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.

I didn’t watch the game (because why would I bother?), but having listened to Tuchel on Thursday, I think most of us knew the sort of treatment he’d get. The media have played their part in this, too, big time, I’m afraid. It’s people like Henry Winter who have felt compelled to make comments like this, or Martin Samuel of The Times, quoting:

England fans like winning, but they still don’t like players who walk out on the team at a World Cup.

Well, Martin, you of all people know the story behind the reasons for Ben’s exodus, and you know very well that Ben White just didn’t suddenly wake up one day and decide he didn’t like England anymore. The good folks over at The Daily Cannon have reposted this yesterday, which I think is worth a link to. Steve Holland is clearly an idiotic, archaic, “Proper Football Man” the likes Yer Da would love. Go back to the late 80s, mate, football ain’t for you anymore.

That Telegraph article from the time leaves a few bits out, but there are also rumours that White didn’t want to discuss tactics of Arsenal whilst in an England camp, whilst the City players didn’t mind, which also sounds very plausible. But the very fact that Ben has come back into this England team and scored that goal, you’d hope that everyone will just drop it. But let’s just see, shall we?

AS for our other involvement on the night, of course we have another injury as a result of f*cking international football, as Madueke was seen after the game in a knee brace, having gone off on 39 minutes. Honestly, these f*cking internationals during the season can just f*ck the f*ck off. I’m sick of them. Players get chewed up and spat back to their clubs to deal with the fallout. With Eze likely to be out for at least another three weeks according to reports, it means that once again we’ll have to become over-reliant on players. And that has been happening all season. Odegaard is out, so Eze comes in. Eze gets injured just as Odegaard goes down. Timber plays all the time and gets injured, then White comes in and gets overplayed. It’s a never-ending cycle when you have players who keep going down. I was wondering about whether this is now worse than last season or not, so I took a little look at the ‘absences’ chart on TransferMarkt for last season and this season. I’m not counting what I would call ‘youth’ players, but perhaps any player who has played more than three times in a season. Last season we had a total squad absence of 196 match-day absences across the squad in the Premier League alone. This season so far we have lost 144 absences. From last year 37 of those 196 were because of Tomiyasu who was basically in the squad on registration only. So if you take him out, last season we had 159 by the end of the season. Depending on how long some of the current injured players are out for, we could eclipse last season, which I dubbed “The Cursed Season,” when we were in it by the end. It’s so frustrating. We just can’t catch a break and, from a position about a week ago where we had an almost fit squad bar Odegaard and Merino, the current list of players absent who have an injury is:

1. Saliba
2. Gabriel
3. Merino
4. Odegaard
5. Eze
6. Trossard

Hopefully, some of those are just knocks, and we see players returning next week, and the noises are that Odegaard will be back, but still, this is silly now.

Elsewhere, Havertz got 63 minutes and came off along with Leroy Sane on 63 minutes, as Germany beat Switzerland 4-3, so that says to me, I think he’s fine. Hopefully, Nagelsmann is sensible and keeps him on the bench for their next game. Rodri played 77 minutes in their 3-0 win over Serbia, and Zubimendi came on for the Man City knobhead, and it wouldn’t surprise me to see that switch around for their game against Egypt on Tuesday. Ideally, you want him to play no part, but clearly, he’s getting on the pitch. Kudos, though, for Cristhian Mosquera, who made his international debut last night as an 83-minute sub. 100% deserved for a player who has stunned us all with just how good he is this season, and I don’t think many Arsenal fans aren’t delighted for him this morning.

There was no place for Raya, though, which I have to say, is a bit bloody weird if you ask me. I know I don’t watch enough football, but the little I have seen of Unai Simon kind of baffles me, that our chap isn’t the main man between the sticks. I know Simon is good with the ball, but better than Raya? And in terms of shot-stopping? Is he really as elite as Raya has shown himself to be? A quick search online tells me his weaknesses are that he has lapses of concentration, technical errors in ball control and his handling is at times questioned. There’s also this article here that suggests that many believe Raya or Garcia should be the number one.

Still, at least it reduces the chances of injury to David, which is important given how much of a delta we’ve seen between him and Kepa very recently, of course.

The other guy that got minutes from our squad yesterday was Pierro Hincapie, who came off on 72 minutes, in clearly an effort from the Ecuadorian boss to appease Arteta. Good man management because the way things are going right now with injuries, I fully expect to hear that Calafiori didn’t last the first 45 in Italy’s play-off game on Tuesday night.

Look at that – I’ve managed to write 1,000 words about Arsenal players, and now I’m grumpy. I should probably leave it there. Hopefully, some kind of good news story can come out from the Athletic or somewhere, because it feels like we need it.

Catch you all tomorrow kids.

Why the HELL is Saka playing the full 90?

Rice was taken off on 65 minutes, so that’s good, plus Ebs got on and scored a pretty decent goal from that left forward position (more on that in a sec), but Saka shouldn’t be knocking down 90s in a game like this. I hope on the game on Sunday he’s given rest time.

I will say that Tuchel appears to be more mindful of the players and their minutes compared to the horror that was Gareth Southgate. He’d give Saka the full 90 in an international friendly against Gibraltar, was such his ego needing stroking (funny how he has taken no managerial opportunities and instead is just content on releasing a new book, eh?), but at least Tuchel thinks and acts like an elite manager and is mindful of loading minutes of players. That’s my hope anyway when it comes to Saka, because he’s clearly decided that Rice can have an earlier sit down last night.

Gattuso and the Italy coaching staff are doing the same with Calafiori, who was left out of the team to face Moldova but might be in the squad when they play over the weekend. There’s apparently nothing to worry about, but that’s a clear sign that they know that he has a chequered injury history, that he’s played a lot of football this season and if he can have a few extra days off whilst still training (albeit alone) with the Italian National Team, then that is something. In a weird way, if he plays over the weekend that might be a good thing, because it shows that he’s ok. Italy play Norway on Sunday evening and if he plays a part, then he’ll have from Sunday until Sunday to recover and that is hopefully enough time (assuming he doesn’t pick up an injury) to be ready for the North London Derby.

Saliba also played for France in a game in which he will have basically been a spectator in most parts given their dominance over a Ukraine side that had zero attempts on goal or on target and just 33% possession. Talk about dominance. I looked at his numbers in that game and it was 62 of 67 passes for France and 29 of those attempts were in the opposition half, so I think he’ll be feeling fine off the back of that win. He normally averages around 67 per game for Arsenal so this feels like a pretty standard Saliba outing, which is good news.

The rest of the players are action in their first matches either tonight and tomorrow and I do wish Brazil would have played their games a little earlier. Big Gabi is off with them and they don’t play until tomorrow and then on Tuesday, but here’s the good news:

1. It’s a friendly and so hopefully he’s rotated
2. It’s in Lille, France – the borders of Belgium

A quick check on Google tells me it is a one hour and 22 minute flight from London to Lille; that’s like taking the trip to Inverness in Scotland, so he’ll be back and hopefully wrapped up in cotton wool by Wednesday night, meaning Arteta can have a look at him on Thursday and by Friday he’ll have had three full training days before the North London Derby on Sunday. Great stuff. Providing he doesn’t pick up an injury, that is.

I mentioned I wanted to touch on Eze today and I wanted to have a little look at where he featured for England. He came on for Rashford on the left wing position and a look at his heatmap showed he very much occupied the kinds of positions you’d expect from that position. But in the 26 minutes on the pitch he was very much not playing like a winger who is hugging the touchline and asked to drive at his man. If we think about how Martinelli plays that role, Eze feels a lot more analogous to Trossard as more of an inside forward in that position and the superb goal he scored last night was scored from that sort of inside-left position too.

We haven’t seen too much of that this season due to the injury to Odegaard and Eze has been obviously asked to play a little more centrally, which I think a few Arsenal fans have been left feeling like there’s a little more that Eze could give us. But I think that’s in part due to the fact he plays the ‘Odegaard role’ different to Martin. Odegaard is a pressing trigger for us and he is quite an intense one; Eze presses, but not nearly as intensely as Odegaard – can you remember many times when you see him closing down the ‘keeper like Odegaard does when we are out of possession? I can’t. But in my mind I can visualise Odegaard doing that every game. Odegaard also drops deeper to receive the ball than Eze does, as well as picking it up in different positions too, so when we are missing Odegaard it’s great we have a player like Eze who can look to perform that role, but I wonder if he’s been the victim of the fact that expectations are that he would be similar to the Norwegian. That’s simply never going to be the case.

Eze has to carve out his own niche in this Arsenal team. That means from a central position when he’s playing in for an Odegaard, or maybe even if Rice or Merino aren’t available and he slots in at left eight, or even if Rice slots in to the six with Zubi out. We almost got to see that against West Ham but Odegaard’s injury reduced it to just a glimmer of a showing. So the return of Odegaard might see Eze put in positions more like he was in last night and if he delivers end product like that, I don’t think many of us will be complaining, that’s for sure.

The challenge Eze will have when Odegaard returns is the form of Trossard in that position, as well as the competition of Martinelli and Madueke as the rapid, touchline-hugging wingers to offer something different. I for one am glad we’ve had him and his contribution with all those attacking players out has been valuable at this time. But perhaps he needs to find a way how to do the different roles a little differently to the others, to absolutely cement his place as a regular in Arteta’s Arsenal first XI.

back tomorrow with some more thoughts.

**Quick Shakespearian ‘aside’ to give some props to Saka for his fantastic goal as well last night. Good work Starboy – keep on doing that for us when you get back!**

I have a few feelings on this. Firstly, the lad is 19-years-old. This isn’t a season pro who has starred for a decade in the first team. He broke through, was excellent, we all love him and he’s found game time a little more difficult to come by due to the ongoing fitness of Riccardo Calafiori and the fact that Hincapie has emerged as a left back option this season. Naturally Thomas Tuchel is going to say that he wants players in his squad who play regularly to make the final. He has his job for England and he’s going to say that. But for Sky Sports to go in on reporting this feels a little like a major media outlet trying to flame any potential fans of discontent.

Of course clubs will be interested in Myles. He has shown an electric burst of pace, he can beat players and glide past them with ease (as evidenced by the goal he set up for Martinelli against Atletico) and all of us feel like he has a bright future at the club. Who wouldn’t want to be interested in him? The report does say Arsenal aren’t looking to sell and I do think this has been designed to get the player and representatives to perhaps make some uneasy noises towards the club.

Here’s the thing though – Myles is VERY well represented. We all know about how his mum has been such an influence on his career, how she places high value on mapping a path which is right for him at his age and how she also helps young players and their families in helping to develop careers with their kids. She will be well aware of the situation and I would be surprised if, having just worked with Myles and others to secure a five-year-deal in the summer, she will suddenly be knocking on the door for ‘showdown talks’ on his Arsenal future.

He has an Arsenal future. It will be a bright one. He will find plenty of minutes and now, with a quarter of the season gone, he’s played 463 in all competitions. Last season he made 2,543 in all competitions – 237 of those were in the Premier League 2 and EFL Trophy – which are youth team competitions. So first team minutes last season was around 2,300+. He’s currently on track to hit around 1,850 minutes for the season. That’s probably a little lower than he would have ideally have had, but we haven’t really faced any injury problems at the back so far. We are about to go into a period in which we play A LOT of really tough matches and there’s no way that he doesn’t see more minutes. Myles and his mum will know that.

I also think they’ll be well aware of his trajectory and how in his own career pathway, he’s probably about a year or two ahead of schedule. Last season, because of the injuries, he broke through and I think that was a surprise, because he wasn’t playing at all for the first half of the season. Last season will have been a “see if you can get to 500 – 1,000 minutes in total” season. He made almost triple that. I suspect if all would have gone to plan, this season would have been a “get to between 1,800 to 2,000 minutes” season – which he’s on track for. Then next season would have been a “be a first team regular” – which he’s already on course for. Finally, that “get in to the England team” final step might have been in 2027/28 thing. He was fast-tracked through all of that process in about six months. It’s a massively rapid ascension and that sort of stuff can scupper a career if not managed properly. Emile Smith Rowe made his England debut at 21 years old. He’s played a total of three times and never quite kicked on from the height of his situation back in 2021. Eddie has just the one cap, as does Carl Jenkinson. Making the England squad is not the end game here – making a career is – so trying to search for that admittedly lofty and exciting opportunity does not have to come at the expense of making rash career moves.

For what it’s worth, I doubt anyone at Arsenal or Myles and his camp are worried too much about this. They will know he’s at a club who are fighting towards the top of the league. That comes with competition for places and they will have been well aware of that when they signed the new five-year-deal in the summer. He is an Arsenal boy, he will want to succeed at Arsenal first and foremost, which will also mean he’s more-than likely to also want to give it the best possible shot. At 19 year’s of age he probably has a solid three more World Cup’s after this one as well. He could still get to 100 England caps with ease at this rate. David Beckham was 31 when he got to 100 caps and he made his debut at age 21. Harry Kane too. Steven Gerrard was 20, but he got to 34 before reaching 100 caps. So some of the best England footballers of recent generations didn’t really even kick off their England careers until they were in their 20s. Myles doesn’t hit 20 until next September. So he will be well aware of the fact he has time on his hands.

Where he’s at will be good for him. It will inspire the fight in him, to drive him to improve, which will be good for us if he only gets better and better. He’s already operating at a high level, but if he can go supernova, there isn’t an Arsenal fan alive who wouldn’t be delighted to see another Hale-Ender make it. But he has to put the work in, he has to suffer the sting of not playing, to make him stronger. I think by the sounds of his character that’s exactly what will happen and I for one couldn’t be more happy about that. It means we have yet another winner in our ranks who will do everything to make this season a success for The Arsenal.

I’ll leave it there for today and be back tomorrow. I was going to say some words about this rumoured Italian scout from Napoli that we’re supposedly in for, but perhaps that can wait for tomorrow and i’ll do some digging in the absence of any other real football going on.

See you then.

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.

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.

I then spent the afternoon getting some exercise and going for a few walks with The Management, before setting up the BBQ whilst putting the England game on. Rice scored, which was nice, I thought Noni was bright again on that right hand side and that bodes well for us in the immediate future too. With Saka out we need to see a player come in to that position and give us something. Nwnaeri did a good job there but he started to fade towards the end of the season and I think the move for Madueke is, thankfully, making more and more sense with every passing minute. I’m liking what I’m seeing and the bits I saw of him yesterday I liked too.

Tuchel was pleased with him and said he did well and can be an important player for England, but he did acknowledge that Noni ‘falls asleep’ in reference to counter-pressing and I suspect with more time on that training ground it will be something Mikel will want to work on. The reason that Smith Rowe was shown the exit – aside from the very good fee we got – was, I think, because of his lack of concentration and focus off the ball. Emile is electric when it’s at his feet; he can beat a man, showed the other week he gets into good scoring positions in the box and can be very exciting to watch on his day, but football these days is as much about what you do out of possession as in it. The managers of Premier League teams all want to see hard work and focus when off the ball and when Arteta didn’t get that from Smith Rowe, he found himself out of the team, then barely getting any minutes. Madueke is young, he’s talented, I’m sure he wants to improve and his off the ball stuff will be something that Arteta will focus on.

The Eze comments from Tuchel I will take with a pinch of salt. His words were apparently “not quite the quality” and “he didn’t find the creativity that he found in training” and I suppose there could be a slight concern for us because Eze faced a low block and we seem to spend two-thirds of our season against low block teams. Eze was brought to be that tricky player, that clever player, the one who can beat a man but also take shots when we’re sitting with a wall of defenders in front of us. He had three yesterday but I can’t really recall anything specific from them. They were all on target but nothing really spectacular. I’m not too worried though, because I think Eze is going to be playing a different position for The Arsenal. Yesterday he played centrally in that number ten role, with Rashford playing wide left. I think Eze starts on the left for us and that allows his positioning to be different in game. He is going to be an ‘out to in’ player for us; starting position wide, getting the ball wide, then driving inwards. In that role yesterday he will have been required to float across the front line, to link play with Nadueke and Rashford and be a connector for Kane. I just don’t think he’ll be given that instruction by Arteta and I think that will be beneficial for him. Starting on the left will naturally give him licence to get on the ball and run at players more because in low block teams you have a bank of four, one, two or sometimes three holding midfielders congesting that space in front of the D. Teams are happy to cede space in wide positions if they get their shape and so if Madueke is given more time on the ball, freedom and licence from out wide to drive in, I think he can be a success for us.

So yeah, less worried about Eze’s performance yesterday, more focused that we get all of these players back and fit.

Rice came off on 68, Eze on 78 and Madueke played the full 90, so it appears we’re good there. Tonight we have Zubi and Merino playing against Turkey and so we have to cross everything on that one, as well as Jurrien Timber playing for the Netherlands against Lithuania. Hopefully he doesn’t get one and he can be saved for Forest next weekend. Leo might get some minutes as Belgium play Kazakhstan, but then tomorrow and Tuesday are the remaining games for the players I ran through yesterday, so there’s not really a lot to read in to until we start to get to Tuesday/Wednesday and we get news of any players who have become crocked. We just have to keep those fingers crossed.

And I’m going to spend the day in the garden in the sun, taking in what is the last of summer, so I’ll catch you all tomorrow.

We know that Big Bill Saliba pulled out of the French squad, which will be a concern for Forest in a week’s time, but what about the others? Who has made it out unscathed so far?

Viktor Gyokeres

Given Kai is out for the foreseeable future, we really could do without this guy going down, but the good news is that he appears to have got through their game away to Slovenia unscathed. He started as the centre forward for the Swedes and I watched some highlights of his performance yesterday. It was exactly what you expect from him; strong, physical presence, holding up the ball, touches to his teammates, running channels and he even notched an assist with his touch in the box which enabled Ayari to slam the ball in via a deflection. Sweden drew 2-2 but whilst he won’t love that, we will all take it that he’s got another 90 under his belt and I guess given that a lot of us have talked about him needing to get up to speed with his fitness for a couple of weeks now, this is a positive step for Big Vik and hopefully gives him a little extra juice in the tank for when he returns to England to face up to Forest. He just needs to get through Monday night’s game against Kosovo unscathed.

Riccardo Calafiori

Is still alive! He is the one I think most of us have the biggest worry about, not least because on two separate occasions last season he went down on international break. I think it was the October one last season, then there was one in the new year in which he picked up a knock, but last night he made it through 90 minutes with Italy at home to Estonia and by all accounts had a good game. A full 90 under his belt, he created a couple of chances, had three clearances, three recoveries and one interception. By the sounds of it from those who watched, he was one of Italy’s best players and that’s great to hear. See Bik Vik requirements for what we need from Ricci on Monday night away to Israel.

Jurrien Timber

Nercifully for us, Jurrien Timber was an unused substitute against Poland on Thursday and and my hope is that we have the same when the Dutch go to Lithuania tomorrow. Let’s have Timber back and safe by Monday evening and I think we’ll all be happier Gooners.

Piero Hincapie

Our newest edition also got a full 90 for Ecuador and when you look at the numbers is looks like an impressive display. An 85% pass completion rate (he had the most passes of any player), he won all his ground duels, he had four recoveries of the ball, won both of his tackles, had a couple of interceptions and block in there for good measure. You can see why Mikel Arteta was so enthused about getting this guy, he is a battler and a duel monster and I think he’s going to get his fair share of minutes this season for The Arsenal. Especially if our injury luck continues this season. Go on Piero, son!

Martin Odegaard

It’s funny because you want these players to play barely any minutes in these games, but when you don’t watch certain matches and see they come off quite early, you naturally have a moment in which you go “oh FFS, what’s wrong now?” I just had that with Martin seeing that he only played 45 but, given that it’s clearly a halftime sub, it was a friendly and news is filtering through that his – as well as Haaland and others – were planned halftime subs and that hopefully means all is good for the skipper. We need him and we need him fully fit please. They play on Tuesday in a game that matters to them though, which is at home to Moldova, so I suspect he’ll be playing a full 90 in that one. So fingers crossed what we get is a clean bill of health come Wednesday morning. We saw in the Liverpool game that for certain matches Arteta just isn’t quite sure on doing the straight swap out for Merino and whilst the Spaniard did well, it doesn’t give us the same guile and creativity that Ethan does, so having Odegaard back for Forest is a much.

Mikel Merino and Martin Zubimendi

Speaking of Spaniard’s, our two regular starters in the Spain team both got minutes, with Zubimendi notching a very impressive pass and assist for one of Spain’s goals against Bulgaria, a game in which the Spaniards absolutely battered them in just about every metric. They won 3-0, but when you see that Bulgaria were at home and had three shots (zero on target) all game to Spain’s 24 shots (12 on target), you can start to see what a one-sided affair that was. Zubi got his assist, played 62 minutes before being replaced by Rodri and after his apparently great performance on the night (he had 82 touches and 92% possession) I wonder if the Spanish boss might be thinking of a changing of the guard on the way where Rodri starts to play second fiddle? Hey, this is a guy who won the Balon D’Or a year or so ago, so he’s still probably going to be the favourite to retain his position, but having just come off of an ACL, at 29, maybe Zubi’s performances can make the Spanish boss think twice about his involvement. A Rodri not playing also means he’s not in as much form, which is also good because I don’t think any Arsenal player wants to see that guy back to his best for City.

As for Mikel Merino, he bagged the third goal for Spain with a header and you can see why he is one of the regulars in that Spanish side. He doesn’t always start, but he will often have an impact, as we saw in the Euro’s last summer. He scores important goals and he bags a fair few for Spain; I wonder if he’s a bit like Danny Welbeck was for them. He was never massively prolific for us, but when he played for England, for a period of time, he always seemed to score. To be fair to Merino he also scored for us last season plenty of times as he filled in at centre forward, but I just get Danny Welbeck vibes from is proficiency for the national team.

The rest…

Gabriel Martinelli got a start as Brazil beat Chile and that will no doubt give him a much-needed boost as he got 70+ minutes. The Brazilian media apparently said his decision-making as a little questionable, which will come as no surprise to any of us. Big Gabi got through it fine so I think we’re all good there and like Big Vik, it’s probably good for him to get another 90 under his belt as he returns to his peak physical fitness. Leo Trossard came on as a sub and given Arteta has said he wasn’t 100% fully fit, the fact he got 25+ minutes has to be seen as a positive. David Raya never made it off the bench so we don’t have to worry about that, but all eyes will be on the flurry of England players that we have in the team who might start tonight. Noni, Eze, Rice, Myles – any of these guys could get the nod and again we just need to pray they don’t pick up anything.

But we must wait. Let’s just cross everything, do every lucky charm superstition you have today (I shall be avoiding three drains on my run later) and hopefully here’s to a clean bill of health come midweek next week.

Laters kids.

Because the Arsenal Women did the job.

Yep, we get to claim this as an Arsenal victory last night, because Michelle Agyemang is an Arsenal youth product and one of our registered players (even though she played for Brighton last season) who salvaged that last-gasp winner. Then Chloe Kelly, another one of our lot having been on sabbatical at Man City for so long until January this year, bagged the winner after her penalty was saved by the Italian goalkeeper.

Made in Hale End folks, made in Hale End…

I felt ‘somewhat’ sorry for the Italians, because they’d played quite well and as underdogs they were seconds away from a big upset in this competition, but that feeling was tempered somewhat by the gamesmanship. Time-wasting, going down with cramp and then getting the medical team on (instead of one of your own players) to adminster it, some of the theatrical falling to the ground, well whenever a team does that it always feels like a little bit of karma when they get their comeuppance. So from that perspective I was happy. Had there not been as much falling to the ground on their part, there might not have been the seven minutes of added time…

So they will once again represent at a major final and let’s hope they can do the business again this weekend.

As for the men’s side, we got the expected and anticipated Ornbomb yesterday with regards to Viktor Gyokeres, with the noises being that the two clubs has finally struck up a deal and the Swede will now head out to Singapore to complete his medical and sign for The Arsenal. It’s probably going to be about a week later than Mikel would have wanted, but if it’s all done by this weekend then that still gives him plenty of time to adapt to his new environment in and around the Arsenal team, which I think is key really. In a normal business environment I would say – in my experience – you don’t really ‘get it’ with regards to your new company until about at least six months in. There are ways of working, systems, relationships you need to forge with key stakeholders, etc. It takes time and whilst football is of course very different to the world we live in and the adaptation period doesn’t need to be nearly as long (or in some cases isn’t allowed to be with the media that surrounds the game and the players), if he signs within the next couple of days he’s got a couple of weeks to start meeting people and sussing out his place in this squad. I think that is invaluable. It means that by the time that United game rocks up he’ll also have got a bit of rust out of his boots from the summer off, he’ll have been exposed to a few friendly matches in which his teammates will see the types of runs he makes, what his strengths are, etc.

I also think it’s lovely how people like MLS are reacting to this possible arrival. There’s a video doing the rounds of Myles smiling and saying ‘here we go’ reacting to Fabrizio Romano’s message on social media and I think this also tells you what the players think of this arrival. We as fans have ourselves questions as to how he fits in, there’s obvious questions about how the return in the Portuguese league translates to the Premier League, but sometimes the response of players themselves tells you a lot too. It’s why I’ve warmed a little bit more to the Madueke stuff. It wasn’t a signing I was overly enthused by, I was confused as to why we’d shelled out that amount of cash, but when you supposedly get glowing reports from all of the England lads in the camp, it gives you pause for thought and hope that Arsenal have unearthed a gem.

In the Gyokeres instance it is players who have played against him and I think that will also tell its own story when the Swede finally links up with them.

There will be more to come over the upcoming days as this one plays out, no doubt, but the good news is that this protracted saga appears to bear nearing its end. And I’ve heard (and been in on WhatsApp groups) where people have jokingly (half so – and half seriously) said “now bring me Eze. I also listened to the Arsecast from earlier in the week where Andrew and Phil Costa talked about whether the Gyokeres and Mosquera deals along with other players we’ve signed ‘is enough?’. The gents pondered on that and concluded that we probably need one more in the creative spaces and I get that we’d all like to see that. But I also think that we are 100% stronger than last season for sure. Zubimendi is an upgrade on Partey, Gyokeres will be an upgrade on Gabriel Jesus (if nothing else, hopefully on availability), Madueke will 100% be better than Sterling was and Ethan and Myles are a year older and better. When you factor all of that in alone, we are in a better place than last season and if Trossard and Martinelli remain as our attacking options on the left – as well as Madueke – I’m still good with that and think we will still be competitive.

So whilst I would love to see an Eze-shaped signing for us, I still think we’re going to be very good, we’re still going to be up there and I will go into the season full of excitement.

Back tomorrow for some more musings.

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.

I suppose it’s my own fault. I said yesterday that we’d paid our international dues already and therefore we were due a bit of a pass for injuries for this round of fixtures, so the footballing gods obviously took a look at what I committed to print and said “oh no you didn’t just say that…we’ll have you now”, striking again at our team and at our best player who is in blistering end product form right now.

And it’s yet another potential injury blow in a season that doesn’t even feel like it has properly started yet. Saka has – once again – proven just how integral he is to our team and is a player we rely on: we’ve essentially become a bit blasé about his availability but he’s a guy who gets kicked every week and seems to always get up. Maybe this was one game too many and now we sweat on his availability for our upcoming matches – Liverpool in particular looming on the horizon in a few weeks time.

Carsley only offered up that he ‘felt something’ and although I didn’t watch the game, I’ve seen the Greek goal in which Saka was on the pitch and hobbling. I’ve also seen some comments online that suggest that he seemed to be walking around a little more naturally after the game, so the hope is that it is just a knock, with Carsley also confirming that he ‘felt something’. But I think you and I can 100% agree that Saka should be on the first Uber back to his family home this morning. We cannot afford to risk him and England should absolutely take some responsibility for the players’ welfare and forget about testing him – just send him back to Arsenal to begin to recover. If I hear that England are keeping him around because it’s not as bad as first feared, well, I’m going to be pretty grumpy. So will a few million global Gooners too.

England’s next game is against Finland and it makes absolutely zero sense for him to play a single second of that game. Carsley should look to rotate his squad and he should be sending Saka home and letting Rice sit on the bench and watch from the side lines. On Saka you’d hope he’s ok and that happens, but on Rice you can absolutely bet that he will play another 90 minutes. That’s because these international managers rarely think about the players, they are all about getting results in pointless international matches that – in the grand scheme of things – mean very little at all. You can talk about the World Cup qualifying stuff, but at this stage it doesn’t really matter and there’s always another round of qualifiers for England to get through.

So all-in-all, this is a complete mess of a competition that should have never had existed and I just hope that Saka’s knock is not serious. If he’s out for any length of time then it’ll be another injury to add to the list, for which we could now be up to 13 players this season who have already missed at least one game for us. In terms of number of games and injuries/suspensions/absences, it’ll be 34 matches – you can see the details here for more information. To put some context in to this:

• Liverpool = 14 (not including their third ‘keeper in this like I haven’t included Setford)
• 115 Charges FC = 22
• Villa = 24 (there are a few names in there on top of that to bump those up, but the fact I’ve never heard of them suggest that it’s youth players, which I’ve obviously excluded)
• Chelsea = 29 (and they’ve got about a billion players on their list – I’ve excluded Ben Chilwell given that he’s not even a registered player for them I don’t think)

So you can see in that list that we have been severely hit this season, which makes the fact we are even within touching distance of the top a minor miracle, especially given our fixtures we’ve played, something I highlighted earlier this week. Our squad depth is certainly needed and it looks like it is going to be needed a little more when this international break is done for.

I talked yesterday about how we get 2022 Gabriel Jesus back, but I didn’t think it might be to play him in Saka’s position if he is injured as a result of last night’s match! If you’re looking at the good news it is that we have senior players who could fill that position like Gabriel Jesus, or Raheem Sterling, but as good and experienced as those players are, they aren’t our Starboy. Nobody in the world is.

Other than that there’s not really a lot else going on today. There’s the usual transfer click-baity nonsense you always see, but I’m not minded to spend any length of time on it, so instead I’m going to leave it there for today and get on with my Friday of work. You have yourselves a good one and I’ll catch you all in the morrow.

And of course I want England to win. Not just because I was born in this country and it’d be nice to see so many happy people and a nation unified for a change, but also because the idea of Rodri bring happy is not really something I’d like to countenance. Sorry David Raya, but yer man in the middle of the park is a douchebag and I hope that he is crying at the end of the night.

Don’t get me wrong, he’s a fantastic player, he’s the anchor in that Spanish midfield and also the Man City midfield. But his reckless challenge on Odegaard when he was playing for Spain against Norway clearly looked designed to hobble him for the Premier League run-in, followed by his comments at the end of last season talking about Arsenal’s mentality when we went to City, just wound me up and as a result I want him to get his comeuppance.

If I could control things in life that would start tonight, but then it would continue into next season. City would win nothing, he’d be sad and ideally Arsenal would pick up some of those trophy pieces. Then as Arsenal fans we could bust out messages about “keeping the receipts” and remind Rodri of his w*nkery words. That’d be utopia.

The reality is probably that Spain will win tonight and there will be no such comeuppance, sadly, but one can dream.

On the game itself I just don’t see how Spain don’t win. They aren’t the most robust defensively, but in attack they look so good. England have looked shaky in the wide positions and whilst Shaw will most likely come back for the game instead of Trippier, I just can’t see how Lamine Yamal and Nico Williams don’t get a fair chunk of chances against him and what looks like a rapidly ageing Kyle Walker. Of course by the time he puts a City shirt on again in a few weeks he’ll be back to his best, but this tournament he has very much looked like he is showing his age.

The hope is that Saka can have Marc Cucurella on toast tonight. Even if England don’t win, I hope Saka roasts that mop-haired looking muppet. He had his number in the 5-0 at The Emirates and I think he got the better of him in a couple of games the season before, so hopefully the same can be said tonight. For England’s sake he probably needs to, because Harry Kane has done the square-root of naff all in an England shirt and is only starting by virtue of the fact that Southgate has his favourites and Kane is the captain. I fully expect another ambling around the pitch tonight for the centre forward, as Ollie Watkins looks on wondering who’s leg he has to hump to get some decent minutes in this tournament.

And so to Arsenal news, which is to say there isn’t really any right now, with a lot of the stories probably due to kick in literally from tomorrow after all of the international tournaments are finished. Onana is on his way to Villa from Everton for £50million as they try to replace Douglas Luiz, which on paper looks like a good deal for all parties. But one of the things that Luiz did show last season was his passing range; Onana gives the defensive screen and will cover ground, but he isn’t a progressive passer and so I think Villa might not have the same success in that position as they did with the Brazilian. I still think Onana is a good player and he’ll probably do alright at Villa, but let’s just hope that they don’t have the same successes as last season; I still can’t believe they picked up six points against us in two games that we really should have battered them in.

Other than that there’s not really a lot else going on, so I’ll put a pin in today’s ramblings and make the most of a rare day of sunshine in the UK, which is nice.

You guys enjoy your Sunday and I’ll be back tomorrow to pour over any interesting news that might break.

Laters people.

For year’s I’ve been able to fall on my German family heritage as an excuse when it comes to having some skin in the game in the latter stages of international tournaments, but last night England completed their second back-to-back final mission by beating the Netherlands with that last minute Watkins winner (more on that anon). But now, I have to admit, Gareth Southgate and his team have delivered another major final opportunity, having also got to the World Cup semi final in 20128 and the Euro 202 (played in 2021 because of the COVID period). It is a record that you look at on paper, you’d be hard pressed to besmirch. And I will hold my hand up and admit, I’ve done a bit of besmirching myself.

England went in to this tournament looking ropey. They’ve spluttered their way through it with unconvincing victories and a very good set of penalties, but last night against The Netherlands I thought they were the deserving team and although they had a huge slice of fortune with the penalty (I didn’t think there was nearly enough from Dumfries to give an overturned VAR decision by the referee and his officials watching on), after they were level they were the better team and created the better chances. Foden hit the post, had one cleared off the line, Kane forced a good save from Verbruggen and Saka had a goal disallowed for offside. England created the better chances and whilst the Netherlands still managed to fashion one or two themselves, I thought they weren’t quite at it last night.

It’s interesting because I thought they’d certainly looked like they were pulling it together rather than England in the tournament before that, but when the two sides finally faced off, it was England and some of their big game players  who stepped up. It’s almost as if some of those players remembered just how good they are and it clicked.

That’s decent enough to think about, when you consider their next opponents, who will be heavy favourites and a team I still think are going to win this tournament when it’s all said and done. But the ol’ cliché of ‘anything can happen in a one off match’ I suppose applies here and it’ll be interesting to see how England cope with the plethora of quality players the Spanish have.

The only real Arsenal news kicking around is that we bid £50k for Dan Bentley from Wolves and that Nuno Tavares is nearly a Lazio player. Let’s deal with the Bentley deal first. £50k is basically peanuts but given that Wolves only paid £57k for his services from Bristol in January last year, I’m not sure why Arsenal would pay much more. He’s their reserve ‘keeper and made a total of eight appearances last season (including against us in the home game at The Emirates) and the noises are that Arsenal want him as a number three ‘keeper. That makes sense to me; it’s a bit of a risk mitigation exercise because of the exit of Okonkwo, Hein going out on loan and the rumours of a possible Ramsdale exit. Arsenal don’t want to be forced in to a Runarsson-style deal and so having a guy like Bentley in as a ‘just in case’ feels sensible. Perhaps if Wolves get more than they paid for him – £75 -£100k? then the deal can be done. But this isn’t going to be a natural back up and it means Arsenal have hedged their bets, which is fair enough. He’s made a total of 438 games in all competitions, he’s experienced enough, he’ll be a good ‘vibes’ man and Arsenal don’t break the bank.

As for the Tavares deal, it feels like it makes sense to me. We signed him for £7million I think, Lazio are expected to pay £7million after the obligation to buy deal goes through (probably based on him playing and staying fit) and we get the money back we paid for a player that hasn’t quite worked out, as well as a sell on fee that will ensure we might even turn a small profit. Again, a decent return for a player who has been around a bit and who has a contract that expires at the end of next season. He was a guy who I thought at times showed some real flashes of brilliance and there’s no doubt that going forward he’s got something about him. But his propensity to switch off at the back and do mental things sometimes (remember scoring that goal early on against United and then inexplicably handballing it in the second half to give them a penalty?) probably meant he was never really going to work out under Arteta. Hey, it was a low cost gamble which, ultimately, won’t impact us too much I don’t think.

Other than that there isn’t really a lot going on. I see that it’ll be a Colombia vs Argentina Copa America final, which might be a bit spicy, but over this part of the world all eyes will be on that England versus Spain match up on Sunday. Should be a good’un.

That’s it from me for today – enjoy your Thursday in whatever you’re doing and I’ll catch you all tomorrow for some more musings.

Laters people.

Going in to the game I probably edged towards France because I think, ultimately, out of the two teams on the other side of the draw, France would be the opponent that both the Netherlands and England could stand a better chance of winning against. But the Spanish showed why they have been the best, are the best, will be the best by the time Sunday night is done. Coming from behind is one thing, but doing it with the goals they scored…well…that really was *chefs kiss*. Yamine Lamal is some player. I have a 16-year old nephew who is in the Ipswich academy and doing alright by all accounts. Yet here we are with this Spanish lad playing for Barcelona bagging wonder goals like he did in a semi final? That goal just added a literal zero to his value I’ll bet. There’ll be endorsements aplenty when he returns home to Catalonia.

But then the second goal from Olmo from Leipzig was a peach too; his touch to bring it down, the second to create space and then a clean strike. I think that UEFA should be able to change their own rules because putting that down as a Kounde OG seems incredibly harsh.

And I think Spain will now go on to win this thing, because let’s face it they’ve already played two would-be finals anyway. Against Germany it was the ‘real’ final, then last night although the French have been bad they still have the quality to change the game and that felt like they stepped  up at least a little bit more than their previous games. Regardless of who wins tonight, Spain will – I am 90% sure – get over the line and you’d have to say they deserve it after the way they’ve approached this tournament.

The only down side to Spain winning it will be that both Rodri and Cucurella are happy. If we could find a way to make it so that they are both sad at the end of the final, even if Spain have won, that would be great.

From an Arsenal perspective as I mentioned yesterday, it means that at least Big Bill Saliba will get a couple of weeks off before returning to the Arsenal fold and you’d hope that he’d be  ready and up for the new season from that first game at home to Wolves that we have. When you factor in that our back line will all have been back in England by the beginning of August (White, Saliba, Gabriel and Tomiyasu?) it augurs well for what is going to be a really hard start to the season. We need everyone firing on all cylinders from the off and this feels like a good time from an Arsenal perspective to be seeing Arsenal players bowing out. I’m sure it’s not good for them and their own happiness, but for us if England go out tonight, the silver lining is that you can add Rice and Saka back in to the mix of players you’d expect to be back well in time for the new season.

As for tonight’s game, well, I can’t say I’m that minded to do much of a match preview, to be honest. England have the better players, but the worse manager (that’s saying something given the Dutch have Koeman in charge) and they’ll set up in a similar style and approach to how they have done all tournament. Southgate will rely on a moment of brilliance rather than any kind of tactical innovation or attempt to bring proper balance to his team, whilst the Dutch will probably fashion more chances and look more balanced. They looked like they were starting to click against Turkey and I expect Gakpo to be quite excited at coming up against a Kyle Walker looking every bit his age when he puts on an England shirt.

My overriding hope for tonight is that our Arsenal boys play well and that they come back to London Colney unscathed. Let’s cross everything on that front.

And on the Arsenal front…well…there isn’t really anything to be honest. There are still some of the gutter press red tops trying to eek out a slightly different angle on the Calafiori deal, but there isn’t really anything new in it from what I’ve read. There was also some leaks about the new away kit and whilst so many people are calling it out as a terrible ‘Lynx Africa’ homage, I kinda like it. I’m not as sold on it as the old black and gold variation, but I don’t mind it. Anything could be better than that neon yellow and black craziness that we had to endure last season, that’s for sure. Whether or not I like it enough to go out and buy the thing remains to be seen; I’m not overly enamoured by the home kit so that won’t be making it’s way in to my wardrobe at home. Let’s see what the third kit brings, although I’m not sure how much it even gets an outing to be honest; I think the green one made it out a couple of times but the pink one from the season beofre’s pink kit was only worn away at Bournemouth right at the beginning and then never seen again, so can it even be classed as a team shirt?

And that’s all there really is to talk about today, probably evidenced by the fact I managed to eek out a whole paragraph on the colour of the bloody Arsenal kits! So I think I’ll stop there and come back tomorrow with some post-England v Netherlands musings. There’s no ‘one in, one out, one bangs’ tonight because of the football, but I’ll be back tomorrow with some usual ramblings on here.

Have a good one folks. Enjoy your Wednesday.

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.

Bukayo Saka showed why he is England’s best player last night. Bukayo Saka showed why Gareth Southgate appeasing Phil Foden by giving him the keys to the England car was the wrong decision. Bukayo Saka showed throughout why he is England’s threat.

And he did it whilst being doubled up on by the Swiss, whilst being starved of service at times, whilst not having a familiar sight that he is used to at Arsenal; Ben White overlapping to create space.

And last night not one of us Arsenal fans were surprised. It doesn’t matter if you are English or not, if you were invested in the result or not, if you are an Arsenal fan, you knew just what this fabulous young man is capable of and how he delivered what we must have seen at least two or three times last season, minimum.

That cut in side, jockeying a couple of defenders, then BAM! It’s a goal.

Saka’s goal even went in off the post. Those are the best kind of goals. Pure accuracy. Pure potency. Pure class. Pure Saka.

He wasn’t just an end-product merchant last night either. This wasn’t a ‘stand around and whack one in from 25 yards having done nothing all game’ performance from Saka. This was him at his best and he gave the Swiss left-hand defensive side problems all night. He was in behind three or four times that I can remember, including wriggling free of his man and cutting the ball back to Mainoo, who was thwarted by Granit Xhaka (of course) in the first half.

It was a cagey game and a game in which both sides created chances and at the end you’d probably say that a draw was the fair result. It wasn’t the most epic of matches and I thought the Netherlands against Turkey was a lot more entertaining, but Saka, Rice and his other teammates won’t care; they’re through to another semi final and have done it despite hardly convincing. And this morning I saw Guillem Balague put something on Twitter asking why England fans and the English press are so hung up on playing good football. “What does it matter if they win?” is the retort and I totally get it. But i’ll offer my opinion and my opinion alone on this, as I won’t speak for the collective, but I’ve seen this sort of stuff play out in an Arsenal context.

Remember the winning run under Emery? 22 games unbeaten and everyone – me included – were saying “who cares that we’re not playing well, that we give up chances, that we’ve had a favourable run of games, when we’re winning?” I was in that camp and had I not deep down – like every Arsenal fan – known that the way Arsenal were playing back then was not sustainable, I might today be thinking along the same lines as Balague. But I did see that Emery period and I did see that it eventually fell apart. If – and it’s a VERY BIG IF – England win the tournament, then you have to say “fair play, we all need to row back on our Southgate chastising, now” and I too will hold my hands up. But because we can all see the tactical deficiencies, because we can all see that this football is not sustainable, because we know that if you’re looking at teams like the Spanish as a blueprint for success, then this England football will only get so far. Emery’s style and approach only got so far and then eventually the truth outed itself. England and Gareth Southgate cannot lead a charmed life forever. Eventually the talent and knowledge and skill has to rise to the top.

England have, thusfar, relied on individual moments of brilliance. Whether it’s Bellingham’s overhead kick, or Saka’s great striker yesterday, they’ve relied on those one out of ten moments and that won’t work when other teams fashion more chances. Let’s remind ourselves that England’s routes to the semi’s and finals in the last four tournaments have been:

Euro 2024

• Serbia
• Denmark
• Slovenia
• Slovakia
• Switzerland

World Cup 2022

• Iran
• USA
• Wales
• Senegal
• France (knocked out)

Euro 2020

• Scotland
• Croatia
• Scotland
• Czech Republic
• Germany
• Ukraine
• Denmark
• Italy (losing finalists)

World Cup 2018

• San Marino
• Albania
• Poland
• Austria
• Romania
• Croatia (losing semi finalists)

Aside from a German side that at the time was on it’s knees as a country from a footballing perspective, that’s a pretty favourable list of teams. Southgate has led a relatively charmed life and whilst in the early days it was just nice to have England back as a competitive nature with a ‘vibes’ manager, it feels painfully obvious that if they had a guy in there who had more about him tactically, they might be doing a little better performance-wise that would have more English fans thinking it might be ‘on’. But last night he persisted with Kane despite him being pretty anonymous throughout, Foden was given all of the tools yet didn’t really deliver, Bellingham was shunted wide left and was quiet and Trent was once again not given a look in when Kyle Walker looked shaky defensively. It’s all there for Southgate to switch it up a bit, to try different things, but one of his big problems is that once he gets entrenched in playing certain players, that is it. England we better against Switzerland, but not massively so, and they really need to be better at creating chances against the Dutch because I think despite the fact they haven’t been great either in this tournament, you’d think with the players they have they’re going to create even more chances than the Swiss did.

But let’s end today’s musings on the positive notes that it started, which is that us Arsenal fans get to be smug that our Starboy once again showed why he is one of the best in the business and we can all be proud at the Arsenal player who is one of the leaders in this England team. Very happy for him this morning, I can tell you that much.

Catch you all tomorrow.

In the UK it’s even worse because all of the talk is about the General Election as it’s polling day today. By the end of it Rishi Sunak is almost certainly likely to be out of a job; maybe Gareth Southgate should be dropping him a Whatsapp to see how it might feel. After all, regardless of what happens in this Euro’s, that man should probably be out of a job. I don’t want to labour it too much because I’ve talked about it already, but tactically he is completely out of his depth and it is why I am happy that at The Arsenal we’re in a good space with our team and manager.

I watched the England v Slovakia game at Glastonbury on an iPhone and I was with a mate who isn’t really in to his football. He’s a bit of an egg-chaser and he said to me on multiple occasions “are they really supposed to be this sh*t?” or “even I can see that they aren’t moving around the pitch when they should be”. That’s to the uninitiated and self-confessed football hater that he is, but when you’ve got somebody like that making fairly obvious statements that the world can see, you know there’s a problem.

I’m bringing this up because I then spent the time talking to him about The Arsenal. I held my phone up near him and started pointing at patches of green space:

“ok so here’s an example. Rice receives the ball, he’s moved it to that guy on the left. At Arsenal Rice and at least another player will move in to a position here, where the angle of a pass is a bit more like creating a triangle. That means the guy receiving the ball has two options. He can retain possession forward or backward but more importantly there are angles created to keep the ball. It’s all about continuous rotation of players without the ball to create space”

As I found myself explaining Arteta’s Arsenal I also found myself incredibly thankful that in Arteta we have a guy who has coached a collective of players to be so good off the ball. When you’re watching as a fan in the stadium you don’t always see it – I certainly don’t given that i’m in the lower tier – but when you start to watch other teams where you have somewhat (even if only a little) investment in the team, it’s easy to see why we’ve been steadily improving under Arteta. When I watch other domestic club games I don’t always look at the tactical side because I am also invested; I want to see City/United/Liverpool/The Scum/Villa, etc, lose. But international football detaches me somewhat, so I find myself observing the actual process of football and as a result I could explain to my mate why Gareth Southgate was…well…not very good as a coach at all.

There is no football identity. At The Arsenal we have an identity; I heard on numerous occasions from pundits who are half decent about how Arsenal are one of the best teams without the ball last season. That’s because they are coached by Arteta to always be moving. Football isn’t a chess match with pieces still until they move, it’s a game which has a life of its own and if all of your players are making moves, creating space, showing fluidity as a collective, then you retain possession, you move teams around more, you create openings and fashion chances to score goals. I’ve seen a few pundits (not many, granted) try to suggest that low block sides are the reason it has been so difficult and of course, a small part of that is true, but you still have to move around the pitch enough to try to pull the opposition out of position. England don’t do that, but thankfully Arsenal do.

The good news is that The Arsenal are just a couple of weeks away until the pre season friendlies will kick in. We’ve recently confirmed Bournemouth as a game in the States and whilst that in itself is hardly the sexist of fixtures in the world, at least it’s the beginning of us starting to look at how the next tactical evolution of Arteta’s Arsenal might look. And that’s quite exciting to me because basically every season we’ve evolved and changed something a little differently. Whether it’s inverted left backs, inverted right backs, the boxes in the middle of the park or something else. We’ve adapted and changed and each time given our opponents something different to think about each season, each time giving other Premier League analysts something to think about.

I think i’ll leave it there for today. We did a ‘one in, one out, one bangs’ episode on the Same Old Arsenal show last night if you fancy listening, which you can do so here. Amanda is also doing a show tonight in which she’ll be remembering Kevin Campbell, with a couple of great guests and you can check that out tonight at 8pm here.

Catch you all tomorrow.

I wonder if other teams are as critical of their national side as the English? Maybe. I mean after that laboured win yesterday the French press might be asking some questions, but I guess the difference is that at least they looked decent in points, as opposed to the shambles that is the England side under Southgate. Honestly, I know I’m late to the party here (because of the party in Somerset, mind), but that England performance was woeful, disjointed and a bit of a mess. Southgate has a concentrated period of time to get things prepared for international tournaments. There are friendlies, there are qualifiers, there are options you have to try different things in case the worst case happens and you lose players to injury before major tournaments. Mitigate risk, factor in the unexpected, be as prepared as you can.

In March England played Brazil. This was the team line up:

Pickford

Walker   –   Stones   –   Maguire   –   Chilwell

Foden   –   Rice   –   Bellingham

Gallagher   –   Watkins   –   Gordon

Tell me what you can learn from that side? I get that it’s Brazil, but Southgate shouldn’t give a monkey’s, because he was three months away from the Euro’s and he should have been experimenting. He should have been experimenting a year away from the Euro’s, when it comes to Friendlies. But instead he just played his faves in meaningless games and here we are with him bemoaning not having a natural left back at the competition, or that we miss Kalvin Phillips.

Gareth, you’re an excuse maker, and not a very good one. This is on you.

Anyway, at least the transfer window is now open, so we can officially start to get hyper-sensitive to every single rumour that comes out. Apparently we’ve triggered Raya’s signing with Brentford, which is no surprise, but what is a surprise (well, to me, anyway), is that we’re interested in this Italian lad from Bologna Riccardo Calafiori, who apparently would prefer to go to Juve but Bologna don’t like Juve, so they’re looking for suitors overseas. I get that the kid wants Juve though; they’re the perennial winners in the Serie A and even when they don’t win, usually they go back and get close within a year or two and if you’re Italian then that kind of kudos is big. They haven’t won it for four years, as it’s been Inter, Napoli, Milan and Inter since Juve last won it, but given their record is of winning it 30 times where Inter’s is 20 times, it shows you that eventually they do end up getting it right.

I’m also not sure on Italians adapting to the Premier League, although there have of course been some that are a roaring success, but they’ve tended to be from the 90s and the influx we had. Just look at this list voted by fans of the ‘best’ Italians in the Premier League era. Some of you might be arguing Jorginho for us shows it can be done, but let’s be honest, he’s Brazilian that decided to declare for Italy. He moved to Italy at 15 years old so I don’t think that quite counts – he had his grounding as a Brazilian (even if he’s not really the flare player we come to expect of Brazilians).

What about defenders though? After all, Italians are known for their love of the art of defending, right? I had a Google. I’ve found Ogbonna at West Ham, who’s alright, I guess. Marco Materazzi was at Everton, but that was in his formative years before moving back to Italy after one year and doing the business for Inter. This article is a bit old but still they’re choosing Ogbonna as one of the ‘best of all time’ Italian defenders in the Premier League, so I’m thinking this might be a bit of a stretch to get this Bologna kid and expect him to bang for The Arsenal.

Does that mean I will be devastated when he goes to Man City and becomes they’re greatest ever player? I prefer not to speak…

Anyway, I’ve eeked that rambling on as much as I can, so I think I’ll put a pin in today’s utterings. There’s a couple more games in the Round of 16 tonight and I think most people are thinking it’ll be The Netherlands and Austria who will go through to the next round. The Netherlands have flattered to deceive but the Austrian’s have looked pretty good, so I am thinking we’ll see those two sides face off on Saturday when the quarter final is shown in Berlin on Saturday night. By that time we’ll know if England have progressed and we’ll have also have seen what looks like an interesting evening with Spain against Germany and Portugal against France on Friday – that promises to be intriguing.

I’m trying to sort out a pod for tomorrow so will also keep you posted if that goes ahead. But until tomorrow, have a good one.

This will probably be my last post for a few days, as I’m off to Glastonbury with The Management today so will probably not get around to compiling any ramblings until next Tuesday. We were supposed to be going yesterday – hence not penning anything, but sadly the wife’s Grandma – a beautiful lady who was one week away from her 95th birthday – passed away. She led a wonderful life, was a wonderful person and so yesterday The Management and I spent the day in consolation but also in celebration of one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet. We weren’t sure whether to even head there this weekend, but Frances was a strong, wonderful Northumbrian and she’d have told us not to fuss about her, so we’re going to go, light a candle in the chapel at Glastonbury and find time to think about all the joy she gave in our lives as much as we can today, tomorrow and for the rest of our days.

On the football front there’s a little bit to talk about, although Arsenal have confirmed receipt of a Danish ‘keeper Lucas Nygaard  to the academy yesterday. It’s interesting because I don’t recall us doing interviews and videos with academy prospects, so perhaps this is a new approach, or perhaps it speaks to the fact that everything is so quiet right now. Or perhaps it has more to do with the fact that by the looks of things, until Karl Hein signs this new deal that we’re expecting, we technically have only two goalkeepers at the whole club in Raya and Ramsdale. And Ramsdale is expected to leave the club this summer too.

But as I’ve mentioned earlier in the week, the window doesn’t officially open until 30th June which is on Sunday, so perhaps we’ll start to see the wheels in motion from Monday.

As for the Euro’s, it’s now on a two day ‘rest period before the Round of 16 kicks in and at this point in international tournaments I always kind of feel a little sadder. For me the group stages are the best bit, because you basically get two weeks’ of relentless football matches on all the time. Now as the teams start to think out, you get more ‘in between’ days and less of the volume of matches you can just whack on at any stage. The draw is now settled and whilst most people in England are surprised and pleased at how the draw has fallen favourably with England, I liked this article on Football365 flippantly and somewhat ‘tongue-in-cheekily’ saying that “It is frankly ridiculous that other England managers have not adopted this obviously sensible policy. They are damn fools.”.

It’s true though. Southgate has – during his tenure – basically been handed lucky draws throughout and as a result when he eventually gets the ol’ tin tack he’ll most likely go down as one of the most successful England managers of all time. Under him they got to the semi final of the World Cup in 2018, finished runners up in the Euro’s in 2020 and got to the quarter finals of the World Cup in 2022 losing to the eventual finalists and tournament favourites France. On paper it all looks pretty respectable.

But in 2022 they had an easy group with the US, Iran and Wales and in 2020 they had Scotland, Croatia and the Czech Republic. England under Southgate have made a habit of being flat-track bullies until they’ve come up against any kind of opponent who has anything about them. He must have a bucketload of rabbits feet, four leaf clovers, ladybugs and horseshoes over every door he ever walks through, because that kind of fortunate don’t come often to those in the England job.

And it’s hard not to look at this tournament as being anything else. England play Slovakia in the Round of 16 and if they win that they’ll play Switzerland or an Italy side looking as ropey as they are. Then if they progress there they’ll be up against Austria, Turkey, Romania or the Netherlands before eventually meeting one of the big clubs in the final. The tough side of the draw has Germany, Spain, France and Portugal in it. England could only meet one and it’d be in the final. Southgate is a lucky man, but luck will only get you so far and it still wouldn’t surprise me to see England out before the final, Southgate still doesn’t know his best team after having months to work out different options.

But such is life. Let’s see how this all shakes out. Maybe he can bumble his way straight to the final and if that happens then fair play to him. All I know is that although I think he’s a bit of a fraud of a manager, the potential to see the nation happy, Saka happy, as well as Rice and Ramsdale too, would bring joy to me for sure.

And on that note I’ll call it a day for today. Have yourselves a good one and I’ll be back at some stage in the next four days or so.

Laters people.

I decided to get a good dosage of football yesterday so watched the awesome game that was Austria and the Netherlands. It was a peach of a game with goals, great finishes, teams being pegged back and then ultimately the Austrians winning the group which, given it was France and The Netherlands who were expected to progress, is a pretty good feat if truth be told.

I have been listening to a few podcasts lately and Austria had been tipped by a few as a dark horse and when you see how Ragnick has them set up and performing as a collective, you can see why. They have a few injuries with the likes of Alaba out who is one of the stand out players, but as a collective they seem to be working really well and are certainly cohesive as a unit.

Which is more than you can say for the tragedy that is England under Gareth Southgate. Honestly, that man is so magnolia it makes a new build wall look positively exhilarating. His approach in taking a collective of very talented footballers and slabbing them together like some sort of Kandinsky painting is quite something. Under Southgate there is an out-of-form right back playing at left back, a world-beating Champions League winner and brilliant central midfielder turn in to the invisible man, plus chucked in a guy alongside Rice who’s basic existence on a football pitch is to “faaakin’ run araand a bit” in Conor Gallagher.

Southgate has had plenty of friendlies and opportunities to assess his team before this tournament, yet here we are looking at him still moving things around because he can’t work out how to set up his side against low block and reduced quality teams. Last night’s game against Slovenia was genuinely painful and the only saving grace was that I had my set up all in the garden so I could enjoy the heat and the sunshine, because the football left far too much to be desired with.

Honestly, the sooner that guy is exited as the manager of England, the better it will be for all England fans. I have no idea how the next round works but the noises are that England will probably play The Netherlands in the next round is what I’ve heard, so that will be an interesting car crash of a game based on last night’s performances from respective teams!

Today it’ll be interesting to see how the Slovakia, Romania, Ukraine and Belgium group gets on. They are all on three points so feasibly everyone could finish top, second or third today. I suspect Belgium might scrape through and then I have a feeling it might be Romania that will win, so then the third place will basically come down to goal difference.

In the other games to wrap up the groups it’ll be Georgia, Portugal, Czech Republic and Turkey and I suspect it’ll be Portugal and Turkey who will go through, although if he Czech’s get the win then it’ll be interesting to see whether Portugal can be arsed to turn up against the Georgians. I suspect they’ll still have enough to get over and so it’ll be on that Turkey/Czech result to see how the tournament finishes.

And that will be the end of the group stages which, if I’m honest, I’m not sure have been great in terms of the format. Back in the day they’d go straight to the quarters and so you knew that it would be the top two from the group and that’s that. But in this format it feels like basically almost everyone gets through to the next round. I guess for some countries it’s great because even at the end of these group stages there’s something to play for, but it all feels a little muddled for me.

I saw some stuff yesterday about how Arsenal are looking to get as much as £50million for Eddie Nketiah, which I thought was pretty steep, if I’m honest. If we get just over half that at this stage I think you’d have to say it’s a good deal for The Arsenal and although Chelsea are about to sign some kid Kellyman for £19million from Villa, we all know that the deal itself is a loophole deal and designed to skirt PSR rather than match the value of a guy who has yet to make a single Premier League appearance. I’m sure clubs will be frustrated with this because it’s money that basically never gets exchanged. It’s like me telling you I’m a billionaire because I sold my car to my brother for a billion quid, but I had to buy his bicycle off him for the same figure. What Arsenal and clubs that actually play within moral and ethical rules on transfers get for players will be very different. So if we get £25 – £30million (that extra £11million between Kellyman and Nketiah gets you 187 first team appearances and 43 goals, in case you wondered) for Eddie I think we’d probably say that’s a decent enough deal and allows us to look at what alternative options are out there. Apparently West Ham are interested and I guess given last year they got £100million from us for Rice, I suspect we’d be more than happy for them to write off a big chunk of the outstanding debt that remains. Maybe a deal can be done there.

There’s not a lot else going on so I’ll stop for today I think. It’s all quiet before that 30th June deadline on Sunday so I suspect there will be movements from next week. In the meantime though, we have our round four of the ‘one in, one out, one bangs’ series on the Same Old Arsenal podcast this evening at 7.30pm, so if you fancy joining us you can do so here at 7.30pm.

Catch you all tomorrow.

On Modric, we have to say, what a player he has been. 38 years old, about to turn 39 in September, bagging goals in international tournaments and still performing at a club like Real Madrid. The words ‘generational talent’ are often flung about the place like a rag doll, but he is certainly one of those guys you’d say fits the bill. Was saddening to see him with his man-of-the-match award clearly still with tears in his eyes and sadness in his heart. Still, at least he shed himself of the stench of Tottenham mediocrity with enough year’s on his contract to become the legend of the game that he is and a multiple Champions League and La Liga winner. Fair play to him.

On the Arsenal front it was Jorginho who started and progresses to the next round, but David Raya also performed well apparently. Whether it’s enough to displace Unai Simon remains to be seen; changing of the guard at international level with goalkeepers doesn’t really happen very much. It tends to have to be a mega drop in form or for the ‘keeper themselves to drop out of the team, as evidenced by the fact that we’ve had ol’ stumpy arms Pickford in goal for England for about 45 years. But if he’s given himself a chance by dropping a big performance in a game like this, maybe it’ll have the Spanish national coach thinking about him longer term. The problem Raya has is that he’s nearly two years older than Simon and that means he probably doesn’t have the benefit of time on his side to wait it out. I doubt there’ll be a changing of the guard this Euro’s either; the Spanish team are in winning ways and the only reason rotation was afforded last night was because they knew they qualified as group winners, so I don’t see the manager changing his first XI when it starts to get to crunch time in the knockout stages.

As for Arsenal, there’s interest tonight in Rice and Saka for England, but before that at 5pm we have the small matter of William Saliba’s France against Jakub Kiwior’s Poland. We know Jakub will be going home after the game later and so I suspect France will get a relatively comfortable ride of things, but the Netherlands v Austria could be an intriguing one. If Austria win they’ll probably finish second and that could put the Netherlands in contention for a game against England, which would be an interesting match up for sure. Regardless of what the outcome is though, England will be playing at some stage over the weekend/Monday and I just hope it isn’t against the Germans; it’s useful for me to have both countries to fall back on if one of them gets knocked out early (more likely to be the English).

On an Arsenal transfer front it’s still all pretty quiet. I think we all know that though and I suspect rumours will intensify from Monday when the transfer window opens and the new financial accounting period opens up for clubs. I’ve seen a couple of spurious links for Nico Williams but I just don’t see it happening. He’s on big money at Athletic Bilbao, he has caught the attention of everyone at the Euro’s, so he’ll most likely have an agent demand Haaland-level wages when the tournament is over. Then there’s the question of positional fit. We know Arteta is ruthless so of course we wouldn’t put it past him that he’d be looking at upgrading in any position, but the reality is that our needs are not in left wing but in other positions first and personally I think Arsenal aren’t going to be dropping big cash on big name signings this summer. There’s no doubt the club will look to improve and invest, but I just feel like it’s probably going to be in midfield, maybe left back, alternatively a centre forward. We’re well-stocked in wide-left players and so getting this guy in – as amazing as he looks – feels like a stretch too far for me.

Right, I’m going to leave it there for today. Will catch you all tomorrow as we de-brief the situ post England’s inevitably lacklustre performance under the uninspiring Gareth Southgate.

Cheery-bye for today, folks.

That will be an intriguing match up, because England have been pants and I’ve even leant in to my German roots by buying that delightful-looking Germany away kit that is pink and purple. Love it. Although weather I’ll get away with wearing it over the weekend if England play Germany is probably not something I want to test to be honest with you.

The reality is that I probably just edge the fact I’d rather see England win it given it’s the country of birth, etc, but being able to call on my Oma had her side of the family as a wonderful fall back has been useful over the years.

They played Switzerland last night and I watched the second half having come back from a family meal. It was a bit of a slog of a game as Switzerland just tucked in with a low block and said to Germany “come on then, see if you can break us down”, whilst then trying to play on the counter. And were it not for a tight – but correct (semi-automated VAR doing the business again, thank you very much) – call through the correct application of the technology, they might have done a bit of the ol’ “rope-a-dope” football on Der Mannschaft but Germany decided to lean in to a trusted old formula in Fullkrug and the ‘stick it in the mixer on the big lads head’ to deliver the last minute goods and ensure they secured a draw and top spot.

If England mess up tomorrow and don’t finish top then it’ll be Germany on Saturday they’ll have to play. If they can top the group by beating Slovenia on Tuesday then it’ll most likely be Austria or Romania I reckon. Which would of course be a lot more palatable for the England team than a match up against Germany.

From an Arsenal perspective there was a man-of-the-match performance from our former midfielder maestro Xhaka last night, but Kai had a quiet one I thought. Tierney is obviously out of the tournament but I suspect regardless of his injury or not he’d have been packing his bags today anyway, because Scotland’s defeat to Hungary means they picked up just one point and head home this morning. There was plenty of noise, plenty of good fun from the Scots during this tournament, but they were never in reality likely to progress far in this competition, especially after seeing how they struggled to get goals and definitely struggled to keep them out.

I can’t revel in a Scottish defeat and exit though; I can’t say I’ve ever ‘hated’ the Scots in any competition. I know they hate the English and that’s their privilege to do so, but I’ve never really been that bothered with that kind of international rivalry, so I’m a bit ‘meh’ about it all. It’s funny when you get some bantery chants and all that jazz, but that’s about the limit of my interest of that particular ‘rivalry’.

From an Arsenal transfer perspective…well…there isn’t really any. It’s all still deathly quiet other than a few of the gutter-press red tops talking up a potential Kimmich transfer this summer. He’s got a year left on his contract, apparently there’s not much noise about him signing a new one and he had a couple of pretty good games against us last season. He’s been unhappy being used as a right back but I guess any Arsenal pitch would involve him being used in midfield (where he prefers to play) as well as a flexible option for other positions. It’s interesting because when I hopped on to the Arsenal Opinion podcast last week I said I wondered if Arsenal might go for an ‘experienced’ older head this summer, as well as other signings, so this kind of link makes sense to me. He’s been there, seen it, done it and given we’ve just released Elneny, Cedric, plus there’s rumours that Partey could be available this summer, it’s a fair few older players who have departed and I’m sure Arteta will be mindful of getting the balance right between youth and experience. Kimmich comes in as a 29-year-old at the peak of his powers, as a guy who doesn’t seem to pick up a ton of injuries (last season he missed four games across two stints in December and January – a total of 20 days, then the season before it was one game and five days out with COVID), who might be looking for a new challenge and who I’m sure Arteta would be happy to drop in to his team. The price would have to be right though and if Bayern are looking at close to the value that TransferMarkt puts on him at around €50million (£42million) that might be on the upper end of what Arsenal would be willing to pay. His value is only going to decline at that age but if you could do a deal around the £30million mark then it might be worth considering. If you want to make a comparison, we sold Xhaka to Leverkusen (who also only had a year left on his contract) for around £21million and he was a year older and an integral member of our midfield the season before last. With Kimmich a year younger you’d expect to pay a little more and so hitting £30million for a player of his quality is probably fair for all parties.

So all-in-all I can see the logic to this. But until it gets reported by any proper outlets and not the spurious click-baiters, I think there’s probably a degree of ‘don’t get too invested’ at this stage.

Right, I’m going to leave it there for today. Although it’s a lovely day I have work to be done to pay the bills, so I’ll catch you all tomorrow.

Those in the England national team camp who played last night are probably not waking up with that feeling after their poor performance yesterday, that’s for sure! I missed the first 15 or 20 minutes of the game, so didn’t see Kane’s tap in until halftime, but I did see Denmark’s fine finish from outside of the box and I don’t know whether it’s just me or not, but have we seen an inordinate amount of goals from outside of the box? I feel like almost every game has some kind of great long-range finish and from a spectator point of view long may that continue. Goalkeepers at this tournament are probably getting quite cheesed off at this stage and ol’ tiny dino-arms Pickford will be once again annoyed at the closing down that doesn’t appear to be happening from his teammates.

Mind you, there’s a lot that isn’t happening in that England team, starting with the most basic of things: finding another teammate with a pass. It was so weird to see players like Walker, Foden and Kane all stink the place out and even Declan Rice was poor and sloppy with his passing too. This England team is so talented, but once again we find ourselves with a manager who has absolutely no idea how to change things. Honestly after this tournament is done, if he leaves England and is in line waiting for when Ten Haag effs up, then it would be a double-bubble win for everyone who isn’t a United fan if he’s their next manager.

England went ahead against Denmark and absolute sh*t the bed. There was no creativity, it was passive football and on the up side, it made me thankful for Mikel Arteta. That’s because had Arsenal have gone in at halftime 1-1 against a clearly more inferior opponent like the Dane’s, we’d have seen a very different Arsenal side in the second half. He would have spotted where the deficiencies were in the team, plugged the holes and we’d have adapted ‘in game’ to what the opposition had. Gareth Southgate is completely unable to do that and there’s something that Johnny Cochrane said on our ‘one in, one out, one bangs’ podcast that we recorded last night on the Same Old Arsenal podcast last night, Southgate is very much a ‘vibes’ manager. The difference is that a) he’s not a particularly good one, and b) ‘vibes’ managers don’t really work in modern day football. Just look at what teams are looking at when it comes to manager profile these days. It is about systems, processes, projects and control. The last ‘vibes’ manager out there who really stands out is Carlo Ancelotti and whilst he’s doing the business right now, at 65 he’s probably not got another 10 years at the elite top of football.

So that’s the reason that, for me, Southgate should be hooked, although you can’t do that during a tournament, so England fans will just have to choke down these kind of performances, then it’s another tournament that passes England by with a very talented group that is wasted with a no-talent manager.

In the other games Spain beat Jorginho’s Italy and although I didn’t watch it (was on the tube heading home) I couldn’t believe when I saw that Alvaro Morata is STILL in the Spanish national team. I swear, after the nuclear apocalypse, the only things left to inhabit the earth will be cockroaches and Morata – who will still have a seven year contract somewhere tucked under his arm. Fair play to the lad.

From an Arsenal perspective it’s still all very spurious and ‘spray and pray’ from the media it feels like right now. This morning I see us linked with Conor Gallagher but after last night’s “just faaaakin’ run araaand a bit’ performance from him, I’m not sure how that one fits with us. I was with a Chelsea fan last night and I asked him about Gallagher and he said that he’s alright in a team that’s winning, but if you go behind then he feels like a bit of a pointless player on the pitch.

There’s some stuff about the Turkey left back Kadioglu and supposedly he’s available for around £17million. I haven’t watched any of him really but Turkey play tomorrow at 5pm so if I can make it work I might check in on him. Or record the game so I can play it on x2 speed the next day.

The other one that seems to have popped it’s head up again is the Gyokeres links. Decent player, had a great season at Sporting, but two year’s ago he was bumping in goals against Cardiff and Rotherham, so that one isn’t quite filling me with the giddiest of joy I must admit.

One thing I will say, however, is that Arteta and Edu have given us enough good results that they deserve to be trusted, so I will certainly be putting my hopes in to the Swede should we go ahead and pay the cash for his signature.

And with that I will call time on today’s usual ramblings. Have yourselves a wonderful Friday and I’ll be back tomorrow with some football-related thoughts.

Laters peeps.

There’s very little Arsenal stuff to speak about right now that we haven’t already talked about, so instead I guess I’ll have to relent and talk about international football. I mean, I’d rather not, but given that today is the start of the Euro’s, I guess I have no choice.

I was in Munich at the beginning of May as they were gearing up for the tournament and I have to say even then I did enjoy seeing the vibes about the place as posters went up, etc. It doesn’t mean that I’m going to be all turned around on the subject of international football, but in the absence of The Arsenal I guess it’s a temporary sticking plaster until we get back to the real stuff.

As for me, it’s times like this that I’m glad I get to call on a varied family lineage, with a half-German, half-Dutch Grandmother who we used to call ‘Oma’ when she was alive. It means I get to put a foot in three camps: England, Nederland and Deutschland. And weirdly, it’s England who appear to have the best odds – although I suspect that’s because of people lumping on for England from this country, because when you start to look at the pundits there appears to be a lot of very sensible people voting for the French. They do have the strongest squad I think and when you look at their probable line up if they include the beast that is Big Bill Saliba, then they’ll be hopeful of going all the way I suspect.

England have a decent squad too and should be looking at getting to a decent position if they win their group, but they have the complete muppet Gareth Southgate in charge who will almost inevitably screw it up with a complete lack of tactical nous, ending up with England finishing second in the group and then most likely getting knocked out in the round of 16 to the Germans who I think will win their group. If that happens my allegiances will thankfully switch to Der Mannschaft and when you look at their possible route to the final if they win the group, you’d probable fancy them to go deep. The Dutch have a group with Poland and France in and I can see them finishing second in it, which should mean they’ll get a Slovakia or Ukraine I would have thought, then after that I think it’ll be Portugal, who I think will win their group and meet the Dutch in the quarter finals. Portugal are a funny team because they have some good players, they have some talent and you never know if they might be dark horses, but usually they just fall short and that’s my expectation this year too.

If I’m picking a final I’m probably going for the pedigree of the likes of A Germany versus France final; both teams have pedigree and good players who can hurt you. It’ll mean Saliba versus Kai and that’ll be a nice little one-on-one match up with a little Arsenal narrative we can hold on to if that’s how it pans out.

Unfortunately for me, in my work sweepstake, I got Turkey and if they win the thing I think I’ll grow myself some magic beans to go and visit the giant in the cloud somewhere. It doesn’t matter what company I’m in or who I’m doing a sweepstake with, I think I always get a team that has absolutely no chance of progressing to the latter stages. It’s £2 I’ll never see again but I guess it is partially for charity so I won’t be too bitter. Much.

And that’s really it from me for today I think. I did a ‘one in, one out, one to bang’ last night with my old friends Harry Symeou and Mike McDonald on the Same Old Arsenal podcast, so if you fancy having a listen for a quick Arsenal fix you can do so here to see who they chose as their choices to join, exit and explode next season.

Have a good Friday peeps and I’ll be back tomorrow with some more Saturday musings.

Laters potatoes.

Of course I’m sure Deschamps couldn’t give a monkeys about us and what we feel, but regardless of that, it does feel a little crass of him to make comments about how Saliba hasn’t been that great for France, that he’s lower down in the pecking order, etc. I’ve read a couple of comments on the translation not seeming as harsh as it does in English.

For reference, here’s what he said:

“He is having a good season, but he also does things that I don’t like so much…For France, he has limited game time, but when he plays, that hasn’t necessarily gone well. The hierarchy doesn’t favour him at the moment, but he is here. Dayot Upamecano has had game time and perhaps William has had less….With certain players, I make sure to persevere, because it can be confidence or little blockages that can shift…Some don’t have any concerns, some need game time. William has had less game time, so that doesn’t allow him to be very calm.”

Maybe it doesn’t seem as bad and only a French fluent speaker could probably tell me otherwise, but from my untrained eye it doesn’t exactly look like a coach whose happy to put his arms around a young player. And do you know what the first thing that went through my mind when I read this?

“I hope that this doesn’t mean that he is planting the seed that he needs to play somewhere else in order to get in to the French team!”

Ahh the irrational hand-wringing of a neurotic Arsenal fan, eh? The reality is that as we see in England some coaches just have their favourites and sometimes you just need to wait until the current incumbent leaves before you get your chances. We talk colloquially as fans about when a manager ‘doesn’t fancy him’ as a player, but you never really think much about it until you see instances like this. Saliba is certainly within the top three or four best Premier League defenders this season, he got in to the team of the season last year out, he’s backed up a good season last time with a good season so far and I am looking forward to seeing Upemencano versus Saliba when we see Arsenal v Bayern in a few short weeks time. Hopefully Saliba excels and gives Deschamps food for thought; there’s no doubt in my mind that the Premier League is a more difficult league than the Bundesliga and if Deschamps can’t see the value of giving Big Bill priority, then so be it.

Maybe it’s beneficial for us? Maybe his reduction in game time means that he can stay fitter for us for longer? After all the reason why we suffered towards the end of last season was because we dropped our firstXI quality by losing Saliba and replacing him with Rob Holding. It was only when that got so bad that Arteta was forced to roll the dice on Kiwior, who eventually started impressing (like the away game at Newcastle last season) that we started to recover a bit, but by then it was too late and City were away winning the title. So if Saliba can play minimal minutes tonight then that is a-ok with me. Let him come back to the Arsenal fold where he knows he will get a big welcome from the coaching staff, his teammates and fans alike.

The other news is that Declan Rice will captain England tonight and whilst I have no interest in watching the game in any way, shape, or form, it is clearly a big honour for him and you could see the way he reacted when he was asked about it. It’ll be his 50th cap for his country, it’ll be a proud day for him and his family, but I think when that’s all done and dusted and the initial match kicks off, I want him off that pitch in one piece as soon as possible. For me that means a maximum of 60 minutes on the field. Get him wandering around a bit, get his standing ovation from the England fans, then let’s get out of dodge and hope he’s good to go for Sunday’s mammoth match at the top of the table.

I’m looking at a few players already as those that could make Sunday’s game very different from last year. No Holding and instead let’s have Saliba alongside Gabriel. No half-fit Partey but instead get a pumped Declan Rice having just captained his country. Let’s make a better account of ourselves this time and unlike last season where it was always a long shot, this time around I am hoping that we go toe-to-toe with them and cause them some problems. I’ll start ramping up my thoughts on the game probably from Thursday, but my initial thoughts so far is that I want us to be competitive as long as possible in this match, because I think it’ll be a very tall ask to get anything from it.

But that’s thinking for another day. For now I’ll put a pause on proceedings and catch you all tomorrow. Have a good one.

Dedication. Determination. Tomiyasu pic.twitter.com/2Q6kGZWNza

— Arsenal (@Arsenal) March 20, 2024

We all love Tomi, I think that’s a given, so getting him to extend his stay with us is great. But perhaps it is a mark of some of the challenges he’s had since joining us, the deal itself is only an additional year extension. Clearly the player wants to stay and extending that was his priority, but I wonder how that conversation went, when Arsenal only offered him an additional one year extension? Does it benefit both parties and therefore it made sense for everyone? If you are Tomiyasu and his agent and you want to stay at Arsenal and secure a longer-term future, then perhaps you do this as a gesture of “ok we’ll sign, but we want an option”? If I was in Tomiyasu’s shoes that’s what I’d be wanting. An additional year added to the contract clearly feels like the club might have said to him “we love you, we want to keep you, but we need to have a consistent run of staying fit in order to give you that longer-term contract. Show us you can be available for 35 – 40 games in a 50 game season and we’ll give you what you want”. And I think that’s probably fair enough. If you look at his injury history he’s missed 14 games and 72 days for us so far this season. Last season it was 16 games and 107 days and the season before that it was 11 games and 60 days. In his last season at Bologna he missed 10 games and 47 days, so we’re talking about a guy who does seem to break down at least once a season, so it feels natural that Arsenal wouldn’t tie him down to a deal in which we have a player who as he gets older, is probably not going to suddenly find himself able to shake off more of these injuries.

It’s a shame because he has been so good for us when he has been fit and available. When he signed for us everyone said he couldn’t play as a right back and I think it was one of those soppy Sky Sports ‘transfer gurus’ who said that people in the game didn’t understand why Arsenal were paying that money for a guy who doesn’t play right back. He came in, he excelled at right back, then it was only because he was injured that we moved Ben White to that position that he lost his place. Tomiyasu is a hard-working, strong-tackling, dual-winning, versatile defender who I would rather see us keep than offload this summer because he’d have just a year on his deal. BUt by extending for one more year we can at least park the conversation for another season and give him the chance to show he can stay fit for longer.

If he remains side-lined for something like another 15 – 20 matches next season, then the club have a decision to make in the summer of 2025, but if he plays and contributes and is available for Arteta for most of 2024/25, then it makes sense that we’d look to potentially move him on.

There’s also the emergence of Timber too, that we’re hoping for. If Jurrien comes in, is robust and stays fit, then it may feel natural that he is seen as a successor to Tomiyasu – if the Japanese international does break down again – so Arsenal extending by one year protects the players value, shows that we ideally want to keep him around, but also means that if he finds himself in a position where his chances are limited by next summer, both club and player can find a solution that works for both parties.

But that’s another year away and for now let’s just be glad that another good player who makes an impact in this Arsenal team has signed up to this ‘project’. The players are clearly loving what is happening at the club at the moment and in the last year all of the key players have been committing their future to the club, which is a positive example that is showing we’ve been moving in the right direction. We all know that, but it was about 10-15 years ago when we’d see players start to look elsewhere when their contract starts to run down, but that doesn’t really feel like it’s been a big thing for us now. We have the money, we have the set up,. we have the coaching staff that have proved they can improve players, all we need now is the trophies to start building a legacy. That last bit is never guaranteed, especially when you look at the juggernauts we’re up against, but it feels like we’re ideally placed to have a proper go. And Arteta is the kind of ruthless winner that makes you think that he will not relent until he’s added to that FA Cup he won in 2020 and the couple of Community Shield’s we have.

Just before I wrap up today, as we are now finding out from the press, it seems as though the truth is emerging about the Ben White situation and it doesn’t make England or Gareth Southgate look very good at all. I think most of us knew that something was fishy and I thought as much when I talked about this last weekend. Southgate has clearly lied through his teeth; I also saw the video of his interview during the last World Cup when he spoke about the situation and it was clear that he was both uncomfortable and unwilling to reveal the true nature of what had happened. That’s because his mate Steve Holland had clearly crossed a professional line by calling out White in front of his fellow professionals and I think we all know by now that what he has supposedly said to White smacks of arrogance. The current England set up is stale and dwindling; it is full of Southgate and his ‘mates’ which includes certain players that shouldn’t be in the squad and the sooner he exits after the summer the better. And if he takes the United job then all the more hilarious.

I don’t particularly want to talk about England any more though, to be honest with you. We back our lad Ben and Holland/Southgate can ‘do one’ as far as I am concerned.

Catch you all tomorrow.

Firstly and most pleasingly, there was the announcement that he’s signed a new contract at The Arsenal. Much like Aaron Ramsdale, this contract announcement got a really nice and heartfelt video where his teammates talked about him and what he brings to the club:

Benjamin White, as told by his team-mates pic.twitter.com/2O3pcUJu70

— Arsenal (@Arsenal) March 14, 2024

When I first watched it I thought “ahh, that’s nice. Lovely to see. Then the official site had a nice little interview which you can see here, as well as the usual pictures and text which is here. We’ve known about it for a while, I think Romano tweeted about it ages ago, but the club finally announced it and we can all be glad. But it was only until later on in the day that many started to conclude that this was a very rehearsed and precise reason why the announcement was made yesterday, because on the same day Gareth Southgate announced his England team and spoke specifically about the Ben White situation. We all know he left for ‘personal reasons’ in 2022 and there wasn’t much coming out at that time, although there have been a few stories around that time talking about a bust up. Depending on who you read and believe, it was because either he had a bust up with Grealish, or that he had a bust up with England Coach Steve Holland. The story seems to go in a couple of directions but two prevailing theories are:

• Steve Holland argued and questioned Ben White because of the fact he said he doesn’t watch football
• Steve Holland argued because Ben White didn’t watch the preparation training videos, because Ben White thought they were pointless and he was being targeted in the squad.

I suspect as always there is a little truth and a little embellishment in these stories, but I find it very off that a player of White’s calibre, who Arteta absolutely loves, would refuse to do any background research because he doesn’t care or because he just can’t be arsed. Firstly, if that attitude was displayed at any time whilst playing for Arsenal, I think we all know that Ben White would get the Aubameyang treatment from Arteta. This is a manager who values the ‘estandards’ and the drive and determination more than anyone else. I bet Arteta is even stricter with his players on knowing all the details. So for Ben White to do that at England level seems like a bit of a joke to me. Here’s Ben White talking about how he cried when he got his England call up. This isn’t a man who doesn’t care. This isn’t a man who won’t do everything in his power to play for England. Heck, this is a man who plays through injury, has been described as a warrior and for anyone to question his integrity as a professional should be ashamed of themselves.

Something is fishy here. I smell some bullsh*t and I don’t think it’s coming from Ben White.

This is coming from Gareth Southgate and his camp. Here’s his interview he did in full, which includes the context of the way the question was asked and I will say to Southgate’s credit, he didn’t instigate the discussion. He was asked specifically about Ben White and so he responded. But there are ways of responding. He played the magnanimous manager card and said “the door is always open”, but what he could have said was “the door is always open, but for now he continues to not be available to us and I don’t want to discuss what is a personal matter”. But instead he decided to go in on how he had a call from Edu, told that White didn’t want to be considered, etc. Clearly what Southgate is trying to do is put this all on Ben White and focus the attention on it being his decision. But why would a guy who has openly admitted he was desperate to play for England, suddenly decide that he doesn’t want to be selected?

Southgate refuted claims that there was an issue with Steve Holland, but having watched what he was saying again this morning, I am going to 100% say that I do not believe that Southgate was telling the truth. He is defending his coaching team and doubling down on that, which you’d expect him to, but by name checking Steve Holland too, it seems to me that this is fairly obvious that something has happened with that coach, which leads you to start re-looking at the above and when you again think about Ben White at The Arsenal, it feels like this has everything to do with Steve Holland. Gareth Southgate is telling porkies and Ben White is the victim, because now all of the headlines today are about Ben White snubbing England. It hits his own image and Southgate has been the instigator of it. So now we see why Arsenal went in to bat for their man and we saw the lovely media that went on the website on the same day Southgate decided to try to torch Ben White and his reputation, all the while playing the “no issue from us, he’s always welcome” spiel.

Screw Gareth Southgate. Screw Steve Holland. Ben doesn’t need you because he has an army of Arsenal fans behind him and we’ll back our lad all day long.

The up side is that White gets time with his friends and family and he’ll also get more time to prep for this intense period we’re about to go through. If we get time to rest up Ben and have him on full power for the last couple of months of the season, happy days, as far as I’m concerned.

I’ll leave it there for today I think. Back tomorrow with some more Arsenal musings no doubt. You guys have a good one.

England and their medical team must have conversations with all clubs about players when they are about to announce their squads, which they do a good eight or nine days before any match takes place (probably because flights and accommodation details need to be sorted out by agents, etc), so that conversation must have had some confirmation that Saka will be fit and available for next weekend. If the club were telling the England camp that it’s a hamstring strain and he’ll probably be out for a while, then he just wouldn’t have been named and we’d all be a lot more worried about him longer term. So if you’re going to look at the glass half full you can say that even if he doesn’t play this weekend, hopefully he will be fine for after the international break.

Of course knowing our luck we’ll lose him this weekend in an important match, he’ll go away with England and pick up a knock, then we’ll lose him when he returns to The Arsenal in broken pieces because he played 90 minutes in a meaningless friendly against Australia.

But as it stands, with no new information until Arteta does that press conference, we have to look at the intel we have and say at least it isn’t a long term injury. Remember when the Ghana FA didn’t name Partey in their squad for the last international break, then let it slip that he’d suffered an injury himself and would be out, before Arsenal had even said anything? Well I suspect that would be the case with England had they not already spoken to the club.

That doesn’t mean he’ll be fine for Sunday though and it may be a case of the muscular injury he had when backheeling the ball in the first half just hasn’t repaired itself just yet. Saka may only be 22, but even at such a young age and when the body can repair itself so quickly, it might be asking a lot for him to be ready for Sunday. I’ve just had a cheeky Google about hamstring strains or tears and the NHS website has this to say. A ‘few days’ for a muscle pull or strain would give us hope, but this is guidance based on the average person, not an elite athlete. Saka could right now of this moment be ok to walk around, maybe even go for light jogging, but that doesn’t mean he could be available for intermittent sprinting, turning, etc. In elite sport you also need to be mindful of those marginal gains. A 75% fit Bukayo Saka is very different from even a 90% Bukayo Saka and as fans because we watch football so closely, we are all attuned enough to be able to see when a player isn’t quite right. It just doesn’t look the same. I remember seeing Aaron Ramsey often tke a few games after injury before we’d get the player that we all knew and loved banging in goes and delivering those lung-busting runs. But before we got him at his best you’d normally have to go through half a dozen games in which his performances were a bit ‘meh’.

Against the best team in the world, the treble winners, a side with six wins out of seven in the league this season already, you can’t afford to have players who are not 100% on it. So there will be a lot of deliberation and discussion happening right up until the morning of the game from Arteta and his coaching staff on what to do re: Saka I suspect. Unless he’s just clearly not fit, then it becomes about who can replace him.

And that in itself is a challenge, because as we all know, there isn’t really a natural understudy to Saka. Fabio Vieira feels like he is better as a centrally located player. Emile Smith Rowe hasn’t played there much at all and in any case, it doesn’t feel as though Arteta has him as his next in line. Reiss Nelson has once (that I can remember) deputised for Saka in recent months when he came on against Forest and bagged two goals at home last season. Trossard played wide right when we beat Leeds 4-1 at the Emirates towards the end of last season, but I can’t remember him having a blinder of a game and in any case, I suspect he will take up that wide left position instead of the seemingly injured Martinelli. Gabriel Jesus has operated there but against it is taking a player out of his best position and it means Eddie getting the nod centrally, and recently I don’t think he’s performed particularly well in those big games against tough opponents.

So it is a real worry if we’re missing Saka as well as Martinelli on Sunday. A real worry indeed.

There’s not really a lot going on in the Arsenal world right now. From the Arsenal Women perspective there was the show of faith in Jans Eidevall in his new contract being given to him by the club, which feels very familiar to when Mikel was given a public backing when we went through the tough period during the COVID era. But it was only May last year that Eidevall signed a new deal, so this feels like a very public statement by the club, because we’re only 16 months since his last deal. I don’t really know enough about women’s football to know whether or not this is a good idea or not, but clearly the club are backing their man and now he needs his team to deliver on the football pitch.

Right, that’s me done for the day I think, so I’ll catch you all tomorrow when we’ve heard from Mikel.

have a good one.

Still, at least I’m not in Harry Maguire’s position, because he can’t get anything right, eh? I mean don’t get me wrong, the millions of pounds he earns and the fact he gets to do football for a living means I still wouldn’t mind having a go at being in his shoes, but having heard that he put in another disasterclass last night, it can’t be much fun waking up this morning as you prepare to head in to a United training ground that he probably feels doesn’t really want him that much either.

Still, he’s another teams problem, because the only issues we all really concern ourselves with are Arsenal players and by all accounts it sounds like it’s been a good 24 or so hours for most of them. Gabriel played the full 90 minutes for Brazil in the early hours of the morning, which should mean he can head back to England at some stage today to check in with the club at London Colney and see how he’s doing ahead of Sunday’s game. First ‘tick’ of the international break box. Then I read that we had appearances for Ramsdale, Rice and then a 20 minute cameo for England last night. Another ‘tick’ in the box, especially if Bukayo wasn’t over-exerted and hopefully those England players all report back tomorrow with a clean bill of health.

Saliba and Havertz lined up against each other and I’ve seen the assist that Havertz made for the Germany goal, which let’s hope gives a guy short on confidence the boost he needs. I’ve been listening to a few of the international break Arsenal pods as they talk about a few of the bits and bobs going on at the moment and I can’t remember which one, but there was a discussion I listened to which talked about whether or not he should play against Everton this coming weekend. I’m torn on it because his form would suggest ‘no’, but perhaps a performance like last night’s (and I don’t know if anything else was good about his game to be honest) will be important to help, then he can follow it up by a performance against a robust and clearly physical Everton team who will fancy ruffling a few Arsenal feathers for the Sunday 4.30pm kick off on Sky Sports.

But it seems as though both of those players in that game came through it, as did Martin Odegaard for Norway and Leo Trossard for Belgium, both of whom scored for their respective nations and again, we’ve got yet more confidence boosters for Arsenal players, so that is all good.

All in all we’ve had 16 Arsenal players in action this break, which I read somewhere that it’s the second most of any Premier League team aside from, oddly, Nottingham Forest, of all sides. Mind you they buy players like Chelsea so they’ve probably got a squad of 50 they’re picking from. But I guess the main point is that from three year’s ago when it seemed like we barely had any international players, we now have a litany of them to worry about. Which of course is a concern because it increases the probability of losing some to injury, but at the same time it is also a positive testament to the work that is happening at The Arsenal in trying to raise the quality of the overall first team squad. And you can’t argue that the quality level hasn’t drastically increased in the last two to three years, that’s for sure.

We won’t get full confirmation of whether we have – Thomas Partey aside – a full clean bill of health just yet, but when you look at the minutes of most of the key Arsenal players played over the last 48 hours, it does feel as though we look ok right now. Let’s just keep those fingers crossed though, eh?

The only player who I think most of us would have been happy to at least get on for his first cap would have been Eddie Nketiah, who has worked hard in pre season, has been in the goals, is looking like he’s in some decent form and yet still didn’t get on last night in the friendly against Scotland. You have to feel for Eddie; with any other half decent manager who didn’t just dish out caps for his mates – wherever they are playing or even if they’re not playing – we’d probably see the next generation coming through. But instead Eddie has to wait in line behind Stat-Padder-McGhee up front who is now plying his trade in the Bundesliga. Quite why you would leave a guy like Kane on in an international friendly seems a bit weird to me, but that is Gareth Southgate for you. I didn’t watch it, it’s an international friendly, so I couldn’t really give a monkey’s about some elements of England, but it would have been a nice little tip of the cap to a guy who has been known amongst the Arsenal fanbase for quite some time as a proper grafter. You only have to look at his interviews, see the All or Nothing documentary, as well as listen to him in videos and podcasts, to see that he is a guy who is a relentless trainer, a ‘beast’ as Mikel calls him, and is starting to win over even people like me, who I’ve been sceptical about for a few years now.

Good on you Eddie. Hope you get your England chance in spite of Southgate. You deserve it.

Right, that’s me done for today I think. We probably won’t get any Arteta air time until Friday so I’m going to save any pre Everton chatter for when we do. You have yourselves a good one and I’ll catch you all in the Steve Morrow.

However, I did see that once again Bukayo Saka stole the show bagging himself a hattrick, man-of-the-match performance and demonstrating that we really do have a starboy ready to hopefully go supernova next season. Harry Kane continued to stat-pad his England career by bagging yet another penalty too, I see. I think I read somewhere that a third of his goals for England come from the penalty spot. Says a lot really, doesn’t it?

But I’m not going to talk about one of theirs when I can wax lyrical about one of ours: Declan R…..

Saka is utterly brilliant, he is getting better and better and given he was able to put together a performance like this after playing 58 games this season and probably being quite knackered, I think it bodes well for us for next season. Every Wednesday we do our ‘one in, one out, one to ‘bang’ next season and although we’re only two episodes in (third one tomorrow night here), I wonder whether we’ll get anybody talking up Saka going to another level above what he’s already delivered for us in his short time in an Arsenal shirt. I hope somebody does, because I do think he will be a player with whom we’ll be talking about alongside the De Bruyne, Salah’s, Henry’s and Bergkamp’s (who signed for us back in 95 on this day, by the way. Thanks for at least that, Bruce Rioch!) if he continues this meteoric rise that he’s been on.

More of the same please B!

There was even a cheeky little Instagram post to get everyone putting two-and-two together and coming up with 200 when he responded to Declan Rice’s Instagram on an unbelievable way to end the season with a red and white heart reply from Saka. No doubt that was a cheeky little nod towards what might potentially be happening and no doubt there will be quite a bit of boiled p*ss in East London as a result, but hopefully Arsenal are going to progress that now that the internationals are done and we can see some movement in the next week.

There was a time in which I’d have just said “we’ll maybe see you in mid-August”, as was such our way when it came to any transfer, but just based on the noises and rumblings we’ve had in the last couple of weeks, it does feel like Arsenal, Arteta and Edu don’t want to mess around and have anything dragged out. With the Rice stuff I think West Ham will inevitably look to drag it out to instigate bidding wars, but if Arsenal can keep the relationship sweet then perhaps they can chivvy this along before moving to their next target.

Which we all thought would be Kai Havertz – and it may still be that, but David Ornstein has been busy again and late last night he dropped another Ornbomb about a player from Ajax called Jurrien Timber, with our opening bid of €30million apparently going in. Ajax apparently want closer to €50million but Ornstein says that there is a good feeling on both sides that a compromise can be met.

My first reaction – after I’d googled to see who on earth the young player was – was to wonder why we’d picked him specifically as a player we wanted to go for. But you only have to start reading about some of his profile to see exactly why. He is a young, versatile central defender who has played 166 times as a centre half, but crucially, he’s also played 49 times at right back. Apparently he’s a guy who is good bringing the ball out from the back and at Ajax their playing style has apparently been to have their two outer lying defenders tuck in to bring the ball out from the back more. Starting to sound a little familiar? He is apparently a guy who also travels with the ball in to the midfield to form a midfield three and at this point I think every Arsenal fan reading this is starting to see why we appear to be heavily linked. Last season it was Zinchenko doing that for us and then right at the end of the season Arteta started to experiment with Partey at right back in the absence of Saliba. Some of us – me included – thought it was just square pegs in round holes but even though the Everton game was a dead rubber, we could all see that Partey was basically doing what Zinchenko does, but on that right hand side. Now think about how we could have the flexibility with a player like this to play different ways from the start, or even change in-game to be able to switch tactics on our opponents when one way isn’t quite delivering.

And I think this is what this summer is all about for our acquisitions. I think the Rice move is about finding a player who can play as a lone six or in a duet, but I think the Havertz and Timber moves are designed to give us a level of tactical flexibility the likes of which we have ever seen. Arteta talked about his plans being in five ‘phases’ and that we were in phase three last season. Phase four, I am assuming, is tactical flexibility and his ability to change things around on a game-by-game basis, whilst competing on all fronts. I have no idea, but I’d assume that phase five goes from competing and being tactically flexible, to being dominant and winning multiple trophies. Which is a very exciting prospect indeed.

And perhaps it is because of that, as well as the fact the club appear to at least be trying to make moves quickly, that I feel a little more at ease about the moves compared to last week. This time last week when the Havertz stuff was coming out I wondered what the heck we were doing, but if we’re looking at him differently i.e. not a number nine and something else in the team, then perhaps they can unlock something in Havertz that Chelsea simply could not. That’s the hope, anyway.

We still need to get these deals over the line though before we can really start to speculate about our set up for next season. As it stands we still don’t look to be too close to any deal and given that we went quick for Martinez last season but ultimately lost him out to United, should show us all not to get too hung up on specific players, because their end destination could always end up being quite some distance from London Colney and the Emirates.

That’ll do me for today I think. Have a good’un guys and I’ll catch you all in the morrow.