Today we’ll have the managers’ press conference, which will give us an update on team news, which won’t be very telling on our side. But as I sort of touched on yesterday, it is Chelsea’s team that I am more interested in knowing who is available. For us, the main question will centre around whether Havertz can make the match-day squad, with Mikel Arteta saying last week that he had the outside chance of making the game against the Scum. We’re a week later now and so my hopes are that we get some good news, although we need to be ready to hear a ‘not-a-lot’ update from Arteta; I think he’ll say the same as last week, which could mean anything. The reports of the Havertz injury came out around 12th February, so if he was due to miss a month, that puts him as possibly available next weekend at best, I would suggest. Let’s just hope for some good news, though, anyway, eh?

So, as we head into this weekend’s set of fixtures, what are the pundits saying about our hopes?

Well, Lewis Jones on Sky Sports thinks we’ll get a clean sheet in a 2-0 win, and whilst I’d love to say that it’s music to mine ears, he’s also predicted a West Ham win at Liverpool (never gonna happen), and a Man City draw away at Leeds. I was at a leaving do last night for a mate who is a Leeds fan. We had a chat about the game tomorrow, and I asked him what the chances are of Leeds doing us a favour. To my surprise, he said, “You never know – it’s under the lights as a 5.30 pm kick off, we have a team of big bastards you boot people around, the crowd get massively up for night games, so there might be a chance. Or we’ll be down 3-0 within 15 minutes” – so I liked what he said other than the last bit!

Lewis Jones also said we’d draw 1-1 away at the Scum last week, so I guess his predictions are there to be taken with a pinch of salt. Chris Sutton is going with a 2-0, but his guest – some dude from Neighbours – went for 2-2, and the BBC AI-generated predictor said 2-2 as well, which I thought was interesting because most people don’t really predict Arsenal conceding for obvious reasons. But when you stop and look at 2026, clean sheets have been harder to come by, so predicting that Chelsea will score is probably not too wide of the mark. In every game in 2026, it has felt as though the opposition have one wonder strike in them, or Arsenal have a shoot-oneself-in-the-foot moment, so you wouldn’t bank on that not happening this weekend, would you?

Merse has gone for a closer encounter with a 1-0 to The Arsenal, whereas Mark Lawrenson has gone with a 3-1 Arsenal. Of all of the scores, that’s the one I feel could be on the cards the most, for the aforementioned Arsenal, conceding silly goals or worldies rule. Could also be a 2-1, but obviously, the more we score, the better, and so I’m hoping for some manifestation of my prediction.

What about those Chelsea fans? though? How are they feeling ahead of this one?

Well, the first one I came across on a forum had this to say:

We’ll have no Cucu, no Estevao, no Fofana, a seriously off form Caicedo and a poorly off form Palmer. Only way we score is if Arse sh*t the bed themselves

Yes please! I’ll take that! I didn’t know about Estevao, but apparently, he missed Burnley with a hamstring issue, so let’s hope that remains true. Having scrolled through a couple of pages of fan comments, it’s fair to say they aren’t too happy with their new manager, Liam. The crux of what I’ve just read is:

• They really don’t rate that Tosin fella at the back, and shortly behind him, they don’t really fancy Badiashile
• They fear that Rosenior will just replicate the League Cup tactics
• They seem convinced somebody from Chelsea is getting sent off

One of the forums has a poll of the score and has it as 56% of Chelsea fans thinking it’ll be a win for us, 18% think a draw and 25% think they’ll win. So the odds, even with the Chelsea fans, seem to be stacked in our favour, but they were massively against United, Wolves, Brentford and Forest, and look how that turned out, so we need to be mindful of these prediction routines. Instead, let’s look to the data on Chelsea, which again is quite difficult, given that Rosenior is still forging the identity for his new team. The stats tell us that behind City and us, Chelsea have scored the most goals. It tells us that they haven’t, however, had a ton of shots and sit fifth in the table, having had 43 fewer shots than us this season, and 13 fewer on target. They average more possession than us and sit third in the league, whilst also having attempted 1,101 passes more than us so far. The picture is starting to form on them over the whole season – they want to keep more of the ball than us for sure. They lead the league for passes per defensive active (PPDA), which means they allow the least amount of time for an opponent to be on the ball before engaging them, but only just behind us. Defensively is where they have challenges, sitting firmly in mid-table with their xG allowed, whilst also having the highest average xG allowed per shot – so in other words, of every team in the Premier League, Chelsea do give their opposition high-quality chances.

So we have a bit of a picture here from the whole season. But what has Rosenior done for himself in the 11 or so games he’s managed for them? Well, apparently, he’s given more reigns to Andrey Santos to do the defensive midfield work, which means Caicedo can go hunting for the ball and pop up across different areas of the pitch with more regularity. Enzo Fernandez no longer sits alongside him, but in the left half-space. The teams do, apparently, also have less structure about them compared to Maresca, in which it was seen as a bit of a millstone around their neck at times. They appear to be good in patches, but I found what Merse said a couple of weeks back interesting on Sky Sports – that they couldn’t string a 90-minute match together. I don’t want to say that feels similar to us, because it clearly isn’t, but at times in 2026 so far, it has felt as though we kind of just give up first halves, expecting to then do the business in the second. That’s not how you qualify for the Champions League in Chelsea’s case, and it’s certainly not how you win a league title in ours, so my hope is that we won’t see that this weekend like we did in the League Cup – i.e. a cagey nothing game, certainly in that first half.

In that game, however, we didn’t have to go for it. This weekend, if we want those three points, we really do.

Right, that’s enough waffle from me for one day. I’m off to do some work. You have a great Friday, and I’ll be back tomorrow when we know the possible team updates, as well as who we’ll have in the Champions League draw, which will happen this morning at some stage no doubt.

As usual I did my habit of going to have a look at a few Forest fan forums to see how they’re feeling, which gave me a little bit of hope, because they aren’t exactly bullish ahead of this one. Some of the quotes I came across were:

Can’t look beyond a comprehensive loss where we barely touch the ball and they win by a 3+ margin

and

Hope I’m wrong but reckon we’re in for an absolute hammering. Arsenal to have 80+ % possession, we’ll barely get out of our half and will struggle to put 3 passes together

and

I will be stunned if we get anything out of this game. I’m expecting a 3 or 4 nil loss. The Win against West Ham hardly filled me with confidence but it was important.

Now, of course, you and I know that despite the 4-1 win at home to Villa, we don’t really do high-scoring games. In fact, if you ask any Arsenal fan, they’d probably tell you that, given we’ve put four past Villa, three past Bournemouth, four past Portsmouth, and three past Chelsea on Wednesday, we’re all a bit surprised we’ve suddenly come into form. That’s normally because teams sit in a low block, but none of the aforementioned sides did that. I suspect Forest will be more deep-lying and more defensively resolute than any of those teams we’ve managed to score three or more against recently. Their recent results don’t suggest that, but we all know Dyche loves a bit of low-block murder ball against us – like he did whilst in charge at Everton last season – so I am not expecting much of a game. Their form as well suggests they’ll be trying to stop the rot a bit; they’ve won three of their last nine games, losing six, with their three wins coming against a terrible West Ham, a terrible Wolves, and a terrible Scum team. Their defeats have been home and away to Everton, as well as Brighton, Fulham, City, and Villa. So it’s a real mixed bag.

They’re also a team that hasn’t exactly been pumping the goals in, with 21 scored this season, which is joint second-worst with (surprisingly) Sunderland. They’re a bit better on their xG in 13th position, which suggests that they just aren’t putting their chances away, which gives a little insight into why some of their fans are pessimistic about their ability to put goals away against us tomorrow.

What is interesting about Forest is that they are one of the top sides in the league for progressive passing, making more of those than any other team, other than us, Liverpool, Newcastle, and City. They’re also top of the table when it comes to tackles won in the attacking third, so that suggests to me that they might be a little more aggressive in the press than I would have expected. The other teams up there are Brighton, and we know how they like to press the ball high. Does that mean that we’ll be seeing a Sean Dyche side that tries to be aggressive in the press and leave space with bodies forward?

Maybe. But I do think we’ll still see that direct, long-ball, up to the target man, Chris Wood. Then, if the ball is lost, that’s when they’ll look to win second balls, try to win those tackles in the attacking third. If you’re bypassing the midfield, you aren’t winning tackles there, which I think explains a little of their approach. If you look at the total number of touches in the third, Forest are also up there, with only Liverpool, us, and Man City having more than they do.

When it comes to their potency in front of goal, they’re about mid-table on the volume of shots they have, as well as the percentage of shots on target they get, with the second most crosses into the box in the Premier League this season.

A pattern is starting to evolve here, right?

1. Direct football, find the target man
2. Win the 50-50s in the attacking third
3. Balls out wide when the ball is in Arsenal’s half, get it wide and look for crosses in to the box.

Gabriel and Saliba might well have a day of lots of headed defending, methinks.

The pundits are obviously going for us, but they are all more cautious about how tight the game will be, compared to the Forest fans, with Neville calling it a 1-0 on the Overlap, Merse giving us a 2-0, Chris Sutton going 1-0 and the Opta Analyst giving us a 66% chance of a win, with Forest down as 15% chance of winning. SO that all looks good, but as we know, this Premier League is more than unpredictable; it’s why it is the most watched, the best, and draws in the biggest audiences. I’ll do a bit more of a preview on what we need to do tomorrow, as well as team news, but this is a game in which Arsenal need to win and they need to be able to show that we can keep City at arms-length, because there’s no chance that a hapless Man United (until they play us in just over a week’s time, of course) will get anything from a game against City.

Right, I’m calling it for today. Got a day of work before my weekend can kick off, so I’m off to start it with a bit of the gym.

Be lucky people. I’ll be back tomorrow.