gyokeres didn’t have a sniff all match and we huffed and puffed without looking like we were going to break through a Crystal Palace back five that came to frustrate and hit us on the transitional counter.

The good thing about us, though, is that our defensive back line is water-tight and I’ve seen a stat online that suggested that Palace had just 0.09xG in that first half. We were restricted too, however, with just 0.11xG, but the difference was that we found the back of the net first and I think when that happens, we bet on the reliability of our back line to just not concede goals. I was saying to the lads in the pub beforehand that I didn’t want to say it out loud last weekend for fear of it coming back to bite me on the arse, but as soon as we scored against Fulham, in my head I said to myself “that’s it – that should be enough” and yesterday, after Eze had struck his first goal in the Premier League against his former club (more on that in a sec), I had that same feeling. The only difference this time was there was a fair bit more of the match to go, but despite that factor, we never really gave Palace too much of a sniff in a game that was just snuffed out after Arsenal went ahead.

And on the goal itself, that’s the kind of goal you expect Eze to score and that’s why we paid the big bucks for him. A fantastic scissor kick volley into the net following a knock down on a free kick. Set Piece Again Ole Ole as the saying goes…

The Palace fans must have known it would be him to come back to haunt them. It was almost like it was pre-destined to be this game that he got his first Palace goal. Having seen van Persie’s, Anelka’s, Adebayor’s and others come back to haunt us over the years, I feel your pain Palace fans, but I’m afraid this was a day in which sentiment cannot be afforded to any other team, so getting those three points by any means necessary was crucial for us this weekend. It’s a big goal scored for Eze too, which has some significance about it too, I would wager. It’s all very well scoring the fifth of a six-goal victory, but when you are the match-winner, the goal holds more importance and as a player you probably take more joy and confidence from it. That’s certainly what I’m hoping and at a time in which we are missing our captain and key creative midfield output, Eze has delivered for us. Good jobs.

In terms of the game itself, there isn’t really a ton of stuff to talk about, because it felt like a cagey one in which both defences cancelled out the attacks. I’ve already mentioned that our front three didn’t really get a sniff, but neither did Mateta, Pino or Sarr; it was one for the back lines and when the final whistle went it was smiles all around as we find ourselves four points clear at the top of the league.

There was some slightly worrying news from the end of it, with Saliba coming off at halftime for Mosquera, plus Calafiori apparently took a knock, along with Martinelli in that second half. Arteta said afterwards that he’s not sure on any of them and they’ll all have to be assessed, but one would suspect that none will now be involved against Brighton in a few short days time. The good news is that we can easily rotate those players out and bring in some quality players too; Hincapie came on yesterday, Mosquera played the second half and did well, so I think we have cover there. On Wednesday we could have a back five of Kepa, White, Mosquera, Hincapie, MLS and I think most of us would be happy with that. In midfield I think I read somewhere that Declan felt a little discomfort and so that’s another one that I think we need to rotate, but with the ability to bring in Norgaard, Merino and Nwaneri into the midfield three, I don’t think it’s too much of an issue. If these injuries are more serious and are going to result in extended absences for longer than a few days, then perhaps we need to worry, with Burnley coming up on the horizon, but for now we can only go off what Arteta said in the post-match press conference and that’s not too much.

And so we march on with another victory, another clean sheet, another weekend in which rivals faltered and I’m looking at that Premier League table and, boys and girls, it’s looking pretty tasty I have to tell you. Seven wins, one draw, one defeat, playing well, scoring goals, not conceding them, with a pretty tasty goal difference, truth be told. We’ve conceded three goals all season and those goals have been from a wonder free kick, Haaland, then a Woltemade set piece up at Newcastle. That can’t be too bad.

James and I will be doing a pod tonight at 8pm on the Same Old Arsenal pod so if you fancy joining us then you’ll be able to do so here. Other than tat, I’ll catch you all tomorrow.

Last season, every time Liverpool slipped up, we weren’t able to capitalise. I remember seeing that Liverpool had slipped up in match week 16 and drawn to Fulham at home last season. But we then played out a drab 0-0 at home to Everton, which felt like it happened on a number of occasions. Conversely, they were just always there and doing their business when we slipped up, so from a pretty early stage it felt like the league was going to get away from us. Today, up against a very good Palace side who are going to cause us problems, we need to banish any demons of last season and do what we’ve done nearly all season – get the result we need.

This was also a fixture that, last season, we fell foul to the dreaded Draw-itis that plagued us throughout the season. Palace picked up a 2-2 and were pretty good that day; Eze scoring a particularly good volley from the edge of the box if I recall rightly.

But today we need to have the answers to what they will bring, which will be a system that has born them a lot of fruit and bookending their summer was a very impressive finish to the season with an FA Cup, as well as an unbeaten run at the beginning of the season that only ended a few short weeks ago. Palace come here probably quite bullish, despite no win in three and as I alluded to in yesterday’s blog, Glasner sounded like he’s fancying another scalp today so we need to be on it.

We also need to be able to nullify their threat, which comes from a back three set up, wing backs that like to maraud down the flanks and get low and impressive balls in to an in-form Mateta who has five goals already this season. I think given how we afford Calafiori the licence to get forward and in doing so we vacate that left back spot when we are pressing forward, we are going to need to have an answer to the big switch diagonals into that space, because Palace will absolutely us that. A quick look at a few metrics tells you that. If you look at how many times they progress the ball through carrying it, or passing it forward (FBREF counts a ‘progressive pass’ as one that is not in the defensive 40% of the pitch) progressively, Palace are second from bottom in carries and fourth from bottom in passes. This is not a Palace side that like to build up play. They get the ball and they move it quickly with their long balls and specifically, long diagonal balls. Palace don’t have a lot of passes though. They are second lowest for the number of passes they attempt in the whole league. This isn’t a team that wants the ball all the time; they want to go front to back in as fewer touches as possible and that says to me that I think they’ll want to spring traps and break on us. And they’re good at winning tackles and doing that – the best in the league in fact. In that back three of Richards, Lacroix and Guehi, they have a strong defensive unit.

So I don’t think this is going to be a game in which Palace press us super high – they currently sit 14th in the league for the dominant stat on pressing which is PPDA – so I think they are going to want to frustrate us, then spring rapid traps with the likes of Sarr, Mateta and Pino, who have all been in good form.

The onus for us, will be on whoever replaces Big Gabi today, because all the noises are that he isn’t fit and with that in mind Arteta has some options. He can go with Mosquera, who has impressed in these early stages of the season, then shift William Saliba to left centre-half. Or he can play Calafiori in there and play MLS as the left back. A third option is Hincapie and I think had he played a bit more this season, that is what we would go with. It doesn’t send the best message to the Ecuadorian that he’s the left centre-half understudy if he isn’t the first name called upon when Big Gabi is out, but the problem is, we’ve only seen him on for a few dead minutes at the end of the Bilbao game. Other than that he just hasn’t been used so I don’t think that’s what we’ll see today. I suspect it will be a Mosquera/Saliba partnership and given how good Mosquera has been, as well as the fact he’s played plenty of minutes already, I’d be ok with that.

So far all I’ve done is talk about Palace’s threats, but what about our options? Well, from what I’m hinting at above, clearly Palace are going to give us the ball and try to rope-a-dope us, but perhaps when they are transitioning on us, we can counter-transition back, so if there are any fast breaks and we see it, I’d like to see us get the ball to the space vacated by their wing backs. That, for me, means that Martinelli and Saka have to receive it in space and it means the likes of the defenders, as well as Zubimendi, need to be going direct to them quicker. That’s what I want to see. Of course we have to try to do the business when they are sat in their compact shape and defending as a five, but I want us to react quickly when they spread their players out across the pitch.

Perhaps it’s also a game for a scrappy goal, if we have the ball and it’s congested in the Palace box? With that in mind I am hoping that Big Vik can get another one in off his arse if needed. He just needs to occupy the space. He’s unlikely to get the chance to run in behind too much today, so it’ll be another one in which he has to battle and if he gets an inch in the box – something Palace rarely succumb to given the stats – he has to take it.

And we have to take whatever is given to us. It won’t be easy, there will be nervy moments, but if you want to win this league, you have to win games like today. I suspect City will get a result against Villa away, which means if we lose today they will go top. So we have to react. Catch you tomorrow for a debrief

Me, I’m going to get myself out for a run, then I’m going to settle down to watch some football at home this afternoon, as the Management and the mother-in-law are in London watching Black Sabbath: The Ballet.

The hope is that there can be another weekend of hate watching with Chelsea up against Sunderland at three, United hopefully getting done at home to Brighton at five-thirty, then at eight-o-clock we’ve got Liverpool away at Brentford. I suspect in reality we won’t get anything go our way, but at this early stage of Saturday morning it’s nice to dream.

What isn’t a dream is the fact that whatever the results today, we shall still be top by the time our game kicks off against Palace at two and yesterday Mikel Arteta was of course all smiles and calm as the journos handed out their flowers about how well Arsenal are playing right now.

What a difference a month makes, eh? Because a month ago we were too passive in our attacking, we didn’t ’go for it’ enough against teams, we relied too heavily on set pieces and that was to be our downfall. Now everyone is queuing up to ask him what the secret of the success is on our marvellous set piece record. And of course, he divulged his secret sauce:

Hard work.

Who’d have thought it, hey? Arsenal and Mikel Arteta work really hard, on a consistent basis, at set piece routines and have been doing so for years. In fact, for around about a decade he said and given our record is so much more exemplary than any other Premier League side, I can believe it. This is elite football. This is a sport where the tiniest of marginal gains can make a difference, where all of the teams are really, really good, so to best them you have to be near perfect. And the way to do that? Practice. A lot.

I really enjoyed the conversation that the Arsenal Vision guys had in the aftermath of the Atlético Madrid game where they talked about how even if we don’t score from a set piece, the fear of conceding one to us is enough to make teams act differently. They were walking in reference to the MLS run and not wanting to foul him because then we get a set piece, so in a way they were dammed if they do and dammed if they don’t, which is a really valuable asset to have when you are competing at the top: unpredictability. It feels like we have that at the moment and with the squad depth we have, I feel happy that Mikel has all the tools he needs to get wins – including tomorrow.

That doesn’t mean we will win, but we have all the players and options available to put us in a good position, which is what the pundits and ex-players think too. Jones Knows has us down for a 2-0 on Sky Sports, Sutton over at BBC says the same, Merse has done the same and Shearer has also said we’ll win. It’s pretty much a full house across the board and with Palace having less rest time than us, as well as being away and having not won in their last three games in all comps, you can understand why.

Oliver Glasner’s press conference was interesting, because he sounded very bullish in it, of course saying that Arsenal were a good and efficient team. But for every bit of praise he dished out, there was a touch of the ‘yeah but we…’ about his responses, so he’s obviously confident that they are going to get chances to score against us. You can see why given the xG they create, the form of Mateta and the displays we’ve seen like their home game against Liverpool in which 2-1 was a flattering scoreline for the Scousers. Glasner conceded that he didn’t think they would get seven or eight big chances tomorrow, but maybe one or two, which would be more than one or two than most teams have got recently. But given how well they’ve played this season you can see why he’d be confident they will and I suspect that yes, they’ll get more than any other team has this season, so we need to be wary.

Talk of course inevitably shifted to Eze and his return to playing against his old club and Mikel said that he would be fine, as you’d expect, whilst Glasner simply spoke about how they are actually better off without him, citing that xG stat I used already, as well as yesterday. It wasn’t in a style that was a bitter “we didn’t want him any more anyway” or anything like that, but more just to big up his existing players. I do think Ebz will have an extra bit of impetus to impress tomorrow though. As a human it’s only natural to want to show your former club that you’ve moved on to bigger and better things, but if I’m in Arteta’s shoes I’m telling him not to force anything tomorrow, because we all have the recent cautionary tale of Declan Rice’s previous two season’s before this one when we played West Ham at home. He had such a nightmare one last season that he was hooked at halftime by Arteta, which I think is the only time he’s done that to Dec since he arrived at the club. The only other times he’s come off has been fitness related, so it wasn’t a shame to see that perhaps the game had gotten in to his head a bit.

I don’t think that we’ll get that tomorrow from Eze. For one thing I think our form is very good and I think he’ll have the support of a number of players around him to try to get the best possible outcome. But I do think he’ll start and I hope he can get on the scoresheet too, because it’d be grand for the ol’ #narrative.

Other than that I think there’s not too much to report from both respective conferences. We just have to hope that the knock that Big Gabi picked up against Atlei won’t rule him out of tomorrow’s match.

Back tomorrow for a bit more of a tactical look at how the game might play out.

It’s a fascinating case because I think most of us have sadly moved on from him, but as Simon Collings’ article points out, it’s easy to forget that before he did his knee in that United FA Cup game last January, he was on a run of six goals in seven games. I’d completely forgotten that and I think i’d even mentioned on here and on social media that my feeling was a move back to Brazil was probably what he should be angling for this season. After all, he’s most likely fallen down the pecking order with Kai and Big Vik duking it out for that central spot and Merino knocking on the background with his goal output. Gabriel Jesus can play across the front three, for sure, but he’s not getting in ahead of Saka, Martinelli, Trossard, Madueke and probably even Eze at this stage. But at 28 he isn’t a busted flush and that goal return before he was injured is worth considering before we think that he’s done. He doesn’t think he is at Arsenal and good work to the lads at Arseblog for doing the translation on an article in which he says he still wants to win things at Arsenal. nice words, the right words, but I suspect if there’s an offer in January to be had, Arsenal would consider it. We’ve got a big squad as it is, but having players already not making the match day squad and with his wages as it is, I suspect Arsenal might look to cash in on an asset – as nice a guy as he might be.

Until we get a deal though, he’ll be re-integrated and it shows just more strength-in-depth that we have at the club and I wonder if that is something that Palace will be wary of on Sunday. They were defeated to Larnaca last night and whilst I didn’t watch the game, I had a look at the result and stats and it seems they had a lot of dominance in the game and played a pretty full-strength team. Henderson, Guehi, Lacrooix, Munoz, Mitchell, Sarr and Mateta are all regulars for the Eagles and whilst subs were made by Glasner from 71 minutes onwards, it’s still guys getting games on a Thursday night before playing on Sunday. That’s something our squad is used to and our depth has been able to handle, but I wonder how Palace react to that? Hopefully they feel the fatigue whilst we’ve had two extra night’s rest and with Bernardo Silva bitching about it in the game we played against City (they had no issue the season before when we were in Italy two days after they were playing at home before going to Manchester, but there you go) , you know that this impacts these finely tuned athletes. Even if it’s just a 5% difference in our favour, that works for me.

As for their fans, a quick check of a couple of message boards reveals a little discrepancy between fans. Based on the 30-odd predictions that I read, there’s a blend of “We’ll get a scrappy score draw” and “this isn’t a good time for us to play them given our form”, with more leaning towards a score draw than a defeat. I can kind of understand this. We have to remember that Palace were on a mad-crazy undefeated spell before they got beat up at Everton, but that defeat last night is now being spun into a “three without a win” jibe at the FA Cup holders. As usual from the Palace fans I’ve seen there is a little bit of the ol’ “as long as we’re good on corners they can’t hurt us” and whilst I’d hope the Palace coaching staff apply the same principle, I’m not naïve enough to believe so.

We all know this is a good Palace side, a well-coached Palace side, who do create a lot of chances with their mid-block approach that gets plenty of chances when they spring rapidly from front to back. Heck, they’re the current xG leaders in the table by some distance:

Hopefully that screen grab comes through and you can see it from FBref.com, but what it shows you is that Arsenal are coming up against a team who know where the goal is and I suspect we’re going to give away a few chances on Sunday in search for the goals. What it might do is turn this game into a transitional one and create more chances for us, but I’ll park any further tactical analysis for the weekend.

For now we’ll wait until we hear from Mikel and Oliver on team news and whilst ours is hopefully positive, it’ll be interesting to see what Glasner hints he might do given the fact that Palace have – unusually for them – a disadvantage playing a European-playing side this time around, because of their own involvement in midweek competition.

So I’ll leave it there and be back to you tomorrow with some more thoughts following the press conferences. Have a good one.

This time yesterday I was writing about the Trossard deal, trying to justify what felt like quite an odd move from the club, as it appeared as though we were unlikely to be doing any more business. I pondered over what we needed from the trio of Martinelli, Trossard and Madueke in terms of goals and assists.

By lunchtime – or just after – that had become even more important, because the news was breaking that Havertz had suffered an in jury and was due to be out for a ‘significant’ period of time, as reported by David Ornstein. That was the counter-signed by a few journalists and as the club took part in an open training session in front of the fans at The Emirates stadium, the absence of Kai was very noticeable and a worry for us all.

Cue the hand-wringing from us all. This is what happened last season and this news meant that, like last season, a big player for us suffered an injury that would cause big ruptions in our aspirations this season. Our attacking options were supposed to be Big Vik AND Kai, not just Big Vik.

So I think it’s fair to say that the mood was pretty low. We’d been dealt another accursed injury and the season hadn’t even got going. And spare a moment for poor Kai; he’s had a knock in pre season, having missed a massive chunk of last season, yet here he is with another spell on the sidelines. An important player for us, loved by all of us, who can’t do the thing he’s good at. I’m gutted for him.

And yesterday afternoon I was gutted for us, because the news that was permeating from various sports journalists who had clearly been briefed, was that Arsenal were looking for loan options or something to replace Kai that would be on the cheap. The chats started. Vardy at 38? Nico Jackson? Asensio on loan?

None of them were optimal, none of them were Havertz, few really inspired.

Then it dropped.

Ornstein and Fabrizio, not long after each other, with a Bomba and a Here we go.

Eberechi Eze. The Arsenal. Fee agreed. Player wants move.

The online explosion was amazing. It was like a set of beautiful fireworks were going off across Arsenal social channels everywhere. This was the one we wanted. An Arsenal lad, a player who has been the talisman for a rejuvenated Palace side towards the end of last season. A guy who should have been the match winner last weekend.

Eberechi Eze. A Gooner.

Jobs not done, player still has to go through the medical and tonight he’ll be playing in the Conference League at home to Palace, but by the sounds of it Arsenal have moved swiftly to conclude this and he may be an Arsenal player by the time the weekend is done.

Honestly, the level of decisiveness that has been shown in this deal really is quite something and dare I say it, quite un-Arsenal like. We like to take our time on these types of deals. Just look at what happened with Gyokeres. Clearly a lot of that was down to the Sporting Chairman and clearly Steve Parish is a man who is loyal to ‘Ebs’ and wanted to do right by him. There was a fee and Palace were happy to go with that fee. And so he should – hopefully – become an Arsenal player.

The deal was ‘dead’ apparently. I heard through a mate that it was off a while ago and I don’t think any of us really batted an eyelid. The Scum had a pressing need, we were looking at our front line and left wing, there needed to be some sales and clearly we weren’t pulling the trigger on a ‘nice-to-have’ player unless we had space for him. The Havertz injury has clearly changed that and, worryingly, it makes me wonder if this is a really bad one that means we might not see him until at least 2026. If that’s the case, he will take time to get fit and so most of his season is probably hanging on a knife-edge, because there’s no way you sanction a £60million deal for a player like Eze as quickly as we did unless there is a big problem with Havertz. I am delighted we have moved, we have a versatile player in Eze who will fill a number of positions, but that joy is tinged with a little bit of sadness for the German.

There will also need to be a re-jig on how we line up now I think too. Eze for Havertz is not like-for-like. Eze can play left eight, left wing, I think he’s done right wing once or twice and he plays in the pocket as a 10. That’s a lot of spaces that Kai might have taken up, but if we’re looking for a rotation option for Gyokeres now, it feels like we’ll have to find an alternative solution. Martinelli? Trossard? Merino? None of which are optimal, but perhaps in some games we will need more from those wide players.

Whatever Arteta has planned for Eze, one thing is for sure now, which is that we are well stocked in those attacking positions. And we’ve brought in players who like a shot, like a dribble and can play more direct. That should make us much more unpredictable this season and given some of the stodgy stuff we saw last season, that is welcome news to all Arsenal fans.

Finally, before I sign off today, perhaps the juiciest of cherries on the cake, is all of the #content out there from Spurs fans. They came in their droves. They posted on TikTok, they gloated on X, they lorded on Threads and they chuckled on BlueSky. Facebook was awash with mems and the joke was, supposedly, on The Arsenal.

No no no my friends. Whatever happens in life, the joke is always on you.

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?

• Draw at Everton
• Draw at home to Brentford
• Draw at home to Palace

And they all follow a similar pattern:

• Arsenal dominate possession
• Arsenal play at walking pace
• Arsenal take the lead
• Opposition team is gifted goal(s)

To be fair to Palace, they pressed well enough, but it was still a wonder strike that brought them level after Kiwior had scored with that fine header from a free kick. You have to admire the technique from Eze, but of course it was Palace’s first meaningful shot. But then again, we scored with ours and aside from a good effort wide from Rice in between our goals, Dean Henderson didn’t really have a lot to do in that first half. Trossard brought us back ahead with a fine finish after a fizzing ball from Timber was well controlled, but if I think back to that first half all I can remember are the goals and that Rice chance.

It was a forgettable half, it was a forgettable game, with Arsenal’s performance littered with mistakes, slips and brain farts that have me just a little concerned, I have to say. For Palace’s second goal it was another mistake by Saliba and then Raya stood practically on the edge of our box from where I stood, which is incredibly weird given that the ball was being contested in our third. You would have thought the natural compunction of a ‘keeper would be to retreat back a bit, but I guess this is the way Arteta wants his goalkeepers to play – like a spare outfield man – and so as a result, this kind of incicent can happen every once in a while.

Mateta will get the props, but the finish felt odd to me, not like he meant it, although I guess it was a shot towards goal so perhaps I should give him more credit. But much like Palace’s first goal (Jover was doing his nut on the sidelines because he called somebody to mark Eze on the edge of his box, who was alone), it felt very avoidable from an Arsenal perspective.

The Mateta goal was scored late, for sure, but we should really have done more to put the game to bed, but then again we’ve been saying that all season. Arsenal’s inability to convert level scores in to ones that are in our favour is really rankling me – and you too I’ll bet – and to have 13 draws in a season where you have aspirations of trying to compete for the title isn’t really good enough I’m afraid. The Invincibles season was one in which we were seen to be having too many draws in it and that one we finished on 12. The difference was that we won 26 of them. Arsenal don’t look like they are going to get anywhere near that this season; certainly not with the way we are playing in the league right now.

It’s frustrating because we only really need a couple more wins and then we can just play out the remainder of the season not really giving a monkey’s about where we finish, because we know we’ll be second. But the fact City have started picking up wins (we’re now only six points clear of them) shows just how turgid the last month has been domestically.

We know that it’s all eyes on PSG and Europe, we know that there’s little to play for in the league, but you still need to do your job and these lapses of concentration, these lacklustre performances, they don’t smack of a team who can just turn it on instantly. I hope I’m wrong, I’m probably just venting after a frustrating night at The Emirates, but yesterday I said once again “just do your job” and once again, these Arsenal players didn’t quite match up to the ‘Foggin estandards’.

Arteta will probably have them all in today doing doggies.

Is there any point going player-by-player on this game? Not really. I’ve called out Kiwior for his good header, for Trossard’s fine finish, then Saliba and Raya’s poor collective actions on the second Palace equaliser, but there doesn’t really feel like there’s any other points worth talking about. It’s frustrating because Palace weren’t great, but we weren’t either. A real ‘end of season’ feeler about this game.

Let’s hope this approach, the mistakes and the mentality isn’t anywhere on show next Tuesday against PSG.

Back tomorrow.

So whilst I have lamented the domestic campaign for a number of weeks now, I still want us to ‘do our job’ and make sure we get  the required points needed to secure that second spot, which means a win tonight is what is required. That will take us to 69 points and have a lot more daylight between us and the rest of the league.

Palace will of course want to win, but they neither need to win, nor do they need to have any injuries or fatigue for their FA Cup semi final at the weekend. Oliver Glasner himself has hinted that they’ll make changes and although I don’t think he’ll rotate the whole team tonight, I also don’t think it will be the ‘two or three’ he suggested on their official site yesterday. They’ll be missing Richards who was sent off at the weekend against Bournemouth, but if I was to hazard a guess, I’d think that they’ll probably rest Eze and maybe Sarr too. He might decide to play one of those two, then maybe somebody like Guehi or Mitchell on the flanks. If Palace are going to spend this evening without the ball – which you’d expect given we’re at home – then they will be doing a fair bit of off the ball running. That might mean that the likes of the full backs and the attacking players are given a rest.

As for us, I think Arteta can afford to go a little stronger, because we have just under a week under we play PSG next Tuesday. I suspect the back four will revert to the first choice back four and that will mean a return of Timber and Lewis-Skelly. They didn’t play on Sunday against Ipswich and both White and Zinchenko haven’t played much football lately, so chucking in somebody like White for back-to-back games is probably not something Arteta wants to risk.

I think the midfield will be the ‘dress rehearsal’ midfield for PSG, which means the same as at the weekend in Suffolk, so that might mean a place on the bench for Partey. It’s harsh on a player who has been so consistent for us this season, but we need to get our system with as many minutes as possible together for another dry run before the big match next Tuesday. The game against Ipswich would have been a confidence-booster for the midfield and the attack on the day, but it was done within the first 30 minutes and when the red card came out; reduced to a training ground of keep ball, with Arsenal and Ipswich both knowing it was over very early on that Sunday afternoon. It meant the team wasn’t as tested as an outfit and so if I was in Arteta’s shoes i’d be looking at getting the lads out there again who will play on Tuesday night to see if we can work through more of those connections that will be so important when we play the perennial French champions.

So for me it’s Rice in the six, Odegaard right eight, Merino left eight. Then up front ‘we go again’ with that front three. Trossard putting in another positive play with the likes of Saka and Martinelli around him will do us the world of good I think. And hopefully there should be some goals tonight too to give them more confidence. Arteta did mention yesterday that Saka ‘should’ be ok, given his boot on his achilles on Sunday, so perhaps the only question mark will be on whether Arteta wants to risk him. Having missed so much football this season Saka will of course be desperate to play, but Arsenal, Arteta and the medical staff will need ton be very mindful of not stressing his body too much. So to that end, if he’s even a few percent shy of being fully fit, I don’t think any Arsenal fan would have any issues with seeing Nwaneri start from the off tonight. He scored at the weekend, I heard on the Arsecast he’s just one goal away from double figures for the season, so there’s an incentive there for the youngster to come on and see if he can do the business for us tonight if he starts.

As for how Palace will line up tactically for today, I suspect their game-plan changes little than usual, which will involve pressing off the ball and trying to transition from front to back as quickly as possible. Palace don’t like to keep the ball at all; they prefer to cover the hard yards without it, press the opposition, then when they win it get it forward to rapid attackers as quickly as they can. Their fullbacks also play an important role in this too and if Glasner decides he needs to keep more in the tank for them for the weekend, then I suspect there might be opportunities for us to test full backs that perhaps aren’t the usual first choice.

Whatever happens, we need to make sure this is a professional Arsenal performance, one like the weekend that helps us to set and build momentum ahead of the most important match of our season next Tuesday.

Back tomorrow for a Palace de-brief. See you then.

Of course that logic doesn’t quite work because if we were another six or seven points better off we’d be wondering if we could still catch Liverpool, so probably would be demanding our best players till play. So we’re in a bit of a weird situation with the Premier League right now in that we want to win and consolidate the Champions League spots, but we don’t want to do it at the expense of losing any more players to injury and therefore we want have the team with their legs up on the sofa’s at home watching the remaining Premier League games.

Tomorrow night we have Palace and that’s another one that you have to wonder what the approach is after Saka nearly had his ankle taken off. Do you heavily rotate to protect? Or do you say “we need to get to ‘xx’ points before we start doing that, so it’s the best possible team where we can”? I suspect Arteta will go with the latter tomorrow; he’ll want us to pick up another three points and if we do that then you’re basically looking at top five being practically done. I think most of us recognise that we’re probably the second best team in the league this season and so it would feel weird not to see us there at the end, but in reality it only matters that we are in the competition next season. A win tomorrow night puts us 12 points clear of Chelsea in sixth with them having five games to play. They have to play Everton at the weekend which you think they’ll win, but then it’s Liverpool, Newcastle and Forest that they’ve got. Liverpool will have won the league by then because they have Tottenham on Sunday, who are terrible and showed it again last night, so I suspect they’ll have their foot off the gas for when the Scousers go to Stamford Bridge. But if we can pick up three points against Palace, then follow it up by a win at home to a Bournemouth side who have just fallen away a bit and look like they’re unlikely to catch Villa in seventh, then that’s probably it for us in the league. That game, however, is sandwiched in between the two PSG games because of the Palace match happening tomorrow, so once we have played Palace the team has almost a week off to prepare for the visit of the perennial French Champions.

The fact that it has fallen like this is a blessing for sure. Arteta must be delighted to see Palace in the semi final, on so many levels:

1. Arsenal get to rest up after tomorrow for a vital game so can take the weekend off
2. Arteta has even more time to prepare, analyse and run the rule over PSG and how they will look to shape up against us
3. Crystal Palace players will hopefully have one eye on the FA Cup semi final on the weekend against Villa

This game tomorrow feels like more of an inconvenience for Palace than it does for us, so we have to hope that we aren’t going to get any disgusting Leif Davis-style challenges, instead having a game played with two teams who don’t want to pick up any knocks. That will be absolutely fine for any Arsenal fan tomorrow evening, for sure. It almost feels like this game tomorrow might have ‘summer friendly’ vibes to it.

I’ll do a bit more of a Palace preview on them tomorrow and today we’ll have Arteta’s press conference so we’ll get a bit of an update on player availability, but their domestic season is now all invested in the cups; they’re 12th in the League and because of the newly promoted teams all essentially down in all but name (Ipswich ‘could’ technically stay up, but they’d need to win all five remaining games, West Ham lose all five, then a 20 goal swing in goal difference would need to be achieved – so it ain’t happening), every team from probably eighth down to 17th is essentially just playing out the season now. It hardly makes for an exciting end to the season when the title is decided, the relegation spots are decided, then all you’ve got is Sky desperately clinging on to the hope that the Champions League race for positions will peak a little bit of interest.

It just shows that this season’s Premier League has probably been one of the most boring ones in living memory. But there you go.

Right, I’m going to leave it there. I’ll be back tomorrow with a look ahead at Palace. I’ll catch you then.

The time zone is a couple of hours ahead of the UK which meant I was able to time the watching of the game with an early dinner, meaning no disruption to the most important activity of the day:

Watching The Arsenal.

I still missed the first goal though; nature called just at the wrong moment and so when Gabriel Jesus struck early, I was only privy to the information from the gents loo’s. You’d think that a man in his 40s could time his body to work better and around The Arsenal, but c’est la vie, as the French say.

When I got back to my seat in the hotel restaurant (who conveniently has the game on two big screens in the bar attached to it) it was 1-1 though; the goal itself was decent, the finish was clever from Sarr, but I do wonder what Arteta and his coaching staff will be saying this week as they do a re-watch. He probably should have had a tackle made before Sarr struck the ball, but thankfully we didn’t have to wait too long before we got our noses in front again.

Gabriel Jesus’ second goal was a peach though, wasn’t it? Absolutely perfectly placed after a knock down from Partey in the box and he found the tiniest of gaps to place the ball in. What a difference a week can make in football. I’d speculated last week and after the Palace League Cup game that Gabriel Jesus could potentially go on a run now and I know it’s only two games against the same opponent (in his head this morning he’ll be doing the whole “can we play you every week” chant I’d wager), but he’s been a bit of a streaky player historically in his career and perhaps this is his ‘streak’ happening now. How long it goes on for remains to be seen, but with Saka limping off yesterday evening, it’s good to see other players step up.

That Saka injury will be a big worry for Arteta; Sterling was also missing and with games coming thick and fast for the foreseeable future, you wonder just how many he might miss as we hit the busy festive period. Arteta admitted his concern afterwards and we just have to hope that the scans bring back positive news.

Positive news did come in other areas yesterday though; Palace are a good side, a tricky side to play, but we decided that we would be super efficient in taking our chances. The game certainly didn’t feel like the dominant walk in the park it might look like on paper with that scoreline. Raya was called into action a few times and Mateta will certainly have felt that he should have bagged his second goal against us this week with his one-on-one.

He didn’t take his big chance, but plenty of our players did and it’s good to see Kai and Martinelli on the scoresheet, with some poachery-style goals too. Both felt quite instinctive and after a few games without a goal, Kai will be happy to get that feel of the ball hitting the back of the net. He played as a left eight yesterday and I thought that was interesting; we haven’t seen Kai in midfield since Villa at home last season and as we all know, it didn’t quite work on that day. But Arteta referenced it yesterday in the post-match presser and clearly they’d spotted a tactical switch from the League Cup game in midweek.

I do wonder if the fact Palace played their strongest team and we rotated a bit had an impact on this game too, you know, not just with fatigue for them being a factor either. Arteta will have known how they would set up, where the danger areas are, studied his opponent and he will have spotted something to go at them with; hence the decision to select the side that he did with Kai in the left eight. Of course Palace would carry more threat when at home, so perhaps from a tactical perspective there was a little

More simplicity to the result than I’m reading in to – when teams venture forward and ‘have a go’ you’re always going to get more space to attack, so perhaps it was as simple as ‘let’s get more attacking threat on the pitch from midfield because we’re not going to have a low block team today’?

He said afterwards that we were better against Everton and to some extent I think he’s right, because we certainly had more control and limited any real chances for Fulham, Everton and then Palace at home. But we were certainly more ruthless; the stats show that because Palace had more total shots than us (15 to our 14) and the same number of shots on target (six-a-piece). We dominated possession, as you’d expect us to, but we took five of the six chances on goal on the day. Do that every week and we’ll be seeing a lot of high scoring games indeed.

Of course we know it won’t always be like that, perhaps the media narrative about us being profligate in front of goal and only being able to score from set pieces was hyperbole, but as much as that was probably one way too far, talking us up as having now fixed all of our attacking questions on the basis of this game alone, feels like it’s a bit far in the other direction.

But we have a nice weekend and plenty of goals to be happy about, the team will take plenty of encouragement on the goals and the likes of Gabby J, Martinelli and Havertz will all be buzzing for their goals. As will Rice, who added the cherry on top towards the end. Lovely stuff.

Right, I’m off to Durban to see my mate Paul, who will also have been very happy with the result yesterday.

Catch you all tomorrow.

It’s my last working day today and also my last in the UK for the next three weeks, as I jet off to South Africa for the holidays, so it was fun to learn that the Scum almost blew a three-goal lead in the League Cup last night. Ol’ Mate-Mate was smiling in the end, but that team is batsh*t mental and it reminded me of that Sebastian Squillaci quote from about nine years ago:

It was very open, and often we found ourselves defending in the middle one on one with the opposition attackers. It was never easy.

Oh to be a defender in the peak Banter-era Wenger sides. Must have felt like that Jon Snow Meme:

Anyway, hopefully they learn nothing, they’ll most likely get smashed by Liverpool, so if we progress against Newcastle it’ll be us against the Scousers on neutral territory and that should be interesting. Of course we’ll have to go back to St James’ Park for the second leg, having played them at the beginning of the first leg and although we all knew whoever we played would be a tough opponent, the way the domestic cup chips have fallen has hardly made it easier for us.

The Scum also have basically a completely makeshift backline, which I only bring up because guess who they are playing this weekend? Yep, Liverpool. So Liverpool have played us with a completely decimated defence away, as well as now them down the road with the same. They played a Southampton side without a manager in the League Cup during the week, which meant they got to do a lot of rotation, whilst they play Accrington Stanley in the FA Cup after the League Cup, which will mean they can fully pull out all of their big guns and rest them for a weekend, whilst we get Man United at home, which means Arteta is less likely to be able to do that.

I reflected on how everything seems to be going Liverpool’s way – fixtures, lack of key injuries for a prolonged time, playing opponents with injury problems – whilst for us it is the opposite (we played Everton with them having had 10 days off, as an example). Arteta has been good and hasn’t moaned, but I’m a fan, so I get to do that on his behalf. It’s a little navel-gazing-y I know, it’s also a little too melancholy I admit, but I can’t help it. On the Same Old Arsenal pod we get constantly asked who is going to win the league and I am always a glass half empty guy, but this season it just doesn’t feel like it’s going our way. The silly suspensions, the constant injuries (admit it, you’re looking at the fact Rice didn’t make the squad in midweek and worried, right?), playing teams at the wrong time (I know everyone has to play everyone, but sometimes there are good times to play teams and bad times, right?), all seems to have added together to be working against us. Last season it was the opposite; we played a few teams when they were decimated by injuries (I feel like we played Wolves in a crisis on one game, as well as Liverpool without Salah) and we profited, but it’s almost like we’re having some kind of Footballing Gods punishment for some small slices of fortune last season.

I know, I know, it doesn’t work like that Chris. But maybe it does. Maybe, to win a title, you need to be good, have the right conditions, but also get your slice of luck. City previously mitigated it by essentially having 22 – 25 players who were all £40million+ players they built up over a number of years, but even their chickens are now coming back to roost. In the last time we won the league in 2004, we had a stable of players who basically stayed fit for the whole season; sure, we had injuries, but we also had core players who stayed fit. We were a superb team, but we also had things going for us, like the game at Old Trafford where van Nistlerooy hits the bar for the penalty. He leans over the ball a little more and keeps it down and we don’t go unbeaten and who knows, maybe we don’t go on to win the league.

Football can so often feel like a bit of Sliding Doors moments and this season it feels like every door is opening for the Scousers, but for us we’re walking in to them.

Then you realise that we still have two-thirds of the season left and that nothing is decided right now. There is still hope; the season could turn on its head and much like how we looked to have fallen out of any reckoning after the home FA Cup defeat to Liverpool in January of this year, suddenly things turned on its head and we went on that brilliant run post-Dubai. The games that preceded that trip were ones in which we battered opponents but looked profligate in front of goal. We got one spark – Crystal Palace at home in January as I mentioned previously this past week – and suddenly it all turns itself around. Maybe, in the most unexpected of twists, the spark from Wednesday night and Gabriel Jesus’ hat-trick, can be what we need to go on a goalscoring rampage? I certainly hope so.

There’s that privilege of the archetypal football fan – that word ‘hope’ again.

Maybe we can hope that Gabriel Jesus can go on a bit of a streak of scoring now? It’s not completely inconceivable. I feel like he’s always been a bit of a streaky player; his goals in his career have tended to come in spurts. His last season at City he scored seven in the space of about four games towards the end of the season and I think the season before he had a couple of spells of that. With us needing a ‘spark’ as I’ve bleated on about a few times in the last couple of weeks, and yet the January transfer window still two weeks and three games away (I’m counting 1st January as we’re not signing somebody the second it opens), we do need something to come from somewhere left of field. Perhaps Jesus can be our Christmas saviour (sorry-not-sorry)?

We have to hope so. But it will also be interesting to see what Arteta says in his press conference today and whether we get any hints as to whether Jesus is going to get another start on Saturday. He’s certainly put himself in a good position to do that.

Back tomorrow with some pre-Palace, post-presser, thoughts.

Arteta suggested he would do a bit of rotation and I had a feeling that Tierney would make his way back in to the side; he’s a Scottish international, he’s back fit, we still have no sign of Calafiori and Lewis-Skelly had played the last two games. This was a good time for KT to get some minutes, along with some rotation options. So in came him, Kiwior, Jorginho, Nwaneri, Merino, Sterling and Jesus from the more regular crowd, supplemented by first team regulars Partey, Timber at centre half, Trossard left wing. I’d talked about fringe players showing us that they should be a consideration for starting and this was their opportunity to prove it.

So to go a goal down within the first few minutes was the opposite of what you want to see. It wasn’t even a well worked goal either and I think Kiwior will be having nightmares about that goal for a while to come yet. Rouite one, over the top, he committed the cardinal sin of letting it drop and Mateta took his goal well.

And then it became a game that has been very familiar to us as Palace did what both Fulham and Everton have done in the previous two weekends and retreated in to a low block, telling Arsenal to “go on then, see if you can break us down”. And that first half was frustrating. It felt like a continuation of previous frustrations; we didn’t move the ball quickly enough, we couldn’t find a ton of incisive passes in behind and Palace succeeded in frustrating us. At halftime I was saying to the gents I was with that it’s always difficult to assess a half like that when there’s such an early goal, because the narrative and game state completely shifts. Would Palace have retreated so much and let us have the ball if they hadn’t have been a goal up? I’m not sure. I also think we weren’t that terrible. Sterling looked a little more lively, the back line was barely troubled and I thought KT was getting in to some good positions. We just – and this will feel familiar – didn’t have that final finish. Trossard blazed over, Nwaneri was popping the ball around but finding space difficult and Gabriel Jesus looked a little lost up top, if I’m honest.

So I decided to step in with my commentators curse and said to the gents over a halftime pint “I think Jesus is done, sadly”.

Oh, he wasn’t done.

That was his best half of football in…well…I can’t remember when. Football is a results and end product game, I know that and you do too, so quite often a performance is coloured by the fact you won or a player scored. But what we got in that second half from Jesus was more than we’ve been seeing. I haven’t seen him deliver movement like that in a long time. For the first goal it was a really clever run in behind and the deftest of finishes. I haven’t seen the goals on TV yet but the second one, whilst offside apparently, was still a very good finish. as was the third, drilled in to the bottom corner to make what felt like the game safe for The Arsenal. He was alive again and after he was so poor on Saturday, this felt like the exact game to bring back to life a player like Gabriel Jesus. The confidence this will give him will, I think we all hope, help to bring him back to the pack as an option. Because before last night, I think most of us agreed he was drifting away from this team.

In the morning I’d suggested large-scale rotation, but I think what we saw yesterday was an example of why you can have too much rotation. So come full time I was happy to be proved very wrong, because the introduction of Saliba at the back allowed Timber to slot back in to right back, which gave us more balance. Then the introduction of the skipper Odegaard created that incision and craft that an understandably raw Nwaneri didn’t have on the night. This kid is going to be a big star for us, I’m sure, but when you’re that age you have night’s like he had last night.

And the impact was almost immediate, as Sterling hit the bar almost straight after halftime, although I’m pretty sure it was easier to score than miss. But that was a sign of things to come and we dominated that second half. Palace did get one back, with a standard “ex-player comes back to haunt Arsenal” move in the shape of Eddie Nketiah, but we held on for what was ultimately a deserved win. And now we have a semi final to look forward to against either Liverpool, Newcastle, the Scum or Man United. Any of those will be rather tasty for differing reasons.

That was the first round of our double header against Palace, with us travelling to them this weekend and I’m trying to work out if this gives us any psychological edge ahead of that game. I suspect maybe a smidge, but not much, as it will be a different Arsenal side that lines up and they’ll give us more of a hostile environment under the latest of Selhurst Park. There will be more stress put on our back line this weekend than yesterday, but again that could be dependent on how the game shapes in the early stages like yesterday.

A few final points I wanted to pick out before I crack on with a day of work:

1. Interesting that Palace left three up for the first corner or two against us; I wonder if that will be a tactic we’ll see more with teams? (Although they didn’t do that all game)
2. Saka’s assist on the second goal was sublime – it was instant reaction from a player who delivers almost every time he’s on the pitch these days
3. I did enjoy the traditional “you’re not singing any more” from the home crowd on 74 minutes – Christmas is a time for tradition and that was certainly an old one from the songbook that I enjoyed
4. Finally – sarcastic ‘kudos’ to the referee for adding on five minutes of extra time given there was no time wasting whatsoever last night, yet against Everton at the weekend they gave four minutes. One of the big things that proper bugs me, that.

But we’re through, we’ve picked up a win, Jesus has a much needed confidence boost and we need to carry that in to the weekend.

Catch you all tomorrow.

Play all the squaddies Mikel!

I’ve chosen my words carefully here, because the usual response with a game like this is ‘kids’, but I think we’re in need of some rotation tonight and I suspect that’s what Mikel Arteta will endeavour to do. We have had a few players who haven’t been dropping too many minutes so far this season and given the volume of injuries we’ve already sustained so far, utilisation of players and keeping enough minutes in their tanks to be ready to first team action, is vital.

So, your Kiwior’s, your Josh Nicholls’, your Jorginho’s, your Sterling’s and your Jesus’ – all of them need a run out tonight and hopefully we can see some signs in life for some of them. Because the way this season has gone so far, ensuring that some of these players keep their engines oiled is as important as resting a few of the first names on the usual team sheet.

Maybe.

But we do need to mix it up tonight, regardless of what Palace do. Glasner played a pretty strong team in the last round and so I suspect he’ll be knowing that we need to rotate and will see this as an opportunity for a bit of a scalp, so despite what he said about Eze being touch and go, I think he’ll play him. IN the last round they flanked Mateta with Nketiah and Eze and given that Turner and Eddie return to an old stomping ground, it wouldn’t surprise me to see Glasner go for them tonight, in an effort to see if they can deliver something extra with that added incentive of showing their former employers what they are missing.

Eddie, in particular, will have a point to prove, because I suspect he’s looking at Gabriel Jesus’ form and saying “and you swapped me out for this guy?”

It’s true though, Jesus form has been pretty shocking since he returned from injury a few months back, but tonight should represent an opportunity for him to get a few more minutes in his legs and he needs to show Arteta that he is a viable option. He was a little better against Monaco, but he still fluffed his lines when in on goal twice last week, so if he gets a similar chance tonight he simply must take it, because those rumours about Arsenal listening to offers will not go away if he drops another six out of ten performance.

Our team line up should have a fair degree of rotation, as I’ve already mentioned, so what I’d like to see from Arteta tonight is:

Setford

Nicholls   –   Heaven   –   Kiwior   –   Tierney

Jorginho

Nwaneri   –   Merino

Sterling   –   Jesus   –   Trossard

I’d give Setford a game as I think we should be building him up as a future player for us, given he arrived from Ajax in the summer. I’d not risk Saliba or Gabriel, although I suspect one will play given the senior nature of Palace’s probably line up. But I definitely wouldn’t be risking Timber, Partey or even MLS; he played against Monaco, he played against Everton and if Calafiori is still out at the weekend, then he might get called on to play at the weekend away to Palace. So for tonight I think it is finally time we gave KT some minutes. It is a lower risk game, we might find we still have a player in there, plus it adds a degree of experience to what I’ve got as quite an inexperienced back line.

Then, in midfield, it’s the wisdom of Jorginho, the trickery of Nwaneri to continue his education in this competition (and hopefully his goal tally), followed by Mikel Merino. I’ve gone for Merino because he just feels to me like he needs more minutes under his belt as he adapts to our league from Spain (yes, I know he played for Newcastle, but that was a while ago now). It also adds a little more experience in the team, which is why I also think Mikel will opt for a front line full of it. Sterling needs minutes, Arteta has admitted that himself, Jesus too needs to start centrally and he needs to prove he isn’t a busted flush; after his essentially negligible appearance against Everton it feels like he needs a goal and a performance more than anyone else. Then, on the other side, I think we have to go for Trossard or Martinelli. I’d be cool with this swapping around and starting with Leo on Saturday, or if Arteta tells them both that he’ll give one 60 minutes and one 30 minutes and it’s a dress rehearsal for a start on Saturday, I’m cool with that too. But whoever it is, they need to show up, because we haven’t seen enough from an attacking and product from any of those four senior pro’s so far this season.

So now is the time to step up. I want us to win this game. You want us to win this game. We want these players to show that we have a bit of attacking depth. But the mindset has to be right and we have to go there to dominate a Palace side having just come off the back of a really good 3-1 win against Brighton away from home and probably fancying on making this a big night for them too.

They will be up for this; they’ll know we’ll have more of the ball, the attacking impetus will be on us and they will know that there’s an opportunity for a ‘smash and grab’ game. They have the talent and the pace to do it, so we have to be ready to keep them quiet when they try to hit us in transition.

That’s how I was yesterday, but as we approach the double header with Palace over the next few days, it will start to die down and focus will shift on these two games. Arteta will speak to the press again today and I suspect he will be asked questions about how Arsenal break down these stubborn opponents, especially at home, because the blueprint has been set by both Fulham and Everton this week and I suspect that Palace will take a similar view and approach. Whether they do that tomorrow I’m not sure, because it’s a cup game, but on the weekend I suspect we’ll see them set up in an organised fashion, look to give us the ball, frustrate and annoy in a compact shape.

This is not a new phenomenon to Arsenal, or any team operating towards the top of any division. So-called ‘lesser’ teams will always try to stink out a point or smash and grab; Jordon Pickford even used the words ‘smash and grab’ at the weekend. Arsenal have to react. Arteta has to react. We have to find different ways of scoring and different approaches. There’s probably been too much leaning in to the set piece narrative and whilst we can all have a chuckle when we score and chant “Set Piece again, Set Piece again, ole ole”, you do wonder whether it does affect the players’ psyche in some sense. Think about it; if you get so good at something, why do you not just lean in to it more. That’s great, but it also because a psychological crutch and I think Arteta will be looking to find ways in which we can be better in terms of how we operate in front of goal from open play.

I know that sounds really obvious, it is, but if I think about the ways in which you can improve this, I think in simple terms, which could be:

• More emphasis in training on attacking movement
• Shooting practice in training
• Throwing in new personnel from the start in matches
• Buying somebody else in come January

The latter is what everyone is clamouring for, of course, but we can’t do anything about that now. So how do we solve this current issue that we’ve seen in the last two domestic games? We can’t just hope that more teams like Monaco come to town and play. Do we even need to solve this issue? I mean, Martinelli stays onside at Fulham and we scrape a 2-1. Odegaard doesn’t fluff his shooting lines on Saturday and we probably eek out a 1-0. Life then feels very different despite the statistics looking exactly the same.

I was out for a walk yesterday and I was ruminating on this problem and thinking about the 2022/23 season. In that season I remember people talking about how we were ‘running hot’ on our xG. We were very potent in taking chances and to some extent, it seemed a bit of an outlier; teams just don’t do what Fulham did two weekend’s ago and score with their only chances. We were not like Fulham, but perhaps we were taking one in two chances or one in three in games in 2022/23. Things were falling for us and players like Martinelli were outperforming their previous season’s and subsequent season’s that we’ve seen. But this season it seems the opposite; you look at the numbers and stats and we’re getting in to good positions, we’re not giving up many chances, we’re operating as a team in the top of the league should, we’re just not putting the ball in the onion bag.

It all feels very Christmas has come early right now; what I mean by that is Christmas period last year, when we lost of West Ham despite battering them, lost to Fulham and were crap, then lost to Liverpool despite battering them at home. After that game against Liverpool, guess who we played?

Crystal Palace. We won 5-0 at home. I’m not a fan of history repeating itself, but I’d love a dose of that to come early right now, that’s for sure. Now, that was after the Dubai trip I believe and we came back a new team going on to win game after game, which of course can’t happen because of the volume of games. But there needs to be some kind of spark that we need. And we need it quick. Perhaps securing passage to the semi final of a domestic cup can help?

I don’t know. That’s low on the priority list and I don’t think many of us – me included – want to see Arteta put out a full strength team tomorrow night. We looked leggy on Saturday and a week off for most of the first team should probably be in order, regardless of the consequences tomorrow night, but Arteta does occasionally drop in hybrid teams in matches like this. Teams with a smattering of first teamers in them amongst some of the Hale Enders. Could he do that tomorrow? It wouldn’t surprise me.

Catch you all tomorrow.

Last night it was Emile Smith Rowe’s turn to be thrust into the spotlight, as Sky Sports ran with a story that Fulham and Palace are both interested in his signature. That’s probably good news for all parties, to be fair. Smith Rowe himself is from Croydon originally, born there and where I think his family still are, so perhaps the potential of returning to that area with Palace might appeal, but from a footballing perspective, both there and Fulham represent a decent, established, Premier League club that it feels like he could make a name for himself.

It’s good for Arsenal too that we have two clubs equally matched in their desire for him, I think, because it could open up the prospect of a bit of a bidding war and if the news is true that Arsenal have rejected £25million and want more, then you’d think if both clubs were super keen, we’d be able to nudge it above the £30million mark. He’s 23 (turns 24 in eight days), he’s played over 100 games for The Arsenal first team and as fans we all absolutely love him. He’s a perfect age for a club to be making him a key player in their team and Arsenal look like they recognise that. Fulham have just received around £47million for Paulinha and so for them to think that an attacking player liek Smith rowe is worth just over half that, seems a little off to me. I think Arsenal are probably hoping for a little too much if they want £40million for him, but nudge that £25million up to £30million and I think they’d be happy with that. Home grown player, had a couple of injury problems, but was fit for most of the second half of the season, is a good age, I think £30million represents a good deal for all parties. With a series of games and a coach who will start him whenever possible, if he stays fit, he’ll quickly be bumped up to a £40 – £50million footballer and whever he goes, I think he’d do well.

If it happens I also suspect that it will mean Arsenal start moving in to gear on incomings too, although with one less home grown player on the books and Califiore supposedly coming in, they’ll be mindful of needing to ensure that they do the necessary in terms of players coming in. The rules are that you can only have 17 non home-grown players and I think we’re on something like 14 at the moment. If Califirore comes in that’s 15. If Smith Rowe, Eddie and Reiss all depart, replacing them with overseas players may not be feasible. So whilst Arsenal probably only need a couple of players to come in for those first team spots, they might be right on the nose in terms of the squad composition. Perhaps that’s an angle they are pushing when trying to drive the fee up? After all, we all know there is an English premium, so why can’t that also be true of when we sell, as much as it is when we buy?

It’s why you can see why the club are being careful about who they bring in for that third goalkeeping slot, for example. If you’re getting close to your quota, you can’t be using up a slot on a guy who in all likelihood isn’t going to play. Raya is classed as home grown and so that solves that problem, but if Arsenal sell Ramsdale, do they want to use up a slot on an overseas players for the reserve ‘keeper position?

It just goes to show you how much planning needs to go in to squad competition these days, plus why English / home-grown players need to have a little more pounds/shillings/pence added to them when looking to sell. The market for elite talent that is classed as home grown is finite and if you’re a club like Arsenal you’re in a position where there isn’t really a point in taking a squad player from another team who isn’t going to improve you. We’re in a position where we need to be looking at any marginal gains and that isn’t going to be just onboarding any ol’ player who has a British passport. If we want to compete again against 115 Charges FC, then we’re going to need to make improvements on any player that leaves, with ones that are better.

Mind you, I’ve just remembered that Elneny and Cedric departed, so perhaps it’s not as bad as I thought. I still think they have to make these considerations when offloading players who are classed as home grown but still made part of the first team squad last season though. Nelson, Nketiah and Smith Rowe all got minutes – admittedly not loads towards the end – but replacing them all with non home-grown players may not be the answer Arsenal are seeking.

It’s still all rumour and conjecture at this stage and the players who have exited us already weren’t really massive parts of the first team squad as it is, but it looks like the next week or two might have a few bits to do for Edu and his team this summer.

Right, I’m offski for today. Catch you peeps all tomorrow.

I saw a few fans say that we should shut up about the Newcastle goal that was given now that we’ve had our own version of that goal allowed, which made me chuckle, because quite clearly those are two different scenarios. The first goal in particular on Saturday was Gabriel Jumping in the air and the Palace dude backing in to him, so I fail to see how Joelinton pushing Gabriel in the back is the same. But there you go. We had success last season, we proved we’re one of the better teams in the league, which has now put a target on our backs and means fans of other clubs start to hate us for our successes.

Ce la vie.

Unfortunately Bournemouth couldn’t do us a favour yesterday though as they got battered by Liverpool and it is starting to look like it’s their title to lose right now. City will win their game in hand and reduce it to two points, but Liverpool keep picking up results and I just wonder whether this eventual ‘blip’ that I’ve heard should happen will eventually come. They’re progressing through games, they’re picking up points and winning in cup matches, it’s looking ominous and whilst I am still holding out hope that we can start to string together wins that enable us to compete with the likes of City and Liverpool, I just have a gnawing suspicion that we might fall away. Which sounds a little defeatist on a weekend in which we’ve won 5-0 and have been able to get ourselves back on track, but it just feels to me like we’re hanging in there trying to keep pace, whilst those two clubs (City and Liverpool) are starting to ramp up their title efforts.

What we need to do is to start a run. The win on Saturday was great but there were times in the game where it didn’t exactly feel like we could say “Ahh, all good, we’re back baby!” because despite the eventual score line, Palace frustrated and handled us quite well at times I thought. They didn’t create a bunch of chances, but they did deliver a decent game plan and had we not have scored early it feels like we might have been in for a frustrating afternoon. What we need to do is get back to the free-flowing Arsenal and Arteta needs to be emphasising that in the next week I reckon. We don’t play for eight days and the team has the opportunity to continue the rest and rejuvenation that began in Dubai; get some players back, work on Forest and Liverpool’s weaknesses, then in a few week’s time life could feel very different indeed.

We do have to wait however and whilst it is probably good for the players to be given more recovery time ahead of a trip to the City ground, it’s bloody annoying for us fans having to wait for The Arsenal to be back on and playing. With no football we have to turn to other content and a quick look around the football internet quickly shows you that there’s little going on of any regard. We’re nine days away from the transfer window ‘slamming shut’ and this has been one of the quietest windows in living memory. Last week there was some questions around an Emile Smith Rowe loan to West Ham but Arsenal’s rejection of that says to me that Arteta will want to use him a little more than he has done this season so far i.e. sparingly. I get the feeling that Arsenal are – Cedric aside – happy to say the door is closed from both an incoming and outbound perspective and it does feel as though a lot of the Premier League feels the same way. There isn’t a lot of movement in the market and that is reflected in the fact that only the Scum seem to have made moves to bring players in, which makes sense given that they have £100million from the Kane sale helping to prop them up. City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Villa have all kept their powders dry and you just know that the people of Sky Sports are furious with the lack of activity. They probably rely quite heavily on those rumours fuelling clicks and views on their channel and website and with little action seeming to go on right now, they’re having to contend with some pretty naff guesswork from what I’ve seen in recent weeks. It’s a funny one though because whilst I want us to bring some new bodies in, with everyone else holding fire from pulling any transfer triggers, I think I’m kind of ok with us also keeping our powder dry. If City, Liverpool or Villa made a bold signing today, however, I’d probably start to get a little wobbly because I’d be thinking that moves were being made to strengthen a position whilst we’re standing still. That’s the irrational mindset of a football fan I guess. A new signing represents the unknown and whilst it’s true that a new signing can be a game changer for a club, more often than not they don’t end up being like an Erling Haaland or Mo Salah.

And with that in mind I think I might put a pause on today’s blog proceedings. You have yourselves a good one and I will catch you all tomorrow as we wax lyrical about how TRANSFER X is going to revolutionise our season!

“What does ‘good’ look like?” I thought. And I concluded:

• A win – that is kind of obvious and implicit.
• Goals – We needed goals.
• Goals from the forward players – we have to see that they are back into their scoring ways.
• Clean sheet – that would keep up the defensive belief going.
• Returning players – We’d been missing a couple lately so we needed to see some return.

And I think it’s fair to say that we got exactly that yesterday. Well, almost, but we can get in to the why’s and wherefores’ in a minute. But the important elements were that Arsenal are back on the winning trail again having deviated off it in December and January with three defeats in a row. And as the game kicked off and for the first seven or eight minutes or so, I did worry that the psychological wounds that had been inflicted on the team before the Dubai break were still there. In the first opening salvo’s of yesterday’s hammering of Palace there were one or two loose balls, a few players not on the same wavelength and I had a wee bit of nerves that we were going to get ‘one of those games’ again.

Palace had set up with a back three and just us I predicted in my preview blog the day before they wanted to contain Arsenal and then spring on us with long diagonals to Mateta up top and with Eze and Schlupp providing support. But that gameplan lasted just 11 minutes because as with a number of times this season already, Arsenal got their noses in front through a set piece. There was a few arguments from the Palace players that Gabriel had fouled Chris Richards in the build up to the goal, but that was never going to be the case and even afterwards I thought Hodgson’s comments felt a little half-hearted; like he probably didn’t believe them himself either.

Set Piece FC was up and running and we had the goal that our possession and control had merited. But in football that is never enough and so we needed that second one – ideally before halftime – to make the game feel that little bit more comfortable. So we did it again and it was big Gabby again who did the hard yards heading it goalwards to come off Henderson’s head. I thought it was a bit harsh that he wasn’t credited with the goal but it is what it is and the most important thing was that we suddenly had some daylight between us and a Palace side whose gameplan was basically done the second that ball hit the net. In the second half Palace would have to come out and attack us and the hope was that we would find the spaces to exploit too.

And that’s exactly what happened and why we all sit here today having seen The Arsenal bag five goals. Raya’s throw for the third one deserves special praise; he was quick to think and act and the pass from Gabby Jesus was inch perfect for Trossard to take the touch and fire it home. It felt like he definitely needed it; he’d been preferred to Gabriel Martinelli and up until that point I thought he’d been a bit poor. He’d not really got in to the game, had a couple of efforts which didn’t lead to anything and I’d seen him give the ball away a few times. So for him to bag that goal on the anniversary of him joining us was pleasing. It was a very tidy finish too I must say.

That really was game over but pleasingly we still managed to get ourselves number four and five to give this the feeling of an important psychological boost the team probably needed. Martinelli’s goals were almost identical carbon copies of each other and his finish for both were both cool, calm and collected (I’ve been listening to some Fleetwood Mac’s Isn’t it midnight). It was exactly what we needed and not only did it give us some of the mental bonus points the team might have needed, but it also will have helped our goal difference stats too. The win by that margin has notched us up from the seventh best goals scored tally in the league to the fifth, whilst the clean sheet ensures that only Liverpool have a better record than us. Hopefully Bournemouth can help us out today with that one.

There were some good and some less good points from the game yesterday in terms of individual players too. Zinchenko coming back in to the team was welcome; he’s been out for a while and having him back whilst Tomiyasu is away is important – we don’t want to be losing him for any more time because as we’ve seen, Kiwior at left back doesn’t really work for us. The less good was both Gabriel and Rice coming off with knocks. Gabriel’s one didn’t look too bad and he was in consultation with Arteta as he came off for Kiwior. The good news was that because the game was done at that point it didn’t impact the result  yesterday, but Arteta said afterwards that we are a little short in numbers and players injured so you wonder about whether he was talking of the likes of Big Gabby there. Then the other news was about Rice, who I’m sure you’ve all seen by now said to ESR as he walked off “hammy”. That doesn’t sound too great and the hope of every Arsenal fan right now is that it isn’t too serious and that he can recover in time for Forest.

The good news is that the game in Nottingham isn’t for another 10 days and Arteta acknowledged that in his post match interview. Our exit in the FA Cup means he has time to give some of those players with knocks rest, he can plan ahead with his team for that match and they can get a fair few training sessions in so we can be ready to try to take the points at a ground in which we’ve lost the last three games at and where our last league win came back in 1999. So there’s some time to try to break that hoodoo now and hopefully Arteta is already crafting his plan for success.

Right, that’s me done for today I think. I’m off to lie on a beach and slowly cook. You have a good one.

Arsenal have had over a week off, the batteries have been given enough time to re-charge, the players should be chomping at the bit to get on to the pitch this lunchtime and we have to see a reaction after three defeats in a row. We face a Palace side with one win in their last 11 matches, who have just been knocked out of the FA Cup, who played in midweek whilst we were off and who whilst they don’t exactly have an injury crisis, will be missing the likes of Doucourre, Ward, Olise and Ayew, who is at the AFCON.

But we all know The Arsenal, right? I mean we played Fulham over the Christmas period and they have one win in their previous five games in the Premier League in which they have scored a grand total of two goals, which of course was against us to take their only win since early December. SO teams always have a hope against us, it seems!

We need to nip that right in the bud today and that means I want to see an Arsenal team with fire in their bellies. I want to see goals, I want to see controlled and dominant defending, I want to see a match in which Arsenal take the initiative and the game to a Palace side that should be licking their wounds. I want blood.

If we don’t get that, if we don’t pick up all three points today, I think we have to accept that it’s going to be a fight for top four this season. It’s as simple as that. So these Arsenal players need to be ready to fight for everything and they need to be prepared for a Palace side that I think will sit deep in a low block and look to frustrate us from minute one. That’s how they’ve played previously under Hodgson and that’s how they will play today. We should expect a 4-4-2 or 4-4-1-1 and Eze will be their danger man on counter. They will cede possession to us and pose the question to these Arsenal players: “Can you ACTUALLY break us down?”

And that’s the answer we simply HAVE to have. We are going to come up against eight or nine defenders at time and their outlet will be through the likes of Anderson at the back, whose long ball distribution is, I seem to recall, quite good. They’ll then rely on either Edouard or Mateta as the main aerial threat, with Eze as the playmaker behind also looking to cause a nuisance. This will be football that we’ve seen a lot this season and we should be ready for it, so the name of the game today is no silly mistakes. It feels like we’ve been victims of the old ‘one shot, one goal’ trope when we’ve lost this season and if ever there was a game in which that could happen it was today. Think the West Ham game at home. Yeah, that could VERY MUCH be on the cards unless we take the chances we get today.

My hope is that Arteta has been working on solutions for this. Is it that we overload more in wide areas to avoid Palace doubling up on our wide forwards? We’ve seen too much this season that Saka has been stood up against defenders who just double down on him and that will 100% happen today. Or is it that we need more box crashing from our team? That means the likes of Havertz could have a very big role to play. Whatever it is, there needs to be a solution. Palace’s low block approach has seen them sitting sixth in the league for xG against and they’re seventh from top for the number of goals they have conceded. That means that although they don’t score loads, they don’t concede loads either. The picture is being painted of a game of attack versus defence here and that means we can’t see the Arsenal of just before the warm-weather training break.

Palace don’t progressively carry the ball, they don’t progressively pass the ball much compared to the rest of the league, They tend to launch the ball, they allow a lot of crosses from wide areas. What does this all tell me? What I’ve already said – this will be a low block, compact, “defend inside your own box” performance whilst looking to take advantage of set pieces, corners, or launched out balls from the back.

Arsenal need the attacking players to step up. We all know what our problems have been, but now is the time for the lads to do the business in the final third. No more excuses. Get that ball in the net. Repeatedly.

In terms of the team line up I’m expecting it to be:

Raya

White   –   Saliba   –   Gabriel   –   Zinchenko

Rice

Odegaard   –   Havertz

Saka   –   Jesus   –   Martinelli

So pretty much Mikel’s preferred XI today. And that team needs to show up. We need to move the ball quickly; I don’t want to see four, five, six touches on the ball. I don’t want to be reminded of the bad old days of David Luiz walking with the ball at his feet in the defensive third with a bunch of touches before doing nothing. I want to see movement, craft, a desire to stretch a deep-lying Palace side and to create spaces for each other that enables chance creation. I want to see quick interchanges in tight spaces and I want us to force that fatigue on Palace. Defending without the ball for 90 minutes is hard and the fact they played midweek and we didn’t needs to be an advantage we utilise.

We have the players to do it. They just need to prove it today.

Fingers crossed we get back to winning ways and fingers crossed tomorrow’s blog is one of joy and happiness, not frustration and angst.

Come on you Gunners.

It’ll be press conference day today ahead of the Palace game and with less than two week’s until the transfer window closes I think it’s inevitable that Arteta is once again asked the question on whether there are any incomings happening this January and, inevitably, he will respond with a variation of the party line that he has used for the last 19 days. It’ll be a variation of “no, nothing is close. We have to find solutions within the players that we have right now”.

And to be fair I think most of us have accepted that. Would we all like another attacker? Of course. Would we like to see a left back come in? Of course. Would we want maybe one more midfielder? Of course. But we all know the confines with which the club are operating in and I think the average Arsenal fan is accepting of the situation. It doesn’t mean you have to like it, but we all know where we are, so we just have to hope that this team can have some of the longer term absentees return and make a difference for the rest of the season.

One of the absentees from earlier in the season who could play more of a part if Emile Smith Rowe who, if you read a few of the speculative accounts on Twitter, has apparently been impressing in Dubai. That is music to my ears, I have to say. I think we’ve all thought his time is drawing to a close, that Arteta “doesn’t fancy him” any more, that he’s too injury prone and that the very fact he’s only been given dead minutes recently since returning from injury is a sure fire sign that the end is nigh for his Arsenal career. But apparently not. I’ve seen a couple of people who claim to have at least some sort of connections inside the club who have said that he’s been impressing in training in Dubai, he’s really stepped up recently and has been looking good. Of course this could just be wild speculation, but if this is true then it’ll go a long way to helping his cause for more minutes in Arteta’s eyes and rather than ask the manager pointless questions about incomings this month, I really hope somebody asks him about Smith Rowe today. I feel as though he was asked about him a few week’s back and said he’d been really impressive in training, or something like that, so I want to know if that is still the case if Arteta is asked that again. He’s always been a little different when speaking about Smith Rowe; we’ve seen him say nice things, but they’ve always been laced with a little “yeah but he needs to do a little more” in his tone of voice. That might just be me mis-remembering, but I feel like Arteta has always been a little more guarded about our number 10 and so if Arteta is asked about him and if he does sound effusive in his praise, I just wonder if there’s potentially more game time in there for ESR.

We certainly need to have more creative and attacking options. I think most of us agreed that the players looked tired, that there was a spark missing in a few of our forwards pre the warm-weather training camp that has just gone on, but whilst that week spent in Dubai might help in the short term, in the longer term those fatigue problems will quickly come back if we don’t find a better way to rotate in players more often. IN six week’s time when we hit March and the are back in the Champions League discussions, do you think that if we’ve used the same 12 or 13 players, that we’re going to end up avoiding the ‘fatigue’ question? I don’t. So players like Smith Rowe need to be used more and they need to also be able to contribute more. I suspect it is unlikely that Odegaard, Martinelli, Gabriel Jesus and Saka are all going to now get 10 goals to bring them up to last season’s tallies, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t just spread the goals around even more. If we see five goals from Saka, Jesus, Odegaard, Martinelli and Havertz for the second half of the season then that’s 25 goals right there. And I think that is the lower end of what they should be expecting. Now if you add in another five goals from ESR and Fabio Vieira (I’ve singled out those two because they haven’t played very much this season) from the bench and you’re up to 30. Let’s think of another 10 goals shared between Trossard, Nelson, Nketiah, Rice and all of the defenders/midfielders combined. Now you’re up to 40 goals. I don’t think those targets can be too unrealistic for the remaining 18 games in the Premier League. If we get 40 goals in our next 18 games then that’s an average of 2.22 goals per games and last season for the whole season we averaged 2.31 goals. So we wouldn’t be far off last season’s form for the second half of the season. Now, if we remain as defensively resolute as we have done this season (recent games notwithstanding), then we’d be talking about 38 goals conceded in the season which would be five fewer than last season.

I know, I know, a lot of “ifs” and “buts” in that little bit of wish casting there by yours truly, but I don’t think those assumptions are unrealistic. To expect Saka to get just five goals for the reaming games when he already has six, or for Gabriel Jesus playing centrally to score less then one in three, doesn’t feel that fanciful to me. But what we do need to see is a change happening. I think if we even want a fools hope of competing for the title, then we probably even need to be better than the numbers I suggest above, even if it’s just three or four of the hypotheses I have mapped out. It feels like we need to see everyone chipping in with goals even more than last season and if we don’t, if we get the same as the first 20 games, then we’ll be a long way from the good team that we thought could have another go at challenging for the title deep in to the season. That means that we need the likes of ESR to be as good as some of the rumours suggest.

We’ll find out whether that’s true soon enough.

Catch you wonderful people tomorrow for a Palace preview.

It’s an interesting one though because I wonder whether playing an hour makes a massive difference or not to their levels? Clearly the data Roy has is more advanced from the analysts at Palace and clearly he knew that he wouldn’t be able to do a solid 90 from those players. It makes you think about the balancing act Arteta has had to do with the Champions League this season, because we’ve seen some of our key players play the full 90 on a Tuesday/Wednesday, then have to do another round of games at the weekend. Roy obviously doesn’t have the depth of squad and therefore he doesn’t have the ability to go hard at a game on a Wednesday before doing the same on a Saturday lunchtime and it does go to show you how important getting that squad rotation and balance right is.

Perhaps that’s the next key learning Arteta will have to take from this season when we get to the end of it; we have seen some of our players play 180 minutes in four days and when you talk about marginal gains then perhaps that is something that we will need to sort out rather promptly if we advance beyond Porto in the Champions League. We play in one competition until then because of our knockout of the FA Cup and therefore I’m looking at the period between now and when we play Porto towards the end of Feb as being quite important to get the team in tip-top shape. But it is also incumbent on the manager to make sure that he gets adequate minutes in to the legs of the players who have perhaps played less minutes this season. Fabio Vieira is returning, Partey is returning, Smith Rowe is returning and eventually Timber will return along with Tomiyasu from the Asia Cup. By mid February he should have – fingers crossed – plenty of options to choose from and what I’m hoping for from this second half of the season is that we see a little more rotation so that those fringe players can make more of an impact than they did in the first half of the season. Chucking ESR for dead minutes at the end of a game is hardly going to give him the chance to regain that form that saw him score from the bench practically every time he came on a couple of years back. That’s what we need to see more of and if we’re going to have any kind of success this season you do feel as though it is the impact of substitutions that could be a difference maker. What would you give now for a couple of Reiss Nelson vs Bournemouth moments, etc? I know we had the Declan Rice last-gasp winner, but he was on the pitch; I’m talking the Nelson’s, or the Bendtner versus the Scum kind of moments. That’s what I’m hopeful for from our subs for the remainder of the season.

But they have to be given more than just ‘dead’ minutes in the last couple of a game. They have to be given the chance to impact and Arteta – who I do think has improved a lot this season – needs to be more bold if he thinks something isn’t working. If it’s 60 minutes and he thinks something isn’t quite right, make the change. Heck, if it’s the first half and you see something hasn’t worked, make the change. As fans we know that he is responsible for preparing his team, changing tactics in game, but another big part of his role is knowing when to roll the dice. My big hope for the second half of the season is that he doesn’t mind doing that a little earlier than perhaps he has before.

There’s not a lot else on at the moment so I might leave it for today, other than the other FA Cup tie that may or may not affect us that happened last night, which was Forest beating Blackpool. It means they play over the weekend before we play them, but as it’s on the Friday night, it gives them a little more recovery time than i’d have liked. Would have been good to see them play Saturday afternoon and then us on Tuesday, but I guess them playing Bristol might have Nuno thinking that they could get something from the game and play a stronger team. All the while our players will have the weekend off so hopefully that is another marginal gain we can take advantage of as we try to get our season back to winning ways.

Right, that’s yer lot from me today – catch you wonderful humans tomorrow.

We’ll get our opportunity this weekend though and we simply have to take it. I have been listening to a lot of Arsenal pods, watching a wee bit of video and reading a couple of bits online, where there has been a few people looking at that Liverpool game as a potential season-definer, but right now we just need to hurdle the current obstacle of Palace before we get to thinking about whether Liverpool could end or kick start our second half of the season.

We’re hoping to do some podcasting tonight by way of a preview with a few Palace fans tonight on the Same Old Arsenal podcast this evening, but I’m not sure if they’re confirmed yet, so keep your eyes peeled if you fancy joining the team to discuss what’s going to unfold at the weekend. without wanting to go too much in to a match preview though, I do wonder what Palace fans make in general of their season. They’re in 14th position, they’ve won five from 20, losing nine and drawing six and they have a man in charge who even last time he left them it was because they thought his career was pretty much done and he was in retirement mode. Roy Hodgson comes across as a likeable football man, but his time as an elite manager is drawing to an end and Palace and their fans must be thinking about how long they are going to be able to keep him around keeping them from out of trouble. They’ve tried other managers either side of Hodgson’s stints in charge and whilst Paddy Vieira looked good at the start, they quickly panicked and went back to Roy when there was an unfortunate run of games. I wonder what they think ahead of games like this? And I wonder how they will set up missing a few of their big players like Ayew and Olise. They have the impressive Eze and that’s somebody we’ll need to keep an eye on, but I also wonder what Roy will be thinking ahead of our game, because Palace have an FA Cup replay this evening away to Everton.

In some respects that’s quite beneficial for us because it means the Palace players and coaching staff have their focus on tonight’s game and trying to get through it. So it becomes interesting to see how Roy approaches the game this evening. If they rotate their team then it probably doesn’t go down too well with the fans; they are in the competition and a cup run excites every fan who dares to dream, so going back to my other point with Palace sitting in 14th they are currently five points off the relegation places, it doesn’t mean they are fully comfortable. We know that money talks and there is money in the Premier League ahead of a cup run, but if Crystal Palace can’t dream about getting deep in the competition, what can they dream of? Their fans are surely not sitting at work today ahead of the game thinking “can’t wait to see us avoid the drop by getting to 40 points”. It’s cups that excite and so my hope is that they show little sign of rotation tonight.

Because if that is the case, then Roy will be taking a team to the Emirates that played on Wednesday, got back in the early hours of Thursday, probably has Thursday off and then is training on Friday ahead of a 12.30pm kick off on Saturday. You know how Klopp has talked about how harsh it is to be on the 12.30pm kick off time on a Saturday having played midweek? Well let’s hope that Palace have the same issues. There will be some people saying “why are you hoping for Palace to be fatigued? We’re The Arsenal and we shouldn’t need a leg up” and I understand that point of view, but I’m a marginal gains man and if you offer me any advantage for The Arsenal in every game in a season, then I’m taking it all day long. I want Palace to play tonight, I’d LOVE it if it went to penalties, then I want a rested Arsenal team to rock up at the Emirates wanting to correct the errors of the Christmas period and early new year.

And in that vein I also want to see Forest progress to the next round of the FA Cup too, because if they beat Blackpool away this evening, then they will be playing the weekend before we play them on Tuesday 30th January and again, if that means Forest have had less prep time and less time to recover for the visit of The Arsenal, then all the better for me. It feels like we’ve been unfortunate with some of the situations we’ve found ourselves in of late (teams scoring with minimal chances, or fortune going their way through deflections or own goals), so if we get a little bit of an advantage by playing a few fatigued teams and if that enables us to get three points by any means necessary, then that’s absolutely fine by me!

So tonight i’ll be keeping an eye open on those games and hoping they go the way that benefits The Arsenal.

Catch you all tomorrow.

I wonder if Mikel and the Arsenal team were tempted to stay out in Dubai for an extra couple of nights? I think they are due to stay until today I think I read somewhere, but if they’re coming back from the Middle East at some stage this afternoon, boy are they in for a rude awakening.

As for us, we’ve all pinned our hopes on the warm weather affording a reset, the players feeling refreshed and that Palace won’t know what hits them this lunchtime coming on Saturday. Whether that actually happens is another story. And as I was on my run this morning, that mindset of a fan – me in particular – was something I was thinking about. After we played Brighton and performed so well to stay top of the Premier League, I thought to myself about how we were in such good shape. We then went to Anfield and the mood of finally actually being able to win there was buoyant. Of course we didn’t in the end, but there was enough there in that performance to suggest that this team were in decent shape.

We all knew that we had flaws; we weren’t quite clicking in the final third, we probably should have scored more than we did, but when you’re top of the league, have the best defence and there still feels like there’s more to come, you can park some of the minor concerns that might be permeating in the back of your mind. After that Liverpool game I remember being around my parents house on Christmas Eve, thinking about The Arsenal and thinking “we’re in pretty good shape. Two winds in our next two games and we’re looking good for a title assault”.

And this is what I’m talking about with the ‘mindset’ thing, because in my head I hadn’t really factored in the two performances we were going to get over Christmas. I’d almost already plotted out the six points; we would beat West Ham comfortably because Moyes doesn’t have a great record against us and we would pick up a win at Fulham because they weren’t in good form and we normally play quite well at The Cottage. By Christmas Day I was positively jubilant about The Arsenal because we were in control in the title race.

Just one week later and it would all feel very different. We all know what happened and then what happened a week later when we played Liverpool and suddenly having gone from being a guy who is plotting out the wins, I find myself heading in to this coming weekend thinking “hey, Palace are no mugs, they have had a week off to prepare for us too, they have Eze who is a talent, plus Rob Holding will probably come back on as a sub and Mavropanos us in the second half”.

Back-to-back defeats impacts a simple fan like myself, you see, because had we won our last three games, then I’d be pondering about how many goals we will win by this weekend. Winning breeds arrogance and conversely, defeats breed fear. Mikel Arteta’s job this last week is to show those players the footage of the last three games and tell them “look at this. You are the better team. Just go out there and don’t overthink in front of goal”. We do that and we should be fine. But until we see the evidence of that when the game kicks off against Palace on Saturday lunchtime, we aren’t really going to know what Arsenal will show up. We should do, but overthinking of the average football fan is our prerogative. What we should be doing is thinking “this team has won 12 of 20 games. They tend to win a LOT more than they lose”, but when you’re on a run like we’ve been on, it doesn’t feel like that. The irrational ‘chimp’ side of the brain kicks in and you think that any opponent you are facing could be having their ‘one big day out’ against you in the upcoming match. Just look at Fulham – they’ve lost five out of there last six I think. Their one win and their one ‘big day out’ was of course against us. Just had to be, didn’t it?

So here I sit, tapping away at my laptop with another four days at least until I see whether The Arsenal will be the side we think they are this season, or whether they are going to suffer from that psychological barrier that seemed to envelope them post Christmas Day, which has led us to score one slightly fortuitous goal rebounding off Saka from a Bernd Leno parry.

Let’s just hope that it’s all going to change from this weekend. The tide needs to turn and the goals need to come. The season depends on it.

Catch you all tomorrow.

Still, we’re on count down to The Arsenal on Saturday and at least that’s something to look forward to. For those who couldn’t survive the weekend without The Arsenal there was of course the FA Cup victory over Watford for the Women, for which they progressed with ease it seems, so that might have helped. But the game against Palace looms in the distance and it is one in which I suspect all of our attentions will start to laser in on in the coming weeks.

We’ll have to though, because there’s not a lot else going on in the Arsenal world, unless you’re going to count the fact that Mikel Arteta visited that Sale Bae D*ckhead in Dubai. Honestly, I’m not that fussed about what he wants to do with his time and I won’t spend ages analysing it, but I just which people wouldn’t give him the level of exposure he gets. It’s kind of cringe.

At least the team come back to the world of normality this week and the next images we all want to see is some training pics with some players returning. The big one for me is Zinchenko. He missed out of the Fulham and Liverpool game, then he was absent in any of the Dubai training pics – unless I’ve missed something. But when Arteta was asked about him on 5th January he said that he was progressing well and they had one more training session before the game against Liverpool in which he’d be assessed. So there could only be one of two situations happening I think:

1. He was a lot further off from playing than Arteta was letting on
2. They are keeping Zinchenko out of the training pictures for some kind of marginal gains advantage.

I’m not sure it’s two to be honest with you. I don’t think it impacts preparation of a home game against Palace if Zinchenko is in the team or not. Perhaps Palace will be looking at it and wondering whether they put a different type of winger on their right hand side, but I’m not sure Roy Hodgson will go that deep in to the 3D chess mind games to completely change the way he is going to play dependent on whether Arsenal have the Ukrainian in the team or not.

Which means Arteta was probably not 100% straight in his press conference because we’re now 10 days later and if Zinchenko was on the verge of training (or at least sounded like it) then he would have been seen somewhere in Dubai methinks. So if he’s out for this weekend it essentially means he’s been out for more than three weeks (as he didn’t play against Fulham on New Year’s Eve) and he’s already missed the start of the season because he wasn’t quite fit. And as Arsenal fans if we’re questioning his long term fitness and availability – and we really should be – then you can imagine that the Arsenal medical team must be doing just the same as well.

It’s why the rumours of a new left back – despite the training pics of Timber being released – do make a little more sense. The best ‘ability’ is ‘availability’ as the saying goes and Zinchenko has missed patches of this season and last season with injuries that I’m sure Arteta will be saying to himself that we can’t really afford. I think that’s clearly also why he was trying Partey in as a right back and why he also wanted Timber too: Risk mitigation. If Zinchenko is going to miss up to a third of the season then we need alternate options that might not be the same, but might enable us to at least have a very similar style and approach to how we play with him in the team. Then to have Timber basically be out from the second half of the first game of the season was unlucky, but I’m sure Arteta thought that after we were able to get 33 games in the Premier League out of Partey last season, we might at least be able to manage another 25 – 30 matches from him. His injury which has limited him to four matches in the Premier League this season (three as the inverted right back) has meant that his plans have been scuppered and with Zinhenko being out too, that’s why the noises on a new left back have been the loudest of the possible arrivals in January.

Whether it actually happens remains to be seen. We all know the restrictions and even the financially doped clubs are making noises about how they have to operate within the confines of FFP (City’s historical charges still remain unanswered by the way…), so I still think that we’ll not see anything for another week or two and even then it might be nothing at all. So the hope then has to be that we get a few UK training pics with the Ukrainian back in training and that he can stay fit at least until Tomiyasu comes back in mid February. If we can get through the next few weeks and if Tomi doesn’t pick up a knock in the Asia Cup, hopefully we’ll be alright.

But we shall have to wait with baited breath and hopefully when the press conference rolls around on Thursday or Friday we can get some more good news on him being back in the squad and training.

Catch you all tomorrow.

And so it came to pass that last night we were eventually made to sweat at the end due to some ‘circumstances’, although those were not really in our control and in the control of third parties who we all know about, but we’ll hold fire on getting to eventually today. But before then, let’s start at the beginning…

The murmurs on my football WhatsApp groups were certainly not ones of complete satisfaction an hour from kick off, as is the way with the depth of squad we have these days. No Gabriel, Tomiyasu in for the injured Timber and a continuation of the side that just about got past Nottingham Forest last weekend. Naturally when you see a guy who made something crazy like 72 or 73 appearances in the league in a row benched for the second time running you start to ask questions, but Fabrizio Romano tried to clear up the noises about whether big Gabby is on his way by saying that both player and club are happy. Arteta also came out after and said ‘nothing to see here’ and that Gabriel would be getting plenty of games and at this stage I think we have to take him at his word. But other than that the side stayed the same and I guess you have to say that perhaps there was an element of sticking to a winning team and that’s what I suspect he was going for. There is also the fact, as we now know post game, that Palace would set up in a low block formation and look to hit us on the counter, which is pretty much what happened until that turning point in the second half that I’ll come to in a bit. So I guess what I’m saying is that I can kind of see why he went the way he went.

And so we started and the familiar pattern was set for the game; Arsenal had most of the possession, dominated the ball and looked in control. We repeatedly looked to move Palace around by placing our wide forwards in very wide places and tried to move what was clearly a very defensively sound unit that had little intention of being manoeuvred out of position. Which made it difficult and chances were at a premium in that first half. But we still did create them. Eddie Nketiah, in particular, showed us the good and the bad, the Jekyll and the Hyde of his game. Firstly his spin of his man to create a chance and hit the post was impressive, but shortly after when one-on-one with the ‘keeper his flick over Palace ‘keeper Johnstone was poor. He should have scored it and I suspect Eddie definitely knows this. I was on Twitter and halftime lamenting his inconsistency, but ultimately I have to chalk it down to being a good day at the office because it was his quick movement in the second half to run in behind for the penalty that led to our goal; quick thinking from Martinelli sliding him in was clever, then his run and poke of the ball beyond Johnstone was equally crafty. I always find those kind of penalties frustrating though. Obviously not when your team is the recipient of said pen, but there’s no way that Eddie was going to get to the ball after it’d been touched past the ‘keeper, so it always feels like a weird one to get such a high-scoring chance from something that – had the ‘keeper not been there’ – probably wouldn’t have been has high scoring.

But I guess that’s kind of the point; had Johnstone stayed on his line then Eddie would have controlled it and had a one-v-one against him, so his chances of scoring ARE so much higher.

Nevertheless, it was a penalty, Roy Hodgson’s weird claim about Partey being a blocker wasn’t right but that man Odegaard stepped up and slotted away brilliantly. I thought Martin once again had a great game and dictated our tempo at times, with a lot of the attacking flow through it, but it was his midfield man just behind him – Declan Rice – who I thought stole the show. He was brilliant; he kept the ball, won tackles, recycled possession, was always showing and overall it was exactly the kind of performance you want from a guy who cost as much as he did. And his post match interview with Sky Sports was also brilliant. He’s such a down to earth guy and you can tell that he is going to have a massive impact for us not just on the pitch, but off it as well in terms of his personality. I think we’ve got a grand ol’ player in Rice, you know.

So that was the good, but there was also some other aspects of the game that were probably less than great, that I might as well get on to. Firstly, Kai Havertz who I really hope I am not developing a blind side for, but I didn’t really think it worked for him yesterday. He does go down quite easily for a big fella, I didn’t really think he impacted the game enough and if I’m honest I’m just not seeing whatever ‘it’ is that he does. Hey, it’s two games in and there’s still plenty of football to be played, but unlike many other players, I’m still not seeing how he massively improves our team. Right now I’m certainly missing Xhaka more than getting excited about Havertz. But we have time and I guess he is still learning about his new team and the way we play. So right now I think we have to give the benefit of the doubt.

And so to the main talking point from the evening, which is the refereeing and the decision to send Takehiro Tomiyasu off which, let’s all be honest here, was an utter joke. The first yellow I have seen that he had the ball in his hands for eight seconds and was booked. For this one, actually, I can almost sort of see. There had been a bit of the referee saying “get on with it” a few seconds earlier when Ramsdale took the free kick and I think about five minutes earlier that Tomiyasu had probably taken about 30 seconds on a throw in if I remember rightly. So perhaps Tomi was just a victim of the accumulation of instances and referee David Coote decided that enough was enough. Ok, I kind of get that. I am hoping we see the same level of gesticulation at the Emirates next time a team is time wasting on our home turf. I suspect I might be holding my breath a little too long for that instance to come about though.

What I don’t get is that just a minute or two before the second yellow card, Jordan Ayew brought down Saka by tugging his shirt back, whilst Ayew was on a yellow card already. There was some leniency showed there, perhaps because the referee was thinking “come on man, I don’t want to send you off”. Fine. I’m sure we can all live with that providing the rules are applied equally. And YET AGAIN we are talking about inconsistency because there is nobody on this planet who can truly tell me that what Tomiyasu did was worse than Ayew. The contact was minimal, if anything, the Palace player made a meal of it, the ref fell for it and noboddy was in his ear to tell him that it wasn’t worthy of a second yellow. I heard last night that they can’t intervene for second yellows, which seems like a very weird blind spot in the rules, but something has to be done in that instance. The referee was generally useless and inconsistent anyway, but in this instance perhaps it would have been better if he could have been told “actually, have another look at that, because the contact was exaggerated”. Instead, Tomiyasu walks, the game becomes an attack versus defence and we find ourselves with our backs to the walls.

But, as Arteta said afterwards, that fight and determination won out and we held on for the three points with quite an impressive defensive display, one which Arteta admitted he was very pleased with afterwards. So we move on, with two wins out of two, with the visit to Fulham next weekend in our sites. All eyes on that three point prize. Hopefully with less stress than last night though, eh?

Catch you all tomorrow. I’ll be re-living the game with the guys on the Same Old Arsenal podcast tonight so if you fancy tuning in you can do it here.

Palace away is a tough fixture. We have a fair few examples of that in recent years and even last season on the opening day, when once again Sky sniffed an upset, we came out on top albeit after a really tough game. We should be under the illusions that this should be no difference.

It’s funny though, because this game against Palace feels a lot tougher than when you see teams play at Selhurst Park when the season is full flow and I think it does mean something. I think Palace fans can be very vociferous and whilst the season is young and the ray of hope still exists that any club can have a great season, they get a little louder. If Palace play Liverpool at the end of November, or a Tottenham in December, I bet they don’t give as tough a game and as tough an atmosphere as we’re going to get tonight. It feels like we always have to do it the hard way when it comes to Crystal Palace.

But you have days like that and you have teams like that in which you have to overcome if you want to be one of the best sides in this division. There is no time for sympathy or ruing bad luck; you have to have runs of games that are going to be difficult and if you want to be competing for the major honours at the end you have to do the business on tough away nights like tonight.

This is going to be a challenge, we all know that, but it should be one these Arsenal boys are ready for. Arteta will have been drilling them all week, we’ve had over a week to prepare seeing as our opening game was the Saturday before last, so they should all be ready and pumped.

In terms of team news, it doesn’t like we have any major injuries that we have picked up other than Timber, which is where the first real question on who Arteta lines yup with needs to be looked at. I think he will go for Zinchenko. He played in a midweek behind-closed-doors friendly against Luton, he got 60 minutes under his belt and although Arteta was saying something like “hopefully he’ll be back soon” when he was asked about him last week in his presser, I think Arteta is chucking him in today. He’s done that before with Zinchenko; remember last season when we didn’t see anything of him, then suddenly he started against United at Old Trafford? I think Arteta will do that tonight because I think – for all of his injury problems – Zinchenko is a guy who when he’s fit he can just slot in. He isn’t somebody who needs to start with 10 minutes as a sub, then 20, then 30, the 60 minutes from the start, then after his fourth appearance he’s ready to play 90, he just strikes me as somebody who will come in. Maybe he doesn’t last the whole match but maybe we get most of a game out of him.

The rest of the team, I think, picks itself. Although that can’t really truly be said given the squad Arteta has now. But gut feel tells me it’s Ramsdale in goal, White at right back, Saliba and Gabriel are the two centre halves with Zinny at left back. Base of the team has to be Partey and then I suspect Arteta goes Rice and Odegaard, with Martinelli wide left and Saka wide right. But who to play up top? Last weekend it was Eddie because he ‘played like a beast’. Has he done the same this last week? Or was that just Arteta trying to ‘big him up’? I have absolutely no idea. But I do wonder if it might be Havertz through the middle to cope with physicality of Andersen and Guehi at centre back that Palace will offer.

Palace will have Eze there pulling the strings behind Eduoard who, despite not really being too prolific since joining from Celtic, appears to like a goal against us and scored last weekend. So I’m expecting the same tonight; remember when Benteke couldn’t finish his dinner, let alone chances, yet bagged his first goal in years a couple of seasons back at The Emirates? Yeah, that.

I think with the long distribution of Andersen too, they’ll look for willing runners getting behind our back line and I think that means that we’ll see us stretched, although whether or not they will look to drive that through the wide left channel on their side remains to be seen. Last season it was Zaha that they tried to unlock and Ben White had a pretty good game in keeping him quiet. this time around I suspect they will look to operate more centrally and play through us; Eze certainly will be the one to watch from that perspective.

I’m not quite sure how this one will go tonight. We should have enough to control possession, but at this early stage of the season, with the crowd sure to be raucous, it feels like we’re in for a rough ride. Key is to silence that home crowd and if we can start fast, start quick, if we can score early, then it changes the complexion of the game. If we see Palace get a few early chances in to whip up the crowd, then it might end up being a tough old evening.

If you’re going then sing up for the Arsenal. I’ll be there from my sofa with my heart rate raised as usual, hoping for a win and crossing everything!

Catch you all tomorrow for a post match debrief and then in the evening we’ll be doing the Same Old Arsenal pod, so join us then if you can – I’ll pop a link in it in tomorrow’s blog.

Have a good one people!