I don’t know how I feel about this one today, you know, because Sunderland are a strange ol’ team. I mentioned it a couple of days ago, but they don’t take tons of shots, their stats are such that they seem to have profited from whatever they’ve had, which means they’re in a purple patch right now that see’s them right up the top of the league as a newly promoted side.

They’re good. They’re confident. They’re at home.

Apart from the last point, the same can be said about us, though. So I don’t really know how this game is going to pan out. We’ve been dealing with low block sides all season, but I’m not sure Sunderland will start this one with the same mindset. Under the lights, in front of their fans, they’re going to be feeling like they could take another scalp here like they did against Chelsea a couple of weekend’s back. Which certainly could happen today. As much as we’re all having a laugh and a joke about how we don’t even allow shots on target any more, that run is going to end eventually and that certainly could be today. The clean sheet record has been immensely impressive, this is a rock-solid back line, but football has so many variables and it only takes one lose ball to fall awkwardly and a team can score against you. As I said this week already, I do wonder about what our response will be if that happened and I feel like the clean sheet record might be lost today.

The key will be whether we’ve scored first and how we’re going to respond to that first goal going in. If we’re three-goals up and it happens in the last five minutes, it’ll be annoying. But if the score is 0-0 and then we go one down, that probably will turn it in to a low-block siege mentality game. The question then becomes whether we can unpick that lock and my hope is that we have all of the tools if/when that happens.

For today, the key is Granit Xhaka. Sunderland build up via him. They leverage his ability and passing range to dictate their patterns of play and so if we want to stop them, we need to cut them off at the source, which is the Swiss international. Press him, don’t allow him to get on the ball, force the high turnovers and manoeuvre Sunderland into an unorganised defensive shape with those turnovers when Xhaka loses it. That’s where opportunities will come from and that’s where we pick up the three points.

There will be no Big Vik, as we know, so it’ll be Merino up top but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. He naturally drops deeper when we don’t have possession and so if he’s given the dual role of playing striker for The Arsenal, but also contesting the game and trying to put Xhaka under pressure, that might work for us. Either side I suspect it might be Trossard and Saka (we literally have nobody else) and the midfield three will be Eze, Rice and Zubimendi with the usual back five and Calafiori restored to left back I think. Arteta was a bit cryptic over the team news though, so I wonder if one of the injured attackers might make the bench. Could it be Noni or Martinelli? I hope so. Whilst they might not be ready for a start, having them as an option from the bench would be welcome at a time in which we’ve been finding ourselves getting down to the bare bones.

There were some other bits and bobs from the press conference that might be worth digging in to, like AI and Arteta talking about the use of it already, but I think I want to save that for another day and focus on this match. A match in which Sunderland will line up with a back five and a familiar face in Dan Ballard, who has become a regular for them at the back, but they will be man-to-man and aggressive in the press when they start. Apparently it’s been a feature of their play this season and when we have goal kicks they will most likely press us high and try to force mistakes. If we are accurate in our movement of the ball, that could see us get a fair bit of space today, or at least that’s what I’m hoping.

Their danger is also the long out ball to Isidor and they won the game at Chelsea through a long ball out from the back that was converted, so we need to be mindful of that, although our back line is a little more organised than Chelsea so I’d hope we have the matching of any countered balls like that.

I wouldn’t say I’m massively confident about today, but I do have positivity and hope, born out of the run we’ve been on and how imperious we’ve been at the back. We need to make sure we keep up the ‘foggin estandards’ that we’ve been doing for the last ten games and if we’re as good as we’ve been defensively then I think we hopefully should have enough. We just need to do the job at the sharp end of the pitch.

Right, I’m going to go and take some paracetamol, so I’ll catch you all tomorrow for a debrief.

Laters kids.

I can only assume he’s been told that he’ll be a squad player next season rather than a first team regular and maybe he’s thought that, at 32 year’s of age, he needs more regular game time whilst he’s still at a physical best. It’s still weird though. I thought one of the reasons he went back to Germany was that his wife was also interested in heading back there (so I heard). Of course there was the challenge of working with Xavi Alonso and what he was doing in Leverkusen, but I would have thought Xhaka would have a few more glamorous places he could go and play football in than the North East. And having The Management with family from that part of the world, I can tell you know, there ain’t much glamour in Sunderland, that’s for sure. Mind you, I also have family in Cologne and Leverkusen is right next to it and I can also confirm there is bugger all in Leverkusen other than the Bayer factory.

But it is what it is, Granit will get a great reception at The Emirates next season and hopefully he has a good time up there in the upcoming season.

As for us, well, with all of the transfers done and one more Asia Tour game left to go, the in between time we have is filled with interviews. It’s full of people wanting soundbites, little snippets, the tiniest of ‘scoops’ to report back on and the one that is doing the rounds at the moment appears to be William Saliba saying positive things about a new contract. Needless to say, I think every Arsenal fan knows that he is a guy who we need to try to tie down to a longer term deal. The worry for me has always been that you just know that Real Madrid will come sniffing eventually and whilst that has only been a tentative noise so far, with two year’s left on his deal, efforts simply must be stepped up this summer.

On his part he’s been positive; he’s said to people that he’s happy and hopefully a deal can get done, that he wants to leave that to his agent, etc, etc. Arteta also said during last season that all of the noises are positive from him. There appears to be a happy camp on all parts, but as we know, that doesn’t necessarily always lead to a deal. The money will have to be right and Arsenal will need to be offering top dollar here, because if Real Madrid want him, they’ll be laying down the foundations for a Trent-style snaffling for free (or near free) in a couple of year’s time. If Arsenal can propose the right deal, that is good for him and gives him top billing (or close to) on the earnings list at The Arsenal, I have hope he will sign. He’s 24, he turns 25 in March next year and if you look at how he plays and how he reads the game, I don’t think he’s a centre half who starts to look old when his pace starts to depart him. He’s always been a strong and physical player with the ability to read the game well and whilst he’s not the same as Vin Dijk (he certainly doesn’t get the same level of preferential treatment from referees as the Dutchman does), I do think his ability to remain at the top of the game for longer is there.

So if you’re talking about him as a centre half who could – injury permitting – stay at the top for another ten years, then he still has time for that Madrid move if he signs another deal this summer. If Arsenal time him down to a four-plus-one deal, they have him covered until his 29-year-old season and it’ll probably mean that Madrid can come knocking in three or four years, with us getting a nice fee for him and being able to move on.

Of course that’s not what I want to happen; I want him to stick around for another 10 years and become an Arsenal legend, winning trophies and writing himself into Arsenal folklore. But the older you get, the more more you realise the transient nature of football and their careers (just look at Granit), you realise that it rarely works out that way. But Arsenal do need to move heaven and earth to get this one extended for a few years I feel. It appears as though a deal is there to be done and that’s where we need to see that Berta can deliver on all facets of his job. He’s done it with MLS and Big Gabby, but to me it has always felt as though the more difficult contract renewals will be Saka and Saliba. Get those over the line this summer and we’re talking.

Of course the other side to the transfer coins is also something we need to sort out is the outgoings – and doing it for decent money. Chelsea seem to cheat their way through big deal after big deal (although I suspect the letters ‘P’, ‘I’ and ‘F’ have something to do with it..), Liverpool can command decent money for back up centre halves, so the final piece of the Berta puzzle this summer will be those outgoings. If I was to put a number on it as a target, it would be:

Can you get us £75million in sales this summer?

I think that is achievable given some of the assets we have. If I break it down, I would see it as:

• Reiss Nelson = loan with obligation to buy at £15million
• Oleksandr Zinchenko = £15million
• Fabio Vieira = £15million (West Ham supposedly sniffing)
• Sambi Lokonga = £10million
• Gabriel Jesus = loan with a £10million obligation to buy

We’ve already got £7million (ish – I think it’s just under that with the Euro conversion) for Tavares too, which brings us to £72million and then you’d hope that sales of players like Hein, etc, could net a few million here and there to bring that over the line. And I don’t think those fees above are over-valued. In fact in some instances I might be under valuing some of those experienced players. But if we’re netting £75million having spent around £200million in the summer, I suspect from a PSR point of view it leaves us in good shape.

Tomorrow the team line up against Leverkusen in our penultimate friendly before the season kicks off properly and it’ll be the return of Xhaka who I’m sure will get a good reception. I suspect Arteta might do something today, maybe not a press conference (or maybe he will?) but maybe a video or something ahead of the game. It’ll be interesting to see where his head is at in terms of how ready the team is physically for the season start. All players are back now and in training mode and we’ve been treated to some training ground pictures back at London Colney. I suspect there will be a glimpse of Calafiori tomorrow, maybe from the bench or something like that, but it’ll be interesting to see how we line up in general because it feels like this is when we’ll get the closest thing to the starting XI for the Wolves game, although I suspect Lyon in the Emirates Cup will be the proper dress rehearsal.

There won’t be any new signings to speak of I don’t think (check my reversal psychology going on here…), but maybe by the weekend Merino is moving along. It all seems to have stalled based on the news that is being drip-fed to us, which makes me wonder if Arsenal are going to drag this out a little bit. If their valuation is closer to £20million+ and Sociedad want £26million+, you could probably save yourselves a few million by entering negotiations towards the end of August. Sociedad have a player who is free come next summer and if they have him in January then Arsenal could probably negotiate a free transfer anyway, so if we’re getting to late December and a deal hasn’t been done, that’s my feeling about this situation, that Arsenal are trying to save a few bucks, as the Americans would say.

I’m sure there are a few that will take the view we should just “pay the damn money” but £6million is no small chunk of change. Sure, for these clubs it isn’t as much as that sort of money would mean to you or I, but Arsenal has always prided itself on being a financially well-run club. We don’t need shady sponsorship deals, selling of property to ourselves or two do weird and inflated transfer sales of our academy players to other clubs who are also operating in the murky grey world on the edge of the rules. So £6million – if my speculating is correct and that is what Arsenal are doing, is worth holding on a little longer for.

We’ve also got a very good team who you’d hope are all able to survive without the likes of Merino for the first few weeks of the season. A lot can change of course with injuries, etc, but we seem to have a pretty fit squad – poor old Tomi aside – to start the season, so Arteta has plenty of very good options in almost every position as it stands. We need reinforcements for a busy season, for sure, but the first few week’s you’re only playing one game a week anyway, so there’s no need to press the panic button just yet.

The Eddie news is still rumbling along too. The noises I’m reading on the socials are that Arsenal are happy to use him should the valuation we have not be met. Which I think is fair enough really. Would I like to get a good fee and look to get a player in Arteta is more willing to use? Of course I would. I know we used him more at the beginning of the season, but towards the end he really didn’t get a look in and never made it off the bench for the last six games. In fact, after Fulham away on 31st December he never started a game again last season and only racked up 86 minutes in total for the last 15 Premier League games of the season.

But Arsenal do need to stand firm. If Marseille really want the guy, then they have to pay the asking price and I think if Arsenal a playing a little hard ball here, it’s a slightly different situation to Merino. That’s because his contract runs until 2027 and so even by next summer he’ll still have two year’s left to run. Arsenal don’t need to sell. They – we – probably think it’s best for all parties, but if a club wants to play silly buggers and leave it until deadline day with us given no chance to get a replacement in, you’re better just keeping Eddie as a squad player. Our forward three has Martinelli, Trossard, Havertz, Jesus, Saka and Nketiah in it, not to mention Nelson and Vieira has been trialled wide left this pre season, so we are pretty well stacked. Perhaps we could try to shuffle the deck a bit with an Nketiah and Nelson exit, but we aren’t desperate for that and so I think we’re in a strong position. So ‘good for you’ I say to Arsenal for holding out. get closer to €30million/£25million and a deal is there to be done guys.

I feel like i’ve been talking about Eddie and Merino for the last week and I’m getting to the stage where I might be repeating myself, so it is perhaps quite merciful that we have the friendlies to get a look at the team tomorrow and Saturday. Then we can start to get back to the real football in 11 days time. Can’t wait.

Catch you all tomorrow. Have a good one.

**Shakespearian aside moment**

Fabrizio was speaking yesterday on his channel – I think it was a YouTube recording but can’t be arsed to go hunting as I’m doing today’s ramblings on the Met Line heading in to the City so only have finite time – saying that despite some rumours that both West Ham and Arsenal are about to walk away from this deal, that isn’t the case and both parties are ‘nearly there’. So when this transfer is ‘hopefully’ complete, we really will have gone through all of the many complicated stages of any deal, played out very publicly. Even as I said yesterday that there is no mystery in football any more because there were leaks that the Rice video had already been completed, we then get stuff about the deal nearly being off, before Fabrizio steps in with a ‘chill yer beans’ moment for those Arsenal fans (Like me) currently devouring any new angle.

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

And it is ‘new angles’ that I wanted to touch on today because as I was saying, having listened to the chaps on the AOP this morning, I couldn’t help but be surprised that there have been these rumours surfaced about us being in for Tchouameni this summer for around the £70-£80million mark. Now, I am not going to look a delicious gift horse in the mouth and scoff at this player given his pedigree and the fact that many of us would have LOVED him last summer (I gotta mate Giles who I know was hot on him), but I just can’t see Madrid parting with a player with still so much football in his legs to be paid. To be fair to the AOP lads I think they effectively said the same thing, but it just got me wondering why we are still be linked with some of these big names. If we get a deal for Rice and Timber over the line, we’ll have hit up a cool £200million. Now, I know we have some sales to make and that could help to bring the ol’ ‘Net Spend FC’ trope back in to play, but I couldn’t see us a) prizing him from Madrid, and b) having enough cash to go that big.

It is nice to be linked to these players, but unless something massive happens in the outgoings side, then a deal like this feels like one too far for us if I’m honest.

I also think it is why I’m not sure we’ll end up getting Lavia. Great prospect, good talent, but dropping another £40million+ on a guy like that? Feels a little un-Arsenal like to me. And I think we can all see that Arteta is being backed and the club is making some impressive moves, but I just don’t see how this spending splurge continues after we’ve got Rice and Timber over the line. I suspect the noises to quieten down a little bit and whilst we’ll continue to be linked with players, I think the focus will go to moving out players.

And that could be happening sooner than we think, as yesterday it emerged that Granit Xhaka to Leverkusen looks to be entering the final stages. And I gotta tell ya, I find it amazing how we’ve gone from a guy who this time two years ago there were questions about a Roma bid for around €7million I think, to now Leverkusen stumping up a cool €25million to secure his signature. Why the inflation? Well, I guess that’s what happens when you are good. Clubs come to you and try a little bit of shifty business and you simply bat them away. Leverkusen were rumoured to be on the verge of doing a €15million deal at the end of the season if the stories were to be believed. But perhaps Arsenal have realised that if you want to be seen as one of the Premier League ‘Big Dawgs’ then you need to puff out your chest a little more and when you get the eyes from a Euro bloc club, don’t blink.

That’s what it sounds like has happened here and the result could be that we’ve bagged an extra €10million based on what we thought we’d get, for a guy turning 31 in a few months time who only has one year left on his deal. It still has to happen, but if all of these details play out, then you have to tip your hat off to Edu.

It also should make us a bit more bullish for the sales for the rest of the summer. You want Balogun? Sure thing – drop £50million on our laps. Oh, West Ham, you want Eddie? No probs, but that’s a minimum of £40million I’m afraid. Sambi Lokonga to Burnley? Go play with Vincent, Sambs, but Burnley need to give us the £17.5million we paid for him when we signed him.

These are the kinds of moves that I want to see us making. I want to here more stories like the Xhaka one and given we are only just at the start of the summer with clubs having players return to training now, the signs feel good and bode well for us.

Despite all of this though, I still don’t see us making another big money move. And for me I feel like anything over £40million is pretty big. So whilst I’d love us to keep our eyes open for a good deal or two, I’m going to be happy with our lot providing Rice and Timber get over the line in the next week.

That’s be the lot for me today. You guys have a good one and I’ll catch you all in the morrow.

Peace out.

And with this one I’m really not sure. From the bits that I’ve read there are no massively credible sources who are saying this and all we have is a few journo articles saying that Arsenal were unhappy with his end of season form when it reached crunch period. I think we can all agree that his outputs diminished after the international break, but I don’t think that is isolated to just our Ghanaian; Martin Odegaard was voted – rightly – as our player of the season and yet he still put in some iffy performances. So to lump in on a Partey transfer to Italy just because he had a poor finish to the season, seems a little spurious to me.

I think there are a few reasons why this rumour probably won’t get off the ground. Firstly, let’s not forget just how good he was for most of last season. If we’re going to dish out some criticism on the player for the way the season ended then that’s fine, but let’s not ignore just how important he was for us for the vast bulk of the season that got us in to a position where we were at least competing for the league until towards the end.

I also think that with the world’s-worst-kept-secret with regards to Granit Xhaka likely to happen, I would be surprised to see that Arsenal would be prepared to rip out a second part of the midfield that served us so well for so long, based on a few games at the end. Arteta built something quite impressive last season and a dismantling the engine room of the team so easily would feel a little strange to me. I appreciate that we’re being linked with Rice who could potentially fit the six, or eight position in midfield, as well as Caicedo who can be that screen in front of the back four and looks a very impressive player indeed. But even though we could get cash for Thomas Partey from italy, I still don’t see Arsenal dropping the best part of £180million on completely rejigging our midfield with new personnel. It feels a little more like a root and branch change that we may not necessarily need.

But Arteta has shown that he is prepared to be ruthless, we have to acknowledge that, with Kieran Tierney being a guy who Arteta loved and said great things about but who now can’t get a look in at left back as we’ve switched up our system to a point in which he doesn’t fit any more. What if Arteta had something else in mind re; our midfield? What if the reason we are linked with both Rice and Caicedo is that he wants to play a little differently? What if the injury problems Partey has had, coupled with the fact that his age will mean diminishing returns on a transfer fee, means Arteta is already thinking about life after Partey and wants to make that move now? We’ve been heavily reliant on him spending a fair bit of time as the single screen six sitting in front of our defence and last season Xhaka was excellent in an advanced position. But maybe Arteta doesn’t want that for this coming season? I’ve seen a couple of interviews with Arteta towards the end of last season talking about how they need to try new stuff, different stuff, in the coming season and that he was willing to do a little more experimentation. Maybe he wants to change the style of the team up a little bit and it is only by making quite a dramatic change to the first XI that he feels he can do that?

There’s a lot of ‘maybe’ in there though, which is why I am less inclined to think we’ll move Partey on this summer and will probably earmark next summer as an opportunity to move him on. With two years left on his deal it isn’t inconceivable that we move him on this summer, but I just think we’ll be looking to build on what we already have, rather than cash in on a player who – when fit – has been integral to us.

The final point worth noting on this is where his potential destination would be. Italy? I find that doubtful. As we all know there isn’t any money in Italy and I can’t see any Italian clubs parting ways with the sort of money we’d want for Partey. I would place his value at around the £30 – £35million mark and Transfermarkt has his value at €38million, so my estimation seems about right. That sort of cash doesn’t really get spent that often in Italy so I can’t really see it happening. But I’m ok with that. We need to build, not break down, this summer. I think that is what is going on in Arteta’s mind and that’s why I think we’ll keep our Ghanaian around a little while longer yet.

I’m on the pod this evening doing a ‘one in, one out, one bangs’ with Akhil and my mate Merv Dinnen, if you fancy joining us at 7.30pm for half an hour. You can listen live on YouTube here if that sort of thing floats your boat. Or you can check out the show Amanda did on Monday with Kevin Campbell – was a good one.

Until then, I’m off in to work, so you guys have yourselves a good’un.

Catch you later peeps.

A BIDDING WAR!

So waking up this morning to noises that Bayern – and maybe even Dortmund – have sat up and taken a bit of notice of the fact that Granit Xhaka is available, is music to mine ears, that’s for sure.

I’m sure Leverkusen were more than happy to have a lovely ol’ chat with the player, Arsenal, agree the details and get this done quickly. But if there’s a few more interested parties then that’s a-ok with me, because it might chuck a couple of extra mil on the price tag and that can be dumped on the ‘transfer war chest’ pile we need to get our incomings done this season. If Leverkusen want to follow this through then let’s move the goalposts like so many teams have done to us over the years. Unless of course they want to flash a Moussa Diaby in front of us for a decent price.

I’m not sure how realistic this interest is, or maybe it is just newspapers trying to fill column inches, but from an Arsenal fan perspective if Xhaka can give us one final parting gift of having his price driven up as a result of the great season he’s just had and we can get closer to £18 – £20million, that would be lovely.

And this is what should be happening with our players now. We’ve just come off the back of a very good season in which we’ve finished second in the Premier League with the second youngest team in the league. We are – at this moment in time – an employer of choice and whereas a year ago if you’d have said Declan Rice is interested in Arsenal, for example, I’d have told you that there’s no way that’s happening, that he’s an ex-Chelsea academy kid, that they throw money at signings like him and we simply do not. But here we are this summer and every day there is more talk about him being an Arsenal player by 1st September. But I digress away from my original point, which was that we have had the kind of season where teams look at the Arsenal squad players and say “they’re good. Let’s see if Arsenal are interested in selling” and I am a-ok with that.

Let’s drive up the prices and bulk out those Arsenal coffers.

So when you hear stories about how Newcastle are confident in getting Kieran Tierney for £30million, let’s turn those tables:

“You can have KT, sure, but you come back to us when your offer is more serious, guys. Try getting close to £50million and we’ll talk”. That’s what I’m hoping we’ll do.

Whether or not that actually happens remains to be seen, however, so we just have to wait and see what the deal is with the rumoured interest.

I do wonder if we’ll make some under-the-radar moves first though. There’s all the talk about Rice and Caicedo but these moves tend to be a little more complex given the money involved, so I have a feeling that we might a move or two for a player that nobody is expecting. I doubt anything will happen in June as I suspect most members of the club are taking a well-earned holiday. There isn’t much in the press about where anybody is but I suspect it’s only a matter of time before there’s a BBQ-cigar-smoking image of Edu with a big pair of tongs!

There’s not a lot else going on to be fair. Yesterday was the FA Cup final so that’s taking most of the column inches and I suppose the only interesting thing about the result from an Arsenal perspective was that we’ll get a day out at Wembley for the Community Shield on 6th August. I know it is a glorified friendly, I know it doesn’t really mean much, but it’ll be nice to have a day out and hopefully in the sun so that’s cool. I’ve not been to many of them since we won the FA Cups a few years back, so getting along to wembley for that is probably one I’ll have a go at and see if some of the lads I go to football with are interested in getting along. It’s always a nice day out and unlike getting to the Emirates, it’s over my side of the world so will only take me about 15 minutes to get there on the tube – bonza!

Right, that’s it from me today, on account of there being little else on. You have yourself a good one and I’ll see thee in the morrow.

Fast forward to this week and the confirmation via multiple media sources that Arsenal had all but finished the touches on his move back to Germany after nearly 300 appearances for The Arsenal, and I think it is fair to say that the number of people who are delighted with this move has most certainly dwindled.

That’s because this season he has been excellent for us. He has switched his position to play in a more advanced number eight, we have made the most of his strengths through passing, control of the ball, as well as adding what I believe is the most goals and assists in a season for us, with seven and seven to date. He’s turned around his Arsenal career from a guy who was booed off and flicked ‘v’ signs to the Emirates crowd, telling us to ‘f*ck off’, to a guy who only really this season got his name sung with any kind of gusto. He is a player who until the last 18 months has divided opinion, but I think when he says his farewells on the Wolves game in 11 days time, will get a rousing reception and will go with pretty much all fans’ blessings I think.

And I think to those fans who couldn’t stand him at one stage, who didn’t see his value to the team, who didn’t rate him for so long, will all ultimately have a positive feeling towards a player who has pretty much always been available, who is clearly an important guy in the dressing room and at a time in which we’ve had one of the youngest teams in the league, has been a mentor and a positive influence for so many Arsenal players in our current squad. When he gets his send off, I hope he gets one of the biggest cheers.

Of course none of this has been confirmed by the club, but pretty much every major media broadcaster, transfer specialist, etc, are all reporting it. And there is no smoke without fire, as they say. Apparently Xhaka himself spoke to Arteta about wanting a new challenge, Arteta accepted this and the wheels were put in place to make this transition. I suppose this has been in the pipeline for a while though. For all of the details to emerge now about Leverkusen and a €15million bid coming out now, surely means that this will have been sorted weeks ago. Which then leads me to think that this is probably something that Xhaka and Arteta have had planned for a long time. He got a new deal last summer which extended him for another season and I think a lot of people wondered why we would do such a thing. But now it feels pretty obvious; Arsenal wanted to retain a little bit of value on the player, the player himself gets a bit of a buffer in terms of his contract, but as well as that it means any transition in to life without Xhaka can be well-planned out and all set up as part of the evolving process of this squad.

He will leave a hole in terms of a first team spot, but also in terms of a great personality in the squad, which I’m sure Arteta is mindful of. However, in the fullness of time, I suspect it will work out for everyone in the end. We get a bit of cash in to the coffers, which will also be boosted by the increase in Champions League revenue and better placed finish in the Premier League, as well as the probability that we will also get a bit more in through player sales through a number of players expected to leave this summer. And it will need to be a busy summer indeed.

What I do think is interesting, however, is the talk that I have certainly played down in terms of signings. I am of course referencing the fact that I did not expect us to go for both Caicedo AND Rice this summer. It very much felt like one or the other. However, having seen this news about Xhaka emerge yesterday, it seems like this could be a reality after all. I think we all knew that we needed somebody to eventually take over the number six spot and I think most of us thought that would either be Rice or Caicedo. But perhaps the reason Arsenal wanted to move quickly for the Brighton player in January was because they wanted to get in there with him in January, before going after Rice in the summer. What I suspected was a ‘play your cards close’ as well as a ‘red herring’ in the shape of talking up Rice in the summer but actually go for Caicedo now, appears to not be a smokescreen at all.

Perhaps Arsenal’s ambitions are a lot loftier than I gave them credit for.

Of course we’ve already started to see the annual ‘war chest’ stories start to emerge as our season peters out, but I’m not engaging with those. I already did a piece mapping out what I thought would be some of our revenues generated and this ‘war chest’ will simply amount to money already coming in to us, rather than any kind of mega injection from KSE, so there’s no point going over it again, but suffice to say I think Arteta and Edu will need to move quickly and demonstrate how we are looking to step up with the summer additions. And I hope they can get all of this sorted early in the window so we can see what shape we go in to the new season with sooner rather than later. That hasn’t historically been our style though, so I’m not quite holding my breath just yet.

Right, I think I’ll leave it there for today. Have a good one and I’ll catch you all tomorrow.

Oh how wrong I was, because this iteration of Chelsea is absolutely horrendous, I have to say.

The ‘nerves’ I’m talking about relate to how I’ve felt in previous recent seasons; going in to games at home knowing that we should beat the opponents on that given day on our own turf, but also knowing that we could easily turn in one of those performances that have me punching my slightly faded red seat in the ground.

I needn’t have worried, because in that first half Arsenal just blew away a Chelsea team who couldn’t live with us.

Lampard thought he’d throw a ‘Hail Mary’ with the introduction of Aubamyenag in to the first XI in an attempt ton play the ol’ “former player comes back to haunt his old club” trope for the evening, but it never worked as the Gabon intermnational dropped the kind of stinker of a performance that we saw towards the end of his time at the club (the stats guys tell me he had nine touches before being hooked at halftime). Arteta rang the changes with Kiwior coming in for Holding, Jorginho in for Partey, as well as Trossard in for Martinelli. And I’ll admit I did worry if it was a few too many changes for a coach who loves to keep consistency in his side. But I guess the fact we’d gone three matches without a win showed Arteta enough line to be able to drop a few players who had been out of form, certainly from the City game.

And I guess you have to give him props, because the changes worked and we looked much better with the fresher faces in the team. I thought Kiwior was excellent on the night; he one headers, distributed the ball well, got his foot stuck in and looked assured. I think both he and we needed him to have a game like that. At halftime I reflected that I think even with Holding in the team instead last night we’d still have been fine, because in the first half Chelsea offered absolutely zero threat whatsoever, but Kiwior is more of the future than Holding is right now and so for him to get a good performance under his belt after a couple of shaky games since he joined in January, we have to be pleased.

And it’s just as well that he did play well, because he’s almost certainly going to be used on Sunday when we travel up to St James’ Park, with Big Gabby unfortunately unable to carry on and limping off having gone down three times in the second half. Honestly…why aren’t we allowed nice things? You would hope that we could at least finish this season a little differently to last season, eh? Last season our bid for top four fell apart when our defence fell apart with injuries and when we went up to St James’ Park last season we had barely a functioning/capable set of four players who could play in defence. This season it feels like Deja Vu as Arteta admitted to Gabriel will now be a doubt for Sunday’s game. I can’t see how he makes it and it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that he’s picked up a knock to keep him out for the next few weeks, aka his season is over.

But let’s save that angst for another day and get back to The Arsenal, who were imperious to smell blood and dispatch Chelsea in that first half with consummate ease. First was Odegaard with an absolute belter of a finish, then it was another fantastic ball across by Xhaka to see the Norwegian sweep the ball beyond Kepa. So we’re a third of the way in to the game, we’re two-up, then just as I’m starting to think “we need one more, just to make sure”, up steps Gabby Jesus to bag our third and at that point you’re hoping that Arsenal could rack up a cricket score.

As we know it wasn’t to be and in the second half whilst we started brightly and Kepa made a couple of saves, we just weren’t as clinical as we were in the first half. And that is Arsenal to be fair. Even going back to the early days of Wenger, we’ve always been a team that would rather play with its dinner a bit rather than ruthlessly dispatch a dying opponent. We probably should have taken one of those early chances in the second half, but perhaps to be fair to Chelsea we should acknowledge that they rallied and did at least show some fight in the second half. Enough to get a consolation goal, but in reality that was more about us switching off at the back, rather than any kind of scintillating come back.

I’ve talked up the performance of Kiwior, which is great, but let’s also hand some flowers out to a few other players, like Granit Xhaka, for example. I thought he was back to his early season form and picked up a couple of assists and looked very good in the final third again. Hopefully we see more of that from him and afterwards the pundits on Sky were talking up his unofficial leadership qualities. He showed it last night and you just feel like he’s going to need to step up again in the next four games, as we’re going to be missing some key defenders and that is going to cause us some issues.

Martin Odegaard was also excellent and bagged himself another couple of goals. He’s been quiet in the last couple of games but I thought he too stepped up yesterday. As did Gabriel Jesus, who was once again a handful and got himself on the scoresheet again. He’ll have been hurting after a few misses in games like the Southampton one, so to get him back scoring again will be good for him. Let’s hope he maintains a bit of a streak now because you feel like we’re going to need to get a few goals up at Newcastle to actually win that game.

By then we could already be back in second, as City will beat a West Ham side who look to have secured promotion and will offer no threat to them at the Etihad. But we have to keep trying and keep trying to do our thing. As Arteta said in his post game conference, we just have to win our remaining four games – that’s all we can do.

Catch you all tomorrow. James and I are podding tonight at 7.30pm on the Same Old Arsenal pod so come say hello if you’re free.

Laters people.

I got to Highbury & Islington tube station at around 12.35 – about an hour earlier than I normally do – so I could watch the City versus Liverpool game. What a waste of time that was. I hope the Scousers are that rubbish when they play us, although I think we already know the answer to that one, because they definitely won’t be. But I went along to the pub to catch some of the game anyway and sat there and endured a City performance that made their recent history rivals look like a bunch of school kids, before beveraging myself up ahead of our game at home to Leeds.

“Just do your job, Arsenal, don’t worry about anything else”

That was the mantra pre game and that was the concern: that Arsenal would slip up against an opponent who – at home – they should beat. After all, this season we’ve all been talking about the scars we all still have from seasons past; even last season we fell away in the top four race and this one has even more pressure associated with it. There’s a title up for grabs this time, for Christ’s sake.

But I am projecting my own fears, my own biases and my own worries on to a current crop of Arsenal players who are showing every week that they are capable of handling the pressure of a title race. Yesterday was no exception and whilst the first third of the match was fraught with slight concern that it could be ‘one of those days’, as soon as we got the penalty for the first goal you knew we were on our way in North London on a Saturday.

It was a penalty. I had a few lads around me messaging their mates who told them it was soft, which I kind of understand, but when I watched the replays on match of the day in the evening later that night, you can see that Ayling’s boots catch Gabriel Jesus and when there is contact like that, the player goes down and the ref points to the spot, there’s always going to be one outcome. Not even VAR could properly have a sniff at it.

So to Gabriel Jesus the responsibility fell and his very cool penalty down the middle sent us on our way to another three points. He of all people will have been relieved to get on the scoresheet and now we can tick off that barren run goalscoring drought that a few pundits and fans had talked about, is now a thing of the past. He was to double his tally for the day in the second half with another assist for our Belgian maestro Trossard and you can’t help but think how important those two goals might be for his confidence going in to a run of absolutely critical games for our season in the next month. He was only to last an hour yesterday, but it was a good day at the office for our Brazilian and now we can look ahead to that Liverpool game next Sunday and hope that he can deliver more goals for us now that this particular monkey is off his back.

Let’s give some flowers to Trossard too for the assist for goal number three of the game yesterday. He played well I thought, particularly in the second half and his balance and ability to shift his weight so quickly left and right enables him to find space against defenders and pick out passes that others would not be able to. He’s already got seven assists for us since signing and he is proving to be such an important cog in our machine. He’s been that influential and good that Arteta felt comfortable leaving Saka on the bench from the start yesterday and whilst I thought he was a little quieter in the first half, in the second half he – as well as the rest of the Arsenal team – really turned on the afterburners to pull away from Leeds.

Benjamin ‘Benny Blanco’ White also got himself on the scoresheet with a goal that took a few seconds for me to process that it’d gone in when it rippled the net. I love a goal that goes in off the bar but given the proximity to the goal White was, I think next time I’d prefer it if he could just side foot it right in the middle of the goal. Let’s also give some props to Martinelli for the assist too; it looked like a really good ball to find him and pick him out, but it was only on the replays that you can see what a fine assist it was.

Leeds did cause us to have a few minutes of wobbles with their – somewhat fortunate (took two deflections) – goal, but the fact that we restored our lead just eight minutes after they scored through another Granit Xhaka goal was certainly welcome relief from my perspective.

We looked good. We looked like a side who are fighting for the title. We won our 23rd game of the season and we maintain the eight point lead over City with nine more of those cup finals to go. This was a game that we were expected to win, but the fact that we were able to do it without too much nail-biting during the game is pleasing. By matching City’s scoreline against Liverpool we also managed to keep pace with them on the goal different front too, which is useful, because it feels like we might need that when we get to the last few games.

I’m still not ready to declare us favourites though. Yesterday was a game we should have won and we did. Next weekend we will go to a Liverpool side that will look very different to the appalling display they put on at the Etihad over lunch. We always lose against Liverpool and I’m expecting the same next Sunday, so that eight point lead will probably be cut to five. The buffer will quickly disappear with the way that City are playing right now, but we just need to focus on what we can do as a team, then see what happens elsewhere as a bonus.

For now though it is ‘as you were’ at the top of the league and for that we can be happy.

Catch you all tomorrow.

Caveat time: We may not win the league. Man City are certainly capable of winning every one of their matches and that means we probably need to win nine of our next ten games if that happens, but up until this point in the season when it comes to The Arsenal, this team have responded so well to any setback.

Ours of course came on Thursday night, but the mindset of the players was not to go in to their shells or feel sorry for themselves. The mindset was to get out there on that pitch and take control of a football match that could easily have been one of those narrative busters. Palace winless in 2023, Palace have a great record at The Arsenal, Palace without their manager, Palace losing their best defender Andersen in the warm up before the game; sometimes when so many things seem to fall in to place the outcome ends up being the complete opposite. In this instance it would have been Crystal Palace having the game of their season and when Zaha hit the post early on in the match I have to admit to fearing we are going to potentially get an upset here.

But, as we have seen this season, this Arsenal side is made of sterner stuff. After the initial scares Arsenal took control of the ball and whilst for the first 20 – 25 minutes we had all ball and were probing, I can’t remember us making their young ‘keeper Whitworth make a ton of saves. And in reverse I thought that Palace set out quite well defensively, whilst looking to break on us in transition, probably knowing that in Rob Holding you have a defender who you can get at if you have pacey forward players. Which Palace have in Zaha and Olise. However, as soon as we got that first goal, it was pretty much all Arsenal from then on in and you could see that Palace didn’t have that much of a game plan for once they eventually went behind.

Martinelli’s shift and strike was brilliant. On his weaker left foot too, but kudos for Saka must go for working the space and then finding his fellow winger. After some questioned Martinelli’s form a few weeks back he now has six goals in his last six games and he is hitting form just at the right time. We are in squeaky bum time territory and when that happens you need your best players stepping up and he did just that with the first goal.

Then, likewise, did Bukayo Saka with the second after being brilliantly found by White – who again I thought was excellent – and then slotting the ball home to give the score line a bit more of a comfortable feel about it. From then on in it was pretty much all us and whilst you’re always nervous with a 2-0 scoreline, the dominance we showed on the ball and continuing to create chances made it feel a lot more comfortable. The fact that Xhaka (fourth Premier League goal of the season) was able to make it really comfortable after just 55 minutes was good too. It really meant we could settle in to the kind of swagger this season that we’ve shown when in a commanding lead and after last week’s 3-0 win against Fulham, suddenly I was looking at the table for that goal difference tally to be whittled away. That it has indeed and despite the fact Palace got a slightly fortuitous goal (in that I don’t think Schlupp knew much about what he was doing as the ball hit him, then it just falls to his feet to tap in from the corner), when Martin Odegaard restored that three goal cushion, we could once again look at the table not just smiling as a result of the eight points, but smiling because we’re also catching City up on goal difference too. They have now scored one more than us and conceded one less, meaning there are just two goals in it as a differential. I remember about a month ago looking at that and wondering whether at the end of the season that is going to have a massive bearing on where the title goes; I felt a month ago as though it was almost as if it would need a scoring miracle for us to catch them on the goal difference front. Indeed, just a few weeks ago at the beginning of March (matchweek 26) City had a goal difference of +41 to our +34. Now it is +42 to +40 and whilst a win for their extra game in hand will of course make the difference a little more and put a bit more daylight between them and us on the scoring front, right now it feels like a little cherry on the top that within two games we’ve been able to close the gap quite well.

Back to the game, however, and there were plenty of positive performances to speak of I thought. Martinelli and Saka obviously, but Odegaard once again ran the show and the way in which he weaves his body one way or the other, or the ground he covers with or without the ball, really is impressive. And he bagged himself another goal for our fourth which means his goals and assists tally now stands at 16; he’s bagged 10 goals and six assists all season and from a midfielder that is an impressive tally with 10 games still to go.

But we’re spreading responsibility across the whole team and whilst Xhaka also scored yesterday to bring his contribution of goals and assists up to nine, we’ve also got the likes of Leandro Trossard pitching in and doing the business, which of course he did again with Xhaka’s goal as he laid the pass in to him to flick it in the net. Trossard now has one goal and SIX assists this season, which is a remarkable feat given that he has only joined us on 20th January – two months to the day. His acclimatisation period has been rapid and that has had a big impact on the run we have just gone on that has seen us bag six wins in a row. What a signing he has made and with Jorginho also able to come in and give Partey some rest time, it is absolutely fantastic to see that we have options.

The only word of caution I have is that when one or two drop out of the team, you can see the step down in quality, because whilst Holding was relatively untroubled, for the Zaha chance off the post he did try to win the ball far too high up the pitch and there was also a long diagonal in the second half that he was just never in a million years going to catch his man for. Likewise too, Jorginho coming in for Partey is fine when you’re a few goals up and you want to give him some rest, but we cannot afford to have him break down at any stage between now and the end of the season. We coped without Saliba yesterday, we have copied without Gabby Jesus for a large chunk of the season and for a game or two – as Villa away showed – we can cope without Partey. But in those big games that we have coming up, he has to be fit, so I am praying that we can keep him available for the rest of the season. It could have a big bearing on our final league position if we do.

Another win, another three points, another happy day at The Emirates. Let’s hope for plenty more.

Catch you all tomorrow.

TO PROPER FOOTBALL COMING BACK!

There’s no games today because the semi finals are tomorrow and Wednesday, but this is the most ‘meh’ part of the competition for me. What I mean by that is that it is ‘meh because there are so few games. The group stages, for that reason, are the absolute best, because you get three to four games a day and it is all the football all the time. That’s what gets you sucked in, whereas now I’m basically back to “when are Arsenal on?” mode.

The good news is that the answer to that is tomorrow, with a game against Milan, followed by Saturday’s match at The Emirates against Juventus. That means we can fill our time looking at who looks fit, who looks ready, who will probably start on that West Ham game. Arteta will, of course, give nothing away, but I suspect those players who get more minutes for the Juve game, will be those in the greatest contention. He’ll want to find a balance between playing his intended first team for 60 minutes, as well as not giving away any secrets to West Ham, but I’m expecting us to line up in a certain way for that match more so than the one tomorrow. It wouldn’t surprise me if we get a close to full strength side of first teamers tomorrow, then in the second half he makes a load of changes and brings in the kids.

Of course one of the decisions he’ll have to work out is how many minutes to give Xhaka, Partey and White, who all arrived in Dubai over the last day or two and who the club released training pictures of the players training alone away from the main group. That’s obviously to assess fitness but at some stage they’ll no doubt be in with the team. I’d expect that to happen tomorrow actually; I don’t think they’ll start the game tomorrow, but I wonder if Arteta brings on Xhaka, Partey and White for maybe the last 20 to 30 minutes. That would be a good way of getting minutes in to the legs, but also ensuring they are not over-exerted.

With their return, as I said yesterday, things appear to be shaping up quite well, which is good to hear. The game against Lyon showed that the team are still fired up and hungry and although we gave them a battering and most people were just dismissive of Lyon as a poor side, they did beat Liverpool 3-1 yesterday. I’ve just had a look at the Liverpool team and it featured Robertson, Milner, Matip, Gomez, Thiago, Salah, Firmino in their ranks, so it wasn’t as if it was a complete outfit of kids that started that game. Of course they did make a raft of halftime changes like we did in our game, but they still brought on players like Keita, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Tsimikas, so it’s not as if it was a complete kids XI that played the second half. You can never really read too much in to friendlies, but ours looking so impressive and Liverpool’s looking less so, does at least give me a smidge of pleasure and hope that the team can pick up from where it left off in the Premier League back in November.

So, what else is going on in the Arsenal world? Not a lot really. There are more rumours flying about with players like Ferran Torres, from Barcelona supposedly a player that we’re interested in, but that smells like BS to me. He’s played 18 times for Barcelona this season already and therefore is clearly a player that they are intending on playing, so I don’t see that as anything other than paper talk to sell some of their rags. He is the sort of profile that we should be looking at though; has played wide left, wide right, as well as through the middle and that level of versatility is surely something Arteta is looking at. It is why we went in for Raphinha, because of his versatility, so by the very fact of this rumour surfacing, one would hope that it is a little clearer on the type of profile player we are looking at for January. We need a guy who can step in to cover Saka at times, somebody who will also be able to fill in if Eddie gets a knock or falls out of form, and if this person doth exist, a player who can also cover for Martinelli if needed.

That sounds like a big ask though and so I wonder if we’ll see nobody come in rather than a loan stop gap signing. I’ve seen a few people suggest we could have a look at Marco Asensio from Real Madrid. He’s 26, has made 15 appearances in all competitions for Real Madrid, plus he’s played wide left or right. But I’m not sure he’d take a loan move to go from the fringes of Madrid’s team, to be cover for ours. It just doesn’t sound like it’d be an attractive offer for him.

There must be a few decent players out there who would see this as an attractive proposition, but doing a deal that isn’t overly expensive and doesn’t mean Arsenal pay over the odds in January, feels like a big ask. We’ll have to wait and see what happens when that transfer window bursts open on 1st January. My guess is that ‘not a lot’ for the first week or two, but lets just see.

That’s enough from me for today. You have yourself a good one and I’ll catch you tomorrow.

It seems as though the World Cup is leaning in to the craziness too, because yesterday we got another batch of evening games in which things swung hither and thither and I’ll be honest with you, I was utterly captivated by it all. I have a family connection with Germany so I of course wanted them to go through, but even with that connection I couldn’t help but be happy for the Japanese on full time, because I did not believe for a second that they would be going through ahead of the games yesterday. And when both Germany and Spain went ahead, which meant both of the bigger nations were in charge of the group, I thought it would be a ‘death by a thousand cuts’ kind of game that Spain would inflict on the Japanese.

So I went for a quick halftime walk. I thought i’d be back just in time for the second half and just as I was a few hundred yards from my house I walked by the pub and sure enough, Japan had equalised! So I got back in, dumped all of my jacket and other stuff, then settled down to watch to see if the game could actually be moderately interesting.

Boy, was it. I didn’t expect the Japanese to go ahead and at one stage of the evening I certainly didn’t expect both Germany and Spain to be going out of the World Cup after Costa Rica went ahead. That truly would have been some sort of early Christmas miracle. But as we all know, it was never going to last and Germany quickly put pay to that particular group mentalness. But the fact that – even for a few seconds, it was possible that those two teams could go out, was enough to make me think what a World Cup of shocks it has been! Ultimately it was never going to end like that but the fact that Japan alone went through is a massive upset. The only shame for them is the fact that their reward for topping the group is to have to play Croatia, whereas Spain get the easier draw against Morocco, after the African’s despatched with Canada and left egg on the faces of Belgium to knock the ageing Belgian ‘Golden Generation’ out.

Honestly though, if there’s a ‘big team’ in this competition that deserve it the most, it is Belgium, because every time I watched them they looked leggy, uninspiring, ageing and were second best in most of their games. They looked every bit their age; like one of those retired ex-pro ‘Masters’ teams who do the five-a-sides in Wembley Arena as exhibition matches. They didn’t deserve to go through in any way, shape, or form and regardless of if they’d have scraped the group stages, there’s no way they’d have got beyond the Round of 16 based on the way they had been playing in this tournament.

Morocco, however, deserve some kudos, because few would have put them as the group leaders come the third group stage match. But they are undefeated! That will, of course, end in the next round and Spain will be considering themselves very fortunate, because I think they sweep aside Morocco and then they’ll have one of Ghana or Portugal in the round after that I reckon, who neither of which have looked like they’d blow anyone away so far to me. That’s a pretty tidy route to the semi final for Spain and as a result of yesterday’s defeat I reckon they might be one of the favourites to get to at least the semi’s or the final at this rate. The game yesterday will have been a disappointment for them but they have the quality of players to recover from that and in most World Cups the winning team usually has at least one blip before they go on to win it.

As for the Arsenal connection, well, you have to be happy for Takehiro Tomiyasu. He’s been battling his fitness for a while now and as a result has only managed to be a sub coming on for most of these games. But he played very well and defended excellently against the likes of Fati when he came on and I wonder if he’ll be in line for a start for the next game. It was probably expected that Japan would go out of the group stages so for him to get another shot at minutes in this World Cup will be good for him I reckon.

Today my gut feel tells me Ghana and Portugal go through today in Group H, because I think Ghana have the beating of Uruguay, but Portugal versus South Korea is a little more difficult to call. Normally I’d say Portugal but with them already through having secured six points, it wouldn’t surprise me to see them take their foot off the gas and that could give Korea the shot they need. I have nothing against South Korea, but it would be funny to see them knocked out though, not least to see Son crying again. Anything that makes that diving little cheat sad is always a good thing. The only down side is that if Ghana do progress, it means more days out there for Partey and at this point I was semi hoping he could be coming home, getting some Dubai warm weather light training, before the kick off over the Christmas period. Sadly that doesn’t look to be the case just yet, but you never know; Ghana could finish runners up and have to play Brazil in the next round, which would probably mean their tournament ends by the middle of next week.

The Arsenal news for today is of course about all of those Arsenal players playing, with Gabby Jesus and potentially Martinelli starting, which will be nice to see. Granit Xhaka will line up for Switzerland and Partey of course for Ghana, so us Arsenal fans have a little ‘skin in the game’ for today’s matches, which is always nice. Let’s just hope all of our players are happy come the completion of this set of group games.

And on that note I’m offski for another day of work. Have yourself a merry little Friday and I’ll catch you all tomorrow.

I had a lot of work meetings on yesterday and whilst I’m happy to have the game on in the background when it’s internal, having externals in and them occasionally hearing Clive Tyldesley’s voice in the background, is probably a step too far to be honest. It didn’t sound like I missed much for the first game of the day as Croatia failed to overcome Morocco, but the following game had a fair bit of interest to it, with Germany losing to Japan. That’s another shocker to add to the pile of this World Cup and whilst Belgium went full Man UNited at home to The Arsenal and totally skanked Canada in the evening game, what I took out of the opening matches so far is this:

There are quite a few international sides who didn’t impress me much.

(Stop singing Shania Twain in your head right this second).

I thought Germany looked really poor and if Canada could finish their dinner they’d have been out of sight against Belgium before halftime. That game in itself was a fascinating watch because Belgium have their superstars and big name players who have been together a while, but they looked like an old team with not much legs and running about them. Alderweireld is 33, Vertonghen is 35, Meunier is 31, Witsel is 33, De Bruyne is 31, Carrasco is 29, Hazard is 31, Batshuayi is 29 and the injured Lukaku is 29. That’s arguably nine players over or around the 30 mark and I think I heard one of the commentators last night say how they looked a little leggy. They really did and the youthful exuberance of Canada was too much for them to handle. It almost reminded me of an Arsenal side of four years ago playing against an Arsenal side today. Back then we stocked the team full of older and more experienced heads and whilst they had all ‘been there, seen it, done it’, the lack of pace and energy in our team at times was telling. Fast forward to today and we have a rapid, young and dynamic team who have already shown the difference that pace and power can add to your side if you sprinkle it throughout the team.

Based on yesterday I can’t see Belgium going all the way.

But then again, based on a lot of the first round games, I think we’d have a really random set of teams going through to the knockout stages, which is why I guess we have the group stages in the first place. Every dog can have its day, but from a FIFA – and to be fair most of the footballing world – perspective, you don’t want to have to watch a quarter final with two rubbish teams that have had a couple of lucky wins.

What I guess I’m trying to say here is that we should probably not look too much in to some of the shock results. I expect Argentina to beat Poland and Mexico and probably go through. I expect Denmark to beat Australia and maybe they might play a French team who will heavily rotate because they are already through, so that might play in to their favour. Japan beating Costa Rica is more than likely to happen given how shocking they were against Spain and if they do that then that might be enough to knock Germany out if they can’t beat the Spanish. That match there has basically become a knock out for the Germans after their defeat. If they beat Spain and Costa Rica they still might not have enough to go through, which shows why the Japanese ran on to the pitch like they did yesterday; they knew that it was potentially one of the biggest steps towards qualifying and given how good Spain looked yesterday, Germany must be wondering if they’ll be on the plane home a lot sooner than they think.

I wonder if Japan might end up being the dark horses in this competition, you know. I don’t think they’ll top the group, but if they finish second they’ll play the winners of Group F and that would be one of Belgium, Croatia or Canada I reckon. Each of those teams I think Japan would see as beatable and if they can get through them, you’re talking a quarter final and that’s where momentum kicks in. I dunno, I just have a feeling Japan might go deep in the competition. Not win it, but I think they might go deep. Especially with that former Arsenal ‘legend’ Takuma Asano around to bang the goals in. What a story, eh? I basically forgot he existed and then he pops up with a beauty like that? Fair play to him.

Today we have Brazil against Serbia and my hope is that we see what Martinelli can deliver, as he has been delivering all season. I’m sorry, but I’m not having Richarlison as being in better form and playing better than Gabriel Jesus, whilst Martinelli has been explosive on the wing. I’m sure even if they don’t start they’ll have an impact from the bench and I’d bet a shiny pound that they deliver more than Richarlison and Vicinius Jr when they are on. I am of course completely biased and I couldn’t give a monkey’s; our two Brazilians are better than the other options that are available and they should be given the chance to show it.

There’s nothing really else going on from an Arsenal perspective; Switzerland and Granit Xhaka play Cameroon and Partey’s Ghana line up against Portugal. I’m hoping for both players to just come out of it injury free, to be honest with you. We don’t want to see Partey go down once and I hope Cedric Soares has put a good word in amongst his fellow national team compatriots.

That’s me done for today. Catch you all tomorrow

“Who’s going to have the best World Cup?”

I’m a World Cup follower, rather than a specific fan, as you may know if you regularly read the nonsense that I spill on to this blog. I’m English, I inevitably want to see England do well, whilst also having some German heritage, so I have a pseudo back up team to get behind when the inevitable happens. But I’m more of a ‘follower’ for my national team, rather than a fan, and I can safely say that if there was a clash between Arsenal’s Dubai Super Cup friendly with AC Milan and the Semi Final of the World Cup, I’d be tuning in to The Arsenal ahead of anything else.

That being said, we have Arsenal players at the World Cup and so there will be reason to tune in. So, anyway, my morning run…

yeah, I was out there in the pouring rain and listening to a podcast and they mentioned a few players at the World Cup and it got me to wondering which of the players out there do I think would have the biggest impact. Then, which player(s) will go the furthest (because that will also impact us in terms of their return time to the club), then which players will be a surprise package from The Arsenal. So that’s what I thought i’d pick out today. Be keen to get your thoughts.

Who is having the biggest impact?

This is a subjective question based on how you interpret it, because you could say “on the whole competition?” or you could say “for their country?” and for my interpretation I’m saying the one player that the world will look at and say “he’s a great player for Arsenal, who maybe haven’t watched us much before. In that regard, I think it will be William Saliba. Now, I know that there is a caveat in there based on whether he plays, but if he doesn’t play then Deschamps is a nutter, in my opinion. Saliba has made so much look so easy in an Arsenal shirt this season, playing in easily the toughest and most competitive league in the World. I’m biased I know, but to me Saliba is better than Upamencano and with Varane and Kimpembe out injured, surely Saliba should be getting the chance? If he is, I think this will be the player that will make the biggest impact and surprise the most people.

I could have gone with Saka, Martinelli or Jesus, but I think the world knows about Saka now after the Euros, plus I’m not sure – bizarrely – whether Southgate will be starting him. I think the same can be said for Martinelli and Jesus and that’s why I think Saliba has the biggest chance of surprising the most people.

Of course it could be Xhaka, but he’s been an established international for so long and the world should already know about his quality having seen it in World Cup’s before. Hence, I’m sticking with Big Bill.

Who is going to go the furthest?

For Thomas Partey and Takehiro Tomiyasu, my gut tells me they probably come home quickest. I just have a feeling that Ghana don’t make it out of the group stages and that means his last game could be 2nd December. If that is the case, Arteta will probably want him to swing by Dubai, get a week off in the sun, before returning to training after a week and maybe being part of the squad for that second Dubai Cup game. Given Partey’s injury record, if he comes back in one piece and then gets that rest time, maybe he gets a little more time off to recharge, but if we can have him ready for that West Ham game – given we have no real replacement for him, that might be one of the best outcomes from an Arsenal perspective. You could probably say the same about Tomi and his injury record and with Japan in a group with Spain and Germany, that may well come to pass, so for me if we get those two players back sooner rather than later, the better.

I think for England it’ll be quarter finals at best. Looking at the draw I think they’ll get as far as France and then naturally go out, which would mean Saka returning to us after 10th December. I suspect Arteta will want him to take some time off if he’s played, maybe a week, so he can come back and have a week in training before being ready for West Ham. I doubt Ben White or Ramsdale will get hardly any game time so I think they’ll be back then too, but I doubt they’ll have been given many minutes (again, bizarrely). I think Xhaka and Switzerland could also get themselves to the quarter final too, but that’s probably all they’ll have in the tank, so the timings there will probably be the same.

If William Saliba does make the French first team, then I think France are probably – like Brazil – going to be expecting at least a semi final place in the competition. That means the three players we need to think about from a fitness perspective are Saliba, Martinelli and Jesus. The good news could be that Martinelli and Jesus don’t actually play that much and with Saliba it still isn’t clear whether Deschamps will give him any minutes, so we could end up with a situation where players come back having gone deep in the competition, but haven’t been run in to the ground. So they’ll have been training, keeping their fitness up, be match-ready, but will probably just have to deal with the potential pain of losing / come-down having won the World Cup.

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So all in all I don’t actually think it could be that bad for us in terms of player fatigue **touches something wooden as he types**. There will need to be some rest time for those players at the competition as soon as their tournament is over, but that’s only going to be the same amount of rest time as the current set of players not going to the World Cup are getting right now.

But what do you think? Who’s having the best impact and who is going to go the furthest and therefore cause us the biggest potential worry?

Then, when after the first 11 minutes saw us net our first goal of the game, I thought we were playing very good football and we would go on to get more. We’d already created one or two before then and Southampton looked there for the taking. We moved the ball around well, we controlled the game, our team looked like it had the air of a side that is playing full of confidence and swagger.

The goal itself was a fantastic one, with the deft flick from Saka setting up the excellent Ben White on the overlap, before his cut back was superbly delivered to the man of the moment Granit Xhaka. It was another finish with his right foot and another example of him arriving late in to the box to bag us another goal. He’s going to smash his previous best goal tally for Arsenal in all competitions this season. He’ll probably even do it before the World Cup at this rate and yesterday I thought he was once again excellent throughout. But Whilst that first half was very good in terms of territory and possession, the biggest worry in the Premier League is that unless you get a second or a third, you leave yourself open to a sucker punch. That was to follow in the second half but I’ll come to that in a sec. Because before then we’d had chances to put the game to bed and had Odegaard not dragged his shot wide, had Jesus not hit the side netting, had we’d taken any of those big chances we got in that first half, we’d probably not be lamenting the performance.

I’m talking as if we lost the game yesterday when of course you and I both know that we picked up a draw. But it was a draw that felt like two points because Southampton hardly peppered our goal like Leeds did. The stats will tall you that on shots we were pretty level, but I don’t remember Ramsdale having too many saves to make. We restricted them to a few long range efforts and most of them were straight down Ramsdale’s throat. They created little other than their goal, which was well worked and caught us in transition – again – and I’ve been trying to work out what went wrong on their goal. It’s a dummy that both White and Partey get caught out on right on the halfway line, but I have to say I think Tomiyasu gets twisted and turned a little too easily by Elyounoussi, who then flips a decent reverse pass to Armstrong. It wasn’t a massive mistake by Tomi and I don’t really want to pile in on him, but perhaps he’ll look at that and think he could have done better. It was pretty much the only time they cut us open and probably explains why this morning I’m feeling like we’ve lost rather than picked up a point which keeps us two clear at the top of the league.

And that’s still important to point out. We are still top of the league and with Liverpool, the Scum, United and Chelsea all dropping points, we have found ourselves in no worse position after game day 11. In fact in the case of the Scousers and The Scum we have gained a point. So whilst we can all be disappointed that we didn’t knock down another narrative that Southampton are a bit of a bogey team, we can at least look at our situation in the knowledge that we are still in a good position.

The worry is that we’ve had two second halves in a row now in which we’ve looked leggy. Arteta refused to blame fatigue and talked about how he doesn’t want any excuses, but that second half we let Southampton have a little too much of the ball compared to the first half and it gave them a little more impetus. I thought in the second half our passing started to get really sloppy and players like Partey and Saka had one or two instances where their range felt off. Martinelli started to tail off in the game and we just seemed to lose our verve. Gabby Jesus probably had his worst game in an Arsenal shirt as well, but when he plays poorly it doesn’t manifest itself as him being anonymous like it did with Laca and Auba, but instead that he doesn’t seem to take his chances. I’ve mentioned the side netting chance, but there was also one from a lovely flick from Odegaard that he shot straight at the ‘keeper, as well as the one-on-one chance that he really should have buried. It will be a game he probably wants to put behind him and I suspect a few of those players will want to do that.

One other person I suspect will want to forget about this game is referee Robert Jones, another North West referee for the PGMOL’s hall of shame who yesterday had a terrible game, let’s be honest. He booked Saka for diving when there was clearly no dive to be seen. He afforded Caleta-Car the freedom to do whatever he wanted with his arms, both inside the box and outside the box when even the Sky Sports pundits were starting to say “surely that has to be a foul?” after the fourth time of him wrestling Jesus to the ground, then he took no action when Lyanco went to headbutt Nketiah in stoppage time, then followed it up by a throat grab. He was poor all game but then that’s what we all come to expect from PGMOL these days. They have a shocking roster of referees and he’s just another relatively new one in a long line of shocking North West referees who will not get any better, just varying degrees of worse each week.

But whilst we can bemoan the performance of the man officiating the game, we can’t hang our hats entirely on that, as we had the chances and we didn’t take them, then we allowed our opponent a sniff and didn’t shut our own back door.

A couple of final points from me before I head off for the day. Firstly, I didn’t think it was Arteta’s finest managerial day. I can kind of guess his thinking with Tomiyasu in at left back as a “you don’t change a winning team” thing, but given it was that left hand side that cost us the goal, you have to say it didn’t work. KT probably positions his body differently as a natural left back and shows Elyounoussi down the line so he can deal with him, but Tomi didn’t manage that. So I think the boss got it wrong there and hopefully he learns from that. Tomi is a fine left back as a third option, but when you’ve got a perfectly good one in KT sitting on the bench, you have to go with that. Secondly, the subs, although I don’t know if that is more on them than Arteta, but Nketiah didn’t work at left wing and I certainly don’t think it is something we should be trying again. Jesus wasn’t having his best game through the middle so why not just switch him around and see if he can do more damage from out on the left coming in, with Eddie in the middle of the three? Then there was Fabio Vieira who came on at 83 minutes and stunk the place out. He gave the ball away a couple of times and was muscled off it. He’ll certainly want to forget his cameo.

We’re all disappointed not to get three points but let’s look at where we are, how we’ve been playing, how we deserved to win that game yesterday and that you can’t win them all. The important thing is bouncing back on Thursday against PSV, or more importantly against Nottingham Forest at home on Sunday.

Catch you all tomorrow.

We were totally dominant from start to finish and probably deserved two or three more than we got.

As expected Arteta named a blend of regular first teamers along with some of the rotated players that we’ve seen in this competition so far. So out went Ramsdale, White, Saliba, Partey, Ødegaard and Martinelli, in came Turner, Holding, Tomiyasu (for White at right back – I know he started against Leeds but not in his natural position), Sambi, Vieira and Nketiah. Despite the rotation though, the team picked up its performance from last weekend and within a couple of minutes we were creating chances. We’ve tended to start games fast and quick and you could tell that the PSV game plan was to hang in there at the start and then try to hit us on the counter, but we never really let them get in to their rhythm. Efforts from Tierney, Gabriel Jesus and Xhaka didn’t find the target though and as we approached the half hour mark it seemed strange that we weren’t ahead.

It’s weird though, because I never really felt like we wouldn’t get the goal in the end, even though at halftime we had nothing to show for our dominance. In that first half we’d had 67% possession, eight attempts at goal (although none on target), we’d created two big chances and limited PSV to one lowly effort off target.

I didn’t think the deployment of Eddie wide with Gabriel Jesus through the middle worked, if I’m honest, with Eddie more of a striker and Jesus able to play that wide forward position well. It seemed obvious to me that the two should have swapped but Arteta made his choice and ultimately we won so I suppose the complaints should be kept to a minimum.

The second half was more of the same from Arsenal and we dominated that nearly as much as the first, only this time we exchanged possession dominance for efforts on goal and cutting edge. We doubled our efforts on goal in the second half to 16, with eight of them on target, creating three big chances and eventually getting the goal that secured the game. And who else is it going to be to get that goal than Mr Redemption himself, Granit Xhaka, finding space in the box and on his weaker foot, slamming the ball home. It was a very fine finish from a decent Tomiyasu cut back and as Arsenal fans we are all loving Xhaka’s advanced position this season. That’s three goals and three assists and already he is getting closer to equalling his best ever tally in an Arsenal shirt, which I believe was 20189/19, but he got four goals and five assists in 40 games. He’s only played 14 this season so if he keeps going at this rate we’ll see him hit double figures for the first time in his Arsenal career.

And this is important, because what it shows is just how many goalscoring options we have on the pitch now, because we’re not reliant on the front three to do everything. Saka has been scoring, Gabby Jesus has been scoring, Martinelli and Ødegaard have been scoring, but we’re getting goals from other sources too, like Xhaka, Saliba and Gabriel. We are a potent team and even on a night in which we don’t have our shooting boots on like last night, we still have players who will step up and chip in.

As for PSV, well, I’ll admit that I thought we were going to get a sterner test than we did. We may well – and probably will – face a different PSV when on their own turf, but based on last nights showing alone, I can’t say I’m too concerned as I type up my post match thoughts this morning. We looked in total control of the game and we thoroughly deserved that victory last night; a victory that takes us to 12 points and means a point next week secures top spot in the group.

This is a serious Arsenal outfit that looks like it means business and I’m all here for it.

And what’s also impressive is how we are managing rotation. Partey and Ødegaard got 20 minutes, as did Martinelli, whilst off came Gabriel Jesus on 76 minutes to ensure we keep a bit of freshness for Sunday. I probably would have brought Saka off at that time too for Nelson instead of leaving him on until the 85th, but perhaps Arteta just wanted him to run off the knock he took in the second half after being fouled on the edge of the box. Hopefully he’s all good for Sunday.

We’ve done our job in the Europa League with aplomb so far. We look like we’ve got total control of the group and Arteta has also managed to maintain this winning run we’re on. But the tests just keep on coming and on Sunday we’ll see a tough one away from home to Southampton, who have often bested us on their ground and won in midweek against Bournemouth, so they’ll be buoyed by that. But so will we be, because we keep doing what we’re doing, we keep winning, which is breeding a confidence in the team that you can just see is oozing from the players. Long May it continue.

I’m going to leave it there for today. The job is done in the Europa League and I’ve got a day of with The Management’s family, so I’m going to enjoy it.

Catch you all tomorrow.

Sadly for me, unlike many of my workplaces, my current company only has one Spurs fan and she isn’t really that vocal, so whilst I hurtle in on the Met Line this morning, I know there won’t be many glum faces to beam at. Still, I’m able to bask in the online glow and that’s ok. I have also found myself purposefully looking out for more  wise words from Antonio Conte, who came out swinging in his press conference yesterday after it was put to him that some of the Scum fans are a little disgruntled. Delicious stuff.

We’re at home to Bodo/Glimt on Thursday and that means that we’ll most likely have to wait until tomorrow until we get an update from the manager, but whilst he won’t give too much away in terms of his team selection for the game, my hope is that we get hints that there will be mass rotation. With the game against Liverpool at the weekend  and the way they like to play (i.e. more  intensity and more desire for ball possession compared to The Scum), there is a very tough test on the horizon that we need to be physically prepared for. Liverpool play at home this evening and will have two whole days to prepare for the visit to The Emirates on Sunday, so that’s a bit of an advantage and I’m curious to see if Klopp plays his strongest XI tonight. I suspect he will. When you can play a midweek Champions League game and then have yourself five whole days thereafter to rest the players, it gives him the chance to play a full strength team. So That’s why when we hear from Arteta tomorrow I hope he’s hinting that there will be a number of changes in our game.

If you can rest Jesus, Saka, Martinelli, Partey, one of the centre halves and both of your full backs, you can give them longer than a week off and it ensures the freshness and intensity that we will 100% need for Sunday.

One person that I don’t think will be rested, because he never seems to need it, is Granit Xhaka. He’s just won the player of the month award for September and what a way to cap off that fan-selected award than by starting the next month with a man-of-the-match performance and a goal in the North London Derby. Honestly, has there ever been a redemption arc amongst Arsenal fans that has looked so pronounced?

I have always been a fan of Xhaka. No, honestly, check out my ramblings over the years. I have loved the passing range he delivers, I have loved his character and at times he has of course driven me mad with some of his mistakes, some of the narratives that were formed around him historically were blown way out of proportion for me. Like how he always picks up red cards. He’s had five red cards since 2016. And I can remember at least one of them being ridiculously harsh; remember the red card on the halfway line against Swansea? No other player has been red carded for that kind of challenge before or since that card. He himself spoke about how some referees have even said “it’s Granit, this is what he does” and his reputation has preceded him far too many times when he has picked up yellows too. Remember the Villa game last season? I can’t remember who the ref was but he clearly pointed to multiple positions on the pitch where Xhaka had supposedly accumulated a ‘totting up’ of fouls, yet as all of the stats proved after the game and as Xhaka himself said during the game, that booking was the first foul he made.

This season I’m not sure he’s even picked up a yellow. I could be wrong but I can’t think of an instance. Is that because he’s playing further up the pitch and is therefore further away from those kind of fouls where you have to take it because you are overloaded as a team counters you in transition? I’ve seen him get a few yellows for those over the years and we aren’t seeing those right now. That more advanced position he’s taking this season is really leaning in to the positive side of his game, like his vision and ability to spot a pass. His long-range distribution is very good, but what I’m seeing more of this season is those clever mid/short-range passes. Think of in the opening minutes against Brentford for the Martinelli chance – that was fantastic vision by Xhaka to slip a teammate in. Then there was the lob-wedge chip for the Gabriel Jesus goal. That’s they kind of stuff we haven’t seen tonnes of with the previous renditions of Xhaka, but we’re getting it now.

And the good thing about him too, as opposed to a Partey or an Odegaard, for example, is that usually his fitness is such that he’s always available. So as I mentioned above already, if Arteta is going to pick one or two first teamers to start on Thursday, I don’t think many of us would be surprised to see that Granit Xhaka is one of the starters too.

He’s a leader in this team as well. On Saturday, after the first goal, he’s bringing everyone together for a chat, to reset, to say to his teammates “lads, time to make a statement here. We aren’t done with this lot. Let’s put them to the sword” and when you think about the game as a whole, we absolutely did. Xhaka was a big part of that and although he is just one cog in this functioning and well-oiled machine right now, he is a big part.

Honestly, the way he’s playing right now, how many of you would be averse to a one or two year extension for the player? He’s 30, he won’t be in this rich vein of form forever and of course there will come a time in which we need to upgrade, but that doesn’t feel as close to needing to happen as I thought it would. With the style of player he is – he’s  not exactly going to lose his pace because he never had any! Plus his injury record is such that if he can stay fit he can stay a valuable member of the team – I could see him easily being able to play at this level in to his mid thirties. So perhaps the rumours of his demise were wildly mistaken?

Anyway, I think I’ll call it a day on this one for today. Back tomorrow with some Bodo/Glimt thoughts.  Have a good one!

It’s Arsenal’s weekend this weekend with a second consecutive year of 3-1 home victories against the Scum and although it wasn’t as quick for the game to be over this time (after all, last season we were three goals up within half an hour), the level of dominance showed by the team yesterday was similar to the performance from last season, maybe even more dominant.

Yesterday morning I wrote that the key to victory over them would be an early start and that’s exactly what we set about doing. I feared the Tottenham ‘smash and grab’ on the counter and within minutes you could see that was their plan to soak up and hit us, but conversely what we all wanted to see was a ball-dominant Arsenal who imposed their possession-based dominance on a Scum team with little intention to go out and play.

Martinelli hit the post within the first ten minutes I think and that set the tone, but converting chances is key and so until you get that, there is always a worry that it’s going to be ‘one of those days’. It wasn’t, thanks to Thomas Partey, who finally found his range and nestled an absolute pearler in to the postage stamp to make it one nil to The Arsenal. Block five went nuts. The stadium went nuts. The Arsenal players gathered together for a little huddle, with the super Granit Xhaka leading the discussion, most likely saying “lads. Reset. We have won nothing yet. Game faces on”.

And this season I feel like that’s The Arsenal for you. There is a focus about this team that looks to be there. This is a serious group of players and they offer a serious threat to teams. The media narrative has been that we haven’t played anyone decent yet. The Scum will always be the Scum, but you can’t argue they aren’t a decent outfit, especially going in to this game without a loss.

They are a threat, even when they aren’t threatening, so when Gabriel knocked in to Richarlison, there was only ever going to be one outcome: the standard Harry Kane penalty. All the talk is of the fact he has 14 goals for them against us and the most of any player in the Derby, but SEVEN of those have been penalties. Seven. The man is a stat-pad master.

It was pretty much their only shot yo until then. Ramsdale had made a decent save before we went ahead, but it would have been ruled out for offside anyway, so I’m inclined not to count it. Perisic had blazed over from a wide angle a minute before the penalty, but that was it. After they scored to bring it level The Scum had a good seven or eight minutes in which they had more ball and looked a little more threatening, but for Conte to claim (as he did afterwards) that they created ‘many’ chances in the first half, is deflection tactics of the highest order. But that’s Conte to be fair.

The irony of him saying Arteta complains too much last season – as little as five months ago – should not be lost on the footballing world. He thought the red card decision was wrong. Nope, sorry Toni, but Emerson Royal went in high, with studs up, he caught Martinelli. If that isn’t a red card then you can’t be looking at Holding’s red last season at their ground and said “the red card was clear”. So was this mate, so wind yer neck in.

It’s not as if the game truly swung on that either, because we had started the second half in the same way we started the first: dominant. we controlled possession, we created chances and thankfully for us, we were ahead again on 49 minutes and the stadium was rocking. Bukayo Saka – who I thought had one of his best games this season – weaved inside Lenglet and forced Lloris to parry. His and Romero’s next action was of course clumsy, but Gabriel Jesus did his part in hassling them into the error and when it squeezed under Lloris for Jesus to tap in on the goal line, Block five went in to rapture again. Gabby J sprinted off to the corner flag where we were and it was limbs everywhere. Brilliant stuff.

Then came the red – deserved – and five minutes after that the game was done and dusted thanks to the now weekly heroics of Granit Xhaka. His best tally in an Arsenal shirt was in 2018-19 where he scored four goals and registered two assists. That’s six goal contributions in total. This season he already has five goals and assists combined. He was the best player on the pitch and the way he sent Dier for a hot dog on the third goal was just brilliant. He looks a transformed player; released of the shackles and the demons on his past, demons which aren’t so much in his mind, but in ours. The love he’s getting from within the stadium is amazing and I’m so happy for him. This advanced role he has is perfect for his skill set and we are profiting from his performances 100%. I mentioned his role in bringing players together after the Partey goal, there was the goal itself yesterday, but also when Martinelli was brought down it was Granit Xhaka who was in there first looking after his teammate. Great to see.

The rest of the game petered out after that as we set about controlling it until we got to full time. I was kind of hoping that we’d go for the jugular and see if we could make a statement, but I’m not going to complain too much, because first and foremost the win is what we needed. And we got it. We remain top of the league and although I don’t think any of us think we can get close to Man City this season, at least we’re having fun looking at the table this time around. The destination is so important, but our journey so far this season has been hella fun.

As I’ve already mentioned, it’s another media narrative that we’ve debunked this weekend, having now beaten a ‘big’ team. The media are waking up to the fact that this is a good Arsenal side and I for one am delighted to see it. We still need to get an away win on a big ground, but if we continue to play like we have done this season, that will 100% come for sure.

Yesterday was a victory for ‘good’ football. It was a triumph over evil football. It was an opportunity for us to plant our stake in the ground and say “you can play good football AND win”. Conte’s brand of boring football could have prevailed yesterday, but thankfully good triumphed and I think there are a lot of Arsenal fans feeling vindicated this morning having had to read lots about how the Scum are ‘efficient’. Nope. They’re just boring.

I could probably write another 1,000 words on the game yesterday, the result, the belief, what Arteta has done to drive this team forward, etc, but I think I’ll leave it there for now. It’s absolutely bucketing it down outside as I write this, but that won’t stop me basking in the glorious reflective glow of a North London Derby victory.

Catch you all tomorrow.

The narratives were fed to us before the game; last season Brentford started their season off with a victory against us on the opening Friday night and it set them up for a great season. Arsenal were a team that could be dominated physically, could be bullied, couldn’t always handle it. Brentford set up yesterday just as I suspected they would, with longer balls towards their target men to win knockdowns and duels, but what ended up happening was a totally different Arsenal was in town. This is a strong and powerful Arsenal, this is an Arsenal who have strength and physicality to win battles and won battles all over the pitch. And we did. Raya launched ball after ball forward and both Gabriel and Saliba competed for them. And won a decent number of them. When they didn’t win a ball, they won the second ball and so this idea that Arsenal can be dominated, this narrative that we can be bullied, is slowly washing away.

As is the fact that we perhaps don’t react to adversity well. Last season we went through patches of bad form, losing two or three times on the trot and it really harmed our season. Having undeservedly lost to United a couple of weeks ago, my big fear was that going to a tough place like Brentford and getting handed our arses back to us, might put all of the early season good work to the back of our minds, washing away like some kind of fading memory from your childhood. But, as I have said above and in the title for today’s blog, narratives are being kicked in to touch with this Arsenal team. The idea that we can’t bounce back from defeats has now been put away with that resounding 3-o victory.

It could have been more too, couldn’t it? I mean, we were totally dominant from pretty much the first minute and when Martinelli found himself about ten yards from goal in the centre of the goal, just to slip at the last minute, I was cursing what I worried might be a rare opportunity to get chances against an organised and well-drilled Brentford. But again, these narratives – even the ones we as Arsenal fans hold in our own minds – keep getting knocked down and the team responded within the first 20 minutes to get us one up. A lot has been made about how we are better physically in defence, but in attack we are too and the corner from Saka to Saliba’s head was spot on, but it was the fact he managed to leap an extra few inches above Ivan Toney (a superb defender when he’s asked to track back for his team, by the way) to steer the ball off the post and in, that showed how  much a danger we are going forward.

You expect a Brentford backlash after going behind at home, but we just kept control throughout, knocking the ball around as if it was a training exercise. But this wasn’t an Arsenal team showing a lack of respect to the opposition, but rather an Arsenal team with laser focus on what they needed to do to nullify a very good opponent. And Brentford are very good and very organised, as I’ve already mention, which you could see in parts of the game. There were a few instances where they ventured forward and as we threatened to counter attack, they all got back in to a strong defensive shape that broke down a few moves. When they had the ball they looked to go long and had we had the same back line as at the start of the season, we’d have probably crumbled under the pressure. But we didn’t and we capitalised, taking our chances expertly.

I’ve already spoken about the first goal from SALIBA! (I think that’s how we have to say his name from now on…) but the second was majestic too, as Granit Xhaka’s ball to Jesus was absolutely inch perfect. Let’s not forget that Brentford have defenders in Mee and Janssen who are very good in the air and normally it is meat and drink for them to mop up balls in to the box. unless those balls are perfect and yesterday he delivered a sumptuous ball to the head of Jesus, who scored with a fabulous header to put us two up. And from that moment on we were in cruise control for the first half. We saw it out and I went to the fridge to grab myself an alcoholic beverage, because I started to think that we wouldn’t have it our own way for the whole of the second half; this was going to get scary as we try to steady the storm that will come from Brentford.

But the best way to quieten an already quiet crowd, the best way to quash any momentum in the second half, is to get an early goal and make it feel like there is no way back. Step forward debutant Fabio Vieira with an absolute peach of a finish off the post from 25 yards. You have no need to worry about VAR spoiling a goal when you’ve banged one in from that range! It was a fabulous finish, it basically ended the game as a competition and for a lad making his first appearance from the start it is the perfect start to an Arsenal career. He gave us a cameo against united and looked tidy, he gave us the same against Zurich, but yesterday he showed us that he has end product too and on a day where the absence of Martin Odegaard could have been telling, he stepped in and performed really well. He was tidy all game and popped up in positions centrally that were really important. During the match I had thought he was unspectacular but upon reflection, I am recalling a number of times where he was an option for the likes of Saka, or Partey, to distribute the ball to in Brentford’s half. He was just there, always showing for the ball, just like Odegaard does. He is not as accomplished as Odegaard, which you’d expect for a man just at the start of his Arsenal career, but the fact he can come in and act as an able deputy like that is brilliant. It’s the same for Tierney, who played because of the absence of Zinchenko but who performed really well too. We have ourselves a squad. Yesterday we were missing Zinchenko, Odegaard and Smith Rowe and yet you wouldn’t have known we were light on first team players with the XI that started. We bossed a team who are going to pick up a lot of points at home this season and cause teams a lot of problems.

And so will we. Next up after the international break it is the Scum. I’m already crossing my fingers and praying that we can knock down another one of those narratives.

Catch you all tomorrow.

It was made official during the game against FC Zurich and at halftime a minute’s silence was held for Her Majesty as a mark of respect. At that stage it was 1-1 and Arsenal had – I thought – laboured a bit to get to that point in which we should have been out of sight against a team that you could visibly poorer than us technically. Arteta made a fair few changes, but didn’t shuffle the pack completely and the likes of Gabriel, Sambi, Xhaka and Martinelli all played from the start. And when we went ahead on 16 minutes I thought it would be an easier evening than how it actually played out. The goal itself was impressive in terms of the speed in which we transitioned from defence to attack; the ball turned over just outside our box, Fabio Vieira picked it up and played a lovely channel ball for Eddie to chase. Eddie is rapid as we know and he beat his man, crossing it for Marquinhos and the finish was very tidy indeed. Running at pace and then connecting with the ball the way he did was really impressive and he should certainly earn kudos for that.

As I said, we really should have kicked on from there but we never really managed to get that second goal in that first half and I think had we done that, the match would have turned in to a cricket score. Statistically it was ours throughout with 70% of the ball, 18 attempts to their 10 and a feeling that we were in control without really being in control because we didn’t get that second goal. So of course when Eddie went through a Zurich player in the box just on halftime, they got a chance to level and when they did, I suspect Arteta was a frustrated man in the dressing room after the game.

It wasn’t really what they deserved and was their first attempt on goal up until that point. But we had shown enough about us to know that it wasn’t the most composed of evenings; Matt Turner looked a little shaky at times and you wonder whether that was down to nerves or the fact that he might not actually be very good. Let’s opt for the former for now because we haven’t see enough from him. But a lot of the players came out of last night’s game with six out of 10 performances. I thought Gabriel wasn’t great and I am starting to wonder if we could try White and Saliba as our centre halves, if the Brazilian continues to look a little shaky. He’s had some really good games this season as well as some shaky ones, but the good news is that we keep winning and it hasn’t cost us. Yet.

Nketiah had an up and down game too. He was excellent with the assist for the first goal and he was predatory in at the back post for the second goal, but some of his play in between that wasn’t amazing and of course he was at fault for their goal in giving away the penalty. But ultimately he’s there to deliver end product up the attacking end of the pitch and ultimately he delivered there so you have to say his job was well done.

The three players I thought were excellent though were Marquinhos, Vieira and Xhaka. The two newbies getting their first start for the club looked on it and sharp; the Brazilian getting a goal and assist like Eddie, but he also had his full back on toast all evening and drew a couple of desperate lunges from the defender last night. I know Zurich weren’t up to much in the grand scheme of things, but last night hopefully showed us that for the Europa League and maybe the League Cup, this guy is a definite option and hopefully we see more performances like that in an Arsenal shirt. If he can continue to deliver games like yesterday with his pace, running power and trickery, we’ll have quite some talent on our hands.

Fabio Vieira looks good too. Really good. From a technical perspective I was so impressed. The way he strokes the ball around, his movement, as well as the fact he also made some clever runs forward (including one good effort that he only just lobbed over when through on goal) all point towards a player who I think we’re going to like a lot, as Arteta said.

Then finally to Granit Xhaka, who is having one heck of a season so far and who once again yesterday looked like the boss on that pitch. Cool, calm and composed on the ball, he kept us ticking over all game and once again I think there will have been a small pocket of Arsenal fans who will have perhaps changed their minds a little bit about him. Long may this form continue because he’s at the heart of our team right now and one of the major contributory factors towards the six wins out of seven in all competitions this season.

There’s talk that football matches might be postponed this weekend because of the death of the Queen. Obviously I hope that doesn’t happen, because we have Everton on Sunday and I’m hoping that we can see the boys get their game faces on and hopefully grab us three more points. But I suspect there will be some kind of confirmation today as to what the authorities are planning on doing so we’ll just have to wait and see what transpires.

Right, off to work for me, so I’ll catch ye all tomorrow for some more Arsenal-related ramblings.

Laters people.

Arteta named the same team he named on the opening day win against Palace and the reward for a good performance on that opening Friday was another equally impressive and dominant display against a Leicester side that simply couldn’t contain us. From the first minute to the last we were pretty much in control and even when bits got a little wobbly in parts of the game, the reaction from the players was absolutely superb.

In truth the 4-2 scoreline flattered Leicester City I thought. They had two shots on target all day; in the opening couple of minutes when Fofana went through but Ramsdale made a good save, then when Maddison got their second goal to give Leicester some hope, although Ramsdale will probable feel that he should have done better because the ball was drilled straight at him. But that was pretty much it from Leicester. They never really got the opportunity to get us proper chewing our fingernails and that’s because of the response from the team which I thought was absolutely fantastic yesterday. On both occasions in which Leicester scored, we responded within minutes, as if the team had been playing it’s game and suddenly been so irritated that they had scored that we just went right up the other end and restored the two goal cushion. It was like we were a cat with a half dead mouse in front of us, trying to get away and just when the mouse thinks it has managed to escape the clutches of the cat, the cat just swats it back in to it’s palm. It was ruthless football and whilst Arteta probably won’t be the happiest to have seen us concede the two goals he did, he will be delighted with the reaction of the team.

We look a different beast to last season and a lot of that is down to the man up top, who put in a man of the match display and finished his first chance like a guy who has all the confidence in the world. We’d already created a fair few chances before Jesus clipped his sumptuous finish in to the far corner beyond Ward, with Xhaka hitting the post, but scoring within the first 25 minutes was the perfect tonic for what was to be a wonderful afternoon from an attacking perspective and for the Brazilian. His second goal – nodded in at the back post – is something of a trademark of his I hear; he scored one at the back post in pre season and I think he does like to crop up at the back stick like that. I wonder how many of those types of goals we might see this season? He was everywhere and his movement and close control with the ball at his feet was simply sublime. Our hopes were that he would ‘bang’ and for £45million it wasn’t a small chunk of change we spent, but it is feeling like one heck of a bargain right now and if this is just the start of things to come from him, I think we’re going to be very happy Gooners if the last two games are anything to go by.

We looked in control, but we weren’t completely out of the woods, because who else would step forward to try to do us over but the old nemesis Jamie Vardy. Leicester and he hadn’t had a sniff all day but right on halftime he was put in and dived his way across Ramsdale looking for a pen. The good news was that VAR was actually used properly for a change; Vardy had completely fabricated and over-egged any contact from Ramsdale and rightly it was chalked off. But I have to question why that wasn’t called back for a booking on Vardy. He simulated contact, he cheated, so just like Xhaka was booked last week, so too Vardy should have been booked. But of course that never happened.

So we go in to halftime with the lead still very much in tact and as I took my seat in the stadium I wondered if we’d be able to sustain our dominance for the full 90. It felt like we were going to for the first five minutes of the second half but on 53 that hopeful ball looping towards Saliba and a mix up between him and Ramsdale halved the lead. It was a shame because Saliba had played well again I thought, but what is different about the club right now is those players don’t drop their heads. And because of that, we don’t either and there was genuine support and cheering for Saliba that was heart warming to see. The team duly responded with Gabreil Jesus profiting on that Ward mistake and Granit Xhaka tapping home just two minutes after that OG. I have to say Xhaka is looking good right now; he is playing further up the pitch in more advanced positions, which is great because he’s impacting play in the final third and because Zinchenko is dropping in to midfield, it means we have cover. That won’t always work against every opponent but yesterday the gameplan was perfect for Leicester and we duly dispatched them. Even after they scored the second Martinelli responded and I think this season will be one in which we see Martinelli get himself comfortably in to double figures. It was a smart left foot finish and if he gets himself 15, Saka can also do the same and Jesus getting close to 20, then we’ll be looking at a team that is going to be right up there competing.

Yesterday we saw an Arsenal side with hunger, but also with depth, as Tierney and Tomiyasu came on, as well as Smith Rowe. We still have Fabio Vieira to come back in and Nketiah also got some minutes and made himself busy too. There is a core of around 15/16 players who are all quality and it’s so good to see those players all coming together and the fruits of Arteta’s tactical labour working. It is only early days, the season is long, but the positive signs are emerging and in the glorious sunshine in North London yesterday, we got treated to another fine display by a hungry and young Arsenal team with it all ahead of them.

Catch you all tomorrow.

England got battered at home in the Pointless-trophy-which-isn’t-worth-paying-attention-to-Nations-League-Cup friendly last night and the only thing that I learned from it?

Bukayo Saka is getting less time to rest before pre season starts again.

Honestly, at this point, I’m just hoping Arteta gives him a month off and we don’t see him until mid July performing his Arsenal duties. We are now officially halfway through June, the Premier League season finished three-and-a-half weeks ago, we’ve got pictures of some players on holiday, yet poor old Bukayo has to chug his way through a friendly match because Gareth Southgate wants to win a meaningless game.

I didn’t watch by the way. I have better things to do, like read my pamphlet about how I need to do jury service in the not-too-distant future.

But now, hopefully, he can get some R&R and hopefully we can see some kind of refreshed Saka for when we have the start of the season.

As for the other news going on, it appears the Arsenal online fanbase went in to its usual battle lines drawn approach over a transfer that is happening to another club. Many Arsenal fans have wanted Yves Bissouma from Brighton but it looks like he’s off to The Scum for £25million. I tweeted yesterday that it was too hot for me to have the energy to care too much about this deal and I still feel the same. Of course he will improve them, because he’s a good player, but the fact that there were some Arsenal fans that wanted the Mali international seems to have caused a bit of consternation from some.

Let’s look at the reality though:

1. He’s a guy that plays in the base of a midfield in a position in which we have Thomas Partey. So he isn’t getting in above Partey
2. He isn’t going to want to play understudy to Partey and, besides, we have Sambi Lokonga who is earmarked for that role and with more game time will hopefully get better this season (I’m sure he will)
3. He is currently under investigation for an alleged sexual assault. Given how much stock Arteta places in the character of an individual (cited as one of the reasons in which we went hard on Ramsdale last season and we’ve seen just how impressive he has been since joining), this would be quite unusual for Arteta to swing in another direction and go for a player like that if there are question marks over his off field behaviour
4. The Scum have signed players that Arsenal fans have wanted before and it hasn’t worked out (somebody else pointed out Victor Wanyama on Twitter yesterday – good call) so perhaps some Gooners just need to chill our beans
5. We won’t spend a combined £50million on two midfielders when we have other positions we need to focus on
6. We’re after Tielemans.

That last point is an interesting one because what we’re going for is a different profile of player. I had a look at FBRef for both players’ stats to see why and how they are different. Leicester finished eighth on 52 points and Brighton finished ninth on 51 points. So in those two teams we have sides that are very similar in their level and so it is an accurate comparison to look at both teams. If you have a player who is a squad player in a Champions League team, up against a first teamer who plays for Everton, for example, there are maybe some metrics that can belie the reality. Goalkeepers are a great example of that; a guy who makes 10 saves a game each week at the bottom of the table can’t be called a better shot stopper than a guy playing for a side who faces just a couple of shots, because you’re not comparing apples with apples. So in Brighton and Leicester – last season – we have two comparable sides.

So, what do we have? You can look for yourself here for Bissouma and here for Tielemans. Where Tielemans outperforms Bissouma is in goals, shots, assists, expected assists, shot-creating actions, as well as passes attempted. Where Bissouma is better is pass completion, dribbles completed, tackles, interceptions, blocks and clearances.

Tottenham have bought a guy who wants to sit at the base of their midfield and bring the ball out by dribbling it. They have a guy who does not attempt risky passes because he sits in the base of the midfield and keeps his passing short if he doesn’t dribble the ball out of midfield. Sound familiar? Sound familiar? It should, because before his injury and in patches last season, that’s what Thomas Partey was doing for us. Partey’s pass completion is better than Tielemans because he sits deeper in our team at the base of our midfield. So if we signed Bissouma it would be as an understudy to Partey. That would probably mean we’ve given up on Sambi Lokonga and I’m not sure that many Arsenal fans have done that. The club certainly haven’t.

Arsenal are looking to buy a guy further up the pitch who can create chances and score more goals. Tielemans stats show that. They show a guy who is willing to take risks, thread the ball in behind and if you’re looking at the profile of player we are after in Gabriel Jesus, you can understand why Arteta wants those two players hand-in-hand. Tielemans can spot a run and can thread a pass, but he’s also got a good shot on him and chips in with goals. He scored six goals last season in the Premier League in 32 games. That’s just under a goal every five games. Imagine dropping Tielemans in to Xhaka’s position and getting an extra five goals last season (Xhaka scored one last season)? What would an extra five goals have got us in points?

Now, I know Xhaka and Tielemans aren’t a like-for-like comparison, because Xhaka has a better pass completion rate, but when you look at the numbers here you can see what Arsenal are perhaps trying to get with Tielemans in the left eight position. I like Xhaka and I think he and Partey together worked well. I’d like Xhaka to stick around but if we’re getting Tielemans then I can see what he will bring instead of Xhaka and it looks to my relatively untrained eye as though it could be an upgrade. Not least due to the fact that Tielemans is so much younger.

So whilst people are allowed to be disappointed that Bissouma is going to another club and a club we all hate, if we get Tielemans signed up, then I wonder if some of the angst will go away a bit because we’ll have got the guy who Arsenal have identified as the one they believe will kick us on next season. And I’m super cool with that.

Anyway, that’ll do me for today, because I’ve got a load of work to get through before I pop off on me holidays. Have a good one, hopefully you’re chilled in the heat (if you’re in England) and I’ll catch you wonderful people tomorrow.

It’s a bitter pill to swallow and in the fallout from the Monday night defeat at Selhurst Park, all the talk is going towards how we cope with Tierney’s loss. Nuno Tavares has had consecutive stinkers when he’s started in 2022, so a lot of people are questioning whether he can be given a run out against Brighton on Saturday. For sure you’d think Brighton might target him and certainly they’ll see our full back positions as an opportunity to press home an advantage after Cedric was also given a torrid time against Zaha, but in my head we simply cannot NOT play Nuno at the weekend and I hope that in training this week Arteta has his arms around Tavares and is telling him “be my guy now”. For all of the shoddiness of his performance in those crucial matches against Palace, let’s not forget that there was a time in the season in which he was keeping Tierney out of the team. That’s how good he was earlier in the season and that’s the Tavares that we need to see on Saturday to give us all hope that this season isn’t going to derail because of injury.

Tavares played against Newcastle after his Liverpool shocker and earlier in the season and got an assist and had a great game. It was a home match against an opponent we could pin back and if we can see more of the same against Brighton at the weekend then perhaps it can patch up the belief of the player. But also, we need to play the player at the weekend because we can’t be going makeshift at this time. Last season’s travesty of having Xhaka at fullback didn’t work and we can’t see that again on a regular basis. Arteta needs to have Nuno in his office this week and telling him that he has an opportunity to get the best run in the side he’s ever had; he needs to tell him that he’s got the keys to that left hand side and that he believes in him. If he does that and if other players step up like they didn’t against Crystal Palace, I believe we’ll see a better Nuno than the one we’ve seen in his last two starts.

Something else to point out as well; Nuno’s two starts this season have come more than two months apart. Paul Merson – never not quick to jump in on players if he thinks they’ve had a shocker – even said he felt sorry for him because he’s going in cold and at halftime on Monday I buzzed my mate Johnny who said exactly the same. Maybe by telling him he’s starting this weekend it can give Nuno the confidence boost he needs to put in a good performance and if he does put one in, then we’ll all breathe a sigh of relief and get the hope back for the rest of this season.

On the other flank the news was equally as frustrating, as Tomiyasu is now not going to be back until after the Southampton game, which means he probably won’t start away to Chelski and maybe the United game is when we get him back properly. If that’s the case we’re essentially looking at a third of the season without him and whilst we can all rue that luck, I do remember reading one or two things about a couple of injury problems at Bologna. If that’s the case then we need to have a proper think about next season and the need for a really good right back in reserve is important. Cedric has done  ‘ok’ but you can’t afford to have ‘ok’ in your side in the Premier League for any prolonged period of time. We all know we need a striker (Lord knows it’s painful enough right now having to watch Lacazette every week), we all know we need another centre midfielder, but you start looking at how long Tomi has been out and you start to think that we probably also need another proper full back to provide competition for the Japanese international.

Then we come to Partey, confirmed with an injury to his thigh and knowing Partey as we do in his Arsenal career, I’m expecting us to not see him at least until the Man United  game. It is yet another blow and will leave Arteta scratching his head at what to do, but to my mind he shouldn’t be scratching too hard, because the answer feels fairly obvious to me. We need to shift the system up a bit. We can’t have Xhaka playing in an advanced  position with the absence of these latest set of players. We need to have Nuno playing further up the pitch, Xhaka alongside Sambi and then tucking in to that space behind Nuno when he ventures forward. That simply HAS to be the way and we have to revert back to that style, which we did earlier in the season and at times last season. This is not the time to be cute with experiments like a back three or playing Xhaka at left back. Revert to that earlier formation and let’s see how we go.

Oh, and for the love of everything that is holy, hook Lacazette out of that team. He’s offering nothing and we should be showing that bad performance after bad performance has consequences. I might do a specific piece on Lacazette and that central striker role tomorrow, so for now I’ll leave it there and catch you all tomorrow.

Laters people.

What I’m interested in is how many of our players survived the first round of these annoying internationals. It looks as though Emile Smith Rowe has picked up a knock and whilst Southgate described it as ‘nothing too serious’, you have to worry about whether he’ll be back for next weekend. We need him to be back. He’s found quite a few niggly injuries this side of Christmas and in 2022 and it does feel as though it’s hampered him a bit. The weird thing about ESR is that when he does come back in to the team after injury or illness, he tends to do quite well, like he did against Villa, so my hope is that he at least is back training with England and if he doesn’t play in midweek against the Ivory Coast, but is back for Palace, then it’s a ‘win-win’ for us – providing he is fully fit.

The other news I was looking for from that particular game was the performances of White and Xhaka. For White he looked like he got caught underneath the flight of the ball for Switzerland’s goal and he’ll probably be a little disappointed with that, but I am tempering any judgement by the fact that he is playing with a very different calibre of teammate and style in the England set up. No Gabriel, no Ramsdale, no Arteta barking precise instructions to every play; it’s no wonder he didn’t manage to have the best of games! On the opposition side it sounds as though Xhaka had a good game and pleasingly he played the full 90 minutes, which means no injury for him. To be fair to him he’s quite a robust player (don’t worry, I’m touching the wood surface of the desk in my office as I type this!) and so rather than get irritated that he hasn’t come off and been rested, with somebody like Xhaka 90 minutes is fine and hopefully he can get through their midweek friendly and return to London Colney unscathed.

Elsewhere Cedric was an unused sub on Thursday evening and Odegaard played the full 90 on Friday, scoring in the 80th minute. I have to say I’m liking the fact he’s getting in the goals for club and country; it only bodes well for us in terms of his form and as long as he avoids a knock in the home friendly against Armenia on Tuesday, then that can only be good for us as he continues to grow in confidence. Martinelli too will be delighted to make his Brazilian debut against Chile as they won 4-0. He played the last 15 minutes and whilst he apparently didn’t shine, the upside is that he’ll take confidence from getting that first cap and hopefully he can come back to Arsenal with a big smile on his face and even more drive in his play.

The rest of the players remain resting at home and that hopefully means returns for Tomiyasu – who appears to be fit and training now by some of the rumours I’ve seen online – as well as Gabriel, who is with his wife for the birth of their daughter. I suspect that will mean one or two sleepless nights with a new born, but with Gabriel staying in the UK it means less flying time, less travelling time, he’ll be able to train with those back at London Colney and hopefully be up and ready to go at Palace on Monday.

So all in all, barring some kind of mega injury crisis that happens in the next few days, we have a fair few players who hopefully will get a bit of rest ahead of the Palace clash next Monday. My hope is that it serves the team well because I’m focused on that Palace game and if we can somehow get a win there, it will set us up amazingly for the subsequent run of games before we get to ‘DeathWeek 2’ in which we play three times in six days – AGAIN – against some really tough opposition.

I think i’ll keep it short and sweet today. I don’t really want to talk about those links to that Benfica forward just yet – we’ll have all summer to get irate over signings happening/not happening – so I’ll bid you all a happy Sunday and hope you enjoy yours. It’s MOthering Sunday today so I have the in laws over for roast goose. Yum.

Catch you all tomorrow.

That has to – surely – give us an opportunity to start picking up points, right? Not the knowing the favourite colour stuff, of course, but the gap in between matches and the opportunity to get the team totally and utterly prepared and fit for each match. You have to look at the time between games, the preparations, the ability to work out game plans and think that we should be very well prepared for each of our opponents. I have said many times that it has often felt like he hasn’t had much time with his team to get across his ideas and then shortly after he joined we went in to lockdown. I pondered back then whether or not he was cursed but I guess he lifted the FA Cup so obviously not.

I’ve also thought that despite the fact we’re not in Europe, the lack of matches hasn’t really felt like that much of an advantage so far this season. It’s always felt like we’ve played opponents with more time than us in matches – or at least the same amount of time. But after the game tomorrow that can no longer be said. After tomorrow there are no excuses for the team from a fatigue and game plan perspective. So I am expecting big performances from these Arsenal players. We just have to get through tomorrow unscathed.

One really good way of minimising the odds of losing or dropping points in a game, is of course red cards and the stats for the number of cards we’ve had under Arteta are mad. We’ve had 14 red cards since he took over, which is six more than any other team. But we aren’t a dirty team and when you think of some of those red cards some of them feel very stupid. The Pepe headbutt against Leeds, David Luis being sent off for the tiniest of touches against Wolves, Gabriel with a trigger-happy Stuart Atwell against Man City – there are a lot of them that are either silly from our perspective, or rather galling in terms of refereeing decision.

It was something he mentioned after the game on Thursday and admitted it is a concern for us, but I’m just wondering what you can do about it. The Xhaka red card was about him being left exposed and you could probably replace the player with somebody better, but Xhaka isn’t a guy who gets lots of cards. There’s a narrative about Xhaka that is developing amongst some Arsenal fans that every week he’s a liability, but I don’t think that’s the case when you look at the numbers. He brain farts more than anyone else, we need an upgrade, but it’s not like he’s had all 14 red cards (Xhaka has three of those 14, Luiz has three, Gabriel two). There just seems to be a way that we attract these sending’s off but I do wonder if referees like to dish out a card a little bit quicker for us. You can’t argue with many of the straight reds, but Partey’s first challenge on Thursday was a touch and go whether it was worthy of a yellow. The same for Gabriel’s second against City. But the refs on both occasions quickly get out the card. Is it that they are quicker to produce for an Arsenal player than others? It will be interesting to see against Burnley tomorrow, because they are a ‘strong tackling’ side and like to get stuck in. If you put a ‘if that was an Arsenal player’ lens on tomorrow, how many ‘strong tackles’ from Burnley players will be treated the same if they were in red and white?

I’m not saying that it is a conspiracy and the refs are deliberately looking to punish us, but if you take into account what Xhaka said when he was interviewed in the Athletic before Christmas, about a referee saying “you know Granit, sometimes he loses his head”, that suggests some kind of  unconscious bias going on. That I can believe.

“These Arsenal players aren’t bad guys, but they do stupid things, so I’ll get my card out to show them that their stupidity will be punished”

That’s an unintentional bias that exists because of a pre-formed narrative in the minds of a human. We’re all guilty of our own unconscious biases and I just wonder if our reputation is preceding us in that respect. Maybe it is based on a player side and if you take somebody like Xhaka with his reputation out then you get referees who don’t get their cards out as much? In that case it isn’t the player that is the problem but more that we are also removing the narrative from the team.

I guess that’s also why I am hoping we can get somebody in this window, because it shows the potential start of that. Xhaka and Partey will be back after tomorrow and so you could argue that we don’t need another midfielder after tomorrow’s game, but if we’re looking at bringing forward a summer move and signing a Xhaka replacement whilst Xhaka is still around so we can bed him in for next season, then that seems eminently sensible to me.

Whatever happens, there’s nothing we can do for tomorrow and I suspect we’ll look to patch up the team that played on Thursday. The hope is that Tomiyasu by playing has been able to run off a little of the injury he had, which is the same for Smith Rowe, but we’ll need to be ready for a Burnley side who will look to sit in and frustrate.

More on that tomorrow for the match preview. Catch you then.

But by all accounts and from what I have read online, we can be very proud of a resolute Arsenal performance that absolutely keeps us in this tie going back to The Emirates next week. That’s all I said I wanted – to keep the score respectable – and we got more than that on a tough night for those men in blue.

It felt like it was going to be one heck of an uphill struggle even before the game; Ødegaard was confirmed to have contracted COVID, Emile Snith Rowe and Tomiyasu were also still out, which meant whilst Arteta went as strong as he could, that still included the likes of Cedric in the team. Only for the first 10 minutes though and his injury gave Chambers the opportunity for the remainder of the game and by all accounts it sounds like he acquitted himself well for the rest of the game. Given the fact Tomiyasu is a style of defender which is like a hybrid right back and centre half, I’ve always thought Chambers should be the natural understudy for that role, so to hear him play that well with our backs to the wall against an opponent like Liverpool, I do wonder if Arteta might think twice about using him more from now on.

He might be forced to on Sunday, given our injuries and players missing, because Xhaka’s clumsy red card means he won’t be there and that now places an immense strain on the squad. Xhaka, Tomiyasu, Elneny, Partey, Aubameyang, Pepe, ESR could all be missing on Sunday now and in a North London Derby to have that many players out is a massive disadvantage.

But our players should be proud and take confidence from last night. They were made to suffer for a massive chunk of the game because of Xhaka’s red card and those that remained really fought well against a – surprise surprise – practically full strength Liverpool side. As for the red card itself, I’ve watched it and it’s a difficult one. Back in the old days I would have said “last man, got to go” and so it’s probably a red card. I think it’s ‘denying a goal scoring opportunity’ and so he probably should go. But I’ve seen some suggest it was ‘no attempt to play the ball’ which has seen him off. If it is the latter than that’s nonsense because his eyes were on the ball and there’s no way he’s trying to wipe out the player. But There didn’t look to be any other players near and I think if Jota controls it then he probably slots it away. It was clumsy, it could have made for a painful night, it was Xhaka. Xhaka gonna Xhaka but I can’t really go in hard on either side of the debate as I didn’t watch it much in real time and have only seen certain pockets. 

So down to 10 men for most of the match and I turned my phone upside down so I couldn’t see any of the inevitable pings to let me know we were battered and the tie was over. But it never came. I didn’t hear a peep from my phone. Then looking at full time all I saw was positive responses and proud Gooners. It made for a wonderful rest of the evening, that’s for sure, and going in to the North London Derby, there is a bit more positivity after the Nottingham Forest debacle. 

The fallout from the injuries, COVID and suspensions, however, may loom large with the derby on Sunday. We now look really depleted and with no Xhaka in the midfield, we’re once again left scratching our heads as to who plays in there and how. More pondering on that front tomorrow though. For now, I’m a happy man and we still have hopes of a cup final on the horizon.

Catch you all tomorrow.

That makes sense. Bones obviously need time to stitch themselves back together and the last thing we want is a player doing what happened to Partey when he returned too early against Tottenham last season and then lost him for an extended period of time thereafter. We can all see what an impact that had on the start to Partey’s career and so perhaps the coaching staff have learned their lesson and are being ultra cautious. For us it means we are without a senior player a little longer than we might like, but better that we get him back in a fit enough mould to slot in to that midfield by the time January rocks around. Because January ain’t gonna be a fun month. The games are hard, we have players missing at the stupid AFCON, plus it’s the time in the year when injuries start to kick in anyway. At least that’s what I always think.

It’s normally in the new year that I start to think that the season starts to become more of a slog. I don’t know why in my mind I’ve arbitrarily staked in the ground that Christmas period, but after that it always feels like you’re hearing about teams picking up knocks, about the fatigued starting to kick in, etc. Obviously the fact the FA Cup is added in to the mix as a competition has an impact, but for those teams fighting in Europe many are fighting on multiple fronts and have been playing twice a week since September. The season is nine months long but it is when it hits that halfway stage that I start to think about those teams like Leicester and West Ham perhaps having to contend with a schedule of games that is a little more intense than the size of their squad dictates. That’s the hope, anyway, because by the time that February comes around what we’re normally seeing is that rotation of squads is a little more difficult as you get in to knockout phases of the competition. Normally in the Europa League we would see Arsenal play a rotated team in the group stages. West Ham, for example, have been playing a string team in those stages, perhaps because their squad isn’t big enough for the manager to have faith they can win games with a fully rotated squad. I wonder if that cadence of regular games this side of Christmas has helped those West Ham players get in to the swing of playing more regularly, flowing a little better and perhaps that is why they are doing so well. The challenge for them will be maintaining it because it will be some feat on their part if they have the same team lining up each week between now and the end of the season. IF they do then their med team have obviously found some kind of elixir of life and so fair play to them. But if they do start to break down, that is where we need to be able to capitalise.

We don’t exactly have the highest calibre of squad though, which is why players like Granit Xhaka are – despite what half the fanbase seems to believe – very important to our cause. Xhaka is an experienced head, he is a ball retention merchant, a player with whom Arteta relies on and has faith in. He is the archetypal footballer that Arteta can slot in to his system and he will do exactly what he’s told, stand in the ‘zones’ that Arteta needs, cover space and cut out the lanes that Arteta wants cut out. He might not be everyone’s cup of tea and indeed, the number Xhaka brain farts he does in a season maddens even the most patient of us all, but I cannot believe anybody who would tell me that where we are right now and with the squad we’ve got right now, we are better with him injured and not there to support the team.

So if he can return ahead of schedule and maybe play some minutes over the hectic Christmas period, then all the better for the Arsenal, as far as I’m concerned. With the fixtures coming as thick and fast as they are right now we are going to need all hands on deck and like him or lump him, Xhaka is another hand on that deck.

I think I might leave it there fore today. Little bit of a shorter one, but hopefully we get a bit of a team update at some stage today ahead of the lunchtime kick off on Saturday. Have yourself a lovely ol’ time and I will catch thee in the morrow.

The fact that the timeline says full training by the new year says to me that if he’s returning on 2nd January to full team training, he’s probably not going to be match fit until middle of January. By then we’ll have had the City game at home and Tottenham away, not to mention an FA Cup third round tie to be thinking about. It’s a tough one and although there are plenty of people who look at Granit Xhaka with an element of frustration, you can’t convince me that a midfield of Sambi Lokonga and Ainsley Maitland-Niles have the tools and the experience to cope with whatever midfield City put out.

Maybe we should be looking at that type of a game as a ‘free hit’ anyway as City aren’t playing in the same field as us for most of the season, but with them only three points ahead of us as it stands, there are a few Gooners starting to look up and wonder how far this young team can take us, after the impressive win against Leicester. We all saw how different the football was with none of our new signings and a heavily impacted side against Brentford, Man City and Chelski at the start of the season, so take out Partey and Aubameyang from our line up and how much are we impacted if we were playing City right now with the side we have got?

Perhaps not as much, because most of those others players should – lack of injuries permitting – be available to play in that game, but it feels like at the moment we have a good thing going on and taking even one puzzle piece out of this team feels like it could disturb the balanced equilibrium it feels like we have right now.

We are in a good run of form at the moment but as Wenger always said with confidence being like going up stairs and going down in a lift i.e. difficult to build and easy to break down – it feels like we need to see this collective of 11 players playing for a sustained period of time to be able to get our confidence at a point where if we get knocked down by defeat we can get back up again. That’s why I’m so keen to see Xhaka return because he is a senior pro – despite his failings – and having him in the team and somebody like Lokonga or Maitland-Niles covering space and able to put the hard yards in that he won’t, feels like an important thing for January.

Hopefully the club are being overly cautious and there is a chance he’ll return over the Christmas period to get himself up and running for that tough month of January we’re going to have.

As for Tierney, well, the benefit of the form of Nuno Tavares is that it makes absolutely no sense to rush Tierney back this weekend for the Watford game. And besides, the form of the marauding Portuguese is such that he probably deserves another start anyway, so it feels like the right call to be keeping him in, telling Tierney to get himself ready for that Liverpool game because I think Tierney in that game is probably a better selection choice than playing a raw Tavares against the Liverpool front three.

Regardless of who starts, however, it’s good to see that we have that option at left back and if we could only replicate that on the other side, then you’d be looking at our current situation and be rather excited for us longer term. Certainly if we can get back in to Europe next season. The challenge that we are all hoping clubs like West Ham have is that you can’t go deep in multiple competitions unless you have a squad that is capable of rotation and to go deep you don’t just need the bodies, you need players that when they fill the void left by first teamers through injury, the team still looks solid. The nightmare we had when Tierney got injured and we played Xhaka at left back basically cost us a Europa League final against United and so the club have learned their lesson in that position. But if we’re playing in Europe next season there needs to be a Tavares-type player on that right hand side too.

But that’s a concern for next summer, because for the remainder of this season we’re basically playing once a week bar the League Cup games, in which we’ve rotated anyway. So it’s not something we need to be too concerned with just yet.

Other than that there’s not really a lot else going on. Arteta will speak to the press today ahead of the game on Sunday and give us his thoughts on a few bits and bobs in the world of football as well as the mood in the camp. I wonder what he makes of the video on the clubs site showing the team running drills? I guess it’s probably just one of the modern technologies they are used to, but I found it interesting to see the lines on the pitch. My old mate Mike McDonald did a piece on Le-Grove a while back talking about Juego de Posicion and explains it better than me, but the pictures from that drone footage showed exactly what Mike was talking about. That’s heart-warming actually because it is clear that Arteta is taking Pep’s philosophy and it’s also clear that the players are buying in to it. If he can take what Pep knows and sprinkle some of his own creativity and imagination, maybe we can start to get a little excited.

But it’s still early days, only a year ago we were wondering if he’d lost the plot, so I am going to try my damndest to reign it in a little bit and not get carried away. But blow me isn’t it more exciting to feel like this than we have been feeling at times over the last three years, eh?

Catch you all tomorrow.

That’s a bitter pill to swallow because as I said yesterday Partey will be out in January and whilst the club have only just gone through a big transfer splurge and so shouldn’t have to think too far ahead in terms of the market, I really hope they are starting to look at options for January, because the fixtures aren’t easy and as it stands we’ll be going in to January without our first choice midfielders.

It puts in to contrast just how much things can swing because let’s just look at the opening few week’s of the season. Abject performances, lacking creativity and with a collective of players who failed to convince anyone. We fast forward a few week’s and we’re all on a high because the team has almost completely changed. Now imagine the NLD without Xhaka and Partey, then maybe somebody like Odegaard, if he got injured. It suddenly doesn’t feel as convincing that we pick up the win as easy, does it?

I said yesterday that Xhaka’s injury could be a blessing as much as it is a curse, because it gives opportunities to others to step up, or for Arteta to lean in to the 4-3-3 a little more, but it has also highlighted to me that we are a mini injury crisis away from having to rely on those squad players who were so bang average at the beginning of the season.

There’s no need to hit the panic button yet though. Because we aren’t in Europe we have less probability of picking up a mass crisis due to overloading of football matches. Impact injuries are always going to happen and as long as we don’t have a full treatment room for any period of time, one would hope that we can cope with the odd player breaking down. But Edu and Arteta should be very mindful of how our current situation of joy and higher morale across the club in staff and fans can turn south quickly. Momentum is essential and we need to keep up these wins not just because of the obvious benefit of points and rising up the table, but also because if we do get that knock from player x, or a suspension from player y, those one or two players coming in will find it a lot easier to slot in to a winning team. I think it was Paul Merson who used to say you don’t get tired when you’re in a winning team. I suspect that’s the same in terms of squad players getting themselves back up to speed even if they haven’t played as much. If the engine all around you is purring, perhaps you lift your game a little, even if you don’t have as much rhythm of playing matches consistently.

The good news right now is for Sambi and he’s been speaking about how he got his transfer to Arsenal, how Kompany was the one that was always asking more from him, to push him to step up, which he did, then that earned him his move. I’ve got to say I like this kid a lot. We all know he was captain at Anderlecht and perhaps that has given him the opportunity to step up, but the way he articulates himself, his presence o the pitch, his ability on the ball and progressive passing, it ticks all of the boxes as far as I’m concerned. Everyone is assuming that he will take over from Xhaka and perhaps that will be the case this Saturday, but don’t be surprised if he doesn’t get as much game time as we all think. I don’t think he’s playing every game between now and January, anyway, because I suspect Arteta will be very  mindful of putting too much pressure on. But Sambi has spoken about how he spoke to Arteta about the club which was important, but he then called us ‘legendary’ and said ‘Arsenal are Arsenal’ in terms of needing to be convinced to join. That sort of stuff is great to hear. I hope he has a long and successful career with us.

We’ve got some great young leaders in the side. Sambi looks like he’s one with the way he speaks and conducts himself. Odegaard was apparently helping Tomiyasu before his debut, as the Japanese international has already pointed out in a couple of media sources, Gabriel looks like that natural leader at the back and if you’re sat anywhere near Ramsdale’s goal on matchdays you can hear him barking and cajoling the players in front of him. Saka and Smith Rowe look like quieter lads, but their personalities with the ball and the assertiveness in how they receive it and always show for it, is leadership the likes of which we saw in Fabregas. Aubameyang is the official captain and there has been plenty of question marks over him, but he’ll be a guy who will add experience and support for the younger players and that can only be a good thing, as long as he keeps that happy face on.

I said it after the game in the match review and earlier this week, but it just ‘feels’ like we have a likeable team. Last season those players I have talked about were not here or in the side and instead we had Leno, Luiz, Willian, Elneny, regularly playing. Not exactly the same ‘characters’ or lads that you feel like you can see a bright future under, is it? But this collective of players feels more likeable to me. Of course this is still very early in their careers. We have gutted the team and put a new one in since the international break and there will come a time this season in which they go through a bad patch of form. Maybe it is around the corner and about to hit us. But I hope that these players react in the appropriate way that will get us back on the horse as soon as we’ve fallen off it.

For now we continue ton ride high though. Let’s hope that carries us through to Saturday and we can take that momentum to the South Cost when we face Brighton.

Until tomorrow.

That’s the situation he finds himself in today as reports are emerging that he’s done some ligament damage and will be out for between six to eight weeks. It’s a big blow for the manager who clearly defines Xhaka as one of his main lieutenants will now be out for a period of time.

Now, there will be some Arsenal fans that will see this as a relief, particularly with the red mist moment that we all saw against Man City about a month ago. ‘Xhaka doing Xhaka things’ many of us said – me included – and the frustration we all had was fairly evident. But what we got on Sunday with Xhaka’s impressive display alongside Partey, is actually closer to what we saw last season when Xhaka and Partey were deployed in that double pivot in front of our back four. We know he can’t run. We know that when in a footrace he is going to lose, we also know that he can slow down the play with too many touches. But we should all also know by now that positionally he is a man who Arteta can rely on. He takes up space to receive the ball from defenders, or in positions on the field where you will often find the ball dropping for a 50-50. Yes, in a duel he is less likely to come out on top; his footwork isn’t great and mobility limits him to stretch out a leg to nick the ball away like Partey does. But what he does deliver is the ability to keep play ticking over and when we had Arteta at his best many people said the same about him. I remember a few times calling Arteta ‘The Metronome’ and I don’t think I coined that phrase, I think it was used by many others, and so I wonder if that’s why Arteta is so insistent in keeping Xhaka in this team and why he came straight in on Sunday.

So now he is without one of his main men and a player with whom we don’t have a direct replacement who can do what he does. Perhaps that is a good thing. For every great thing Xhaka does, it feels like there is an equal and opposite reaction. The reality is that Xhaka probably has two to three brain farts a season in two to three matches. Three matches out of 50 is not a lot though, from a statistical perspective, it’s just that the mistakes he makes  nearly always end in something catastrophic for the team (sending off against Man City, booting the ball of Chris Wood away to Burnley last season, sending off against Burnley at home, etc). So whilst I  – like you – feel exasperated by Xhaka at times, in the main what we get is a steady player with whom we know the limitations, but when put alongside a Rolls Royce player like Partey, we see just how good he can be.

Where does that leave us then? Well, I think inevitably it means more game time for Sambi Lokonga and that may be a good thing. He’s impressed so far, he’s looked strong, athletic, great on the turn when he receives the ball, plus he is a very progressive passer. He ‘feels’ more dynamic than Xhaka, but if he is now going to be the main man, then we really are going to see whether he can make the step up on a regular basis. Eight weeks takes us to the end of November/beginning of December. The AFCON is in January and Partey will be off for that, so providing Sambi keeps his good form going he could see a lot more game time than I think most of us expected.

That puts a lot of pressure on a kid with whom I suspect Arteta thought he’d give between five and 10 starts to this season in all competitions, then probably another 10 to 15 appearances from the bench. Suddenly he’s looking at making him his main man and that means that the allowance for mistakes is reduced. I hope that he is up for it. He seems like a character who can handle responsibility, as evidenced by the fact he was Anderlecht captain last season, but the Premier League is an ‘all eyes’ competition and it will be incumbent on Arteta and the coaching staff to look after him and also his confidence. We’ve seen examples every season where the confidence of a player can impact their performance and the need to ensure that when that dip comes from Sambi, that he is well supported and can ride the storm and come out the other side, will be so very important.

There are of course other options in the shape of Maitland-Niles and Elneny and perhaps Ainsley will see a bit more time in midfield, just as he wanted, but I suspect it’ll be a little more of Mo Elneny too, much to my annoyance. He’s a nice enough and likeable guy, but it feels like we’ve been talking about his limitations for a decade, so to still be talking about it is somewhat frustrating.

Hopefully he’s  in at fifth choice for central midfield though. I can handle that if you’re saying it’s Partey, then Xhaka, then Sambi, then Ainsley, then Elneny. That should hopefully mean we’re looking at League Cup and maybe a January third round FA Cup fixture for the Egyptian and I’m fine with that. But I still think Arteta is going to use him in Premier League games from the bench. The hope is that he doesn’t just chuck him in thinking he can replicate that United away game from last season. It feels very much like an outlier to me, but perhaps it depends on the opponent?

Whatever Arteta decides, he has options, he has his players, they should have confidence and for a long time in a while we should be going in to games expecting to see a proper Arsenal team. Perhaps he’ll use it as an opportunity to start implementing the 4-3-3 more often, with two number eights in the shape of Smith Rowe and Odegaard behind Pepe, Saka and Aubameyang? We saw that against Burnley and whilst I’ve been spending my time talking about somebody to sit alongside Partey in a double pivot, maybe this gives Arteta the opportunity to deploy that revised set up on a more regular basis?

Hopefully we get the same side last weekend as we do this weekend away to Brighton. 

Catch you all tomorrow with some more thoughts.