But Saka? And Rice?

Apparently, according to the official England Football website, it is for ‘medical assessment.’ Now, there are two ways in which this has gotten to this point:

1. The players picked up knocks in England training and therefore the club and Thomas Tuchel have to send them back
2. Mikel Arteta and Arsenal have sh*t a brick at the news of Noni and has told Tommy T to pull them from the game.

I pray, for the love of all that is good and holy in the world, that we are talking about scenario 2 here. Because if it is one, then the list I spelled out in yesterday’s blog, just got really scary indeed. In fact, if those two are added to those who have knocks right now, we’re almost at the point of being able to field a full XI of injured players, such are the question marks that will now surround the Arsenal squad going into that game at Southampton on Saturday night.

I really hope to god that Arteta was like “nope, not happening, get your arses to Colney, NOW”

I’m also now playing a bit of a game in my head, which includes trying to imagine what the starting XI would be at Southampton at this moment in time, if none of the current players who are fit could play. The back line is pretty do-able, but it’s when we get to the front line that I have to really think about how we plug the gaps:

Kepa

White   –   Mosquera   –   Hincapie   –   Lewis-Skelly

Norgaard

Dowman   –   Havertz

Harriman-Annous   –   Jesus   –   Martinelli

That’s not even an ideal team, to be honest with you, because we ideally want to be easing White, Hincapie, Havertz, and Martinelli back, given they have all been away with their respective international teams. White broke down the last time we overplayed him, but I think you’d have to earmark the Southampton game as one in which he should play, because surely Arteta will have Timber earmarked for Sporting away and Bournemouth at home. Those are the two bigger games out of the next three, with all due respect to Southampton and the FA Cup. You could argue that we have a second bite of the cherry in Sporting Lisbon, given it is a two-legged affair, but I think Arteta is going to want all players fit and available for that and Bournemouth. So I think this news about Saka and Rice is one that will mean we probably won’t see them on Saturday. I think I’m fine with that. It will have meant that by the time the Sporting game comes along, Rice and Saka will have had 16 days off from playing football. Hopefully that is enough time for them to have rested an recouperated, because as much as Saka has been in and out of form this season, he is still one of our best players. With Noni no doubt out for a while now (let’s be honest, we’re all waiting for the Athletic scoop telling us his season is over), keeping him fit is even more important.

When I look at the others in that team that I’ve picked as a possible lineup for Saturday:

• Mosquera hasn’t played a ton of football (he’s got 1,400+ minutes this season so far in all comps), so he’s fine to come in, and he’ll be buoyed by his international debut
• Hincapie too, was injured at the start of the season – he’s just over 2,000+ minutes this season
• Lewis-Skelly and Norgaard will be fine
• Dowman will be looking to impress
• Jesus has been a bit-part player for some time
• Harriman-Annous has just 86 minutes all season
• Martinelli has been second to Trossard of late, so he might be alright

So it really is just Havertz, Hincapie, and White that I’d be keeping an eye on, fitness-wise, and all three have games still to play. Let’s just cross everything that nothing happens to any of them.

Anyway, let’s not end on a negative, let’s end on a positive note today. And that positive was an Arsenal heritage scoreline, as the ladies beat The Scum ladies 5-2, with an Alessia Russo hat-trick to down the tiny Tottenham. This wasn’t the hairy-scary performance that the men delivered two years on the trot back in the day, though. The ladies were two goals up within 10 minutes, then given an absolute gift by the Spurs keeper to make it 3-1. It was the very definition of a ‘Spursy’ bit of goalkeeping, that. It’s good to see that the ladies know how to conduct themselves against the old enemy – that’s by battering them wherever they go. Good work ladies. That’s 13 goals scored in the men’s and women’s leagues this season. Love it.

Right, I’m going to leave it there, I think. Have yourselves a wonderful Sunday, and I’ll be back tomorrow with some more thoughts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Routine.

That needs to be the definer of Arsenal this season with games like this and if Arsenal can continue to put in performances like they did against a functional, not terrible, but ultimately limited Burnley side, then we will indeed receive that glorious pot of Premier League gold at the end of the proverbial rainbow.

Arteta brought back the big guns for this one following the League Cup rotation at the weekend and the impact was obvious. Where – understandably – the team on Wednesday who had not played together allowed Brighton a few opportunities to capitalise, this first XI gave absolutely no quarter. Burnley got nothing and for the third time this season in the Premier League, Arsenal reduced a team to speculative hopeful half chances, with not a single shot on target. The closest they came was when the ball struck the post on 96 minutes but by then the game was done.

But perhaps, in reality, the game was ‘done’ as early on as 14 minutes, when Viktor Gyokeres headed in from about a yard, following Gabriel’s head back from – yep – a corner. Set Piece Again Ole Ole rang out from the away end and online Arsenals watching on TV took to social media to double down on that sentiment. You can cry all you like rival fans, media pundits and muppets like Jeff Stelling, because we don’t care. This is a part of the game that Arsenal appeared to have mastered and when you’re coming up against low blocks each week (yesterday was another five at the back jobbie, with two holding midfielders in front of them), if this is the way you have to prize open that low block like shucking an oyster, then so be it.

I don’t know about you, but I was happy that it was Big Vik on the scoresheet too. He clearly measures his impact on goals and that one will do him the world of good, as he is now up to six goals at the quarter point in the season and as I said the other week on the Same Old Arsenal podcast, my expectations are 20 goals in all competitions. He is well on track to get that.

But as Arteta pointed out afterwards, yesterday he was so much more than that. He ran the channels, he looked lively on the ball and his diagonal pass across the field to Trossard for our second goal of the game was a key moment in this match, such was the clever vision. Trossard’s clip was perfect and man-of-the-match Declan Rice headed home to really make you feel like the game was won as an Arsenal fan. Rice wheeled away and celebrated for his auntie he’s recently lost and that performance from him was one for the ages. He was everywhere. He won tackles, he dictated play with the ball at his feet, he was a metronome when distributing his passing and he popped up with an important goal. And an open play one at that. You lot over there complaining that we don’t score enough open play goals – have some of that with bells on.

It was a super counter attack from a Burnley throw in and showed that when there is space, we can capitalise, which we duly did and whereas I try not to say or think it when we’re ahead, at 2-0 I was saying to myself at hoem “that should be it now. We should be able to see this game out”. That’s very much what the second half felt like to me. Arsenal were happy to see if they could get additional goals and we forced some good saves from Dubravka at times in the second half, but it felt much more of an even game and Burnley had a bit more of the ball than they did in the first half. In that first half we were imperious and ruthless. In the second half we were contained and professional.

That’s all you need to be in games like this. Our goal difference – thanks to our absurd lack of goals conceded so far this season – is already far greater than any other team, with only Man City getting close with +10 GD, whereas ours currently stands on +15. We’ve scored the joint most goals in the league, by the way, for everyone calling us ‘boring’, although I suspect that City might eclipse that today if they beat Bournemouth by scoring more than one goal. They’ll also go second with a win too, although that would put them up to 19 points and so we still would have a six-point cushion.

But as we know having seen it with Liverpool earlier this season, that can all change very quickly, so the game faces for this Arsenal team need to stay on ahead of a tricky away trip to Slavia Prague and then possibly an even trickier away game up at the Stadium of Light next Saturday.

But for now we can be very happy with the way the team are playing and I must say, there were plenty of individual performances that there was a lot to like, I thought. Gyokeres, of course, was great, but I also thought Eze had one of his best games too. I thought Timber did his usual best right back in the league tings, whilst Big Gabi and Saliba were once again impenetrable. Trossard was lively and Saka created chances too, although he’ll be frustrated to have not scored with his one-on-one in the first half and I do think he’ll feel like he left a goal or two out there on the Burnley pitch. But there’s nothing to worry about when you are able to get goals from across the pitch and across different players in different positions too. That’s the beauty of this Arsenal team: They don’t over-rely on any one player any more. If Saka doesn’t take his chances, somebody else will, which is something we have to hope continues for a long time to come this season.

There were some negatives from yesterday, which of course were related to injury as Gyokeres was off at halftime with what Arteta described as a muscular ‘niggle’ and I think we probably need to have him sat out in midweek. He had last midweek off and look at the difference it made in his performance. Let’s do the same in the Champions League and cross our fingers that he can be fit for the trip to the North East. LIkewise too, Zubimendi apparently asked to come off and that one is a big worry too, because he’s become an integral cog in our machine with the way he moves the ball and keeps us ticking over. If we weren’t playing so well and we didn’t already have such a big squad, you’d be cursing our luck with injuries, because by my count if those two are now out we’re up to seven first teamers who could now be out. Seven. Having already missed so many players already this season, we could now have potentially picked up more, so what Arteta will be hoping this morning and tomorrow is that these guys have the minor of knocks that can be resolved with just a few days with their feet up.

But let’s not end today on any kind of negative note, because Arsenal are top of the league with some daylight between the other teams. They have done everything asked of them when we look ed at the start of this run and two more wins will boast an incredible streak going in to the international break. They have to do it, of course, but so far we’re in great shapes and I don’t think you’ll find an unhappy Arsenal fan out there this morning. Well, not a real Arsenal fan anyway.

Right, I’m offski, but we’re doing an early morning Same Old Arsenal pod here if you want to join us.

Starting off with the mid-morning kick off our time with Martinelli and Big Gabi for Brazil. The result may not have been in their favour, but if you look at it through an Arsenal lens, what are you wanting from this match given that the players are already out there? 1) Big Gabi gets a rest, 2) Martinelli gets a confidence-booster. Which is exactly what we got. Big Gabi never got off the bench, whilst on 32 minutes Martinelli got the second goal of Brazil’s 3-2 defeat. It was a well timed goal too and a good run as the ball looped over the back line for him to volley it in. Gabi has found starts limited of late as Leo has played more, so for him to get a solid 57 minutes before he heads back to London can only be a good thing.

Back over here in Europe and with the Management pottering around the house doing chores last night, I was left to see if there was anything good on TV, which there wasn’t. So I decided to watch the England game sporadically. It was a comprehensive one but I only really saw the first and last goals which, if I’m honest, are the only interesting ones. The first one from Gordon was a good finish, but the last one from Eze had interest for us because of the Arsenal connection. Again, if I think about what Eze needs to help him with it’s Arsenal form (which is already very good by the way), it probably is a decent goal in an England shirt. He may not have started, but he finished and his finish itself for the goal was well taken. Then you look at the other Arsenal players and as I said on social media, what do we need from the match?

1. Myles Lewis-Skelly to play minutes, because he hasn’t had many so far so this will help sharpen his match fitness and ready him for our games.
2. Declan Rice not to play too many minutes, because he is already a guy who racks them up and so getting him off nice and early would be lovely.
3. Bukayo Saka not to play too many minutes, because he’s recently returned to fitness and we’ve seen how Arsenal have been loading up his minutes.

I think on that last point, if it had been a Southgate, Allardyce or Hodgson side, we’d have seen Saka probably play 85 minutes. But as Arteta recently pointed out in one of his pre match press conferences, he has a good relationship with Tuchel and I think they will have both have looked at what is best for the player and realised that 60 minutes is about right. He can now come home today, do some light training tomorrow, then take part in normal training on Friday and be ready for Saturday. That’s how you should manage a staged return to work for a player who has suffered a big injury last season and a minor setback already this season.

Elsewhere we also saw the continuation of the crazy-good form of Mikel Merino, who bagged another two goals to make it six in four matches now I think. According to UEFA he played in that right hand side of a three midfielder with Zubi anchoring it, in a very similar position to what he was asked to do in the City game against us and it does make me think about how with Odegaard out, we might need to find different ways to skin-a-cat, so-to-speak. The problem Merino has had – and I’ve heard Clive on the Arsenal Vision talk about this, so I won’t claim it as my own thoughts – is that he probably needs somebody who is a little more creative in that midfield three when he’s playing. Rice, Zubimendi and Merino is a bit too much of a ‘functional’ midfield. I think a slight maverick, or as Clive put it – a ‘footballer’ – is needed with him and in the Spanish side they have Pedri who is their creative eight with the vision, passing, etc.

Of course Mikel Merino scored with two powerful headers and when you’re looking for a midfielder to arrive onto the ball with his head in the box for you (think Newcastle away guys and gals), I can’t think of many better than Mikel Merino. He is such a valuable asset for Arsenal and you can see why Arteta wants to keep him close to the group and playing matches. When you have an aerial threat like that there is always space for them to get minutes.

Zubimendi was mercifully taken off on 63 minutes and so he will have some rest in to his legs too, which is nice.

Elsewhere we had just one more guy to come through without any problems, which was in Italy with Riccardo Calafiori, who played the full 90 for Italy and whilst that isn’t ideal, it shows that he didn’t come off with a knock, so hopefully today he heads back to England and can also be in training for tomorrow.

And so all of the 16 Arsenal players on international duty have, we hope, made it through unscathed and because of the timing of the games we might find ourselves with a press conference from Arteta on Friday (I think he’s doing it on Friday even though it is away, given it is a London derby) where he can talk with a little more authority on player availability, because he’ll have had the lads in for light training the day before and so can speak to the overall fitness of the group.

I might hate international breaks, I might find it farcical that we have another one in just a months time, but on this occasion we’ve done alright from it and my hope is that the players come back with a fire in their bellies for the next batch of games. Because we need to be going on a run now.

Catch you all tomorrow.

I’ve not been drinking for a few weeks and, unlike when I set myself one of those ‘don’t drink for a calendar month’ jobbies, this time around I just did it midway through the month after I got back from Greece and I found the first couple of week’s really easy. They just flew by. The reason I tell you this, my dear friend, is that I feel like this Interlull has managed to fly by already. Now, the downside of my non-drinking is that I found out I really like beer and wine and once I got to two-and-a-half weeks in to my none drinking, I started to fancy a pint. Or a glass of Napa Valley Cab Sav. So clearly the ‘it’s easy’ feeling dissipates after a while and now I find myself really hankering for booze. And I suspect it will be the same for The Arsenal come this weekend. I hadn’t even been thinking about the internationals and as I got home from work last night and fired up the gas for some cooking, I switched on the TV in the kitchen and England were just kicking off.

I just hope that by the time Monday/Tuesday rolls around, I still have that “huh, that’s gone quickly” feeling. It will make this pointless footballing weekend a little easier to take.

I did watch the first 45 of England versus Wales. Well, I say ‘watch’, but in reality I was cooking so it was on in the background. I saw enough to see that Rice was pulling the strings as captain and Saka was doing Saka things by belting an absolute beauty in to the top corner. Save that for Fulham away, son. MLS got some minutes at the end and so that’s good to see him bag another cap for a 15 minute cameo.

Other than that, I didn’t bother watching the second half and the only other Arsenal player that I think was in action was Jurrien Timber, who bloody well played the whole 90 against Malta, which is a bit annoying. By the looks of it he played as a centre half and so perhaps given that the Dutch will have dominated the ball, that means his body wasn’t put under as much stress. If you’re a full back these days you’re 100% doing more running as you join attacks compared to playing centre half, so I am going to speculate that we find ourselves in a situation in which he hasn’t exerted as much stress on his body as he might have done playing right back. At least that’s what I hope, anyway.

The Dutch played Weghorst at centre forward, so I suspect it was a rotated team, which means I have my fingers crossed that when they play Poland on Sunday Jurrien is once again moved to the bench. Sorry Jurrien, but you are far too important to us, for us to be happy that you are being risked against the Finnish. In Belarus Christian Norgaard got off the subs bench on 64 minutes, which is one player you’d say it was good that they’re getting game time given the lack of minutes he’s had so far.

Today we’ll see more of our boys go through the international mill with Big Vik for Sweden against Switzerland, Saliba up for France against Ukraine, Leo in the squad against North Macedonia and Brazil playing away to South Korea. That means big trips for Big Gabi and Martinelli too. Honestly, why can’t they play a friendly against the Isle of Man or something? There’s also under-21s action for Ethan and under-19s action for Dowman, who I expect will bag a hat trick of goals away to Belgium because, at this stage, playing him in the under-19s is a bit like when I was asked to play up against the under-7s because my brother was playing and my uncle was taking training with me having nothing to do. I was 10 against six-year-olds. It was great fun having them all run around me, but I don’t think it made for a great watch, nor great training for those kids. That’s where we’re at with Max. Just whack him in to the 21s guys – he’s no doubt good enough I suspect.

Then tomorrow we’ll have Spain in action against Georgia and Italy away to Estonia. I think that concludes round one of these horrific football matches, but by Wednesday next week we should have all of the players responding and I have to say, I’m glad a lot of these fixtures have been pulled forward. If we take the two Brazilian Gabi’s, for example; they’ll finish their game against Japan on Tuesday, spending Wednesday travelling, by Thursday be back at home and then maybe on Friday they can take some part in training before Saturday. When they’ve had games in South America that have been on Wednesday it’s been a bit of an ask to have them be ready for a Saturday kick off, but that extra 24 hours this time might do them – and us – a world of good.

Because there’s no proper football this weekend they’ll be no Arteta press conference, nor is there any opportunity to have a little look at what opposition fans are feeling ahead of the weekend’s action, so I’m going to put a pin in today’s musings and be back tomorrow with more Arsenal-related thoughts. See you then.

I have concluded that the following would be rather nice:

Calafiori’s legs don’t implode

Last season it felt like every time Riccardo went away with the Italian national team, something in his lower limbs went pop. We knew when we signed him that he had a history of injury problems and, if my memory serves me correctly, he even missed the start of the season for us. Then when he went away in September he picked up a leg injury which kept him out for a few weeks, followed by a similar injury at the beginning of this calendar year. I would verily much like it if – given his superb form for us so far this season – he has zero problems and comes back in one piece.

I’ll be honest, at the end of last season, I wondered whether we’d got ourselves another Tomiyasu and the only thing that tempered my frustration (not with him, the situation) was that MLS had broken through. I fully expected Calafiori to become a little bit of a Debuchy/Bellerin situation, but that just goes to show you how – as the kids say – “I don’t know ball”. He’s looked fit, he’s looked strong, he’s not getting done by tricky wingers as much, but I think that’s probably due to the fact that Gabriel is an absolute monster and plays two positions in our defence, but also that Calafiori seems to enjoy playing as a left eight more in games. Zinchenko liked to roam forward, but he didn’t find himself in the same positions as Calafiori and once again we find that left back role re-invented with his return to form and fitness.

Come back to us Riccy…

Timber gets splinters

I think Jurrien Timber might be one of our best players right now. He’s certainly one of our most in form players, so when I was reading that his minutes were limited for The Netherlands in the September international break, I was delighted. Yes please guys, let’s have Jurrien collect some splinters on the bench, because this is a guy who has already suffered an ACL in his career with us so far and last season admitted that he was basically playing injured for the closing stages of it. We have Ben White – also not called up to the international team, which is nice for us if not for him – ready and waiting, so we have the required cover, but having Timber fit and ready to play against Fulham needs to be the priority and if that means that we see him warm the Dutch bench and get some sub minutes at best, I am 100% on board with it.

Rice and Saka have managed minutes

Declan looked uncomfortable against West Ham just before he came off and when he picked up that knock at the weekend it was right in front of me by the corner flag. You could see straight away he wasn’t happy and thankfully, unlike Odegaard, he was hooked pretty rapidly afterwards. However, unlike Chelsea players, Arsenal players report for duty and perhaps the fact Declan has reported for duty should be seen as a good sign. I still want to see Tuchel go easy on him though. Arteta spoke in the press conference about the good relationship that he has with Tuchel, about how they talk a lot and my hope is that they’ve had another chat about our England boys. But predominantly I’m looking at Rice because of his knock, as well as Saka too. Bukayo has only recently returned from injury, we could all see how Arteta has been building up his minutes, so my hope is that Tuchel doesn’t go full Southgate and just slap him on for two sets of 90s over the next few days. Arsenal wouldn’t do that, so why should England?

I think Tuchel is a more pragmatic and modern manager than Southgate and I think he’ll recognise that shocing Saka on for maximum minutes right now won’t do the player, or England, any good. Let alone The Arsenal.

Some positive Odegaard medical news

All we’ve had so far is that Odegaard has picked up a medial ligament injury. Arsenal haven’t diagnosed the ‘grade’ of it, which means it could be anything from a week to 12 weeks, but I’m sure that the roving reporters at The Athletic will get a scoop at some stage over the next few days. And when that happens, I just hope that the news is that the knock isn’t as bad as we’d feared. Havertz, Madueke, Saka, Odegaard (twice already) – we’ve already had our fair share of “it’s not good news” so far already – let’s have some positive news for a change, shall we?

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

And that’s all I want. That’s not too much to ask for, is it? I mean, obviously I want all the other players on international duty to come back with a clean bill of health, but given we already seem to lose footballers in every single Premier League game this season, it would be nice if the international break could not follow on the start of season form in that regard, eh?

Catch you all tomorrow.

It sounds like it to me. Even in the early hours of the morning with the Brazil game, mercifully Big Gabi and Martinelli were both unused subs, as the Selecao went on to lose 1-0 away to Bolivia. That sounds like a bit of a shocking result but when you realise that Bolivia play their national team games ay one of the highest altitudes in the world (13,000+feet – that’s just over three Ben Nevis’  by the way) you can understand why they get a bit of an advantage over their opponents. The air is thinner and so you can see why, in an elite sporting match, Brazil might have suffered a bit. I read somewhere that FIFA banned playing in stadiums above a certain altitude, but clearly that rule has gone out the window here.

Anyway, neither of the Gabi’s played and hopefully they are already making their way back to London’s altitude, which is around 80 feet in altitude, thank you very much (they’ll be saying). And whilst they might not have had the most fun time with their national team, it seems most of the other boys did, eh? Odegaard for starters, was part of a record-breaking 11-1 win of Norway over Moldova and it is games like that which, if you’re the Moldovan manager, you kind of just want to have a towel you can throw on to the pitch to end it. Odegaard bagged a goal, got a couple of assists, made plenty of progressive passes, won many duels (Arteta will be happy) and by the sounds of it had a lovely ol’ time.

As did the England boys. Declan Rice put in a man-of-the-match performance with general assured play, he bagged two assists, he was all over the pitch in both an attacking and defensive sense and bossed the midfield overall. There was no MLS or Eze, but to me that isn’t a problem because it means they should be fine and fresh for Forest at the weekend. There was another start for Madueke though and he once again put in a very assured play, capping it off with also a very good run and finish to double England’s lead in the first half. I’ll level with you, I watched the game last night, but my reasons were purely Arsenal related; I was interested to see which of our England lads would get on the pitch and how they would get on. And from what I saw, you have to be pleased, because not only did they both play well, but I think the confidence-booster that it will give both Rice and Madueke will be really valuable for us in the coming months. Remember this time last year? Rice was coming off the back of a somewhat disappointing Euro’s, there was some suggestions he wasn’t fully fit, which also impacted his start to last season if you remember. This season he looks fit, he’s playing well and a game like yesterday evening for his national side will have done him the world of good. Then, on that right wing, we have ourselves a guy in Madueke who has bagged a very tidy goal indeed. It was a good run, it was clever to make sure he got in front of the defender and then the chip over the ‘keeper was smart. What I watched with Noni last night was a guy constantly wanting to give the ball and spin his man. Then, when he wasn’t doing that, he wanted the ball to his feet so he could run at his full back. With Saka out as we know right now, we need a guy who is going ‘do numbers’ as the kids say and Madueke has already shown in these early stages that he is going to work hard to impress in both an Arsenal and an England shirt.

And I think as fans that is all we ask for. I didn’t want Madueke. I made that clear on here and podcasts. But the second he walks through the doors at Colney or The Emirates, he’s one of ours and all we want is for him to thrive. I was sceptical about how that would happen, but with Saka’s injury happening so quickly into the season, it has given Noni the opportunity to get minutes on his favoured right hand side position. That will do wonders for his confidence and much like I’ve heard a few podcasters suggest that Gyokeres getting a run in the team without having to ‘take’ the shirt off Havertz by putting in impressive cameos, maybe the same is true with noni that he knows he has a few weeks to get a few games under his belt and if he performs well then the initial fan scepticism of people like me will very quickly dissipate. It already is with displays like that one at Anfield and for England last night and if he can follow up that display with another good one on Saturday in front of the Arsenal crowd, then I think by the time October rolls around you won’t have many questioning the fee, the attitude or the ability of our new Gunner.

Finally for today, a shout out to a happy Piero Hincapie, who will be pleased with Ecuador’s 1-0 win over Argetina, despite losing Caicedo on 50 minutes to a second yellow card. Mind you, Argentina were also down to 10 men, and for earlier in the game as Ottamendi was sent off, so you have to take that into account when looking at the numbers from the game. Hincapie played in at left back of a four and played the whole 90, so my assumption is he’s good heading home in good nick. And so, it seems, are the Ecuadorians, who move up to second with that win on 29 points, although they are still a solid nine points off Argentina in the extended group table that they do in South America.

So that’s it. We are free of these internationals and can now look ahead to a reunion with our old ‘mate’ Big Ange. I really hope there isn’t a new manager bounce that goes on, as there always seems to be against us, but I’ll do a bit more on that tomorrow I think. Until then, have a good’un.

Then I started to think about Liverpool analysing us for the first two games. Obviously they’ll also look at our pre season too, but in terms of when it all matters, the sample size is quite small; we’ve had a game in which we were poor against United, could have killed the game by hitting them in transitions, made the wrong choices, but got over the line. Then there was this game in which I have no doubt in my mind that the narrative of it and the way it played out renders the analysis for Liverpool’s analysts kind of redundant.

But maybe that’s a good thing, right? I mean, as Arsenal fans we are obsessive over our team and we know everything there is to know about every player. But if we don’t know how we might set up tactically, if we aren’t sure who is going to start, then that perhaps gives us a little bit of a minor advantage ahead of the game?

I think they’ll probably have an idea, like we do, though. But I wonder how they will plan to counter it? And what will they have seen? For example, will they have a plan for the way we are setting up Rice and Zubimendi as a partnership? I saw a fair few interchanges between the two I liked on Saturday evening, particularly with the Saka goal, but as Adrian Clarke also pointed out in his excellent tactical breakdown on YouTube over the last few days, I like the way we are dropping Rice in to collect the ball from Raya. In my head I’d just assumed it would be Zubimendi dropping deep to receive, but Rice moving into space gives us more movement and makes us less predictable. Would Liverpool detail Wirtz to be closing down that position on Sunday, for example? Or Would it be Ekitike/Gakpo? If they don’t and they allow both Zubi and Rice to get on the ball and dictate build up, maybe it has a positive impact on the likes of Calafiori and Odegaard (if fit) finding space in those pockets in Liverpool’s third. In Adrian’s video he shows Rice’s touch and pass map and a lot of it is deeper in our half against Leeds, despite the fact that we pinned them back so much, so to me that tells me Rice and Zubi linking up is enabling the likes of Calafiori get forward, as we create a kind of ‘box’ in the middle of the park. Does that change with Eze the natural number 10 to drift in field? Maybe. Or maybe we just set up and ask him to do something different to what he did at Palace?

See what I mean? I think I know how Arsenal have started the season, but already I don’t know what the set up might be come kick off on Sunday, so that surely gives us even a 1% advantage over them. Of course it doesn’t mean we’ll be able to stop what has been a free-scoring Liverpool side so far, but with our back line and the way in which we are organised (also taking into account the Rice/Zubimendi axis), I am hopeful (not confident, just hopeful) that we will be able to give Liverpool more of a challenge of unlocking a defence than they have had so far.

In terms of other stuff going on, there’s no real news on the transfer outgoings front, although I saw some stuff about Porto awaiting to hear back from Arsenal on the Kiwior stuff. My hope is that Arsenal’s stance remains clear: €26million for a Polish international who was great for us in a Champions League run last season just isn’t enough. So in a summer in which we’re seeing kids leave the other big clubs for between £15 – £20million, we need to be standing firm here I think. I like the look of this Hincapie chappie, but if it doesn’t happen, Kiwior stays and we have a very good deputy for Gabriel that hopefully gets a bit of game time this season to ensure we don’t lose big Gabby like we did towards the end of last season. I get that we probably do need to sell for PSR reasons, but I suspect the focus would be more on the Sambi’s, the Viei and the Nelson’s, than the likes of Kiwior who is more likely to be used.

Tomorrow it’ll be Champions League draw day, so attention will turn to that, to which I’m really hoping that our first game is away because I’m on holiday. It’s going to be just my luck that it will be a home game though; we’ve got Forest at home and then City at home the following week, so it is almost written in the stars that I’m going to end up missing three home games in a row!

Anyway, let’s just see what happens with the draw first, then I can lament my first world problems.

Catch you all tomorrow.

I like these kind of signings, because it has rivals going “who’s he? Arsenal have bought poorly again” and because they don’t know the player or haven’t become invested in him like us since the deals of a potential move surfaced, they sleep on him a bit. But when you start reading into him, his profile and also the bloody size of him – he’s six foot three at 20 years old! – you see that he feels like a very impressive acquisition. Although I  have to lay my cards on the table here; I don’t really know much about him and don’t really watch much Spanish football other than the odd game if it’s on in the background as I’m cooking. So I read up on this article from Phil Costa on Arseblog and I have to say, that ticks all the boxes for me. Comparisons to Rudiger, a player who has the kind of minutes under your belt that you’d expect from a 23-year-old, can play either side of the defence, good ball retention and I love it when I get the ‘Gandalf’ feeling from reading about a player. You know what I’m talking about – that “YOU SHALL NOT PASS” kind of vibe. Super stuff.

We of course need to let him get settled in, he needs time to adapt to the English game and its physicality, but he looks like he’s got all of the tools to be a very good signing for us and it’s the first one that I think most of us know is a true ‘Berta’ signing. Even in the video itself Mosquera references ‘the sporting director’ along with Mikel as the reasons he wanted so desperately to sign. And it’s another one that ‘desperately’ wanted to sign, which has become a feature of the signings this summer. Players moving heaven and earth to get to your club is a sure sign that when they put on that shirt, they are walking an inch or two taller, are going to try that little bit more, which is all we ever ask of as fans. But yes, this one is for sure a Berta one. There’s lots of talk about the great summer he’s had, but I do think that does a little bit of injustice to the groundwork that was already done. I think Zubimendi, for example, was already sorted. And I’m not sure (but happy to be told otherwise) whether he had too much impact on the Big Gabi signing, because that seemed to happen pretty quickly after he’d walked through the door, if my memory serves me right. The rumours of Gyokeres or Sesko have persisted for most of this season gone by and although Berta clearly had his preference and maybe that’s what has led us to the Swede, I wouldn’t think he’s ‘instrumental’ on the deal, but maybe just did his bit to push it over the line.

I dunno, perhaps I’m doing Andrea a disservice, but for this one I think it feels to me 100% like this is ‘his guy’. Apparently according to Phil’s article there were rumours that Berta wanted him at Atleti, so that shows you how much of an influence he’s clearly had here. It’s proper pissed Valencia off too by the looks of it. That statement is as cold as you’re gonna get from his selling club. Eek.

But he’ll move on, they’ll move on, hopefully it works well for him and we have a guy who will compete for a starting spot within a few seasons.

The other article I wanted to give you a heads up on was an Athletic article written by Gunnerblog that was released yesterday (behind a paywall here). What I loved about it was the way in which Rice spoke about Madueke, saying how driven he is to prove everyone wrong and be a success. Again, a response from one of our pseudo captains along the lines of “wait and see guys, you’re going to be excited” is the sort of thing you want to read as a fan. We’ve all had our say on the transfer, but now it’s time to see what he can actually do with a red and white shirt on and I hope Rice is right about him surprising people.

I also hope he’s right about his own ambitions. We all wondered about Rice last season at the start and he himself said that the Euro’s and basically having two week’s to ‘get over it’ before being pushed back out on the Premier League stage meant that he didn’t quite feel with it. We all saw that play out. But we saw the real Rice towards the final third of the season and if we think about how he’s had plenty of rest, a full pre season under his belt and now is ready and raring to go, it’s exciting. To me it feels exciting that we could get the Declan Rice that finished the season, starting this season, so when you couple that with the hope that Odegaard is over his struggles, Kai has beefed up, Ethan and Myles are a year older (and Ethan looks like he’s been taking his vitamins!), we’ve got an upgrade at six in Zubimendi and a lot of depth options have been solved – something else Rice mentioned.

It makes me really hope we get to make some rival fans chow down on some humble pie next season. I’ve seen plenty saying we’ve bought bang average players, we will finish between fourth to sixth, that there’s no chance we’re competing and I’m absolutely fine with that. I just hope we can kick on early on and show them that we mean business this season, because I think we really do, and I hope Rice is right with what he was saying.

Catch you tomorrow – maybe – I’m doing a cheeky weekend in Cologne to see family so may or may not get time for writing stuff.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Catch you all tomorrow.

Today is one of those (the latter) days.

I was nervous., I’m sure you were nervous. This was Real Madrid. This was the 15 times champions, on their patch, with a solid three days of build up in which everywhere you turned you heard the words

“Remontada“

That’s Spanish for ‘comeback’ and the Madrid-leaning press, the general Spanish press, the players of Real Madrid, the coaching staff, even Ancelotti himself, had all used that word (or at least in Carlo’s case, replied to it when asked by a journalist.

I wonder if the Spanish press were using their long memories to think back to a time in which Arsenal were perennially knocked out of either the last 16 or at least the quarter-finals of the Champions League? Maybe. Perhaps they were just drinking too much of their own cool aid in the belief that Real Madrid on their own patch in this competition were unstoppable. Certainly in attack they will have expected that.

But they didn’t expect two legs of Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal, certainly not from a defensive organisational point of view they didn’t. And what they got was something we are familiar with – a super organised team with an iron-clad gameplan that the team in black executed to almost perfection.

I say “almost perfection” because, as in football, there are so many variables that can unstitch a well organised set of plans that managers, their coaching staff and then the players lay down. And we saw that within the first half of yesterday evening’s game. Mbappe was a mile offside and even when you looked at it in real time you thought “surely not” after only a few minutes, but he still put the ball in and then you’re instantly looking at the referees. It was an impossible offside to miss, but for a split second, as an Arsenal fan, your heart is in your mouth.

Then there was an opportunity to make this night very special, very early on, as Arsenal got that VAR highlighted penalty from Asensio on Merino. And when you re-watched it, it was clearly an obvious penalty that was missed. In the Premier League that sort of stuff has been happening to us all season and if we play Ipswich on the weekend and that happens in the Ipswich box, there’s no chance it is given, but in this competition we seem to get a greater frequency of decisions go our way. For that we can be thankful. The less said about Saka’s terrible penalty the better. Thankfully, as is the strength of this young mans character, he was to flip that around to become one of the heroes on the night in the second half.

But before we would get to that, there was the small matter of a decision on a penalty to Real Madrid and as Declan Rice got mad for Mbappe’s theatrics as he threw himself to the ground, the rest of the world waited for the extremely lengthy VAR check to take place. It took too long. It’s one of those that sucks the life out of a stadium, but on this occasion, it was for our benefit. Sucking the life out of the stadium was exactly what we needed. And eventually, painfully, the decision went to the monitor and you just know that when that happens, 90% of the time the decision gets overturned. Happy days. A penalty for Madrid there, something for the home crowd to hang their collective hat on for the remainder of the game, could have sparked Madrid in to life. Instead the remainder of the half just petered out and I for one was very happy to see that. “half the job done” I thought to myself.

Except now, in the cold light of the next morning, I realise that the job was basically done in the opening 20 minutes or so. Because by the end of the game even the commentators on TNT Sports were saying it: REal Madrid’s game plan was fundamentally flawed. Arsenal were set up to counter, to be resolute and organised at the back, compact with our two wide forwards tucking in to provide cover for our full backs and even double up when needed. Madrid’s plan was to swing as many balls in to the box as possible. And the excellent Kiwior, Rice, Partey and Saliba, swept up and nodded away all evening.

We created chances in both the first and the second half. We ended the game having had double (six) the amount of chances on target compared to Real Madrid (three). We ceded possession numbers and passion stats to them, but that was as much to do with game state as anything else. We didn’t need to go at them. But we still found ourselves with opportunities and Courtois still made a fair few fine saves. But he couldn’t stop Saka’s finish on 65 minutes. It was good Arsenal play going from back to front, Real Madrid got bodies back, but Saka’s run cross the line of the defence and then in behind as Merino slipped the ball in was timed to perfection. He may have looked silly with his ‘Panenka’ penalty chip in the first half, but this little ‘Panenka’-style flick was in no doubt.

I fist pumped. I yelled. I was jubilant, then paused as I waited for the VAR offside call, which never came. We had a four goal cushion with 25 minutes to go and I started to relax.

If only Big Bill Saliba hadn’t have had that brain-fart moment just a minute later though, eh? It was a kamikaze goal to concede and for a minute or two after that I did have the fear return that we would get the Madrid onslaught.

It never came.

Instead, we managed to win the game outright into injury time and of late we’ve all talked about how good Martinelli’s performances have been, but he’s only got one assist so far since he returned from injury and I think his performances have deserved more. Certainly last night his performance deserved more and so I’m super happy that he got that goal with a fine breakaway finish too. Props to Merino as well for the pass – that’s two assists on the night last night, a goal in the first leg, a goal and an assist against PSV in the away game, as four goals in the Premier League to take his impact as a central striker to six goals and three assists. That’s a fantastic return for a guy who had never played there before and whilst I was unsure of him as a signing at the beginning of the season, whilst I’m still not sure how he fits longer term at the club other than a rotational option, the role he is fulfilling for Mikel Arteta deserves huge credit.

But I have to save the best until last today, boys and girls, because Declan Rice picked up the man-of-the-match award for yet another stunning display in the heart of this midfield. His energy, his power, his ability to travel with the ball, his defensive strength (I mentioned heading the ball away – he did that a number of times last night) is absolutely unmatched. He picked up a yellow card in the Mbappe incident and had that stood and we’d have gone through, we’d have missed him in the next game for sure. But in the penalty being overturned and the yellow being rescinded, we keep what is one of our most important players available for the semi final first leg. Phew. Shame the same can’t be said for Partey, who was silly to pick up a booking for a bit of shoving, but at least we keep Declan for that first leg.

And we get our place in the last four for only the third time in this competition. PSG will be a much tougher opponent, they will stretch us and test us more than any other side. But the belief that will come from this Arsenal team will be massive now. Let’s just hope it carries us through to those games against the French Champions.

I think I’ll leave it there for today. Time to bask in a glorious and historic night, one in which Arsenal will certainly have had plenty of clubs around Europe paying attention too, for which we can all be happy, spending the day soaking up as much content as is humanly possible.

Laters peeps.

P.S. credit to my mate Mark for the pic, as he sent it to our football WhatsApp group last night and I’ve nicked it for my own use. Don’t tell him, he’ll only want royalties or something

Wowsers.

I mean, I knew that Real Madrid were ‘getable’. I knew they had weaknesses. I knew that they had issues at full back and that’s where we, as a team, tend to excel with the personnel that we have. But still…this is Real Madrid. A team that is synonymous with this competition. A side where you play the badge as much as the players on the pitch. A team who have moved aside an admittedly out of sorts Man City and seen off Atletico in the last round. This was going to be a mountain that Arsenal needed to climb (it still might be – we all recognise the fact this is only the first leg, but I’m leaning in to the joy today).

Except last night, after the light show had ended, the red smoke flares had started to die down a bit but the slightly acrid smell in the air still lingered, 11 Arsenal players (ten in red and white, one in neon yellow) stood up, looked at their opponents on the night and said:

“Not today”

Not today shall we play the badge. Not today shall we give any quarter. Not today will we let you display your talent. We’re going to stand up and be counted. We’re going to show you that this is our home, our gaff, we run this place (nod to Declan Rice pointing at the ground in that fashion for one of his goals).

To a man those Arsenal players did just that.

To. A. Man.

Pre game all the worry was about the absence of Big Gabby, but in Jakub Kiwior we had a guy willing to step up and Arteta had talked him up post Everton and pre this game. And the manager got it spot on. Aside from the first 60 seconds when he misjudged a bounce that thankfully came to nothing. After that he was pretty flawless. But then again so were most of those Arsenal players.

Raya was commanding when he needed to be and made a couple of smart save, albeit ones kind of down his throat.

Timber kept pace with the rapid Vini Jr all night and support Saka when he needed to.

Saliba was as cool as a cucumber as he always is and didn’t put a foot wrong.

Have spoken about Kiwior already, but next to him was a Myles Lewis-Skelly who looks like a guy who has been playing top flight football for a decade. I particularly enjoyed his sh*trousers down by my corner when he was given the ball by the Madrid player to take the throw in, only to walk past him and pick up another ball. Nice one Myles.

Partey was good on distribution all night.

Ødegaard started off a little up and down I thought, but grew into the game and you could tell he loves having his mate Saka back with him.

Rice. What can I say? Two of the finest free kicks you’re ever going to see, but aside from that, was a stand out performance that had energy, it had power, it had running up and down that pitch all night like a monster. He also had those extend-o limbs at times and was hands down the man of the match.

Martinelli got in behind his man a few times on the night and overall followed up his impressive recent performances with another one that will bring him lots of confidence for sure.

Merino was busy, has started to drop in to midfield at times which I think gives us more solidity and his goal was a sweetly taken finish that has us in an even more commanding position for this competition.

Saka was good. You can tell he was feeling his way back into the side but still had Alaba on toast at times. He won’t want to have the same in the Bernabeu in a week’s time.

Then some great cameos from KT and Trossard capped off what was a historic night for the club.

And I’ve gotta say, that’s was easily the best atmosphere I’ve been in since I’ve been coming to The Arsenal. Honestly, I thought nothing could beat the North London Derby, which has its own unique intensity, but last night felt iconic to me and as we ratcheted up the noise as Mikel had asked for, the players dialled up their intensity too. They fought for everything. When they needed to slow it down and control the ball they did, then when there might have been an opening, they went for it.

And we should have been up in that first half too. There were some smart saves by Courtois in the first half and I went in for halftime chats and drinks and worried that we weren’t going to get many more chances for the evening. But Madrid allowed us even more in the second half. We scored two super free kicks and a great finish from Merino, but before that Courtois had pulled off a couple of fantastic saves that had us all wondering if it was going to be “one of them nights, lads”.

It was indeed to be one of those nights, one of those absolutely iconic nights that will live long in the memory. It’s only the halfway stage, we have to avoid a collapse in Madrid, but this is a position I don’t think any Arsenal fan would have admitted to thinking they’d be in this morning. It was epic stuff. The Emirates was rocking. The roof was nearly raised and whilst I’ve repeatedly lamented this season for how we have been cursed, in the Champions League Arsenal have been excellent.

There is still so much to do. There is still so much work to get to the promised land of a cup final, but we’re in a great position to at least make a semi final.

Arteta got everything spot on yesterday and the build up to this. The right players were rested on Saturday. He clearly got the motivational speech right before the game. He got the players psyched up and ready to completely nullify a Real Madrid front line that I was honestly petrified about facing before the game. But Mbappe was silent. Vini Jr was silent. Rodrygo was silent. All completely pocketed by an excellent Arsenal back four protected brilliantly by Partey and Rice. We slowed the game down when we needed to, we sped up when we needed to, the game was treated like little mini ‘games-within-games’, of that I am convinced it’s how he instructed his players and they were absolutely ready for it.

Then at halftime he sent the players out early and there was something purposeful about that. It felt like a proper “game face on boys” and as the Madrid players trotted out half-heartedly, those Arsenal players were ready and waiting for them. And they never looked back.

A superb night, an iconic night, an important night and one that we can all dine out on for a while to come.

And one final word on those two free kicks. You will not see better ones struck for a long time. The second one in particular – literal DEFINITION of ‘Postage Stamp’. Love it.

Catch you all tomorrow.

The parallels between the men and women situation are striking in that regard. Domestically it’s a lot more difficult for the ladies because essentially if you lose anything more than a match or two in that league then you’re probably not winning the title, such is the dominance of the top teams. But they find themselves a bit adrift of Chelsea as do the men’s team adrift of Liverpool. Therefore those hopes of the season not petering out for the ladies have stayed in place and I think we will all hope that the men’s team can take inspiration from that.

Obviously the men’s task is probably a little bit more difficult on paper, as Real Madrid are one of the top two or three sides in Europe, whereas I’m not sure the same can be said in women’s football, but I hope all of those Arsenal players coming together at London Colney over the coming days will be able to be buoyed by that excellent display on our patch of North London last night.

For the men there’s a bit more time to prepare before our next game, which is on Tuesday next week against Fulham, for which it kind of feels like we need to just keep cracking on and winning our home games to make sure we remain the ‘best of the rest’ in the league. There will be more of that to come in the coming days as we lead up to that game, but because it’s so far away, I find myself being drawn into far too much introspection, hand-wringing and general concern over things that haven’t happened or may never happened. Yesterday it was worrying about how we’ll all feel if Saka left us like Trent is supposedly doing. The day before it was the conspiracy theory that MLS’ arrival as first-choice left back could spell the end of Gabriel’s time at the club if a big money move comes in and we shift Calafiori to left centre back. Today I’ve been paying far too much attention to these noises about Zubimendi being ‘hijacked’ by Real Madrid.

For what has felt like months all we’ve heard is that Arsenal were in control of the situation, that they would be his destination and even the respected journalists were saying things that made you suggest it was all but done. I think I heard about one of the top sports writers at an AST meeting say that expectations are that it’s just a matter of time. And it all felt very Declan Rice to me. What I mean by that is if you think about the January window before we signed him, we bid for Caicedo which was rejected, but Ornstein had reported that plenty of really positive talks with Rice had taken place and Arsenal were really confident in signing him in the summer. I remember thinking at the time that was a pipe dream, mainly because all the noises I’d heard were that Chelsea were going to just throw a load of cash at him and West Ham and because of his historical ties, that’s more than likely where he would end up. But after a season in which we competed for the league, suddenly we were a side who could be in the conversation. We were serious contenders and we all know that Arsenal pushed the boat out to get their man that summer.

But do you also remember about how City came in and were bidding hard with us. The noises from the likes of Ferdinand were “go to City” and I remember being in Portugal on holiday watching the saga unfold as it finally swung in our favour and we learned that City backed away as Arsenal pushed the boat out to meet the West Ham asking price of £100million (everyone always says £105million, but it was £100million with £5million in add-ons – we don’t know if any of those have ever been met).

Why am I recounting this saga? Well, because it feels like all of the similar boxes have been checked:

• Arsenal have been tracking him a long time
• Arsenal have done a lot of ground work to court him and make sure he’s keen
• There’s an expectation that this summer he will make a move, having stayed at his boyhood club and served his time
• There will be a bit of a bidding war that will go on as he’s a talented player

The vibes I get are very Declan. The only element of this that perhaps is something we don’t have control over, or at least less control, is the cultural change the player would have to go through. Declan is from London, he preferred to stay in London. Arsenal were a clear preference. Zubimendi is Spanish. Uprooting and moving to England would be a lot bigger deal for him than it was for Declan to move from East London to North London. So in that regard, you’d say Real have the upper hand. Then, it’s also Real Madrid and if we’re all honest with ourselves, when they want someone, they tend to get them. If Real are going for Zubimendi and they pay what Sociedad want, then I think our chances are slim.

And so the neurosis kicks in for me again, which is to start thinking that I hope Arsenal have a very good Plan B in place. I really hope we don’t – like we did last summer – have a ‘Sesko or bust’ mindset on Zubimendi, because we will 100% be losing Partey and probably Jorginho, which means there is a necessity to find a suitable replacement.

These are, of course, all worries for another day. The season is still ongoing. But that’s what happens when you have too much time on your hands to think and not enough football matches to be watched.

Catch you all tomorrow.

But the challenges we’ve had in front of goal, the fact that we don’t seem to have many personnel solutions waiting in the wings to change things up, as well as the impact of being ostensibly out of the title race, have me not feeling as buoyant as I would have thought I would feel. There’s no ‘checking the watch to see what time the game is on’, there isn’t a ‘make sure I have social media feeds on between meetings today’ vibe. Heck, I haven’t even tried to re-arrange stuff to get me plenty of time to ‘settle in’ to the evening. I’ve got a 5pm meeting that finishes at 5.45pm in London before i head round a mates house to watch the game later.

It feels a little odd, if I’m honest, because this game tonight is going to be one in which our season hangs in the balance on. We are out of all domestic cups and we know we aren’t competing for the league, so this represents the only opportunity for silverware and that in itself makes for tough reading, when you think about our route to get there.

So I’m feeling a little low-key this morning as I write my preview thoughts. Perhaps it’s because of the league title stuff, perhaps it’s because we are traditionally pretty bad in Europe, perhaps it’s Arteta’s record in European knockout or perhaps it’s the fact that we once again look at our forward line and wonder where the goals are coming from?

I’m sure as soon as the team news comes out I’ll have the usual butterflies in the stomach, but right now, it’s all feeling a little muted.

So It’s on Arteta and those players to show me the error of my ways. That has to be with a lively performance, one with zip and movement, that shows that we have PSV’s number. The real pain point for me for the West Ham game was how slow we were; we’ve been like it for a lot of this season actually, which I know has cheesed off a few of my fellow Block Fivers in the ground on match days. The build up from the back was ponderous and many of us have speculated whether this is a deliberate approach to draw the opposition out to you so you can hit them front to back quickly if they are out of shape. That only works if you have the right amount of movement in the final third and so that’s what we need to see this evening.

We need some of the bigger characters in this team to step up. I’m looking specifically at Rice and Odegaard in this instance; Rice for his aggressive running and ground coverage, Odegaard for his final ball which if we can all be honest with ourselves, has been sadly lacking this season. He’s taken to those little chip balls over the top of late that i’ve seen in two or three games and sadly it has really come off. I’m not surprised though; elite football is played with such high-pace that if you are loop a little lob wedge like that over the top of a back line, nine times out of ten I think they are spinning and able to clear the danger. So what we need to see tonight is incision and precision in Odegaard’s distribution. Not Row Zedding his shots would also come in handy too, methinks.

I wrote a few week’s back about Trossard needing to step up and as one of the senior players you have to hope that too for tonight, because without him and Nwaneri providing service, I’m not sure Merino’s role is anything other than redundant in that false nine role. We need to see the Trossard that can beat a man and put a killer ball in like Leicester three weekend’s back, not the one who gets lost in amongst a sea of defenders, as has been the situation on a few too many occasions for my liking this season.

The hope is that we’ll get more space tonight than we usually do in the Premier League. PSV aren’t playing a Champions League knockout game, at home, under the lights, then giving their vociferous home fans a low block with two chances created all night. They will come at us and that will create space. What we need to do is find a way to exploit that space and I’m looking in the direction of that special 17-year-old we’ve got who will line up on the right wing this evening. If Ethan is in space, find him. Because if he can unlock, or draw out defenders to create space for others, then it is incumbent of the likes of an Odegaard, to find him.

PSV come into this game in a sticky patch of form too. They’ve had Ivan Perisic say he’s annoyed with how they played to Go Ahead Eagles at the weekend. They’re not flying in all comps and are in a similar place to us, except without the level of injuries we’ve got. So the hope has to be that we can quieten that home crowd down if we start well. And you have to feel like we need to start well and score first, to be honest, because as soon as we go a goal down at the moment you’re wondering where the goals are coming from. These players need something. They need something to go in off an arse, or an elbow, or a dodgy penalty, because the longer we go without scoring, the more it starts to feel like a ‘thing’ is bubbling under the surface.

Arteta has had the time to work with them for almost a week without a game. He’s had time to try new things out. Will he do that tonight? I’m not so sure. But an extra week of training with players in certain positions will hopefully give us a little more fluidity in our attack. We need it.

My evening didn’t exactly start on the best footing, as I got stuck at Uxbridge tube station because of a signal failure in the area, which put me back an hour and a half and caused me to miss the first goal by Rice. I had to contend with seeing it on the monitors in the concourse at halftime, but it was a sign of how comfortable we were for most of the night that Havertz was given the free down of the box to deftly touch the ball into Rice’s path for the England midfielder to smash the ball home.

It was a pretty good finish, if truth be told, and I liken it to when you hit a golf ball with the sweet spot of the club; you just know you’ve struck it well and good things are going to happen. Good things did happen – it hit the back of the net.

And when you score so early, it means everyone can ease into the game. The players were stroking the ball around well, the fans were feeling chipper and despite the Zagreb weirdos chucking what looked like empty plastic water bottles at Arsenal players when they went to go and take corners, we looked pretty at ease.

There were some slightly concerning moments though. Kiwior had one where he dwelt on the ball, but we managed to get rid of it, then Timber did something similar a few minutes later. Thankfully that time it was Kiwior stepping in to save his defensive mate. But it did feel like there was a little bit of complacency that had crept in. We were fortunate that we were up against a not very good Zagreb team who didn’t really offer anything going forward. Another team with elite players might have punished us.

They didn’t, we were strong, we got in at halftime having squandered a few chances (Gabriel heading wide from a corner and Havertz also heading wide when unmarked wasn’t great) but you always felt we were good for at least one more in the second half.

And so it was to come to pass, with Havertz heading home from what I thought was an absolute peach of a cross from Martinelli. As Nigel – the guy who sits next to me – said “he forced Havertz to score it”.

As soon as the customary ‘not really properly celebrating because of VAR’ had been confirmed, it really was in cruise control from there on in. We brought Nwaneri and Oartey on for the booked Timber and the – frankly inconsequential – Sterling, which was just what the doctor needed because Nwaneri getting a solid 40 minutes in his belt surely means he’s got a good shout to start on Saturday at Wolves.

The kid had some good runs too. There’s an energy about him that the crowd – me included – love. He never gives up, he’s got a burst of pace about him that is a bit early-years Wilshere, plus he has a finish on him too. There’s was one moment where Odegaard played a ball in behind and it just went a bit too far. Most of us were clapping the effort and saying “unlucky” but Nwaneri chased down and kept it in play against the odds. That kind of tenacity is always going to be rewarded with a vociferous home crowd cheer and we all duly obliged as he then retained possession afterwards.

It’s just as well he’s back, really, because once again we saw the stark difference between the busted flush that is Sterling and the effervescence of Nwaneri. Sterling hasn’t got the pace any more and his trickery affords him the beating of probs key one man at best. The problem he has is that he tries to do two and three and usually it results in him checking back and squaring the ball to somebody like Odegaard. Honestly, I couldn’t be happier to see Nwaneri back on the pitch, because surely it means Sterling resumes his space on the bench from Saturday onwards.

We even had time for Odegaard to put the cherry on the cake by scoring late on too. The ball may have took a nick as Trossard played it in, but he’ll still claim it as an assist after two against Villa and a goal against the Scum and all of a sudden we’re seeing a Leo who has hit a bit of form. And just in time too. And if you think about it, all three of our main attackers have been doing the business of late. We had Trossard scoring against Tottenham, assisting at the weekend and then last night, Havertz and Martinelli scored at the weekend and Havertz last night, as well as Martinelli getting the assist from the cross too.

And we kept a clean sheet.

I suspect if we’d have been up against a better attack we might have been tested more, but a bit like how I think Odegaard scoring might do him the world of good in terms of confidence yesterday evening, I wonder if the return of scoring and assisting boots for our forward line will also be useful as well? I certainly hope so. We all still want another forward, I’ve laid my chips firmly on Sesko as the one I want, but it’s still good to know those players currently operating in our front three have also started to pick up some form. And just in the nick of time too.

They’ll all get themselves a day off tomorrow before it’s back in to training on Friday ahead of another must win away to Wolves, but those Arsenal players will sleep more soundly knowing they’ve had a good result yesterday and they are finding the back of the net again with a little more regularity. There’s also the bonus of knowing that unless something mental happens, we are all but qualified for the automatic spots for the next round of the competition and the last 16.

Right, that’s it from me, I’m calling time on today’s blog and I’ll be back tomorrow as we look ahead to a trip to the Black Country.

The Portuguese manager had said there would be ‘pain’ in the opening part of his tenure and I’d talked about how he was clearly trying to remove any pressure from his team ahead of this tough task for them at The Emirates. We’d been bagging goals for fun since the international break and so he would have been very mindful of a football match that could end up with us running away with it if they were too open. So he set his team up to control more of the ball, although I think Amorim probably didn’t expect us to be as passive as we were, if I’m honest.

I reflected on this with Nick who I sit next to; we were not pressing with the same intensity as Sporting or West Ham last weekend. It was almost as if Arteta had told his team to hold back a little bit because we haven’t really sussed them out. Of course we were missing a couple of key players in Gabriel and Calafiori, but our back line in that first half largely coped fine with a negligible threat that Man United offered. This was two teams who shadow boxed with each other in that first half, which I have to admit was frustrating, because United probably couldn’t have been happier that we were willing to do that in the opening 45.

We did fashion a pretty good chance with Martinelli swivelling inside the box from a deflected Zinchenko shot, but that felt like the sum of our parts and when the halftime stats came up in the concourse that we’d had three shots and none on target and United had two (again, none on target), it felt like a bit of a nothing first half. Odegaard had misplaced a pass or two, Saka wasn’t getting enough space to run at Malacia, plus we didn’t get to see Martinelli make enough of the ‘out to in’ runs that you’d expect against a team playing with a back three and missing players.

We needed a second half reaction.

We got one.

Sure, it wasn’t from open play that we secured this victory, but they all count. If you tell me we’re going to win every game between now and the end of the season 1-0 and score a penalty in each one, I’m taking it. So set pieces were the order of the day once again and the team delivered once more, despite the absence of the main man Big Gabriel. Jurrien Timber’s near post flick was precise and no more than he deserves for what he is serving up for us each week this season. He was once again brilliant and in the second half when Zinchenko picked up a yellow for a silly mistake and was being run at by Amad on the right wing, Arteta simply pulled Timber in to play left back and Amad was pretty quiet thereafter.

The second half was a much better display and even without the set pieces, I’d wager we’d still have broken the deadline, because after the first 45 Arteta had seen enough to work out Amorim’s approach and he altered our playing style accordingly. That’s what I love about Arteta – his in game ability to change things – and he acted and we eventually did the business as Set Piece FC cranked the gears to pick up the second. In an age of so much concern, it’s nice to have something positive to chuckle about, so the fact it came off Saliba’s arse from a Partey knock back was funny and brilliant. On the final whistle you could see Gabriel having a bit of banter with his centre back partner and you could tell he was saying words to the effect of “that’s not how you do it! LOLZ”.

It certainly isn’t, but nobody affiliated with Arsenal will care one jot. We picked up the three points, we were deserved winners, all of the metrics showed this was a United team who didn’t really have a sharp end and that has been something that has been the case for them all season, by the looks of it. They fashioned one chance from a free kick that David Raya made a very good save on, but that was pretty much it for them and we march on with another three points. And with Liverpool dropping two against Newcastle, it means that gap is reduced to seven points, making it a pretty positive night overall. The relentlessness of a title charge means that this win will be quickly parked as we look ahead to Fulham in a couple of days, but for now we can certainly bask in the fact that an old foe has been vanquished and we’re still up there chasing Liverpool. Chelsea have knocked us off second on goal difference after they beat a woeful Southampton down to 10 men for most of the game, but that was always going to be expected so I don’t think there’s much to talk of there. We have to focus on ourselves, we have to keep doing what we’re doing and then we’ll see how we are shaping up come Christmas. There’s a lot more work to do for this Arsenal team before we can claim that we’re clawing ourselves back in to the title race.

And to be fair to them, when you listen to the Rice interview afterwards, that’s how the Arsenal players are thinking too. They know that there’s a long way to go and a steep mountain to climb because of Liverpool’s excellent start. So talk of the title just isn’t worth it at this stage. Rice was man of the match yesterday though, which is good because a few have wondered what has happened to him this season, but he stepped up in a big way and in a big game. I thought he was great against West Ham, then brilliant last night and if we’re getting him back to his best now and for this hectic run in, then that will be pivotal for us I’d wager.

Onwards to Fulham, where we need some revenge from last season, so let’s hope the players bring it.

Catch you tomorrow.

For this game Arsenal are the favourites, but it seems quite universal that these pundits are all predicting a tight game, which I think it will be, because Forest are a well-drilled, well-coached side who will look to be compact and give us little by way of space. They’ll sit in a mid-block and they will look to hit us on the counter as I mentioned in yesterday’s musings. They have a couple of players out in Danilo and Sangare and, perhaps unusually, they also have to consider players who went away on international duty too. Murillo was off with Brazil and Gibbs-White with England, so whereas in the past this sort of fixture will have seen Forest with a side who have been rested for a couple of weeks, they have similar challenges to us in terms of managing players coming back from international duty.

The good news from Arteta’s press conference is that we have some players returning and as opposed to what I think most of us would have expected, which was that Arteta would say there are doubts over a wealth of players like Trossard, Calafiori, Saka, Rice, etc, yesterday he seemed quite open. He seemed really buoyant in the press conference and you could tell that there is some relief kicking in after what feels like the whole season so far being without a number of players. It will have felt to him like one problem after another; as soon as one player comes back, another goes and even yesterday’s news wasn’t plain sailing with the news that White will be out and still no Tomiyasu return date (I’ll come back to White in a bit). But for tomorrow there are some good news with the likes of Calafiori for starters. The Italian is back, trained the last week and was with the physio’s last week too so I’d expect he’ll be in on the pitch from the off today. So too, I expect, will Rice and Saka be there, because they are two players that Arteta plays every minute he can. Trossard provides depth from the bench and I think that’s where he’ll be today, because it will surely be a front three of Martinelli (having scored in his last game), Havertz up top and Saka wide right. With Odegaard not playing for Norway you’d expect him to be fit and firing today and as already mentioned Rice’s availability means that Arteta’s main question from midfield will probably be who plays in that third position.

Does he go with Rice further forward and Partey in the six? Does he drop Rice in to the six and play Merino left eight? Regardless I will probably be happy with whatever Arteta goes for if it is one of those two combinations; Partey has been in superb form and Merino – having looked at the Chelsea game again – showed some really positive signs of progress as he beds in to the team. If I had a gun to my head I’d probably say he’ll play Partey because of form, which would mean Rice further forward.

The back five (including Raya) I think picks itself I think, because Timber Arteta said was doing fine and we know that White is out for what Arteta described as ‘months’. The initial rumours were an expected six to eight week period. So if Arteta is saying ‘months’ he’s not technically lying and that ambiguity probably buys him some time to not be asked about it. I have no intel, I’m not a doctor or sports injury specialist, but I suspect they’ll be looking at a mid-January return for White. Which means Jurrien is going to be needed for the immediate future and I think we will also need to see Tomiyasu return at some stage soon. It doesn’t sound like it by all accounts, so the ‘Partey at right back’ experiment may not be fully dead, unfortunately. I think Partey has equipped himself fine in that position, but his form has been such that having him at the six feels like we are a lot better in our functioning, than him in in the back four.

Nuno was asked about set pieces in his press conference, which makes sense given our potency, but he didn’t really give much up. He did talk about the fact they need to use their speed and the wide areas to hurt us, so that’s a clear indication again to what we’re up against. Forest to be compact, to try to frustrate, then to spring traps rapidly from front to back. So the name of the game today cannot be to push too hard, too fast, for that opener. But, also, we can’t commit too many forward if the game is goalless after a period of time (say 60 minutes, for example). If you’re Nuno or Forest fans today their blueprint is clear: get to halftime 0-0, or, if we can, a goal on the counter. Then frustrate Arsenal, then as the game starts to reach it’s final 15 – 30 minutes, look to hit on the counter if Arsenal are frustrated and pushing for goals.

That’s enough to make me nervous and I am well aware this will be a tough game today, especially seeing as what they did against Liverpool away, but there can be no excuses for an Arsenal team with lofty ambitions. It’s win or bust today. Let’s hope we don’t bust.

Back tomorrow morning for the blog, plus I think we’re gonna do an early morning Same Old Arsenal pod, so look out for that one from 9.30am.

Catch you then.

Liverpool remind me of us two season’s ago and I think their start will absolutely see them go all the way to challenging for the league, but I think like us two season’s ago, they will have their blip. So getting closer to them now is important and that’s why I think the difference between a loss and a draw is massive today.

But the opponent is one that is returning to what they have been in the recent past; Chelsea are a good team and we will have a tough game today. The stats tell us that they have created 18.1 xG and from that have 20 goals, which is the fifth best in the league. Their attack is their main strength and whatever Maresca said about Palmer in his press conference, he’s playing today, so they will line up with a front four that will include the impressive (and unusually fit at the moment) Neto, Madueke, Jackson up top with Palmer behind. They will look to overload and dominate possession and with their inverting full backs they’ll also be looking to cause us problems in our central defensive third of the pitch I think. That’s why Declan Rice’s fitness is absolutely key. If he’s out (there has been talk of a broken toe) then it is probably Partey, Havertz and Merino in the midfield to start today, which will be Mikel’s attempt to congest that period of the pitch to try to stop Chelsea’s volume of numbers overrunning us. If he’s fit, this could be a big game for Rice and I just hope he’s ok because I feel like his inclusion or absence could be a difference maker for us.

Then, at the other end of the pitch, we have to do our jobs. That hasn’t happened of late and the lack of cutting edge against Bournemouth (before we went a man down), Newcastle and Inter is a worry. So we need to see Martinelli, Havertz, Saka all step up. I’d like to see a start for Odegaard but I don’t think Arteta will do that; he’s had a week of training under his belt, sure, but given he played just a few minutes in midweek, I doubt he’ll be ready to do an hour today. I suspect he’ll be named in the squad and we’ll see him in the second half. So, how do I think Arteta will line up today?

Raya

White – Saliba – Gabriel – Timber

Partey

Havertz – Merino

Saka – Trossard – Martinelli

I am basing this on the assumption that Rice isn’t fit. I know there was some noises pre Inter that said he should be fine for the weekend, I think Arsenal and Arteta will be cautious and not play him – think Saka and Bournemouth – so I suspect he goes with that familiar line up and Havertz and Trossard will be asked to rotate. And it’s because of this line up that I’m not overly confident about today. I think the attack is in a funk, I personally think Trossard needs to be warming the bench given his form, but I think that Arteta keeps having options taken away from him and that’s why he keeps getting the nod. This week it could be Rice that is the reason why Trossard gets a stay of execution in terms of being dropped. After the international break I suspect the team will look very different and Trossard will have to do something absolutely amazing today to keep his place, because Odegaard will be back and so too will Rice I think.

But for today I think Mikel will say once again “I know this hasn’t worked of late, but I still believe in it” and his stubbornness worries me. Personally I’d have Havertz up top, I’d say “screw it, Nwaneri, you’re getting the first half to impress”, then I’d see how the young lad gets on, knowing that we could potentially give Martin a 30 minute run out in the second half. That move would be bold, it would be different, it probably wouldn’t be something Maresca would expect, but it would also give us a creative spark that we’ve been lacking of late.

Chelsea will also look to have their wide players coming in from the sides, so we need duels to be won for White and Timber. Madueke has always impressed me and we all know what a talent Neto is, so both players will have their hands full. But if Chelsea do invert their full backs more today, then a transition game could be beneficial for us. Imagine they commit players forward and leave lots of green grass and space for Martinelli and Saka? Yes please indeed! But I suspect Maresca will adapt his tactics and play a little more like they did with City. They lost that game but played well and I think that was a blueprint for future performances. It was Maresca’s first proper game and so the team is still adapting, but by now they have played more than a dozen together in all competitions. So they will look to commit many bodies forward and pin us in our defensive third with their press. If we can spring out of that press, there will be space for our attackers to exploit.

It feels like the first goal is important here. If we score it, we could be springing more and more traps as the game progresses. If Chelsea score it, you worry about what it might do for our mentality. Chelsea can’t do defensively what Newcastle did last weekend, but they can do more in attack, so I’d expect more chances, but also more threat and if we aren’t on it then it could be an uncomfortable afternoon.

I’ll be on the pod post-game so if you fancy joining us on what might end up being a bit of a catharsis one. Hopefully not though. It’d be nice to do a ‘buzzing’ podcast after the last few weeks we’ve had. You can join us here from around 6.30pm.

But here I am 200 words in to today’s blog and I haven’t even started on The Arsenal, which let’s face it, is more important than anything else in the world of football (or certainly politics…). It’s Inter Milan away and after the shoddy display at the weekend, Arteta spoke to the press ahead of this one. He was asked about whether this period is a test for the club and of course he talked about needing a response. I don’t think anybody needs to tell him that though; this team needs to show that it is better than what happened on Saturday and my bigger concern is the performance more than anything else. I want the win, I would love us to make a statement in Milan against the current Italian Champions, but let’s not forget they got a draw in Manchester against City and have the same points tally as us – two wins and a draw.

It’s my birthday today and I’d really love to see three points as a birthday treat tonight, but even if we can’t do that, I want us to show up against Inter, because we didn’t against Newcastle. And it got me thinking about games on my birthday in the past. Historically, November has always felt like a ‘dreaded’ month for Arsenal; I don’t know why but I always feel like it’s a cursed month. Last season we didn’t play on this day, so I decided to look back on games played over the last 15 years or so on my birthday to see how we got on:

• 2022 = Beat Chelsea 1-0 at Stamford Bridge with Gabriel getting the goal – I couldn’t watch as it was too early in the morning and I was in Vegas
• 2019 = Drew with Vitoria Guimaraes in the Europa League away from home – a late equaliser after Mustafi (!) had scored for us on 80 minutes
• 2016 = Drew with the Scum after Wimmer scored an OG and Kane got his standard penalty against us that he always seemed to get
• 2013 = Beat Dortmond at Signal Iduna Park with Ramsey scoring – now that was one game I DO remember watching – Arteta was even captain that day
• 2002 = Lost to Sunderland in the League Cup 3-2.

So basically it’s hardly a vintage time of the year for us and I’ve hardly had an array of historic memories to draw on for my birthday. It would be nice if the boys could make it so tonight though.

They’ll have to do it without Declan Rice though. Yep, even the guy who never misses a game is succumbing to injury this season, with Arteta also not confirming 100% if he will be fit for Sunday. There’s a few of the more well-briefed journo’s who are suggesting it is cautionary and hopefully that’s true; this game tonight is big, but in the context of the season it feels like Sunday is bigger so having him rest up for that is important. Martin Odegaard did travel, however, with Arteta confirmed he is now in full training. I can’t see him getting many minutes tonight though. He’ll not be match fit and it’ll be unlikely that he’ll be able to make too much of a material impact having just spent two months out injured. But having him back in the match day squad is big. It’s a real positive for us and whilst I suspect he probably won’t make the starting XI on Sunday either (he’s also been omitted from the Norway squad for the upcoming internationals, I think), having him able to even do 20 – 30 minutes on Sunday will be good.

So, our team for tonight then, what do we think it will be? Without Rice my gut feel is:

Raya

White   –   Saliba   –   Gabriel   –   Timber

Partey

Merino   –   Trossard

Saka   –   Havertz   –   Martinelli

Now, he could give it a bit of rotation in there and given that we’re up against an Inter team who will play with the desire for possession but quick build up play, it feels a little like the approach against the Scum could be something that Arteta has a look at. That day we had a base of Jorginho and Partey and whilst the Italian hasn’t played much, giving him minutes in Italy wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world. That would mean you would need a bit more creativity in the more advanced midfield role though, so having Merino in there – somebody you’d expect to play to counter the duel-winning of Rice – doesn’t really work. But could he give a job to Nwaneri? We have to be close to this. He’s impressed every time he’s played, he was great against Preston, but was quiet against Newcastle when he came on. And with that in mind, I suspect Arteta will not use him from the start tonight.

I also think that Trossard’s form is such that he probably doesn’t warrant another start, but I think Arteta will see it that he doesn’t have too many options. Jorginho, Partey and Merino doesn’t give you running power and enough creativity. I still don’t think he wants to throw Ethan in just yet, Havertz in there could be an option with Jesus up top, but I think Arteta has Jesus on the naughty step right now, so I just don’t see it. So that’s why I think he goes with a more familiar look to the team like I’ve outlined above.

Inter will go in to this game with plenty of expectation and plenty of players who can do us damage. Martinez is their main man along with Marcus Thuram, who has eight goals this season. They will then look to use the pace of the likes of Dumfries/Dimarco to unsettle us as their wing backs. You’d hope that leaves space for Martinelli and Saka, but in Pavard and Bastoni they have two experienced international centre halves who will be well-aware of our threat out wide. Whether they double up on our wide men like Newcastle did at the weekend will be interesting to see.

It’s not going to be easy, it might not be pretty, but we need to see a reaction from The Arsenal tonight. Let’s hope we get one.

Catch you all tomorrow.

Last season we were all blown away by Rice and how much he impacted our team; his engine, his ability to win the ball whilst still on his feet, his strength and positional awareness, as well as his ability to chip in with goals and some assists too (his best ever tally in his career as well with 15 goals and assists in all competitions – by some distance actually). He quickly became an integral player and was up for one of our players of the season. This season I’ve noted that a few of us fans have wondered when he’ll be recapturing some of his form, because he’s not been as scintillating as he was when he arrived last season. But I do also think that Arteta is the kind of manager who is always adapting and evolving his team to stay one step ahead of opponents. I read an interesting piece from Billy Carpenter yesterday talking about the evolution of Arteta’s full backs during his time. The piece itself is brilliant and Billy often writes some really fascinating in-depth pieces on specific tactical part of Arsenal’s play, but what I think this piece shows is how the players themselves are constantly having to change their approach to matches.

In today’s game there is so much data, analysts observing every square inch of the pitch, people looking at every minute detail and marginal gain, that at the elite level of the sport there isn’t a lot that other teams don’t know about each other. They all have their own team of analysts at every Premier League club, they will all be looking at tactical differences in their games and how to neutralise each opponent each week, that if you don’t constantly evolve and iterate your team, you’ll end up quickly falling behind. We saw how Zinchenko rocked our world with the inverted full back role and it caught teams out for about four or five months. But by the time the end of that first season with Zinchenko was drawing to a conclusion, teams had worked out what we were doing and there was some adaptation they were able to deliver to force us to have to try different things too.

We still invert our full backs, but as Billy’s article more eloquently puts it than I ever could, there are even more nuances to the way we build up these days compared to a few season’s ago. I think from a simpleton fans view like myself, I’m just pleased we have Arteta willing to keep evolving so that we can remain competitive and towards the top of the league. I also wonder if it is because of this that we maybe haven’t seen the absolute peak of Rice just yet; he’s having to adapt his game and change things as Arsenal evolve and Arteta asks him to do slightly different things.

There is probably also something in there about the fact we’ve had so many injuries and suspensions, that the team is having to evolve and learn this stuff on the job, whilst also having to do it with different playing partners each time, which of course impacts those famous automisms that Big Per used to talk about all those years ago.

So Rice will be heading back today and that means he’ll be back and training at Colney by tomorrow/Wednesday at the latest, which is good. It is also good that Carsley confirmed that the injury sustained to Saka isn’t a big one and that he might have even been ‘close’ to play yesterday, but he went back to Arsenal for treatment, which hopefully means he can rest up for a few days and be ready for Bournemouth next Saturday evening. That was one that we’ve all been sweating on a bit and with our luck so far this season on the injury front, I think there’s a fair few of us who might have thought the worst.

So hopefully Saka is back, which means that tonight we have eyes on Trossard and Saliba for this evening, as they face off in Belgium, as well as Calafiori playing for Italy at home to Israel. Timber will line up for a (thankfully) Havertz-less Germany as well, so from tomorrow we’ll hopefully know a bit more about the extent of any damage done during this international break. Raya will most likely start tomorrow at home for Serbia but (hoping I don’t jinx this as I say it) there’s always a little less risk on ‘keeper injury than outfield players, so fingers crossed we get some good news. The only other bits we’ll be sweating on with be the Gabby’s in Brazil, who play 1.45am UK time on Wednesday morning. That means – like the last round of these games – that they won’t be getting on a plane until Thursday UK time and probably even when Arteta takes to the mic on Friday morning for his usual pre game press conference, he won’t have much of an update on them because he won’t have seen much of them.

So we continue to remain a little bit in limbo at the moment, which is frustrating, but I guess it is what it is right now. I’d love to say we have these games then we can forget about them for a while, but there’s another one of these effing international breaks one month from today, so we won’t be able to put some distance in between them and the next ones until after that break in mid-November.

And so we wait. That’s what we do.

Until tomorrow peeps. Have yourselves a good one.

It was pre-meditated, it was fully intentioned, it was a professional footballer looking to provoke. The mistake Rice made, was to offer the slightest of touches on the ball as it was rolling, which gave Chris Kavanagh – intent on refereeing two sides on the pitch very differently – all the opportunity he needed to give Rice the second yellow (he’d deserved the first, by the way).

Rice has said he holds his hands up and it was naive of him, but that’s his public commentary, because he knows that this is an incident that we will never see again. And in fact, across the Premier League weekend this weekend, we have indeed not seen happen in any other game.

This referee – as appalling as he is – has never done that before. Last weekend he was the one that allowed Joelinton to clothesline Neto. Two year’s ago he was the one who saw Declan Rice flick the ball away against Granit Xhaka whilst playing for West Ham. There was no need to say or do anything that day. But yesterday he decided to change that approach and fundamentally change a football match that Arsenal were fully in control of.

We were already one up. We had created a ton of chances. We had forced Verbruggen in to a number of smart – if not spectacular- saves. At halftime Brighton had created barely anything; their xG was at 0.08 – which means we’d completely limited them and we started off the second half in the same fashion.

Kai Havertz had his second goal of the season after good work from Saka to challenge Dunk, followed by the perfect ball to the German to set up a sumptuous goal to get us up and running. It was deserved, it was class, it was us showing just how good we are. Every Arsenal fan was happy and we were looking at extending that lead and securing the points in the second half. And as I and James both said on the Same Old Arsenal pod this morning, I was convinced that we were going to replicate the perfection of a performance as we did last season.

And then everything changed. Kavanagh – who had been giving Brighton 60-70% of decisions up until that point anyway – decided that he wanted to make an impact on the game, even though he didn’t have to. Common sense with decisions like that yesterday should always prevail; last weekend with Saliba, McGinn and White in that incident saw common sense do so, but Chris Kavanagh showed just what sort of poor officiating he delivers on a frequent basis by showing he had no intention of applying some logic to a situation.

I keep hearing this “letter of the law” phrase trotted out for the incident. It is more flawed as an argument than can ever be imagined. And here’s why:

1. By the letter of the law, Joao Pedro should have been booked for kicking the ball away. He wasn’t.
2. By the letter of the law, Hinzelwood should have received a booking for a shirt pull on Saka in the first half. He wasn’t.
3. By the letter of the law, perhaps the high boot on Odegaard should have been chalked up as dangerous play, the Brighton player could/should have been sent off. He wasn’t.
4. By the letter of the law, Veltman shouldn’t have taken the free kick from the position he took it from – the ball was about 10 yards back. He didn’t.
5. By the letter of the law, you can’t strike a moving ball as a free kick. He did.
6. By the letter of the law, his intention on Rice was to kick through him, so violent conduct comes in to play and he should have been given a red card. He didn’t.

This is absolutely farcical that the ‘letter of the law’ seems to have been arbitrarily applied. And we’re not even talking about separate dates and separate minutes.

THIS IS THE SAME GAME.

It was just plain wrong. It was an example of two teams being refereed differently. It made a fundamental impact on the football match.

After that the game became attack versus defence and Brighton – a possession-based team and one of the better teams in the league – were always going to dominate. Had that incident not happened, or had it been refereed properly and how 99 time ms out of 100 I suspect it would have been, then we would all be talking a different story today.

Arsenal seem to be the test case for ‘things you only ever see once’ and frankly, we Arsenal fans are all sick of it.

• Tomiyasu at Palace last season getting a yellow card for holding on to the ball for seven seconds.
• Granit Xhaka against Swansea.
• Martinelli two yellows in one move. Against Wolves.
• referee ‘forgets’ to draw lines against Brentford.
• apologies for ‘interfering’ with decision when they shouldn’t against United at OT – for Martinelli’s goal where Odegaard was adjudged to have fouled Erikson.

What happened yesterday won’t happen again. Yet we are the ones who have to deal with it. Last season we lost the title on two points. What happens if the same happens this season?

We can talk about the defending for the Brighton goal, for sure, and I think Partey could do better with tracking Joao Pedro, but aside from that you cannot argue that this whole match was defined by a referee who wanted to make a name for himself. It’s pathetic, it’s infuriating, it’s unfair. I said it yesterday on social media and I’ll say it again today:

This sort of stuff doesn’t happen against 115 Charges FC.

But it does happen to us. Quite frequently (Kai Havertz getting chokeslammed two weeks ago, anyone?).

And we’re doubly punished now, because we go in to the North London Derby away from home without one of our key defensive pillars. Rice missing for that game will be massive.

I’m tired. I’m tired of the PGMOL. I’m tired of the same conversations about the same group of officials. I’m tired of the lack of change or ownership of accountability (we’ll be seeing referees and the PGMOL talk to us about ‘good process’ here for sure over the next few days). I’m tired of the inevitability of this stuff happening again.

Be back tomorrow with more Arsenal thoughts. Catch you all then.

They are in a race against time to be fit enough and have shaken off the rust and fatigue of a long season, the Euro’s and then some holiday, but these days these footballers probably never really take a proper break from keeping their fitness maintained. There were times maybe 30 years ago when footballers would spend their summer doing whatever they wanted on holiday – pies, booze, laying around on a beach – but the levels needed to be an elite footballer are such that the demands needed during the ‘rest’ period probably still means that they have to spend every day in the gym when their on holiday anyway. Gabriel Jesus has had a bit of an extended holiday period by not going to Copa America, but we all saw that he got himself going with his personal trainer pretty early on in the summer and I suspect there are many more players who have been doing just that in the Arsenal squad.

Arteta won’t have long before he gets a decent look at his fully available squad either, because on Wednesday we have Leverkusen at home and the return of a certain Granit Xhaka. I saw some quotes from him talking about how Arsenal to Leverkusen wasn’t a step back, it was two steps forward, which a few fellow Arsenal fans have taken Umbridge with. Not me though; he joined a team who then went an entire season unbeaten and he won the league, why on earth would he say that he took a backwards step in leaving The Arsenal? I don’t think he meant it in any way to be derogatory to the club and I think he’ll get a fine reception on Wednesday night when he returns. He got his redemption arc in his last season against us and he joined a team who performed fabulously and who at the moment have kept the bulk of that winning team together this summer. They will be a force to be reckoned with in Germany and Europe next summer so it’ll be interesting to see how we line up on Wednesday night. Our last pre season game ended in defeat to Liverpool and there were bits about the performance I don’t think Arteta was 100% happy with, but all-in-all he didn’t seem overly fussed from the interviews I watched. What will be interesting is if he starts to get more animated from now and in the game against Lyon on Saturday, which will be our final match before that Wolves game the weekend after next. I suspect he will because he knows that it’s time to put ‘game faces on’ from now; we can ill-afford not to be ready to go given that we have such a tough start, as I’ve already talked about in recent weeks.

There’s not really a lot else going on. The Mikel Merino stuff keeps rumbling along and as the noises become more consistent, I’ve started to watch a few more compilation videos of a player who looks tidy on the ball and who occupies a zone of the pitch I think Arteta will be interested in exploring. Apparently he too is due to be back in training with Sociedad and I suspect that will be the case regardless of what is happening with any potential transfer. Much like we saw Smith Rowe on tour in the US, then even named on the bench in the games but not playing, Merino will probably have the same situation because Arsenal could ultimately decide against him and then he has to get his head back in to the place where he’s a Sociedad player for the season. These guys are professionals know and they know the game and how its played; you have to just forget about potential moves until they’re basically but done, because anything could make it fall through.

So until it becomes a ‘thing’, it isn’t a ‘thing’ – simple as that.

The final thing I wanted to speak on today relates to a comment I saw on Twitter from somebody I quite like to read their opinion on, which was about a comment made by Rohan Jivan on Thomas Partey:

Some takeaways from the US Tour

– Switches
– 344 build up (Hein CCB) a regular story
– Improved LHS dynamics
– Hale End class
– Timber, Reiss, Jesus, Kai all sharp
– Partey’s physical drop off
– Noticing Raya’s influence in his absence
– Vieira’s quick decision making upfield

— RohanJivan (@RohanJivanAFC) August 4, 2024

This is find interesting, because at the end of last season there’s no doubt it seemed he had a physicality on him that was missing. He just didn’t seem like the Thomas Partey of old. There have been a few who have been quick to say he’s washed, but I haven’t wanted to jump on that bandwagon just yet. Yes, he wasn’t great towards the end of last season and yes, he seemed to be off the pace. But he’d spent so long out injured and then had a set back just as he was coming back to fitness, that I am still not 100% ready to declare his Arsenal career completely buried yet. He could be a valuable rotation option and although we know he’s not going to give us 38 games next season, if he can play a decent part in some games and maybe be rotated in and out of the team, I’d still fancy that he can be a valuable player for us.

Quite how that lines up in our midfield, I don’t know, because as Rohan mentioned when I asked him, he said his timing in the tackle and interception was off and he struggled to keep pace in games. Whether that’s just a pre season fitness thing remains to be seen. I hope it is because if we’re not cashing in on him this summer, we need to be ready and willing to use him this season.

Right, Going to call it a day now. Off for some work.

You guys have yourselves some good times.

Laters people.

It starts to get spicy in the Euro’s now, with the two semi finals on tonight and whilst I’m pretty sure Spain will win, seeing Big Bill Saliba happy and in to the final would be nice.

“See William? You don’t NEED to go to Madrid at all in your career. You can achieve your dreams at The Arsenal”

I think also if England do actually stand a chance of winning the thing, it’s probably more likely to come against the French than the Spanish. I get that David Raya is in the Spain squad too, but he doesn’t really play and they also have Rodri and Cucurella, so I’m fully invested in seeing the French progress tonight.

Whatever happens though, there will be at least some form of Arsenal representation at the weekend and that’s nice. And if we go and buy that Merino chap too, we’ll have had it be proxy anyway.

I suppose if I put my purely Arsenal lens on, the best final to have would probably be Spain versus the Netherlands. If France are out tonight then Saliba can head off for a two week rest before re-joining with the Arsenal squad for pre season by 29th July because thankfully there is no third/fourth placed pointless game. That will have given him two-and-a-half week’s of rest and recuperation, plus it means that there is a solid 20 days to have him in training before we kick off against Wolves on 17th August. Which is a-ok for me.

On the other side of the draw from an Arsenal perspective we have Ramsdale, Rice and Saka who are all in the squad for England, whereas with the Netherlands it’s got a chunk of Liverpool and City players, so if they were to get through at the expense of the English, then we get our lads to essentially have the same amount of time off as Saliba would if he went out. But I guess given I was born and raised in this country, I naturally have the preference for England to go all of the way and get to the final. The weather has been crap this summer but at least England have gone beyond a group stage knockout to keep the country’s spirits up. And it is kinda nice to see people coming together for a singular level of support; there’s so much division in this country already through things like politics, football teams, etc, that it’s good to have everyone routing in one direction for a change.

I guess all of this pre-amble is me saying that regardless of the results of both games today and tomorrow, hopefully by the weekend I’ll very much have a ‘that was a win-win’ mentality about me.

It will also mean that from Monday next week we go back to going way over the top on the transfer situation. This tournament is a welcome distraction from the inevitability of the transfer window, but at least before we know it there will be friendly matches just a couple of weeks after the Euro’s.

The Copa America draws to a conclusion too, which is good, because it means our American players will be getting back. The big ones are obviously the Brazilians but mercifully, they got themselves knocked out on pens on Sunday, so whilst they’ll all be sad this week, they can have an extra couple of week’s off and hopefully then also be back with plenty of time before the season starts. Perhaps in a way it’s better that we’re not in the Community Shield this season; I do enjoy a sojourn to Wembley, but having to call players back an extra week because of a showpiece curtain raiser feels like something we can do without. We did it last season, it was fun, let’s now just use this time to have a little more experimentation when we welcome Granit Xhaka back on 11th August instead, shall we?

There’s not really a lot of other transfer stuff going on, so I think I’ll finish off with a localised story here in London that I saw in FourFourTwo this morning. Apparently we’re cracking down even more on touts and those who haven’t used their season ticket this season and there have already been 54 people who haven’t been able to renew their season ticket. Good. It’s hard enough as it is to get tickets to games right now, so the idea of people not taking their tickets up and leaving empty seats is criminal. Now to be fair, in the lower tiers where I sit, you rarely see that, but even for games like the Scum at home or the last game of the season just gone against Everton, I still saw one or two seats in the upper tiers that weren’t taken up. There will have been people on that final day who would have done anything to be inside the ground and I’m pretty sure there were more than 60,000 people milling outside the Emirates on that final match day, yet we still saw a few red patches where nobody took up the seat. Anything Arsenal can do to avid that absolutely gets my vote. Good on the club for taking these initiatives. Let’s hope we see more proactiveness as the new season kicks in.

And on that note I’ll pause for today and say ‘cheerio’ and ‘see you tomorrow’.

Have yourselves a wonderful Tuesday.

Rice has been an absolute revelation at The Arsenal and whilst last summer on my holiday’s I was watching the saga unfold as we battled City for his signature thinking that we were over-paying at £100million (plus add ons), I now see exactly why Arteta and Edu essentially pulled out all of the stops.

Of course football is about goals and tomorrow I’ll do some words on our attacking players, so much is about shutting out your opponent, but a cog that you cannot overlook is the midfield and this season Rice has been the stand out player for me.

If you’ve read a fair bit of my ramblings you’ll know that my Brother (and nephew) are West Ham fans. One whole half of my family are West Ham fans and over the summer we chatted about Rice. For me he was a £60million, max £65million player. You don’t pay the big bucks for a guy who sits in front of the back four and screens. But he has shown me the error of my ways and I think he’s even been better than he was for West Ham last season. In an Arsenal team at the top of the division he has shown his amazing ability to win the ball whilst staying on his feet, as well as the lung-busting runs that we saw at West Ham. But I feel like he’s elevated his game in the attacking third too; he’s got a fantastic range of passing that I never expected to see and he’s also come up with some crucial goals. He scored the winner against Luton in the dying stages after a difficult game, he scored the winner against United in the dying stages too. He’s also shown a penchant for a wonder strike too and put a cherry on the cake with his peach of a goal against his former club too.

He’s durable as well. At a time in which we have all come to admit that Partey’s days are probably numbered given his lack of availability, Declan Rice has been an ever present. He is an all-round midfielder and I love that we have him; and at a good age too. Hopefully he can be the bedrock of our midfield for the next six to seven years minimum. Let’s also have an honourable mention for his Game of Thrones moment against Liverpool at Anfield. Pressing for a goal and finding ourselves countered on by Liverpool’s rapid transition football, that moment in which Rice was the only Arsenal player against Four Liverpool attackers and Raya became a meme and a screenshot still that reverberated through Arsenal Twitter. His positioning was excellent and it forced Trent to go for a speculative pot shot in which admittedly we got away with, but ultimately salvaged us a point at Anfield which a few year’s ago would have been a rarity.

As for the rest of the midfield, well, it’s a bit of a weird one because the only real ever-present that you can talk abotu with any specific detail is Martin Odegaard. Partey barely played any football, Vieira and Smith Rowe were bit-part players. I will do a shout out for Jorginho because at times he was very important, but Odegaard and Rice are the stand out performers for me. Odegaard’s pressing, his vision, his goals, it’s just amazing. And to top it all off he’s an exemplary captain too. True skipper material and when you see the way he represents The Arsenal and the values of the club, it makes you proud. I really felt for him on that final day; he was exhausted after a long season, he was gutted, yet he still had that drive and burning feeling to say he just wanted to get back on the training pitch. We are so lucky to have him because he has shown us why Arteta made him captain. He presses like a beast too. His equaliser at home to Man United had a real Bacary Sagna “eff you” feel to it and I absolutely loved it. Like Rice he’s also durable; he missed two games all season due to a hip problem.

And finally for today, I’ll mention Jorginho. I know Havertz played a bit in the left eight role and I could in theory include him in today, but I think his story has to be told in the context of the attackers, so I’ll save him for tomorrow. But Jorgi has been great. He hasn’t started loads of games, but there was a period in the season earlier this year in which his form has been pretty special. In fact I’ll retract my earlier statement about the only two players who you could really focus on in the midfield were Rice and Odegaard, because Jorginho has had some pretty big games too, especially in big matches. He was great at home to Liverpool and Newcastle and he is a model of consistency. You could see why Arsenal were super keen to tie him down to that additional year; his experience and knowhow next season will be invaluable for us. I think he’ll play in a fair few games too. When he arrived I – like many of you guys – was sceptical. This was a guy in an ailing Chelsea team who some of them were delighted to see the back of. Plus he apparently couldn’t run and liked a sideways pass. But Arteta and Guardiola love him for a reason and we’ve seen some examples of that this season and last season to be fair. He’s been a great addition to the squad and I don’t think you’d find many Gooners who aren’t happy he’s sticking around for another year.

And speaking of sticking around, I think i’ll head off for today. I’m off to Portugal for some sunshine later so need to crack on with work this morning so I can go and fill myself with red wine from Douro and Sagres beer.

Catch you all tomorrow.

I think i’ll do a few days in which I’ll take a look at the team by on-pitch section, so today I thought I’d have a think about defenders, i.e. what went well, what went wrong, what we might look at for next season.

I think if you’re going to do some kind of grading system, the back line would absolutely be getting an A* from most Arsenal fans. The numbers speak for themselves: most clean sheets in the season is nothing to be sniffed at and the fact we were even able to get to the final day still in with a shout feels to me as though it was mainly in part down to our back line.

At the end of last season it was our defence that cost us; you can’t concede the amount of goals that we conceded and just expect to outscore your rivals. It just doesn’t work. It didn’t under Kevin Keegan in the 90s and it doesn’t work today. Our back line and defensive set up is the reason we have been so good and when you consider the turnaround from 2022/23, it really is quite a remarkable feat.

But what is it down to?

David Raya in between the sticks

I was a sceptic, I still don’t think he’s made that much of a difference (i’ll explain why in a sec), but there’s no doubt that he’s been a calming factor in some areas. I love Ramsdale, I was sad to see that Arteta had no intention of following through on his comments about having two number one goalkeepers, but the way Raya claims crosses and seems so composed at times has been brilliant and I’m sure pivotal in calming those in front of him. I didn’t think he was enough of an upgrade on Ramsdale and I’m still not 100% convinced, but he’s our ‘keeper and he gets my full backing and support and has done whenever he’s been in between the sticks and as we go in to next season.

Saliba staying fit

This is one of the big factors, I think, and I’m sure you guys have seen some of the numbers floating around as to the fact he’s played every minute of the Premier League this season. He’s been immense; his ability to win ground duels, the fact he’s bossed the likes of Haaland this season, as well as the way he strides out of defence with the ball that enables us to disrupt the positioning and press of other teams, has had a huge impact. We all said it last season – that losing him could have cost us the title – but when you have other players saying it as well as he himself stating it, it shows just how important a cog he is in this team. But he isn’t the only one in that back line, because…

Gabriel is a man mountain

If Saliba is the cultured defender who strides and glides so gracefully, Gabriel is the muscle. But to simply label him as that would be a massive disservice to this footballer, because he has become imperious alongside his French teammate. He’s a lot quicker than people would think, he absolutely LOVES a duel, but also he’s a good passer of the ball too. I can remember countless times this season in which he’s played vertical passes in to the likes of Trossard, Martinelli or Havertz and I think that part of his game probably gets overlooked a fair bit. He’s a great footballer for us and I am so glad that nonsense at the start of the season was cleared up quickly, because I have no doubt in my mind that without him we wouldn’t have achieved nearly as much defensive stability. In fact, I’d go as far to say that he was our best defender this season. Last season Saliba blew our minds, but this season I feel like Gabriel has risen to the challenge and then some.

Ben White – Mr underrated

I love him, you love him, every Arsenal fan loves him. Quiet, unassuming, durable and such an adaptable footballer. It’s because of Ben White that if we did lose Saliba to injury next season, I’d feel absolutely fine about having him fill in. He could just as quickly adapt and become a top class centre half again, even though he’s been playing two season’s as a full back. When he’s fit and firing – and post Dubai that was definitely the case – his link up with Odegaard and Saka is phenomenal. I can’t picture specific moments, but repeatable moments; I’m sure you too could envisage White overlapping Saka which then creates space for Saka to either cut in, or feed him to put a ball in. The only sad bit of the season was his miss at Bayern to make it 2-0 to us but he’s a full back, so I don’t think anybody was digging him out too much with that miss. At everything else he excels.

Rice to form the perfect triangle

I think that the real reason above all that we are so good defensively is Rice acting as that screen in front of Saliba and Gabriel. Don’t get me wrong, those two are amazing, but the amount of block tackles that Rice has made to stop the ball even coming to a situation where our centre halves are stretched is, I think, a reason we also have such a low quality of shoit against us (and therefore the best xG against of any team in the league). That triangle of Gabriel, Saliba and Rice is immense. Long may that triangle stay fit, for sure.

This defence is brilliant. I love it. I just pray they all stay fit, because if we can get that level of consistency for next season and those key players can stay fit throughout the duration not to mention the hope that Jurrien Timber bangs for us, the hope is that once again we’ll be a force to be reckoned with.

Back tomorrow with some thoughts on the midfield.

Catch you all then.

And that is exactly what we got from Arsenal.

Honestly, I was so impressed with the way these Arsenal players handled that match yesterday, because especially after the first 15 minutes – when I think we’d racked about about eight chances – there could have been an element of nerves setting in that it might be “one of those days”. I’m in Munich at the moment and so had to watch the game from my phone and even after 30 minutes and no goal scored, that’s what I was saying to The Management in a Bavarian beer garden. I was certainly concerned about the repeat of the Villa game in which we’d done everything but score in that first half and so when Kai Havertz went down and the penalty was given and confirmed by VAR, I certainly felt relief. I have to say though if we’re being fair, it was probably not really enough contact to make Havertz go down. He left his foot there, there was clear contact, but if we’re talking about the lack of contact from Kulusevski last weekend (which wasn’t a penalty in my opinion), we have to say the same about the same level of contact yesterday. It’s one of those weird ones that whatever the on field decision is the VAR won’t overturn it. If the referee says it’s not a penalty then I suspect VAR don’t even properly look at it and we go in to halftime on level terms.

Saka slotted it in and we go in at halftime one up which was a super soft way to be ahead, but as Iraola said afterwards, we were the better team and deserved to be ahead. It just probably wasn’t a penalty and perhaps we got away with one.

But you can also argue that Bournemouth ‘got away with one’ too, because how on earth Ryan Christie stayed on the pitch is baffling to me. His high boot up as high as Saka’s waist midway through the first half looked worse every time you saw it and when you then saw that it drew blood from Saka’s legs, I have no idea why VAR didn’t call the referee to the monitor. If they had have done I’m sure it would have been red and then you’re looking at a game in which we play against 10 men for 78+ minutes. It was at very least a nasty yellow and the fact that he then had hold of Gabriel’s shirt in that first half for a clear yellow again, yet wasn’t punished in the slightest, was baffling. He finally picked up a yellow in the second half and honestly, it felt like a bit of a joke that he remained on the pitch as long as he did.

So perhaps there was a bit of karma in our soft penalty decision, because before that Partey had shot over, Saka hit the side netting, the ‘keeper Travers had made three fine saves from Partey, Havertz and Trossard shots and I think there had been about four or five blocks as well. We were excellent at everything except putting the ball in the net at halftime. We’d had 16 attempts at goal, an xG of 1.97, five shots on target, SEVEN blocked shots and had completely shut out Bournemouth from doing anything offensively.

But this isn’t a poor Bournemouth side and they came out in the second half with a bit more purpose about them. And between the 46th and 70th minute when Trossard got his goal after a superb reverse-flick pass from the man-of-the-match Rice (more on him in a bit), it felt like a game in which any small slip up could be punished. Bournemouth certainly had more about them and in the second half had six attempts and a couple of shots on target. There was also the controversy of the Bournemouth goal they thought they scored. To be fair to the ref I think he blew up as the ball went in, but VAR ratified what was a clear push by Solanke on Raya. If Solanke isn’t looking only at the ‘keeper and pushing him to off balance him, maybe you have a case, but he was never showing any intention to win the ball and so for me it felt a fairly obvious one. Perhaps there is some argument about Saliba fouling a Bournemouth player in the box, but again it felt a bit week to me. If the ref gives the penalty then I don’t think we can complain, but we’ve heard about the higher threshold for VAR intervention and it feels similar to the Havertz penalty in the first half; the VAR will just ratify what the on field decision is.

That would have made for a nervy final 20 minutes plus injury time, but as it was the clean sheet was kept in tact and after that I felt we were in ‘seeing the game out’ mode. It was good actually because it gave a bit of an adrenaline shock back in to the team I felt and we gathered a little more composure to ensure the clean sheet. Which also confirmed David Raya’s golden gloves for this season. It’s an award that I couldn’t really give a monkey’s about but what it does show is how good we’ve been defensively by getting yet another clean sheet, so well done to our back line for once again being strong.

And it was a good job that the magnificent Declan Rice stepped up to add to the goal difference too, because we all knew that Wolves were going to bend over for Man City and gift them more goals and three points as well. Now that IS a team that is on the beach, although they also have a few injuries, but City’s win was as expected as you’re gonna get. But Rice was the deserved man of the match because of his fine assist for Trossard’s, as well as the excellent finish in to injury time to make the scoreline more reflective of the overall dominance we had in that match yesterday.

So it’s another win, it’s another game down, this team can only do what it can to keep up with City and hope for a miracle.

And we start all of this up again next weekend with an incredibly tough one: Manchester United away.

Catch you all tomorrow.

One person I will be hoping that is in the line up is Kai Havertz, who has been in superb form and the fact that he has been lambasted by that utter muppet Adebayor makes him all the more awesome in my eyes. I’m not linking to any of his words, but let’s just say Adebayor is to football punditry what Abba were to the music industry: an utter travesty.

Havertz has been in roasting form, has been one of the clear winners in our form in 2024 and has shown just how integral he is to our side with a goal and an assist in a North London Derby, shortly after bagging a brace against his former club in another London derby too. Keep on doing what you’re doing Kai, you’ve been brilliant.

Another surprise Chelsea addition who has also had a good season so far is Jorginho, with whom reports emerged yesterday from David Ornstein that he is about to sign an extension to keep him at the club for next season as well. And I think most Arsenal fans agree this is the right move. On the Same Old Arsenal pod on Monday night we had a chat about Jorginho versus Partey for next season and I think most of us and those in the chat room as well agreed that it probably has to be Partey that is moved on in the summer. On talent alone then it would clearly be Partey that stays – his verticality of passing and physical presence is just a little more dominant than Jorginho – but he’s barely spent any time on the pitch this season and as he gets older that’s only going to get worse. Conversely Jorginho has shown that he can play a big part in our season and it was only a month or so back that we were all talking about him and one of the first names on the team sheet. He arrived to a few grumbles and there were certainly a few of us raising our eyebrows as to why we signed a 31-year-old for £12million from Chelsea, but when you look at how he’s slotted in and the way some of those younger players look up to him, it just goes to show how valuable he has been for us in more ways than just his time on the pitch.

That has also been impressive too by the way. I remember seeing Chelsea fans laughing at how they got that amount of money for him and suggesting that he was a bit of a crab sideways passer, that he gets bypassed easily and that they couldn’t understand how they’d managed to mug us out of £12million. But nothing could be further from the truth. Under Arteta and in Arsenal’s system we have seen a range of passing in Jorginho that has been superb and something few of us truly knew about (why would we? Then we’d have to watch that horrible club in West London more than twice a season when they play us) and I am so pleased that it has worked out. It’s just another example of why we are all so much more trusting of the Arsenal set up when it comes to player acquisition; there have been one or two that perhaps haven’t worked out as well but broadly speaking in the last two to three years Edu, Arteta and the team that is responsible for player identification have been absolutely spot on.

Havertz, Jorginho, Rice, White, Raya, Gabriel, Tomiyasu, Odegaard – the list can go on and on. You could probably also put the likes of Ramsdale, Zinchenko and definitely Gabriel Jesus in there too; yes the latter three have seen their game time restricted, but if any of us truly sat back and had to make a binary decision on players who have been successful or unsuccessful signings, you’d have to say that those three players have all played their part and done really well for us in the main.

So I’m glad Jorginho is staying and when it comes to the summer I’ll be trying my absolute best to just go with whatever Mikel and Edu opt for in certain positions. Because it’s working and they just need to keep on doing what their doing.

A quick little nod to Declan Rice before I toddle off for the day today. I did like his comments in the Athletic (posted here so it’s not behind their paywall) about his goalscoring. We know what a revelation he’s been since he joined us, we all have a chuckle at our “Declan Rice we got him half price” chant that rings out the grounds these days, but as I also said on the SOA pod, he has been a fundamental part of why we are in the title race talk at the closing stages. Yes, the fact Saliba has remained fit is a big part of our success this season and his partnership with Gabriel is immense, but I think Rice being that screen in front of them for most of the season is another piece in that puzzle that evidences the fact that we are so much more resolute at the back. I couldn’t give a monkey’s if Rice didn’t sore a single goal all season. Of course it’s nice that he has bagged some important goals, but this guy has come in to our team and helped to make us the most miserly defensive unit in the league. And I don’t think this is a one off season either like Newcastle had last season. As long as we can keep Rice, Gabriel and Saliba fit, I think we’ll keep on having this immense back line. Long may it continue.

That’s me done for today I think. Have yourselves a happy Wednesday and I’ll be back tomorrow as attention and focus starts to zone in on Bournemouth at The Emirates.