And were it not for David Raya, we may well have succumbed, but having him back in the side showed the difference you can make when you have a world-class keeper in between the sticks. I actually don’t think Kepa was that bad last weekend – he’s just not Raya, who exuded calmness and composure with the ball at his feet, but also followed it up with some fine saves too. His first, from a pretty splendid ‘Paul Merson Pass’ outside of the ball splitter by Diomande to put Araujo in, was finger-tippingly brilliant. It crashed the underside of the bar, but he had a vital touch, which enabled the ball to avoid rippling the net. And who knows what direction the match might have changed into, had that gone in?

As a quick aside, the shooter in that instance must have had something on the referee, because quite how Araujo managed to avoid a booking for accumulation despite making upwards of seven fouls last night is beyond me. He had obviously read the Jordan Ayew Book of Impunity with Refs, because even when players like Madueke exasperatedly asked “How many?”, he still got away with one or two more.

It felt like a game in which we really did have to ‘huff and puff’ last night. We were in control in terms of ball-dominance and xG chance creation, but Sporting did have their moments. When you look at the stats, it was pretty 50-50, and so as the clock ticked down to the end of the game, my nerves were more about avoiding a last-minute sucker-punch as we have on a number of occasions already this season, rather than winning it. So when Martinelli shimmied himself into enough space to dink it to Kai in the middle of the penalty box to slot home, I was over the moon. It was a rarely-seen Martinelli pass; we don’t usually expect to see him being the provider to that type of goal, but more the man running on to it. It was a really deft chip and quite impressive from the Brazilian. So too, was Havertz’s touch and finish, which was certainly very clinical, and you could see how pleased he was with his celebration. The run was the type of run that you expect from Havertz when Gyokeres is on the pitch; he is playing as a false nine as Gyokeres occupies another defender, he finds the space in between centre-halves, which enables him to be picked out with a run from the D to the penalty spot, completely unmarked. Kai will not give us the vision or passing range in midfield that Odegaard or Eze can, but as a second striker, he has a big impact.

Elsewhere in the team, we had some decent, if not spectacular, performances. I thought Rice was superb again in his midfield duel-winning role, winning his one tackle on the night, making four interceptions, and recovering the ball 13 times. Any nerves about his lingering fatigue were dispelled last night, and that was great. Big Gabi had his hands full with Luis Suarez, but he came through 90 minutes and, like Rice, I am just pleased we had no lingering effects from what was clearly a niggling knee injury on Saturday. I thought White looked shaky in some of the ‘big’ moments – like that chance from Diomande to Araujo – but if you look at his performance as a whole, he did alright I thought. Plus we got 70 minutes out of Odegaard, which is positive, although his performance felt like a pretty rusty guy. He wasn’t really able to impact the game at all, and of all of his 48 passes (out of 59) that came off, I’m struggling to remember how many really did any kind of significant damage. It’s tough when the guy you come on for does what Kai did, but this season has certainly been one in which substitutes have made the biggest impact. I can’t remember the exact number, but I think we’re close to 40-odd involvements from Arsenal players this season. I think that’s miles more than any other team, so it really does show the positive impact that Mikel Arteta’s changes have made this season.

Understandably, Mikel Arteta was delighted last night, but I do wonder if he will continue to analyse why we have found it so difficult to break teams down. It isn’t as if Sporting sat in a low block last night, I didn’t think. There was space there for us to exploit, but it felt like we chose safety first in ball retention, which, I guess, given this is the first of a two-legged affair, is understandable. But I did feel at times that we could have got more out of the likes of Trossard and Madueke, who blew hot and cold last night I thought. We all know that when Gyokeres doesn’t get service he is basically a passenger, which is why I wanted a little more from our wide forwards. And that left-hand wide-forward slot continues to be an enigma, because it feels like no player wants to step up and make it his own. Martinelli was pretty poor against Southampton, but then comes on and made a key impact last night. Trossard had an indifferent game, but if he doesn’t start at the weekend, I’d imagine that he’ll come on and play well from the bench against Bournemouth. It’s frustrating, but equally a bit of a relief that you know these guys can impact from the sidelines when coming on. Or maybe it is just that Martinelli loves the Champions League? That’s six goals and two assists in 512 minutes – he’s averaging a contribution every hour -Harry Kane averages one every 70 minutes, for context.

So it’s a victory, it’s a commanding position in the Champions League, but it’s back to domestic focus immediately now, because Bournemouth on Saturday lunchtime is already filling my stomach with a bit of dread/fear/butterflies. Catch you all tomorrow for some more thoughts as we build up to that.

Phew.

With him returning, having played an hour in the first game and 45 in the second, one would hope that you could chalk this Interlull up as a very positive one that has put minutes in the legs without beasting our hybrid midfielder/forward. It means he can make the relatively short flight back home today, maybe have a rest tomorrow, then get back in training on Thursday and Friday and be ready for selection on Saturday against Southampton.

I’m not sure whether he’ll start, though. If we’re thinking about the matches that lie ahead for us, I think Havertz getting some minutes, but not starting against Southampton, makes sense. Perhaps he comes on as a second-half sub and does 20 minutes or so. This is a guy who returned from a year out earlier this calendar year, played a couple of matches, then broke down again, so I suspect Arteta and the medical team will be acutely aware of this and the need to build him up. He’s played 14 times this season and has just 524 minutes to his name for Arsenal, with his recent performances being:

• 66 minutes against Man City in the League Cup
• 21 minutes against Leverkusen in the Champions League at home
• 61 minutes against Everton in the Premier League
• 16 minutes against Leverkusen away in the Champions League
• 62 minutes against Mansfield in the FA Cup

From those numbers, you can clearly see that the club has been very carefully managing Havertz’s minutes. There’s been a clear pattern that has developed. It does make me wonder, though: When will they feel he’s ready for 90-minutes?

Arteta was very vocal in his praise for Havertz just over a year ago, describing him as a ‘powerhouse.’ The football gods saw fit to absolutely make him eat those words, because it was literally a day or two later that he picked up that injury which basically kept him out of the team for the rest of last season. Since then, his ‘robustness’, as Arteta put it, has been blown away by all of these injuries he’s picked up. It means that Arsenal inevitably have to be careful with him, but there must come a point soon at which he’s asked to play a full 90.

If I were to guess, I would posit the theory that they are building him up for that City game. He’s just played an hour for Germany and then 45 minutes. That’s two in a short time frame, and certainly, when you look at the numbers above, it is more than he’s been playing with Arsenal within a week since returning from injury. That’s why I think he will be used sparingly against Southampton, maybe as a sub, with the idea of him being built up to play in the Bournemouth and City game. It’s just a hunch, but I get the feeling that Gabby Jesus is told to start against Southampton and see if he’s still got something to give for us against a Championship opponent, then Big Vik is told to start the two legs against Sporting, in the hope that Arteta leans into the ‘vibes’ like he did with Eze and the Scum. Then, for Bournemouth at home and City away, either side of the Sporting home game, Havertz is the man. I’m projecting, of course, there’s no way it will pan out exactly like this, but I am imagining him playing around the 70-80-minute mark against Bournemouth, then also doing similar numbers against City a week later.

And I think that seems like a very sensible thing to do.

Elsewhere, Thomas Tuchel had his press conference yesterday ahead of England’s meaningless friendly against Japan, and he clarified the situation with Rice and Saka. Unsurprisingly, it is those two who are getting heat from certain members of the gutter press, and Tuchel was pressed on it yesterday, for which I was pleased that he spoke out about the fact that both had been sent home. Both wanted to play; both were disappointed not to be able to; but the interests of player welfare by an England manager have been taken into account, unlike the previous incumbents of that role. He also used his words very carefully, being very deliberate in describing the Saka and Rice situation as ‘narrative’. Because that’s what this has been since they were sent home; we’ve all known they’ve been in the fabled ‘red zone’ for a while, but there are corners of the British press who hunt for stories and mischief-making angles, regardless of the reality. The reality is that the England manager has realised there is no benefit in risking these players breaking down with a few months of the season to go, so playing them in a meaningless friendly and risking a fatigue injury that could keep them out for a few months benefits absolutely nobody.

I do think the Noni Madueke situation probably strengthened Arsenal’s hand a little in telling the England camp that it might be best to return. Thankfully, Tuchel confirmed yesterday that it doesn’t seem that bad, and we got a HandOfArsenal message on the socials last night that also confirmed it. Apparently, he’s aiming for Sporting/Bournemouth and given one’s first thought when they see a player in a knee brace after the game is that his season is ‘done’, this is a real bonus. Eze too, in that same message, was thought to be hopeful he could return earlier than is expected. I suspect they’ll be looking to see if they can have him ready to play a part in the City game, and if that is the case, then that too is a bit of a bonus. I don wonder if that means that Odegaard might get more minutes this weekend coming that I originally thought, but let’s save that prep for the Easter weekend countdown.

For now, I will bid you adieu for the day, and I’ll be back tomorrow as we start to look ahead at that Southampton match up and hopefully the healthy return of those players still with their respective international teams.

Laters peeps.

Speaking of predictions, shall we have a little look to see what the media are saying ahead of this game at Wembley, eh?

Joe Cole has said he thinks it’ll be an Arsenal win, but Wayne Bridge and Carlton Cole think it’ll be City. Merse has said he thinks we’ll do it with a 2-1 win. Timmy Sherwood thinks it’ll be City, whilst Lewis Jones on Sky Sports thinks it’ll be a draw with City winning on penalties. So there’s a fair bit of plumping for City going around and whilst yesterday I saw the chat rooms of City fans being less upbeat, I can see why. Where the FA Cup is a competition we often joke about being ‘ours’, this one has given plenty of pain over the years. My first cup final after I had my season ticket was the infamous one against Birmingham in 2011 and I can still vividly remember the Szsesny and Koscielny complete cock up at the back to see Obefemi Martins win it for them. I was there for the 3-0 defeat against City and seeing Mustafi just let the ball drop over his shoulder for Aguero to do us over in 2018 and so my feelings going into League Cup games at Wembley are very different to when we’re going there for FA Cup games.

It’s so weird the way this sort of stuff plays out over time, as if there is some kind of hex upon us in the League Cup. The players were different in 2007 when we lost to Chelsea as Drogba bullied us; they were different in 2011, they were different in 2018 and they will be different this weekend. But sometimes it feels as though the footballing gods just like to f*ck with you a bit with stuff. So I’m not overly convinced that we’ll beat City on Sunday, but I do know that hopefully we will give them a better game than that awful showing in 2018. I mean, for starters, I think we’ve got notable upgrades with Raya for Ospina, Saliba for Mustafi and Bellerin for Timber/White. And there’s no square peg in a round hole with Chambers at left back either!

This is a bit of a shorter one today, mainly on account of wanting to save some thoughts for the build up tomorrow and Sunday, but I’ll be back to have a bit of a review of the two press conferences tomorrow, so if you fancy joining me on here then I’d love to have you.

Let me know what you think re: Havertz v Gyokeres in the comments.

Catch you tomorrow.

The problem is, it takes two to tango, and Bayer Leverkusen were in no mind to make it an open and easy game for us.

I guess where I’m at this morning after that 1-1 draw in the Bayer Arena, is that it’s a decent draw and leaves us with the minor advantage of home soil for what effectively becomes a one-off knock out game now. That’s how I reflected on it to The Management when she came home last night and said “What does this mean now?” after I told her the result. With the abolition of the away goal rule, the home leg for us becomes the equivalent of an FA Cup round; there’s no need for mental gymnastics, or the psychology of being a goal or two up – it’s just them versus us and if it’s level after 90, then we go to extra time, followed by pens.

And if you look at the way we played in the main last night, you probably have to say “I’ll take that”. We weren’t great. We had our passing structures all set up, Eze was finding pockets of space deeper, getting on the ball. But I suspect that’s exactly what Bayer wanted. He’s not a guy who dictates from deep. He’s somebody who comes alive in the final third and last night he was probably a little too far from it, a little too often, for my liking.

I thought he had a decent-ish game though, which cannot be said across our front line. Martinelli had the best chance right up until Kai put the ball on the penalty spot to draw us level late on in the game, but his shot off the bar was about it from the Brazilian; it was another frustrating one in which I don’t think he beat his man often enough (when he did he drew a yellow card from the Leverkusen right back, but he never built on that, which is disappointing), and spent a lot of time checking back and slowing the play.

Big Vik started brightly and used good strength within a minute to leave Andrick on a yellow (who might have seen red if his body check on the same Arsenal player would have been 30 minutes later instead of three) early on and he had a couple of early touches and lay-offs that I thought meant we might get one of the better performances from the Swede, but that soon faded away.

But the biggest surprise of the night was just how poor Saka was. In fact, he was so poor, that people on my social media timeline were questioning whether he was fit or not. The manager never alluded to anything in his post-match press conference, and in fact, he even hinted (or so I thought) at the reason Madueke came on being the poor performance of the Starboy. It was just so odd; he never beat his man, his passing was off, he was slowing the play down and it seemed like he’d run out of ideas. One or two of us have touched on the fact we need him to step up, because he’s our best player, but this season has so far been quite underwhelming. And yesterday’s game felt like it was a point in which more people are going to start questioning him.

His replacement Madueke made an instant impact. He was beating his man, which is his bread and butter, and the move which led to the penalty was excellent. I thought the pen itself was super soft, although in real time it looked like a stonewaller to me, but when you see the replay you’re getting quite annoyed that’s it’s given if it’s against you. Mind you, the referee was terrible all night and gave silly fouls and ridiculous yellows all night. Zubimendi’s and Havertz’s were a case in point; how on earth Kai got booked for standing his ground in the penalty box is beyond me. So maybe we shouldn’t be so surprised that he gave that penalty.

It was a relief to bag it, and kudos to Kai for the cajones to step up against his old club and deliver, but it felt like we’d got away with that draw in the end. The stats and efforts overall tell of a game pretty evenly matched though, so perhaps the draw is just the footballing gods appreciating and recognising that neither side really deserved it on the night. Leverkusen caught us cold at the beginning of the second half with their corner goal (Jover will have them all in doing lines on the blackboard this morning, for sure), we caught them out late with a bit of trickery from Noni. One cancelled the other out and we go again on Tuesday evening next week at The Emirates.

I’m not really sure what else there is to reflect on in that game. It wasn’t a classic, Bayer were set up to contain us and then hit us on the counter with Kofane proving a handful for a surprisingly shaky looking Saliba and Gabriel, but they didn’t really have a ton of work to do when you think back over the chances created. Raya made one worldie of a save, I’ve mentioned Martinelli’s crossbar challenge effort, but other than that I can’t remember either side creating a ton and deserving to win this game outright.

That needs to change in six days’ time though. And we need to see a better performance on Saturday too.

Back tomorrow as we look ahead to that tricky one against Everton.

We knocked him and his Palace side out already – why should City get a rule change? We’re all aware of the concept of being cup-tied, so why is it that now this rule shouldn’t apply? You knew the rules when you signed the player. We had it last season with Neto who couldn’t play the cup games. I remember when we signed Aubameyang and he couldn’t play in European competition. If you sign people midway through the season, they get cup-tied. It’s a ‘thing’.

Anyway, let’s get back to talking about The Arsenal, shall we?

What I’ve got on my mind this Thursday morning, is how Arteta has been using Havertz, because I quite like what he’s doing. Against Leeds at times it felt as though Havertz was playing as another striker with Big Vik. He was taking up positions that were closer to the Swede and I do think it unlocked something in Gyokeres. It may just be that we caught Leeds at a good time, it may well be that playing away from home affords Arsenal more space, but to my untrained eyes the closer distances between our two attackers meant that Viktor was more involved. He didn’t cut an isolated figure in between two centre halves. He was able to exchange a few more passes and although he did have a one-on-one that was blocked that he should have done better with, we are at least seeing a few more of those start to happen (think how he also got one against Forest).

I think the team are starting to realise that they need to get the ball quicker to him and in a one or two-touch move – think how quickly we went from back-to-front in the Kairat game with Havertz’s pass to Big Vik. That’s what the team are starting to do more of, and if he gets one or two of those a game, he might only bag with 50% of those chances, but if he gets a couple each match and scores at least one, we’re laughing.

I think Eze can be that direct and quick passer to Gyokeres as much as Kai. I also think we saw it for the Forest game earlier in the season. But the one guy I think maybe doesn’t suit what we need to do with Big Vik is Martin Odegaard. I’m just going on the eye test here, but we have all seen enough of Odegaard to know the player he is. I really like him, I loved his progressive passing approach against Leeds when he came on, but in recent weeks we’ve seen more of the Odegaard that drops too deep and is recycling possession, without much incision. Remember the video at the start of the season where the skipper sent a message to Big Vik, congratulating him on signing and saying, “if there’s anything I can do, just let me know”? Big Vik’s response was simple: “I just need assists”. The assumption was that naturally those two would click and that it would be Odegaard doing those balls in behind, but I think I’ve seen more in recent weeks from Havertz and Eze than I have from Odegaard when it comes to feeding the big man up top.

That doesn’t mean it can’t change, mind, and hopefully it will. Because Odegaard is going to get minutes, and he’s going to play. He’s Arteta’s ‘guy’ on the pitch; he’s the captain, so he will play more often than not. So we need him to be delivering for the strikers. I love the way he leads our press, but it’s time to step up and lean into the ‘chance creator’ role now. I think that means less of collecting the ball from deep. He needs to have a closer distance between himself and the three forwards. When he’s at his best he’s drifting over to that right hand side with Saka, but perhaps he needs to drift a bit more into central positions too?

Hey, I’m no tactical expert, I’m no genuis with data, but I am just a fan who see’s things with his eyes and I just think there’s a little more that Odegaard needs to do to foster that relationship with Gyokeres – and I say this because I think we’re going to see more of Havertz ‘AND’ Gyokeres, rather than Havertz ‘OR’ Gyokeres up top.

It’ll be interesting to see what he says ahead of the Sunderland game, because that one represents another chance to see where he’s going with the striking options, given that we now have all three of our main guys who have recently been on the scoresheet. I mentioned yesterday that some tricky games are coming up, including a midweeker against Brentford and away at The Scum, but having all of your strikers recently score in different comps is very valuable from a confidence perspective. Let’s just hope that some of the connections I believe I’m starting to see with this side can be maintained between now and the end of the season.

Right, I’m going to leave it there. Tomorrow I’ll start to look at Sunderland and what they might do to potentially hurt us on Saturday. Apparently, they’re missing Xhaka, which is a bit of a shame given that it would be nice for him to return to the Emirates, but in terms of handing us a small advantage, it certainly has an impact to have him missing, so let’s see how they’re feeling in tomorrow’s musings.

Catch you all then.

So to see one of their castaways, a guy who we all love and has become so integral to our squad, bag the winner to send us through to the League Cup Final, felt poetic to me. It felt like vindication. It was a visual manifestation of our superiority and having missed out on a few semi-finals in recent years, it felt like what we deserve for what this season has been so far.

We haven’t ‘won’ anything. We’ve got to a cup final. That’s it. But for some years now this team has been knocking down milestones. The final one has been to start winning trophies. And to do it against a team that really are quite odious and reprehensible as an entity – that was lovely.

There’s also nothing more lovely than a last second goal. Chelsea were pushing, they were probing, they left the back door open and Kai Havertz walked through it by rounding Sanchez. Oh, and Kai, the touching of the badge? “Chefs Kiss” my friend. Chef’s Kiss indeed.

I kind of predicted how this game was going to unfold yesterday morning, but I didn’t think it would be the level of cagey from Chelsea that essentially meant nothing. They offered basically nothing. We didn’t need to go and win this game. We had the goal advantage. We had the home advantage. We have the best defence in the country. So the onus wasn’t on us to go and force anything. Was I surprised that Chelsea were just happy to stay in their shape and offer little in that first half? Not really. We, of all fans, are aware from Anfield in 89 what you can do in a second half when the clock is ticking down. Rosenior had, I think, tried to invoke a little of that George Graham spirit; keeping it tight, make the first half a bit dull, let Arsenal force it, then pick them off on the counter.

The only problem with that, is that Arsenal were happy not to force it, we didn’t need to. So why turn this into an emotional game? Screw the neutrals. Screw people switching on to ITV and wanting to see a basketball match of end-to-end stuff. That’s not Arsenal – have you not been watching? We can – and do – have the ability to shut games down. Arteta has been trying to master this for some years now. Control, dominance, possession, minimise jeopardy. Sure, Enzo taking a shot from 30 yards produced a bit of something for Kepa to do, but if you’re relying on outside-of-the-box efforts from the likes of Marc Cucurella as your source of attempted joy, you’re going to be in a bit of trouble playing this Arsenal side.

We had our chances (Hincapie’s early effort was decent and maybe Martinelli could have made more of being put in behind in that first half), but this was a professional display that, personally, I loved. That’s because it felt like – and I put the Leeds game into this bracket when I say this – the Arsenal from earlier in the season. You know the one that just shut teams down and bagged themselves a clean sheet. Of late, we’ve seen us concede a few too many sloppy goals. Sure, there’s been some golazo‘s in there with the two United scored, or the second one from Kroupie at Bournemouth, but we’d let complacency creep in, and now it feels like those kinks have been ironed out. Arteta spoke about doing a bit of a reset a few weeks back. He talked about how some bad habits had started to emerge. But clearly this team has decided that our defensive identity, which has been such a feature of this season, needs to be restored, rather than the slightly helter-skelter results that we saw in parts in January.

It’s been a really testing period for these players, but they’ve come out of it with a cup final to look forward to. Declan Rice said in an interview afterwards that he’s ‘knackered’ and given Arteta went pretty strong with his starting XI yesterday, I can understand why. But I think we probably need to be mindful of that in the coming weeks and Arteta probably needs to be thinking about a bit of rotation. We now have four days until we play again on Saturday at home to Sunderland, so I think there is enough space there between matches for those players to refresh themselves. But after that it starts to pick back up again, because we play Brentford on Thursday, before Wigan on Sunday, which will 100% be the opportunity to sit some players down again. The good news thereafter is that we’ll have a solid week until we have to go to the Toilet Bowl to play the Scum, so I think that will be on Arteta’s mind as he and his staff start to plot the approach for the next block of games we have.

But for now it is job done, Kai the hero, Chelsea vanquished and another impressive Arsenal victory in what has – up until this point – been a great season so far for us. Let’s just hope it continues all the way to May.

I’ll be back with some more thoughts tomorrow as we prepare for the visit of the Mackems. Speak then.

We’ve all spoken this season about how impressive our squad is, how it hopefully will set us up for success, but so far this season the only way in which it’s really been able to be used is via the League Cup, and even then I think Arteta has prefered to go with a strong team given we’ve faced Premier League opposition most of the time. So today is another chance to see some of those rotational options get on the pitch and I think – with all due respect to Portsmouth – it should be one in which large-scale rotation is on the cards.

So for me, the team I’m lining up with today, if I was Arteta is:

1. Kepa
2. Salmon
3. Lewis -Skelly
4. White
5. Gabriel
6. Norgaard – DM
7. Eze – Left eight
8. Nwaneri – right eight
9. Gabriel Jesus
10. Madueke – right wing
11. Martinelli – left wing

I don’t think Arteta will do that, because I think he’ll play Merino, but I’ve left out Merino purely on the basis that he has played a lot of minutes this season compared to the others, and I think this game, of all of the upcoming ones, offers the most opportunity for large-scale rotation. It’s also why I’ve stuck in Salmon at right back, but again, I doubt Arteta will do that. If I go with what I ‘think’ will happen, it will be White at right back, Saliba and Gabriel at centre-half, Eze at right eight and Merino at left eight. There is an opportunity to surprise me though; we can also use the midweek League Cup game away to Chelsea as an opportunity for a fair bit of rotation too and I suspect Chelsea will go quite strong in that one, because it will allow Rosenior to very quickly get fans on side if they beat us over two legs and then also get to a final with a chance of winning a cup.

So if anything, that game in midweek probably needs a stronger XI, which means I hope Arteta goes a little harder on rotation today. I spoke yesterday about how Portsmouth is doing, having reviewed some of the available statistics, and it is a team that will likely play a long game, sitting compact and looking to counterattack on the break. In an ideal world, you need players who can probably operate in small spaces and I think Eze can definitely do that, I think Ethan has tight enough ball control and dribbling ability to do that, so given this game at Pompey might need a few more lock-pickers on the pitch, why not go with two creative eights, rather than Merino who is more of a physical, duel-winning, box-threat eight?

There’s probably also an element of protectionism of Ethan too, because I’ve seen a lot of fans online, on pods, videos, etc, all talking about Ethan and how we get him minutes. We all have a lot of affection for the boy, and we want to see him, hence why I think I – maybe like you – am desparate for him to be slotted in to this team today. Let’s see if it happens.

Let’s also see if we get some Havertz airtime too. That would be brilliant. By the sounds of it in Arteta’s pre-match press conference, the signs are good, so if I was a betting man, I’d probably say that there’s a job share opportunity with Jesus and Havertz today. If Jesus gets 70 minutes and we’re winning, let’s see if Kai can do 20 minutes up top. Much like Jesus’ minutes have been managed so far, we need to do the same with Kai, and so I’m looking at this game as the perfect introduction. It sounds like Arteta is judging by his comments. It will be so good to see him back, although I think most of us are reasonable in our expectations; this guy has basically been out for over a year, and expecting him to have any major impact in the coming weeks is probably a little too far-fetched. I’m looking at February-time for him probably being able to start a match, and by Marc,h he might start to look a little like the Kai of old. But for now, what we need is glimmers of the old Ka,i and with Big Vik looking more and more confidence-shorn, having another option from the bench feels like it’s a big plus for our aspirations this season.

For Gabby Jesus, this represents an opportunity to say to the manager, “Remember – I was THE guy at nine. So here’s my re-audition to be a starter,” and, given that Big Vik has looked anything but lethal in recent games, if he performs today, I think the clamour from the fanbase to start him will only grow. I’m getting there too. That Liverpool game feels like a bit of a watershed moment for Gyokeres; he wasn’t great, he didn’t offer a lot, and when Gabby Jesus came on, you saw a guy so much more involved. Yes, he also wasn’t great, but I think the challenge Big Vik has is that people can’t ‘see’ him. Everyone can ‘see’ Jesus because it’s the kind of wasp-like character he is across the pitch.

I want us to win this game. In previous seasons, our squad hasn’t been big enough to cope on multiple fronts, but given I’ve just been able to name an almost completely rotated XI that still looks very good and doesn’t even include Merino in it, that is evidence of the fact that we have the squad that should be able to challenge. And we’ve been knocked out in the third round of this competition too many times recently. Last season to United (which was a joke), the season before to Liverpool, two seasons before that it was Forest. In fact, since we won it in 2020, we haven’t progressed beyond the fourth round of this competition. It’s time to change that. And this team has the depth and quality to do it. Now go and prove it, Arsenal.

I’ll be back tomorrow as usual to do a bit of a de-brief, but for now, I’ll leave you with the rest of your Sunday and let’s hope we can do the business this afternoon.

Laters kids.

Thierry Henry – you are a true legend.

Back in today’s world of Arsenal now and last night we got some news filtering through that despite Kai Havertz being rumoured to have been targeting a return to first team football before the year is out in the next few games, he has apparently had another setback which will see him out until mid-January. At this point you just have to laugh at this. It is crazy the level of injuries we’ve had to deal with and then when you see details like this emerging from Sky Sports about the volume of injuries since the beginning of last season, you have to wonder if our ‘injury curse’ has basically just carried on from last year. Last season I called it The Cursed Season but you look at that chart and realised that you might even call this one that same situation too. In that same time Man City have had 18 fewer injuries, whilst Liverpool have had 33 fewer injuries and so it is actually a remarkable feat that we’re still in there fighting for the title, let alone leading the table going in to match week 15.

Havertz’s setback means that he’ll essentially have missed half the season through injury; it’s a bitter blow for a player who hardly ever got injured before last season and who Arteta described as a ‘machine’ just before he picked up his knock. And given his injury last season, as well as his injury this season, I am starting to wonder if we will ever get back the same Havertz. He might come back fully fit, for sure, but we have all heard stories about the psychology of players being out for so longer and never really fully recovering mentally for it. Robert Pires famously always seemed to run a little differently after his injury, I’m pretty sure Rosicky has talked about the impact of these injuries that kept him out for a long time, so what sort of player will Havertz be when he gets back?

Hopefully he can find his old form from when he was fit, because at the start of the season I seem to recall saying on one of the Same Old Arsenal pods that he was on course for a 20-goal season in the early stages of the season. He played 36 games in 2,800+ minutes last season and had racked up 15 goals in all competitions. I’m pretty sure he’d have got to 20 with another 15 games that season to do it. So it was a real shame when and how we loist him and it’s been a massive shame how we haven’t seen him since the opening day against United.

What his extended absence does do is give Gabriel Jesus a chance though. I think for sure he’ll get some more sub minutes against Everton tomorrow, but then I also think that he’ll get a start against Palace. If he can come through 60 or 70 minutes against the Eagles, then I’m 100% convinced that he’ll be making a start in one of the Christmas fixtures, which is not something I think any of us thought at the beginning of the season. His return to the team means we have cover and options to rotate in the absence of Havertz providing the Brazilian doesn’t have an impact, which feels massive, given the context of these next few weeks, as well as the calibre of opponents.

And that run of tough games starts tomorrow away to Everton, which as I mentioned yesterday, isn’t a place that we’ve had such a great time of inj recent years (one win in our last seven). We then play two games over Christmas that we drew at home last season in Brighton and Villa. Let’s also not forget that this time of the year hasn’t always been a happy one for us; two season’s ago we lost at home to West Ham and then away at Fulham. Admittedly we then went on a mega-run of winning game-after-game, but the Christmas period has always felt like a slog for The Arsenal and I’d be lying if I said to you that I don’t have any apprehension. Man City have an easy time of it; a pretty shoddy West Ham team tomorrow who they will batter, followed by a Forest Team who are currently in 16th and have lost eight games, not exactly looking anywhere near the same side as last season, followed by a Sunderland team who despite being in eighth right now, aren’t exactly flying when it comes to underlying metrics. It feels to me like they’re running out of momentum a bit (even though they won the derby last weekend) and by the time they play City on New Year’s Day, I suspect the momentum and vibes they’ve been channelling will probably be running low.

So what all of this means is that at a period in which our rivals will most likely get an easy ride, we’ll have to conquer some demons. And do it with one of our star strikers missing when we thought we’d be getting him back. The hope is that we have ourselves some better news over the festive period at the back, with Big Gabby rumoured to be looking at one of the games over Christmas as a possible return date. If he’s back for Villa, that will be massive because it will mean we hopefully get that main central defensive pairing back up and running for the new year and with Bournemouth away and Liverpool at home on the horizon in January, having him return to the heart of our defence gives not only confidence amongst the fanbase, but also amongst the players as well I suspect. We’ve been able to cover so far, I think Hincapie has come in and done great and hopefully will continue to do so, but there is no substitute for Big Gabby and his return will be very eagerly anticipated for all associated with Arsenal.

I’ll do a bit on team news, Everton, what we might see tomorrow and more in tomorrow’s preview, but for now I’ll bid you farewell for another day and hope your Friday goes great.

Catch you all tomorrow.

*A few moments later…*

Yeah, that was basically me last night as, post making and eating dinner, I had a little scroll on my timeline to see:

Arsenal continuing to assess Gabriel amid concerns 27yo could miss 1-2 months through injury sustained on international duty. Initial indications suggest #AFC centre-back set for spell out but tests ongoing
W/ @gunnerblog.bsky.social for @theathleticfc.bsky.social
www.nytimes.com/athletic/681…

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— David Ornstein (@david-ornstein.bsky.social) 18 November 2025 at 17:18

“Great” I thought. And just bloody predictable. But the night wasn’t done there, with Fabrizio then appearing on my timeline with:

Nagelsmann: “Kai Havertz had minor relapse on his injury, but overall he’s doing well”. “He is expected to return towards the end of the year”.

[image or embed]

— Fabrizio Romano (MIRROR) (@fabrizioromano.yopro20.com) 18 November 2025 at 17:29

Super stuff, if true and to be fair, he’s just repeating the words of the German national team coach. But honestly, this news bloody sucks. I think a lot of us were hoping to have some exciting news regarding a number of players, but this Havertz stuff is a massive blow and as my mate Cookie pointed out on his social media last night  the amount of time Havertz has missed in 2025 is mental. Given that about a week before he picked up his first big injury at the beginning of the year we had Arteta talking about how Havertz is a ‘genetic powerhouse‘ it makes me feel like sometimes we are bloody cursed. It’s like we’re not allowed to say anything, or think anything, because it could literally manifest itself into existence. The injuries we’ve had in the last year and a bit have been crazy and by the sounds of this – as yet to be confirmed by the club – series of setbacks, it shows no sign of abating just yet.

Just let us play football with our players. Please. It’s getting mental now.

Let’s not sugar goat this either; Big Gabi out for one, or two months, is huge. We’re on 19th November now, if it is worse-case scenario, he misses out until mid-bloody-January. There’s so many games during that time, it’s crazy to think that he’ll probably have missed the equivalent of a third of a season’s games if it’s the worst-case scenario.

It means that we need to find a solution and that solution, thankfully, comes in different guises. Piero Hincapie – who I’ll admit I wondered where and when he’s get game time – is suddenly a guy we’re all looking at and by the sounds of it he had a bit of a blinder for Ecuador last night. He played the full 90 so hopefully he’s back and ready to go for the North London Derby and given he comes across as a guy all built up as a warrior centre half, there can probably be no better option than having him in our defence on Sunday. I wonder if that’ll be as a left centre-half, or as a left back?

I seem to recall Arteta saying that he prefers not to disturb too many positions and shuffle people around (back when he said that I think it was related to Ben White playing centre half instead of right back) and given the positive news about Calafiori, perhaps the Italian will stick in at left back and we’ll have either Hincapie or Mosquera in to replace Gabi?

The good news is that I don’t think any of us could remotely predict who, but equally that either would be a very able deputy for the Brazilian. Mosquera has come in on a number of occasions, filled in on the left and the right of the centre half pairings. He’s proved good on the ball, with good distribution, an ability to ride tackles and a strong presence about him. Hincapie looks every bit the ‘warrior’ I already mentioned and whilst Mosquera might get the nod, I do have a sneaky suspicion that Hincapie will be the one. It kind of sets the right message too; he’s the left centre half understudy and Mosquera is nominally the right. He’s the guy who ‘feels’ like the better option to me, although I wouldn’t be unhappy with either. And that’s the good thing, right? Big Gabi is out, yet we have two defenders who look ace and who will see this as an opportunity to step up and prove their credentials. I don’t think we’ll be as solid as we are with Big Gabi, we’ll certainly not have the same goal threat in the opposition penalty box I don’t think, but I think defensively it hopefully won’t be as big a step down as the dark ol’ days of poor ol’ Rob Holding, bless him.

And so for today’s wrap up I think I’ll say only this: I am nervous as I always am with the North London Derby, I am rueful about the injuries sustained and the ‘setbacks’ again from another ludicrous international break, but I am hopeful and positive for a response this Sunday. We will need it.

Back tomorrow with more musings.

City, conversely, are being touted as ‘on the march’ now and you can sort of understand why Sky Sports want to hype it up. They don’t want any team having a procession to the title, but Guardiola certainly has shown he can be a force to be reckoned with previously.

The humbling City handled to Liverpool has a lot of people proclaiming City are ‘back’ and I must confess I gave a few little nervous feelings in my tummy, but if you look at what is happening to Liverpool, you do wonder whether them being close to ‘done’ in the title race is no big problem either. Certainly some of their crowing online fans being a little salty this morning is amusing. Their manager and his ‘no excuses’ or ‘excuses on injuries are for teams who don’t win’ is now looking rather amusing I have to say. But we do have to use Liverpool as a cautionary tale as to how things can swing so differently in this competition. We are four clear at the top which is great, but after the international break there are some really tough games and it isn’t inconceivable to see that gap eroded away if we don’t get back on the winning wagon almost immediately after the players come back from international duty.

And it’s not as if they are absolute gimmie games either. I know that no game in the Premier League is, in reality, a ‘gimmie’, but The Scum are going to be tough to break down, tough to beat (they are much better away from home playing the under dog than at home under the watchful gaze of their own home fans) and as it’s an NLD all bets kind of go off. It only takes that game going the way of a draw, then Bayern getting a result against us, then the same at Chelsea and the season suddenly looks like it’s in trouble. When you’re at the top you’re only a couple of wrong results away from a crisis and Liverpool are finding that now.

It’s why I really hope there is some magic happening in the treatment room at London Colney over the next 10 days or so. We really do need those re-enforcements in attacking positions. those who have been on the pitch  have coped admirably, they’ve done what is required to get us in this excellent position, but we need to see the return of at least two of the current injured players for that derby game because the bench did look decidedly light on Saturday evening.

I do think we will see at least couple make it. I saw a couple of people speculate that Arteta could be deliberately not playing players because he doesn’t want them to go away on international duty. I’m not sure that’s 100% true because he’s a guy who wants to win every game and I don’t think he’d be thinking long-term when he still had that difficult Sunderland match to overcome. But can I say that it is completely unlikely? No I can not.

The guy I stand next to at The football – Nick – occasionally gets tickets to be in one of the boxes at The Arsenal and at the last game he was in them – Atletico – he said Madueke was in the box next to him. Said he was a lovely fella, really humble, seemed to be genuinely chuffed to be there and when he made a joke to Noni about making himself a hero at the NLD, Madueke just smiled and said “that’s the plan”. I think he might be one of the guys they are expecting back. I also hope/suspect that Viktor’s muscular injury is just a short-term one, so I’d hope that’s another option. Whether Odegaard, Havertz or Martinelli are back in remains to be seen, but I do feel like we probably need one  of Big Vik or Havertz to be fit and ready to play. The challenge with Havertz is that he’s had no time to build up his match fitness. If Gyokeres is ready, then he’s been playing all season, he’s missed just a couple of games, he’s been able to rest the muscle injury and hopefully it’s healed without too much loss of match fitness. So hving him start and perhaps Havertz coming on (if he’s back) will be massive for us. It means we have so many options and with Bayern also on the horizon that week, it means players can be down for some job sharing, which hopefully keeps them fresher for longer.

So all eyes will already, inevitably, be on any news breaking over the next few days on players getting out on the training pitch at London Colney. We need an Ornbomb to drop this week to get us excited for the squad getting back to full health. Something like that this week will be a lovely little antidote to the poison that is yet another international break.

Right, I think I’ll leave it there for today, such is the inevitable lack of Arsenal news given the media attention on this impending interdull. Have yourselves a great Monday and I’ll see you all tomorrow.

On Odegaard, you have to really feel so sorry for him, because these aren’t injuries caused by overplaying. They are impact injuries that are just unlucky. Two shoulder injuries in the same place, then the clash of knees, which is hella harsh on the Norwegian and I don’t know about you but I’m looking at that game against The Scum on 23rd November and really hoping he can make the match day squad for that one. It’s just desperately unlucky. You can say all you want about whether it is the club, the over-use of players, maybe the training, but I think that is speculating on too many variables with not enough knowledge personally. There was a Mikel Arteta pre-match press conference a couple of weeks ago where he opened up about all of the different variables and it was some really fascinating insight, because to me it showed me in to just how much detail the club have been looking at this problem. I think most of us will have suspected that they will try to leave no stone unturned; this is Mikel Arteta and we know he is a details guy, but when you look at the Odegaard case in isolation, it just looks and feels like we have ourselves a guy who seems to have walked over three drains, crossed multiple black cats, picked said cats up and then decided to walk under a row of ladders.

Again, if you’re looking at the positive side of this, it shouldn’t point to an underlying problem like an Abou Diaby, Tomas Rosicky or Thomas Vermaelen. The diagnosis is hopefully that he has to sit this one out without surgery, then can come back after the international break and if I’m in Odegaard’s shoes right now I have a big red-ringed circle around the North London Derby. Let’s hope he can make that.

We’ve also go Kai Havertz, who hasn’t been seen since match week one and Arteta said a couple of week’s back that it will be ‘weeks’ and not ‘months’, which is good. But if he’s expected to return in November (hopefully the beginning) then that’s already one of our key attacking players who will have missed at least a third of the full season as it is. Madueke is the same – expected to return in November and he’s another one where Arteta said “a few weeks” back in September. So if I try to put a ‘glass half full’ hat on (that would be weird. What would a glass half full hat even look like??) and say the beginning of November, then we only have a couple of week’s to navigate after this international break has finished.

And if that can happen, then we have Fulham away, Atletico Madrid at home, Palace at home, Brighton in the League Cup and then probably Burnley away on 1st November. If we’re talking about Kai and Noni looking like they are getting back after those matches, then there’s a little block of games in which I think the Arsenal squad can absorb the impact of the absentees. Arteta has been trying to rotate players to keep them fresh and I think it means games like Atletico Madrid we might see a Merino, for example, whilst you look at Ethan getting minutes and you’d expect he might be in line for a start or two. I suspect it will be Eze this weekend, maybe against Atletico, but perhaps with Palace at home Nwaneri could look at some minutes? Certainly in the League Cup I think given our injuries there will be a desire to see a lot more rotation than perhaps we might have normally done against a Premier League opponent.

And with all of these injuries, I don’t know about you, but I naturally start to look at who played last night and whether there were any issues. It doesn’t sound like it so far, which is a relief, because having questioned whether Trossard and Martinelli might be due for a sale this summer just gone, now they are becoming vital players for us. Leo scored for Belgium last night right at the death against the Welsh and before this international break I thought it was interesting to see him starting in all three of our last Premier League games, as well as the Olympiakos game in the Champions League. So whilst many of us – me included – thought that his game time might be limited and that Martinelli, Madueke and Eze would duke it out for the left wing position with Leo finding his minutes limited, the opposite has actually happened. Trossard played 84 against Man City, 88 against Newcastle, 74 against Olympiakos and then 75 against West Ham. Clearly in that left wing position he does things that Arteta wanted ahead of the other players and with that in mind (and probably also given the travelling that Martinelli is doing for Brazil this week) I wonder if he’ll get another shot in that wide left position on Saturday too?

So for all of the talk of rotation this early in the season, we are starting to see that some players are getting more minutes more frequently than others and if I’m honest, as long as they are delivering, then I’m fine with that. I think Trossard was ok against Newcastle and unlucky not to score by hitting the post. He came off the bench to score against Port Vale and I thought against West Ham he did okay; for Belgium he’s been on the scoresheet and that form makes you wonder if he might yet be counted on once more, with Martinelli being used as an impact runner when the opposition tires. Martinelli himself never got off the bench in the away game in South Korea and at 11.30am today UK time he will be hoping for some minutes against Japan, but if those minutes are managed then I think that’s fine for me. Whatever time he gets afforded on the pitch, however, I think I speak for us all when I say that we just need him and Big Gabi to get another set of pointless friendlies over and done with and get them on the plane back to us.

I think that’s all from me today. I don’t really feel minded to talk about how Big Vik had a sad night as Sweden stunk out the place against Kosovo, neither do I want to look in to the 2-2 France draw with Iceland, as long as we know that Big Bill is fine and he’s heading back to England now to be ready for the visit to the Cottage on Saturday evening.

So I’ll take my leave for another day and I’ll be back with some more thoughts as we start to wind up this international break. Thankfully.

Arsenal’s final pre season friendly of this summer ended with a pretty emphatic 3-0 win against a Champions League Athletic Bilbao, with boxes ticked all over the shop, including:

• Big Gabby returning to start
• Calafiori on the pitch for valuable minutes
• Timber shaking off his knock and starting
• Zubimendi looking imperious again running the show
• Ødegaard finding pockets and delivering good link up play.
• Big Vik running the lines and delivering us his first goal and trademark celebration.
• Good connectiveness for the second goal which involved key players like Rice, Ødegaard, Big Vik, Martinelli and Saka for the finish
• Havertz showing a turn of pace and good finish to cap off a great day.

I think if you asked Arteta for the perfect afternoon, he’d have told you he wanted the performance and cohesion first, then it’s the defensive solidity, then it’s the attackers all connecting and scoring, then it’s a nice big score line. Probably in that order.

He got everything so no wonder he was pleased post-match. This was the more familiar Arsenal side that we’ve seen in recent seasons and this morning, I’m kind of breathing a sigh of relief, because I’ll be honest and admit that the performances (more than the results) were a little concerning so far. We’ve looking disjointed in our build up, we’ve lacked a cutting edge and when you look at how the Villareal game played out, our high line had a feel of the Scum from last season. I had my concerns and ahead of the big kick off next week I was quite desperate to see us put on a show.

It didn’t even have to be full of goals either. If we’d have won 1-0 with a scrappy goal, but we’d battered Bilbao and their keeper Unai Simon had had the game of his life, I’d have been fine with that because:

• We’d have shown defensive solidity and kept a clean sheet
• Shown we are playing well to create chances
• We’d have had a ton of shots and just caught an inspired ‘keeper. That doesn’t happen every week.

We got everything we wanted though, including a great ball from Zubi and a deft flick from Gyokeres on his head, which set us off just after the half hour mark. We’ve spent the last few weeks since he signed talking about how the one thing in his game is he needs to be better with headed finishing and if this is a sign to come, then that’s a-ok with me.

I thought it was a great game by the Swede. He got his goal and is off the mark (although we all know it’s ’not really’ until he gets one in an official match), it was a fine finish and was just one of the positive things he can take from yesterday. Arteta seemed happy with him afterwards and after that performance it makes you wonder about his possibility for starting at Old Trafford next weekend. I had Kai down to start as he’s the incumbent, he’s somebody who knows our football well enough, he’s a big game player and Arteta knows what he’s getting. But when you see a performance like that from Big Vik, it could suddenly be a different outcome that Arteta looks for next weekend than Kai starting because he’s been here longer.

Either way, isn’t it good to see both of them on the scoresheet? I thought Kai’s goal was expertly taken and the way he controlled the ball as he raced away, as well as calmly slotting it in to the bottom hand corner, had me thinking “this guy wants to up his game this season”. We’ve all seen how he’s added a little more to his game, but perhaps it’s also the increased competition he now has that will make him strive to be even better next season. If that’s true, then we’re in good shape, because two quality forwards battling it out and scoring goals is how you get closer to that dream Premier League title.

And the second goal was a great bit of interlinking through the middle. I’ve mentioned the players involved already, but the way in which we moved the ball from back to front was quick, it caught Bilbao off-guard and resulted in Martinelli and Saka getting in behind through the centre. Saka was the eventual goal scorer, but to me that part of it was less relevant, rather that we crafted a good team goal and we got in behind. How many times last season did we find ourselves slow in build up and that meant that when we got to the edge of the box we had 11 bodies in front of us? I’ve lost count. So to see us cut a team open was pleasing.

Of course you could argue that we won’t face a side like Bilbao every week and we won’t always be going ahead in the first third of the match. There will be times this season in which we go behind and what ends up happening is teams just sit camped on the edge of their box. For that we still have questions to answer but yesterday I saw enough to make me a little more relaxed and a little more excited for next weekend. United won’t camp on the edge of their box and so if we can get the same spaces, there might be opportunities for us at a place that has for so many decades been really difficult to get wins at.

So we sign off with an emphatic victory and now the players and manager have a week of preparation and analysis on the new-look Man United team, with a new front three who they’ve just spunked over £200million on.

Back tomorrow as we begin the work week countdown to that game next Sunday.

It’s a little too late in the season to have any kind of extreme excitement for me from these returning players, but if we get some minutes at the end from Kai and if we get an Arsenal side at least willing to show something extra given it’s the last home game of the season, that’ll do for now. Then, thereafter, this season can well and truly get in the bin as far as I’m concerned.

The club are also due to announce the new home kit soon I think. I saw some stuff online about how the Arsenal Direct shop is saying something like “We’ll be back soon” with the background artwork on the graphic the supposed ‘A’ from the old Arsenal badge of the 90s. I’ve seen the pics, you’ve probably seen the leaked pics too, by all accounts it looks like another good job done by the club and I’ll most likely be partaking in it at some stage.

One of the good things about being an adult with your own money is you can go out and buy yourself things like football shirts, when you want, so I am lucky that I can afford to do so, if truth be told. I remember being a kid and basically having to ask if my birthday present could be brought forward four or five months, sometimes it would be a hard ‘no’ and I’d have to wait until November, but back in those days the kits would be worn by the players for at least two season’s. They’d alternate the home and away kit so that each season one changed, but the other one stayed from the previous season. So getting the shirt knowing that it’ll be around for at last another year-and-a-half meant that I was sometimes happy to wait.

Back to matters on the pitch though and the return of Rice et al can only be a good thing for this weekend. He’s an integral player in Arteta’s side and before the open training session I think most of us were wondering what sort of patched up team we would see against the Geordie’s. No Timber, no Gabriel, no Rice, no Merino (suspension), no Trossard (came off with what looked like a hamstring injury), no Gabby J, no Havertz – “how on earth are we going to line up?” That’s what was I was wondering. But the arrival on to the Emirates pitch of three of those guys at least gives us more options. Hopefully Trossard and Rice are fully fit and if so, you’d expect both of them will start.

Havertz won’t, but just seeing him getting minutes is a positive. He started the season so well, he was also bagging goals and I remember saying on the Same Old Arsenal pod earlier in the season that I fancied him to hit 20 goals in all competitions. He’s on 15 at the moment and he’s been out for a third of the season. I’m convinced that, were he to have stayed fit, he would have hit an extra five goals in the 20+ odd games he would have played for us in that time. He was averaging a goal every two+ games before his injury, so I don’t think it is unrealistic to have expected him to get one goal  in every four.

That would have represented his best figures in a Premier League season and so it’s a real shame that the injury happened when it did. I think for me personally, I have come to really appreciate him and the value he brings to this Arsenal side. As a guy who meshes together our midfield and attack, as a focal point for balls into the box (I’m remembering his header against PSG at home in the League format of the Champions League as an example), as somebody who ran and ran and ran, covering so much ground for us. There’s understandably – and rightly – been lots of talk about getting a new striker in this summer. We definitely need it. But Kai has proven me 100% wrong certainly in his ability to play that role and were he to have been fit for the whole season, I am thinking we’d be a lot closer to the Scousers than we are today.

It is what it is though, he’ll get a nice reception this weekend I suspect and that will be a positive on a day in which there will be a lot of people around me probably hiding a frustration deep within themselves that a season that offered so much, has ultimately ended in a serious of unfortunate events and Arsenal falling short again. That season overview perspective probably needs to wait until the chapter is fully closed on this season, which as we know isn’t for a few weeks. So with that in mind, I’m going to park any further thoughts, bid you all a fond farewell for the day and be back tomorrow.

Have a good one peeps.

Calafiori is still out, although he is close to a return according to Mikel, whilst Jorginho is apparently ‘still struggling’ with what happened to him at Brentford. With Thomas Partey now not able to play the first leg of the game anyway, I suspect that there’s not a lot of change from that position on Sunday or indeed against Palace on Wednesday too, so it’s not really too much of a challenge for us that he is out. It’s the same with Riccardo, to be fair, although that’s because of the scintillating form of Myles Lewis-Skelly since he broke in to the team. I’ve just watched another little comp of his from Wednesday night and in it there is one section in which he just blitzes through the Real Madrid midfield from deep. You know how we’re all starting to say that Nwaneri has that ‘trademark goal’ in which he cuts inside and curls it? Well Myles has his own signature move too, which is that driving through the middle of the park. He ain’t the tallest guy in the world, but his body strength and balance to stay upright with the ball at his feet amongst pressure from the opposition, certainly feels elite. I’m also thinking back to that Everton run he had before being poleaxed by Tarkowski a few weeks back. Mesmerising stuff.

Mikel did offer an interesting soundbite on Kai though, saying that although the semi finals would be too soon for him, but he suggested that he would potentially be back before the end of the season. I remember just before he picked up his injury Arteta was saying that Kai was an absolute machine in terms of his fitness and whilst at the time that had looked like he’d cursed him, if he does return then it does speak volumes about how his body is well suited to adapt to injury hits and also fatigue. Having Havertz back for the last few games of the season would be amazing; I think there’s a few of us looking at Big Gabi in a leg brace on Wednesday night (great video of him celebrating Arsenal scoring at home on Instagram if you want to search it out) and worrying about the start of next season, which for me given how Kai also had to have surgey, had me worried about him from the start. But even if he comes back for the final few games we at least know he’s ready to go for next season. That in itself offers comfort.

A lot of the other questions from the media were obviously more focused on talking about the game on Wednesday night and the semi final against PSG. Arteta’s comments about having to find alternative solutions to Partey’s European suspension were of course naturally vague and it was put to him that MLS could be that option. I guess when you see run’s like he has been making as part of my hypothesis of his ‘signature move’ you can see why people are saying that, but I seem to recall that Arteta doesn’t really like to move too many of his chess pieces around. It’s why two season’s ago we say Rob Holding against City rather than the more preferable option of having Ben White at centre half. It’s why we saw Kiwior come in for this run of games – although admittedly he’s been brilliant so that’s vindicated, but I saw people suggest moving White in there (he’s been injured so has been difficult), for example. So for me I think he’ll probably go with an option which keeps as many of his first teamers in their natural positions. Of course, if Calafiori is fit, then perhaps it becomes an option because you could play Riccardo as the left back and Myles centrally, but I suspect the most natural move we will see will be Declan dropping in to the six.

A lot of this is just speculation though and with us not knowing who exactly is fit it’s difficult to call. It’s also one for another day I think. For this weekend it is Ipswich and whilst Arteta dished out his usual platitudes for Kieran McKenna and his team, I think he’ll have earmarked this as one of the ‘we need this one to get over the line’ games. I’ve already said it a few times, I think I mentioned yesterday too, that I think we probably need to win four out of six of our last remaining games to finish second. Maybe even three. If we pick up three points this weekend and then can follow it up by beating Palace on Wednesday, then that might get us close enough to it.

And that’s about it really. That’s what we’ve got to do. Just get over the line. There’s nothing more to it, there’s no more real jeopardy in the league, we’re just trying to do enough to cement second (which Arteta kind of referenced yesterday as well) so we can all just move on with our lives and forget about the joke that this domestic season has been (and I mean that in terms of volume of injuries, PGMOL and the fortune of a certain other team sauntering their way to the Premier League).

Back tomorrow with some more pre-match thoughts.

Laters peeps.

I know you’ve looked a bit sullen at times, Arteta has talked about how you don’t like it when you’re not playing, so now is your chance to shine because you are basically going to play every possible game between now and the end of the season.

Kai’s absence, along with Gabby’s Martinelli and Jesus, as well as Saka, means that you are the only real first teamer left who is fit. You are the anchor point from which everything will flow.

We know you’re not a Havertz; you aren’t a target man and hopefully Big Dav Raya is lumping Mitre Size Five’s up to you from 60 yards away. That’s not your game. It’s been Arsenal’s game at times and maybe there’s a trick up Mikel’s sleeve whereby Merino adopts that space if we need to go long, but if that happens, you have to be the main man still. That’s because it is you who will need to find pockets of space for which to receive the ball if we do go long. Is that dropping deep so that the Spaniard can lay the ball off to you? Is it going long for a Shearer-esque flick on? I don’t know, you probably do because Mikel would have spoken to you about what he wants to do, but whatever the decision is, I think there isn’t anyone with any skin in the Arsenal game who doesn’t recognise that we need you now more than anyone.

Sterling is a busted flush. Sorry, I know he’s probably great around the training ground, I know you probably get on well with him, but he’s washed. He doesn’t have that burst of pace that he was famed for (understandable given he kicked off his Premier League career at the age of 17; players who go into teams that young often tend to peak earlier and see a decline earlier – take note Ethan), he hasn’t really set anything alight in an Arsenal shirt, so the expectations on him to step up just aren’t there. Maybe he can adopt your position of left wing and that can bear more fruit, but regardless of where he plays, I think we all know you have to be the main man. You’re no Robin to his Batman like it might have seemed that way with Havertz last season – you are the lead character now and we need that main character energy from you tomorrow lunchtime and for the foreseeable future.

If we’re going to be rotating our forward line to create space, you have to be the one who is orchestrating it. You will be that focal point so if you want a five minute switcharoo with Sterling to tell him you want to give it a go wide right, then you do it. You have to tell him that he needs to be ready to move into spaces you vacate and at 17-years-old, you probably need to be that guiding hand with Ethan too. If Arsenal are going to have any success in winning football matches for the remainder of the season, it feels like we’re going to need a very mobile front three; interchanging positions and pulling teams apart if they try to go man-to-man. And it feels like you need to be that man to be starting off any of that movement.

You’re arguably one of the best finishers of the club too, so it’s on the players around you to get into those positions so you can take those chances. Martin will be looking for you from deeper down the pitch. He has a good relationship with Ethan, it seems, so they will interchange and look to set him down the wing, but you’ll need to be there to finish or provide an option for a pass because as great as Ethan is he’s starting to get noticed and he will start to be targeted. He’s got the world at his feet, but he’ll quickly start to be doubled up on, so you need to be there for him.

We’ve noticed your form of late has picked up too, so that’s giving us – the fans – some hope that you can bag the requisite goals. We know it’s not all on you, but we need to see the output upgraded now, because five goals and six assists in 36 games needs to be updated in this final third of the season. We believe you can do it though. Have you set a target? You probably should. I’m thinking that we probably need to see you hit ten goals and 10 – 15 assists at least between now and when Saka and Martinelli return by April. That’s a fair bit to ask for, but we believe in you, we’re all behind you.

It all starts this weekend at Leicester. The Arsenal fanbase were down after the Kai news, they got a bit of an adrenaline hit with Liverpool dropping points, but they need you and your team to show that this Arsenal side has fight and is still in the Premier League conversation. We are down a bit, but you can be a key part of getting everyone involved in Arsenal back up, so let’s see the best version of you tomorrow lunchtime. Let’s hear that “Trossard again ole ole” ringing out in the away end, then let’s hear it every week between now and May when the season finishes.

Go smash it man – we’re all behind you.

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

Mikel Arteta speaks to the press today – let’s hope he comes out bullish and buoyant and fighting. We need it. I’ll be back tomorrow with some pre game and post press conference musing tomorrow. We’ll also be doing a Same Old Arsenal podcast straight after the game – just hope it’s a positive one come 3pm.

And it’s almost as if the footballing gods have looked at our January window and said “really? You REALLY want to tempt fate and test us? Ok then Arsenal, have some of this”. It was entirely predictable that we would find ourselves in this position, but I think some of the reporting sheds a light on how it was predictable and perhaps, just perhaps, it was also avoidable. Because if the noises are true and if Havertz was injured doing high-intensity pressing drills, then I am afraid we now need to look at the manager and his coaching staff, who have been beasting players whilst on a warm weather training and break.

We only know what is being reported, we can only speculate as we don’t have all the details, but in the absence of anything else I think as Arsenal fans we now need to be looking squarely in Arteta and his teams’ direction. These players have given everything. They have been run in to the ground because of a conscious decision to leave us light in the summer. We all knew we were light; the club, the manager, us fans and even the players. The fact we signed Sterling on a pretty dead loan on deadline day shows that the club knew it. The fact that we had the likes of Rice saying “we need some help” in January shows the players knew it. The fact that Arteta talked all January about bringing somebody in shows he knew it. Yet we failed to augment the squad and that put undue pressure on an attacking collective of players who were already running on empty.

So to then hear that the team running on empty, who were getting a Dubai trip for a rest and recharge, were potentially being beasted, brings out some frustration in me personally. Again, I will caveat this by saying that I can only take on board what I can read and see, so if the rumoured injury is not as it is reported and if it is not because of the overload being put on already overloaded players, then fair enough and I’ll temper that frustration. But at this stage and with what we know, we have to look at the way the club are approaching the rest and recuperation of the players and start asking legitimate questions as to why they are being asked to undertake some of these activities.

So where are we at now? We’ve got fans on socials talking about playing Merino at false nine, which certainly is creative to me, although I suspect what Arteta will be doing is going with a front three of Trossard up top, Nwaneri wide right and Sterling wide left. It’s hardly ideal, it’s a lot to ask for those three players and given it doesn’t sound like anyone else will return until mid March it means there’s three football matches we’re going to have to hope for some kind of resurrection of form for Sterling, continuation of form from Trossard and Nwaneri stepping up to the plate as a main man at 17. But we have no other choice. We made our decisions last summer, in January, in the way in which we train our players and in our approach, so we have to live in the life for which we have built ourselves. I asked the day after the January window closed: “I hope you know what you are doing, Arsenal” – that has never felt more pertinent than now.

And you hear stories like this latest Havertz development and start to think whether Dubai will have done anything at all. I spoke about this earlier in the week when I mentioned that I didn’t think Dubai would be the panacea that many of us were hoping for. Now it’s feeling like quite the opposite. And on an evening in which – and this is where the ‘giveth’ part of my title today comes in – Liverpool dropped points to an absolute sucker punch last minute equaliser for Everton. We should be buzzing this morning, because the anticipated Liverpool win and extension of their lead to nine points leaves us all but done in the title race never materialised. It was seconds from being that, but the footballing gods gave something back: Hopium. They handed a small morsel of it to us Arsenal fans on a day in which we were all pretty down as a result of the Havertz news. There’s still probably too much of a mountain to climb, especially now we are so shorn of attackers, but for now at least, the cold water hasn’t quite been poured all over our domestic season.

Be back tomorrow with some more musings.

“All on red for us”

“Erm….yeah, i’ll take black please…”

I am, of course, referring to the news that Sami Mokbel broke yesterday about Kai Havertz, who is rumoured to have suffered a hamstring injury whilst on the Dubai trip that the team returned back to England from yesterday. Sami is a respected journo, but I’m not linking to the publication he works for, as I think think it’s a horrible paper – so here’s Arseblog’s reporting on it for more info.

To extend out my metaphor further, if Arsenal were a person, you’d follow them around in the casino to make sure you were there on whatever game they were playing afterwards, because they aren’t winning any cashola on the slots, that’s for sure.

We are just over a week since the transfer window has shut – about nine days – and we’ve lost two players (rumoured) since then. We’ll get confirmation from Mikel when he does his press conference on Friday, but unless he can give us some Lazarus-esque news on both Martinelli and Havertz, then we’re down to one recognised first teamer, one loanee who has looked absolutely turgid so far for us, then a 17-year-old with bags of promise that we’re hanging most of our creative hopes on.

Who could have predicted such ill-fortune for us this season?

Oh, I don’t know, how about every single Arsenal fan on God’s green earth, perhaps? This season has been disruption after disruption, injury scare after injury scare, PGMOL blunder after PGMOL blunder and the second that January window slammed shut and we saw briefings about being “impressed that the club didn’t panic” I think most of us guessed that it would not be long before we ended up with a problem in our attacking end of the pitch. No Saka, no Jesus, no Martinelli and now potentially no Havertz means that the decision to ‘keep the powder dry’ was a sensible as throwing a can of petrol on a bonfire.

I’ve seen some commentary about how Havertz has played similar minutes to Salah and Haaland. But just over a week ago we were seeing the likes of Thierry Henry talk about how Haaland offers little in games. He is a man – like Salah – who is deadline in short bursts. I have not looked at the numbers, but I bet if you looked up distance covered on a football field this season, Havertz’s would be significantly greater than those other two elite forwards. Simply put – he has been ran into the ground and that is why we are where we are. We play players so regularly and we ask them to do so much (remember how many times we’ve all talked about how good we are off the ball, at how quick we are to get back into defensive shape and how difficult it is for teams at times because of our ability to cover so much ground?) as part of their roles, that inevitably they are going to break. You can’t compare apples and pears and talking about some player sin other teams versus Arsenal players just doesn’t work – they aren’t asked to do the same things as ours are.

I put a message on social media last night that this season can get in the bin. I was being flippant, I was being silly, but part of me is kind of just waiting for the inevitable final nail in the season coffin so that we can all start looking at next season and hoping the club addresses it’s failings from the last two windows. I know that sounds defeatist, I know it sounds a little spineless, but I just feel like everything that could have gone wrong this season has, so sometimes you just can’t beat the footballing gods.

I don’t even feel like I can be arsed to apportion blame at this stage either. What’s the point? Arteta isn’t to blame because he was very clear he needed reinforcements. The players aren’t to blame because they’ve run through brick walls (and picked up knocks on the way ). Edu left halfway through the season and whilst I am not wholly convinced whether or not Jason Ayto is the answer, I don’t know enough about him or what he does, or how hard he works to understand or really cast judgement and throw some shade on him. I will admit that I have never trusted KSE and that has remained the case even through these recent periods. But I don’t really feel like turning this into a bashing session on them either; I think they have been very fortunate to have a bunch of football people running the club who have got us in the position we are now that we’ve been challenging for the title – it is not because of them or their money though – the money Arsenal have spent is the money they make. KSE might have acted as signatories, but they haven’t been putting their hands deep into their pockets – any money that came from COVID or the intervening years was in the form of loans I believe. I didn’t heap praise on them when the going was good, I’m not going to go in two-footed because of the two windows we’ve just had.

Maybe there are just season’s like this though? Maybe we are using up all of our bad luck this season so we can be prepped for another assault on the league next season? I’m not a superstitious man in any walk of my life except football, but this Kai news, the Martinelli news, Saka, Jesus, Odegaard (I haven’t even mentioned that it sounds like Tomiyasu is out for the season and will need knee surgery), the red cards, etc, etc, etc – it all just feels a little too much, eh?

So we just have to roll with the punches. I’ll enjoy our wins, i’ll be sad about our defeats, but at this stage in this season, expectations need to be squarely managed I think. Time to focus on the journey a bit more folks, because the destination in May might be a little too much to ask for these fantastic group of footballers we support.

Catch you all tomorrow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And we kept a clean sheet.

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

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

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

It’s the feeling that we’re going to have all of the ball, we’re going to dominate territory and possession, the opposition are going to be ruthless and score from the little they create.

And that’s exactly what Newcastle did last night.

To be fair, they looked good in the first half I thought. You can tell they are a confident team who are on a winning run. Conversely, we looked like a leggy team who are needing a trip to Dubai sooner rather than later. There is no time for that this season though. Yesterday night’s defeat to Newcastle was a tale of key narratives and a microcosm of our season; we created enough chances to win the game and had some real sitters (how does Havertz miss his chance? How does Timber blaze over from his header inside the box?), but we lacked a real killer. Our opponents had one in Isak who was red hot and took the few chances he got. He’s a very good footballer and was the best player on the pitch last night. Many have said they’d love him at The Arsenal but I still remain sceptical because of his injury record. But he was very fit last night and was very much firing on all cylinders.

Just like at St James’ Park in November. Isak and Newcastle scored with their first attack and then basically did little for the rest of that game, asking us to break them down, wherein we were poor attacking-wise. That’s what happened again tonight.

Trossard is now no longer an end-product machine. Martinelli is good but patchy. And last night I compared Havertz to being more like Bergkamp, than Henry. Of course Havertz is not as good as the great man, but in that Arsenal team Dennis was the creator, the facilitator, the guy who everything flowed through, but he was never a prolific goalscorer. That’s what Havertz is more like. But the challenge we have is that – normally – we have Ødegaard to perform that role and I guess you’d say Saka is more like the killer for us, even though he plays wide right.

We have no Saka for the foreseeable as we know and last night we had no Ødegaard. Well, in body we did, but that was the ghost of Martin Ødegaard playing last night, because he was awful. He didn’t dictate the play, our creative spark never once flowed through him, he was misplacing passes and not covering his usual ground. Perhaps he is still recovering his fitness from the illness he sustained over the Christmas period, but with the benefit of hindsight, we probably should have just sat him down and got another body out there instead.

It wouldn’t have helped, it probably would have looked a bit stodgy and functional, but that’s how we’ve been this season and with Leo looking like he picked up a knock but playing on anyway yesterday, it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s now injured too. That’s how our season has gone wrong. I saw somebody describe it as Murphy’s Law (I.e. everything that could go wrong goes wrong) and it feels like we just get that game after game this season. We beat Palace, we lose Bukayo Saka. Raheem Sterling gets injured so we can’t have an option in there. We find Nwaneri, he gets injured after scoring another great goal against Brighton. It feels very much ‘us’ this season if we now find out Trossard is a doubt for the next few weeks.

We miss a spark. I’m getting bored of saying it. I’m sure you’re getting bored of reading it. Earlier in the week I wrote about Liverpool and how in the 22/23 season we went a little too ‘all in’ on our attacking side and then when that dried up, the fact our defence was letting in goals became a problem. Well we had the opposite of that last night, because a defence that normally looks so imperious, looked really shaky. And it’s not like we were makeshift; Raya (poor misplaced pass early on), Timber, Saliba, Gabriel are all pretty much first choice and MLS has made himself a massive shout for that too. We had Partey sat in front of them, Rice and Ødegaard with him, then Trossard, Havertz and Martinelli making up our starting XI. But it didn’t look and feel like the Arsenal I am used to seeing. Our press was patchy, defensively we were shaky when Newcastle pressed us and they also got out of our press really easy too.

It felt like an uncharacteristically six out of ten performance.

If you lose 2-0 at home though you’d expect it to be a three or a four out of ten performance, but actually, we dominated everything. But, as is becoming a familiar tale this season, in their penalty box we were once again found wanting.

Arteta needs to be talking to the club about doing something in the market. It’s about lifting the team as well as the fan base. We’re all looking around for answers but with bodies dropping and form of certain players varying so much from game-to-game and week-to-week, we need more and personally it doesn’t feel like we’re going to get that by looking internally.

I haven’t really talked about it, but you look at our summer business now, with half the season gone, and it’s hardly kicked us on, has it? Calafiori looks good but spends half the time injured, Merino is a functional guy who seems like a decent squad player but not a lot more, Raheem Sterling might as well not have joined on loan, for all the football he’s (not) played. We’ve been used to Arteta and former Sporting Director Edu getting signings right pretty much every season for the last four years. This now feels like they’ve had a summer window in which they haven’t quite hit the mark. Which is a worry.

There is still time though. We aren’t out of anything yet (although I worry that by the end of January we might be), action can still be taken. But will Arsenal do it now? Or keep the powder dry until the summer? For the context of this season, we must all hope it’s the former rather than the latter.

Catch you peeps tomorrow.

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

Watching The Arsenal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Catch you all tomorrow.

Don’t get me wrong, we had some perceived wobbles at times and particularly in the first half of yesterday’s ‘scoreline’ hammering of Monaco, we looked like that might be one of those “we’re going to regret missing our chances aren’t we?” kind of games. But eventually the truth kicked in and this thoroughly capable Arsenal team delivered a significant win in this ghastly Champions League format.

“Significant?” I hear you scoff?

Well, yes, because as Johnny and I ruminated over in the first half as the play unfolded in front of our eyes, this result was important.

Important because a draw or a defeat would probably leave us needing a win against Zagreb at home in the new year, as well as a result of some kind against Girona away in Spain, just before we play Man City. Given the way our injuries have hit us, we don’t need a) having to play a full strength team at Girona, and b) additional two games should we not finish in the top eight. Especially given Liverpool have done what they’ve done, meaning their chances of playing two extra games and suffering as a result, diminished somewhat with their win yesterday.

Thankfully we’ve put ourselves in a commanding position thanks in no part to Bukayo Saka. Boy, aren’t we indebted to him, eh? In the first half Johnny and I mused how he had been quiet. I posited to Johnny that he’s a player who is happy to tick along until the right moment, so when he popped up at the back post in that first half to tap home, my sage-like nodding to Johnny felt profound.

It isn’t really.

*NEWSFLASH: BEST PLAYER DELIVERS CRITICAL MOMENT FOR FOOTBALL TEAM*

Saka does. Constantly. And he was on hand to make the halftime beers perfectly palatable. He’s such an amazing footballer. Amazing in his ability to make simple things seem like anybody can do them. But they can’t. He is the master of efficiency and once again he delivered last night. Sure, his second goal was an absolute gift from the Monaco ‘keeper and defenders, but you still have to finish the job. And Saka did it almost as if he was saying with his feet “ahh, thanks for the early Christmas present guys, too kind!”

And clearly Monaco were feeling charitable in that second half, because we created so many more chances than in the first. Actually, scratch that, because maybe the signs were there in the first half too. Gabriel Jesus, for one, will be mighty glad he gets to ratchet up an assist for his ball across for Saka’s first goal, because he really should have been on the scoresheet. A ball in behind to leave him one-on-one with the ‘keeper should have opened the scoring, then shortly after he had another really presentable task that should have ended in him wheeling away in celebration.

Yet something is missing in him and I’m not sure we’ll ever get that back. That makes me sad for a footballer who looked so amazing when we signed him, but we’re getting to the point of no return here and I think Arteta knows it too.

That’s why Havertz came on in the second half and whilst Kai isn’t the most prolific footballer in the world, he delivered tonight, with a deft flick in at the near post to put a very comfortable look on the scoresheet. In 20 minutes he did more than Gabby J did with two (arguably) easier chances and at this stage I think we’re sadly getting to ‘end game’ with our hard-working Brazilian forward.

I’m trying my best not to go full “he’s done” here, but this game – in a competition we’ve always talked about how much he loves – feels like another unfortunate nail in his Arsenal coffin. I hope for nothing more than to be proven wrong.

It feels like a long shot right now. not, however, like Arsenal’s Champions League campaign. Win against Zagreb and it should be ‘job done’ for The Arsenal. That’s the target now. Do enough on game-week seven to make eight utterly irrelevant.

All-in-all, after the profligacy of the weekend (oh, wait, was that three open play goals??), this was a very welcome end product, even if there were some initial questions about the first half missed chances.

On some individual performances:

• Martinelli vs Trossard – won’t somebody please take the bull by the horns and deliver the consistency to make yourself number one choice? Both have struggled from the start but looked decent from the bench
• Kiwior – slowly building up his confidence. This will be important if the scary rumours of Gabriel are true.
• Timber – cameo appearance, looked good, great to see him and hopefully he’s all good for the weekend
• Rice – another good display and starting to do more of those driving runs
• Lewis-Skelly – didn’t look like he put a foot wrong – possibly needed given out defensive problems this season
• Nwaneri – another good cameo.

There’s not a load more to be focusing on with a night like this. Arteta was absolutely right to extol the virtues of his squad last night; he’s been consistent in his championing of his team and focusing on there being no excuses for under-performance given injuries. Last night showed just that. It was professional, it was composed, it had end product and it delivered the result we absolutely needed. In an age in which anything other than constant wins are deemed unacceptable, this Arsenal team continued to show that despite adversity, success can be found.

But, as is the situation where the demands are so high, it all counts for nothing if victory isn’t confirmed come 5pm on Saturday afternoon. The good news is that this team will go into that game at home to Everton full of confidence.

And right now, that’s all we can ask for.

Catch you sexy bitches tomorrow.

I mean yes, there was a moment in the first half when it went to 4-2 that I had PTSD from my trip up to Newcastle all those year’s ago to watch the 4-4 draw, but as I said on the Same Old Arsenal podcast this morning, this Arsenal team is built differently and now that the 5-2 result is done with and we can talk with hindsight in mind, this Arsenal side is built to withstand wobbles like that.

They are also built with strengths that – even when the opponent knows what is coming – they can do little about. So when Bukayo Saka sauntered over to take the corner on ten minutes, you knew we had a chance to nab ourselves the lead and of course it was going to be Gabriel that delivered the blow to West Ham. The Sky Sports commentary even picked up on the fact that Gabriel had a word with his teammates about what he wanted the play to look like and it was executed to perfection.

We had dominated the nine minutes before that and we also then proceeded to dominate the entire half. West Ham were reduced to long ball clearances that Arsenal just recycled, reset and went again in attack. It didn’t matter that we were missing Partey and Merino through injury, because Jorginho stepped in and kept us ticking over throughout, his metronomic passing exactly what this type of game needed. And within half an hour we were two up with a superbly worked goal that we thoroughly deserved. Trossard gets his name on the score sheet and the glory of the goal to his tally, but it was Odegaard and Saka who did all the heavy lifting. Odegaard’s flick over the defence was sublime and Saka’s ball across the goal meant that all Trossard had to do was tap it in to an empty net.

Arsenal were purring and it was a delight to see. I had worried the adage ‘one swallow doesn’t make a summer’ could be true if we didn’t put in a performance yesterday, but this team showed once again that it is not a flash in the pan. We’ve challenged for the league in the last two season’s and this time around we’re up there again, but the media have been telling us otherwise at times, without realising the challenges we’ve had that have stopped us from being closer to league leaders Liverpool right now. But yesterday was an Arsenal team laying down a marker; this was a performance that said “we will not be silenced” and at 3-0 and 4-0 in quick succession by 36 minutes, that voice was loud enough to be heard in Liverpool and Manchester. The third goal was clever from Saka to get the penalty, the fourth goal was a superbly weighted ball from Trossard and a superb finish by Kai to basically seal the game. I don’t think West Ham had mustered a shot on our goal by then.

The two West Ham goals were something out of nothing, annoyingly, because it was a superb assist from Soler and then a perfectly precise free kick from Emerson. Of course that got the crowd up and excited, but that second penalty right on halftime was absolutely perfect in terms of quietening the stadium. It was a penalty. At first I wasn’t sure and I think Anthony Taylor was a little hesitant too, but you can punch a player in the head and not expect it to be a penalty, so I’m glad it didn’t even have to go to VAR. We all saw it last season with Onana at Old Trafford and we all agreed that it was one missed by the VAR and the refs on the pitch, so it was good to see that they got this one right yesterday. Saka dispatching the penalty basically meant all we had to focus on in the second half was shutting the game down and that’s exactly what we did.

It was also pleasing to see that we took no chances with some of the players and the subs. Big Gabi had done his job in the first half and so bringing on Kiwior was the right move. Likewise with Calafiori for Zinchenko, who Arteta admitted that we have to manage his minutes because of his knee injury. So it sounds like they’re both fine and that’s good news ahead of a big game on Wednesday at home to Man United. The cushion of a three goal lead has ensured Arteta has felt comfortable enough to rotate and hopefully that bodes well for the next few matches.

The stand out players from yesterday were, however, the attacking players and once again Bukayo Saka proved he is worth his weight in gold with yet more end product and influence on another one of our games. Him and Odegaard simply ran the show; it was great to watch them link up and West Ham had absolutely no answers to what they were both offering. Saka is strong, he’s powerful, he makes the right decision again and again. Yesterday for our second goal he was put in and he could have easily have tried to take on the shot himself, but he knew exactly what to do with his perfectly weighted pass and Trossard was the beneficiary. Likewise with the penalty he won; he gave it to Odegaard because he hasn’t scored this season and so when the second penalty was awarded, he was also the beneficiary of having a chance to further add to his goal tally. That’s five goals and ten assists this season. He’s on course to hit 40 goals and assists at this run rate and I wouldn’t bet against him.

The pressure was on us yesterday to keep pace with those above and with City and Liverpool duking it out later today we had to make ground on at least one of them. We did just that, added to the goal difference tally and put on a display that has all of us Gooners purring right now.

Bring on United on Wednesday.

I don’t think there are any Arsenal fans that thought that Mikel Arteta and his charges were going to head over to Portugal, absolutely blitz an unbeaten team with a 100% domestic win record this season, with one of the clubs best ever score lines in European football. You’d have been a confident person if you did that’s for sure.

I personally would have taken a scabby 1-0 away performance that gave us the three points that were needed, but given the statement that was made by this Arsenal team, I think we can all agree we are much happier. As the intolerable Steve Mcmanaman and Darren Fletcher said on commentary in the UK that I was watching, this is the kind of performance and squad that does make you think that Arsenal can kick on from here. The Forest win was impressive, this took it up a level and I don’t think there was an Arsenal player who dropped a below eight out of ten performance last night.

Arteta went back to a more familiar starting XI from the Saturday just gone as I think most of us had expected. This is a good Sporting side, on their own turf, who will be fancying another scalp after Man City (whose implosion at the moment is making me wonder whether that draw we had at their gaff was a pretty bad result in the end) a few weeks back. This was a Sporting side with the most potent forward in Europe when you look at his goal ratio. Yet Arsenal set about dismantling the Portuguese champions and now in the cold light of day I think there will be the rest of Europe waking up and taking some note.

Gyokeres was kept pretty quiet all night, thanks to the absolute number that Saliba did on him; every ball the Frenchman mopped up and every channel run he just held him off with consummate ease. Next to him his partner Big Gabi was also there to ensure balls were knocked away easily and either side of them was Calafiori and Timber who made up what looked like the miserly defence from last season. Which is amusing because a) we didn’t actually keep a clean sheet, and b) two of those players didn’t really feature for Arsenal at all last season.

The start we had was the perfect one too. There was a fair bit made by ‘Fletch and Macca’ about it being similar to how City started in Lisbon, but as opposed to the comeback and rope-a-dope that Sporting managed to successfully execute against City, we were better prepared and took our chances. The first goal was superbly executed down our right hand side and Timber’s ball in was the archetypal ‘corridor of uncertainty’ ball that is between the ‘keeper and the defender that is so difficult to defend. Close to goal, if you come steamrollering in as a defender you risk an OG, you’ve got strikers attacking it and the ‘keeper doesn’t want to come. Martinelli graciously accepted Jurrien’s gift to him and we were up and running within seven minutes.

We took control of the game from the off and on that right hand side of ours Sporting had no answer. The one-touch football was brilliant, but also so was the pockets of space all of our players seem to find. But even when there was some congestion around them, the Arsenal players were able to quick-touch their way out of it. I thought Partey and Odegaard in particular were superb at that. And before a third of the game had gone we were two ahead and at the point in which Havertz tapped home the ball after Saka’s super run and nutmeg of the ‘keeper, you had a feeling that Arsenal would be in control for the night. That feeling was extended with Gabriel’s headed corner goal and once again, as they said in commentary, it was as if Sporting didn’t realise what Arsenal’s super powers are:

• We are most effective in creating boxes and triangles on the right hand side
• We are very good at corners

Both of those facts were brought to the fore in the Portuguese capital and Sporting had no answer for either. A 2-0 lead is what they call the most dangerous in football; a 3-0 lead feels like a “job done here lads if we stay focused” – a certain Manchester club should probably take heed.

Game state is something we are all aware of and that goal coming on halftime was a lot of fun, but the second half was never going to be as easy for Arsenal as the first. This was an away Champions League game, the home team would absolutely react, which they did almost instantly in the second half. I don’t know whether it was Arsenal sleeping, or just because we weren’t 100% switched on as the second half got going, but Calafiori will probably not be 100% happy with his defending for their corner goal I’d wager. Suddenly Sporting fans had something to cheer about and for about 15 minutes and until we got our penalty that Saka dispatched, they were on top and we looked a little ragged. We weren’t able to complete passes, there was some sloppiness creeping in and as a fan, you always worry that this will end up like some sort of mammoth comeback. IN a game in which you win 5-1 you don’t expect to also be hailing your goalkeeper, but Raya also made some really good saves on the night too. LIke I said above – everyone had an eight out of ten at least.

The penalty ended all hopes of that. I thought Diomande was lucky to stay on the pitch too, because his foul on Odegaard looked nasty and right down the Achilles. If that’s outside of the box I think he picks up his second yellow, but this was a classic case of the referee probably saying to himself “I’ll give the pen, that’s enough punishment because it possibly ends the game and this will peter out”. Thankfully Saka put away what was an excellent penalty and we were basically done. There was enough time to add a final cherry on the cake through Trossard’s headed nod in and we head home with three points on the night, ten in total for this competition and two home games coming up that – if we win against Monaco and Zagreb – should pretty much confirm automatic qualification I would have thought. We still have to get the job done, but this was a massive three points.

I also hope that performance and confidence it will bring will carry us in to our next few games too. West Ham were very impressive against Newcastle on Monday night and so they’ll now be going in to this match against us with a bit of a swing in their step. But hopefully our swing is bigger after that performance and result!

Onwards and upwards – bring on the weekend.

Catch you all tomorrow.

Tonight the gauntlet is run by Havertz and Timber and the hope must be that Havertz is rested, given that Germany have won their group, so there’s no need for any regulars to start tonight away in Hungary. Let’s see if Nagelsmann is as kind to us as De La Fuente was last night. I have my hopes.

Less so for the Netherlands, although they too are qualified with a draw over Bosnia and Herzegovina, so maybe Koeman might cut us some slack by letting Jurrien have the night off. I won’t count on it though.

What we are all counting is how the injuries are stacking up and that’s why I’ve got everything crossed for a clean bill of health from those playing this evening. Zinchenko hasn’t been getting any real game time, but even he is somebody that it feels like we’ll need in the coming weeks. No Ben White, Timber is still building himself back up from last season’s ACL, we have no real news on Tomiyasu of late, plus Calafiori I have already voiced a nagging background fear I have that he might end up being another injury prone player for us.

So Zinchenko’s availability – ironic I know, given how he has had consistent problems himself since signing for us – feels like something we are going to need. I agree with you if you are shaking your head reading this and saying “he’s a liability with his mistakes” and yes, they seem to have crept more into his game over the last 12 months than when he was first playing for us, but I think he is still a quality player and is still somebody that can offer something to us. Especially in those kinds of games where we’re going to dominate possession. You’d imagine a game like this weekend would be the sort of game he could do well in; Forest have pacey wide forwards and like to hit on transition, but if we’re talking about them breaking with one or two rapid players, you’d think that Saliba and Gabriel have the ability to match them. Then, on the right, we haven’t see as much of Timber going forward, so perhaps he can play a bit more of a role as a strong and robust full back effectively tucking in to make that a back three when Zinchenko is moving in to midfield.

I agree that if we’re going away to somebody like Liverpool, Chelsea, maybe Brighton with the likes of Mintah or Rutter dribbling at him, that could be an easy space to catch us out and especially if we have less possession. But Forest at home – as good as they’ve been – should be the sort of game in which Zinchenko could and should be used. Forest want to give us the ball, they’ll want to draw us out and hit us on the counter, but we’ll have most of it and the emphasis will be on us in our attacking third. So that’s why I’m not completely done with Zinchenko. There’s a time and a place for him and if Calafiori isn’t quite 100% fit for the weekend, then I’d have no problem with Zinchenko getting his old job at left back again.

Of course the big question is whether Arteta has that same faith. We’ll have to wait and see with that one.

I guess the same applies to Gabriel Jesus too. When we played City at home last season we did it without Saka and there probably wasn’t a single second’s doubt in Arteta’s mind that Gabriel Jesus would slot in at left wing. But this season his performances have been such that I bet if Saka is missing this weekend, it’ll be more of a question he’ll be asking of his coaching staff than a year ago. The good news for Jesus is that the potential injury to Trossard may mean his only competition is Sterling, which doesn’t feel like an impossible battle to win given Sterling’s form so far. But something has to spark back in to life with Gabriel Jesus, because his Arsenal career seems to be slipping away from him.

He just looks a little forlorn to me. He looks lost in a sea of his own melancholy and although we all had a lovely ol’ chuckle at Andre Vilas-Boas all those years ago when he talked about a ‘negative spiral’, the reality is that confidence and morale is a big thing in elite sports and he is the sort of guy that feeds off the positivity. He also feels to me like a bit of a sensitive soul and whilst his mentality has been described by Arteta before as ‘contagious’, I wonder if he’s the sort of player who needs to have an arm round him and a show of belief to kick him on when he’s in a bit of a sticky patch of form.

The problem he has, unfortunately, is that Arsenal’s aspirations mean that it is essentially impossible to carry players through patches of form. In the latter stages of Wenger’s time at the club we saw him persist with players to try to bring their confidence back up, even though it was fairly obvious they were past the point of return. I’m not saying that is the case with Gabriel Jesus, but Arteta will not be the guy to give Gabby J an extra three or four games of 70 minutes if he isn’t able to recapture his old form. It is incumbent on the player himself to do that. Quite how he does that I’m not sure, but as fans we all have to have hope, because today’s game is a squad one in which players not in the ‘first XI’ need to play their part and be ready to, if you want to achieve any of your aspirations.

We need the old Gabby J back.

That’ll do me for today. Back tomorrow as we finally get to cast this international break back into the shadows from whence it came.

• Minutes into legs of squad players
• Young players given the opportunity to shine
• Comfortable result
• Controlling possession and football played Arteta’s way
• No new injuries (that we know of)
• Confidence-booster ahead of an important run of matches coming up.

On that last point, I think I’ll start today, because although “It’s only the League Cup“, you still want to see The Arsenal win and after the draw was concluded last night and we learn we have Palace at home for a spot in the semi finals, it feels like suddenly this could open up to send us deep into the competition and give us the chance of winning some silverware. Hey, it’s not the main silverware we all want, but it might prove – as I said on Tuesday ahead of the game following my pre-Liverpool chat with my mate Kevin in the pub – as a momentum builder when the season reaches its conclusion in May.

The Liverpool draw felt like a confidence increaser because of the performance, so this feels like another layer just added on top a wee bit, because there were some decent performances from some of those rotational players that may bring them closer into the frame in Arteta’s thinking. There’s been a little online discourse about how some of these squad players looks like Arteta just doesn’t want to use them. On night’s like last night, a bad performance only heightens that, but I don’t think we really got one from anybody. Plus there were a couple of stand outs that I think will be very good for both individuals.

We obviously need to start with Nwaneri, because once again he showed what a fabulous young talent he is. His goal was sublime. One touch to let it roll across his body, then a curler into the corner, that Woodman just wasn’t getting near. He looks like a 27-year-old pro that has been doing this stuff for a decade. He was also unlucky not to get a second in the second half with his shot that clipped the top of the bar and there’s a reason why Arteta keeps bringing him on when we’re chasing games – every time he gets solid minutes he proves he’s ready. The headache Arteta is going to have which is getting more and more prominent for the Spaniard, is who Nwaneri’s place he is coming for, because there will be a few players in the first team that must be looking at this kid and thinking that it’s only a matter of time.

Wowsers.

The other person I wanted to highlight was Kiwior, who I thought had a solid enough game defensively to follow up his (second Liverpool goal aside) solid performance against Liverpool last weekend. He put in a wonderful cross for Havertz to head home to make it completely secure at 3-0 and I think he’ll have come off that pitch knowing he’d done all he can do to prove to the manager that he’s ready, willing and able, if needed on. Of course we all want to see Gabriel and Saliba on Saturday against Newcastle, but with Mikel refusing to confirm pre-game whether he was fit or not (not that we would expect him to, mind), I would have no problem seeing Kiwior and Saliba as our central defensive partnership based on what I have seen from him in the last couple of matches. I know you have to take the calibre of opposition into account yesterday, but again I reiterate the importance of confidence when a player is playing minutes – it makes him feel a few inches taller and I think last night will have been very good for Jakub. Especially after what happened to him at Bournemouth.

Raheem Sterling did alright too, was unlucky not to score right at the end and I think that will have been beneficial for him, but I’m looking at the performance as a whole and thinking it was superbly professional, symptomized by the performance of Jorginho, who never really got troubled all night and looked cool as a cucumber.

There were also more minutes in Zinchenko’s legs, which is positive, plus Timber and Merino came off at halftime and so hopefully that’s good for Jurrien getting him back up to speed ahead of the next 10 days of football. We are absolutely going to need him and pre-Preston Arteta said he could not continue as he had cramp. So to get 45 more minutes in those legs, bringing him further up to speed, then taking him off so as not to exacerbate anything, feels like a perfect bit of ‘loading’ to have him up and ready for the inevitable physicality of Newcastle on Saturday lunchtime.

We also got a goal from Gabriel Jesus, which again, feels more like he needed it than anybody else. Get that goal drought monkey off yer back, son. And Kai Havertz chipped in with another goal to add to his tally. As we go deeper in to this season, it feels like we’re going to see more than 20 for this guy, for sure. He’s on seven already and we’ve only just hit the quarter way through the season, so this bodes well, methinks.

And so Arteta will be very pleased with the night’s work. They will probably all get on the training ground on Friday feeling pretty good with themselves and after a bumpy ol’ time with injuries, suspensions and some questionable results as a consequence of that, this feels like another little booster for the team ahead of this death run that starts on Saturday lunchtime.

I’ll be back tomorrow with some more thoughts, so until then, enjoy your Thursday folks.

Yesterday as I was about to start cooking dinner after work I did my usual switch on of the TV in the kitchen, to see that the first skirmish between the Premier League and 115 Charges FC has concluded, with Sky Sports reporting that ‘both sides are claiming victory’. Cue the barrage of clearly partisan fan opinions flying all over the place on social media, as City Fans rejoice in a perceived win, whilst other fans try to understand what to make of the ruling yesterday – of which you can read all the details here. It’s a beast of a document and I’m not going to bother reading through each bit line by line and make notes because a) I’m not a legal professional and so I probably would miss stuff, b) I have better things to do in my life, and finally c) I ultimately don’t believe that anything will come out of this and the wider process of charging City for their misdemeanours.

What was interesting to see was where City have been recruiting their foot soldiers, in the form of journalists, maybe even where some clubs and the Premier League have been doing theirs. As soon as the findings for this first salvo were released, there was, inevitably, a slew of journalists with their fingers on the ‘publish’ button to give their two penneth worth, which ranged from more balanced and attempted neutral views, to the farcical Martin Samuel’s click baity “Unlawful, unlawful, unlawful, unfair, unfair, unreasonable, unreasonable. The seven conclusions of the arbitration panel make for sobering reading” – which I’m not linking too because I don’t want to be an accessory to this kind of nonsense. Some of these articles came out within minutes of the ruling; it’s almost as if some of these journo’s have been briefed by one side or the other…

The reality of this situation is that the panel decided City were right in a couple of instances, whereas the Premier League were right in the majority of their assertions, for which they mention here. What will happen next is the Premier League will re-write the rules in some cases and then it’s back you go to the courtroom to sort out the 115 Charges. And yes, it is still all of those charges, because this relates to City’s counter argument against the Premier League; they haven’t knocked down a bunch of those charges, they’ve just had their counter-argument heard (Dan Roan explains that in his BBC article here).

So where we are, it’s hard to tell, but where we could be after the 115 charges have concluded will have an unparalleled implication on the way this league is structured. It could open the floodgates for the likes of Newcastle to pump crazy levels of cash in, likes of which no club has ever seen, which obviously feels like it will impact the competitive edge of the division. There will be those fans who will argue that this happened before the billionaires and nation states all had their grubby mits on football, but never to this extent. Manchester United accumulated wealth through their commercial revenue brought on their success, Arsenal to a lesser extent, but Chelsea got theirs artificially through the Ambramovich era, as well as City through their Oil cash. The race to the morally bankrupt bottom was set in motion a long time ago, this ruling could just see how quickly it accumulates.

And all of this happens whilst we go in to an international window, which only amplifies the conversation, because so many fans like me just aren’t interested in the latest pointless international distraction, so we end up talking about this kind of rubbish. I hate it. It isn’t what football is about; football is about competition, it’s about sporting integrity and it’s about what goes on, on the pitch. This is anything but that.

What will be going on the pitch is these internationals and our latest unwelcome news (maybe) is that Kai Havertz has withdrawn from the Germany squad with knee problems. Gulp. Now, we can perhaps all talk about the old Fergie era ‘ he’s injured’ nonsense that used to go on, but I’m sure I’ve read on a couple of occasions that players do have to report for international duty unless they can provide evidence of their injury. We’ve seen that with Saka in the recent past where he’s reported and then been sent home. Obviously when it’s a flight involved it might be a little different; there might be dialogue with the Arsenal medical team and they provide them with information about the player that the medical team for the respective national team have to review before coming to the same conclusion. I just hope that there’s a little bit of artistic licence in this case, because we can’t really afford another injury to another key player in this Arsenal team.

The good news is that the noises are that it isn’t too serious and the fact Havertz was able to play the full 90+ minutes on Saturday has to be cause for positivity. But it’s still enough for us all to get a little nervous. That, in itself, is testament to the 16-odd months in which we’ve had Havertz. The German arrived at Arsenal with people like me saying “why are we signing a striker who doesn’t score goals, make assists, or even know what his best position is?”, started off looking like a player with his confidence smashed in to a million pieces, missing chances like that fresh-air swing against United that I still shudder over. That penalty goal he was given against Bournemouth last season was the beginning of the rehabilitation of his confidence and form, which culminated in his excellent end to the season which he has now carried over to this.

What we now have is a guy who is feeling the love, is banging in the goals (six this season including that brilliant strike last Saturday), talking like a man who is at ease and confident and somebody who, I think, as long as he stays injury-free, will bag 20 goals this season. He has six goals in 10 games already. I doubt he’ll maintain that ratio, but even if he just matches his goals-per-game ratio of last season, in which he averaged a goal every three-and-a-half games, if he plays the same number of matches as last season (51), he’ll get another 11 goals at least. That will notch him to 17 in all competitions which won’t be too bad a tally, but I’m deliberately being cautious because that factors in the start of the season last year in which he got one goal in his first 13 games for us. He also played as an attacking midfielder in all but one of those games, whereas he is now firmly established as our main centre forward. At the weekend he played right eight in the absence of Odegaard again, but as soon as Jesus had gone off and he was pushed back in to the centre forward spot, he scored our equaliser. If we can keep him centrally and up top, he’s going to get more than 11 goals for the rest of this season.

And that is massively positive for us. At a time in which we’re all a little concerned about Gabriel Jesus’ form and potential crisis of confidence, Havertz is doing the business, so hopefully this knock is something that can see him recovered for the trip to Bournemouth in a couple of weekend’s time.

Back tomorrow with some more ramblings. Catch you then.

The reason I bring that game up this morning is because it feels to me like that home game against PSG last night was the archetypal Mikel Arteta home performance in the Champions League. If he could map our perfection – or as close is possible in a sport in which there are so many variables – then I think this would have been it. Arsenal winning 2-0 with two goals in the first half and then keeping a very good (French Champions and with pots of cash, no less) Paris Saint Germain side who really had no answer for Arsenal’s strength all over the pitch.

By the end of the game Arsenal had limited PSG to between 0.27 and 0.4xG (depending on which model you are reading) – this was the lowest they had executed this season and is testimony to the miserly Arsenal defence that really afforded PSG very little in terms of glaring opportunities. There was one shot off the bar in the second half and one from Mendes from outside of the box in the first half that clipped the outside of the box, but apart from that, I don’t remember Raya doing any worldie saves; although I will say that his claiming of the ball and aerial command of his own box was once again impressive.

Arteta named an unchanged side from the one that beat Leicester, shaking off concerns that Calafiori had picked up a knock in the game at the weekend; the Italian actually ended up playing the full 90 and so any worries about his fitness have thankfully been expunged. And with that unchanged starting XI there was an air of calm inside the ground; I thought that this game kicked off with two very good teams ‘feeling’ each other out, with us not giving them too much, whilst PSG also had passages of play in which they had a bit of the ball. But when you play in games like these it is often the fine margins and that little bit of class that can separate teams. Step forward Leandro Trossard, who I thought was excellent yesterday along with man-of-the-match Havertz. Trossard could have actually have gone down in the build up to the goal, but he shimmied past the PSG players, beat a couple of men and then played a perfect cross into the danger area between defender and ‘keeper. That felt like a proper old-skool 90s centre forward goal. Havertz started about five yards behind the defender and as a result he was able to get the run up and leap to get beyond him and leave Donnarumma in no-mans-land.

One-nil to the Arsenal, a goal Alan Smith would have been proud of, so then it was just about how PSG would react. And to be fair to them they did react; Hakimi got beyond Calafiori and forced a save from Raya at his near post, there was the Mendes chance that I mentioned already, plus a couple of simpler saves. 1-0 is always a dangerous score line, as the cliché goes, but 2-0 is much more fun. Step forward Bukayo Saka on 35 minutes from a free kick on the right hand side. Whilst there were plenty around me saying it was poor from the PSG ‘keeper, as an ex-keeper myself I’m going to cut him some slack, because those kind of balls are so hard to defend against. When Saka swung it in near the front post low and curling, you’re trying to keep an eye on the movement of the ball, through on-rushing attackers and your own defenders, as well as Martinelli, Partey and I also think Gabriel were there. You’re in between the sticks in that moment basically just expecting a touch and I think seven or eight times out of 10 there is a touch and you have to be ready to quickly react. It was unfortunate for him, but it was also a really good ball whipped in to a difficult zone to defend.

2-0, Arsenal in control, so then it was all about the reaction from PSG and how we would defend in the second half. And I thought we were great; we gave them very little, we controlled possession, then looked to hit them in transition in which we did a couple of times. I thought we were unlucky with one Havertz header that the defender got a touch on which slowed it down for Donnarumma to catch, plus there was an excellent move that – had Martinelli been able to apply the finish – would have been one of the goals of the round for sure.

We saw the game out and collected our first three points – and vital three points against one of the toughest opponents we’ll face in this group stage – to really kick off this Champions League campaign. The way this competition is structured you need to win your home games and then pick up a few points on the road; we’ve gone to Italy and picked up one and in our next game we play Inter away and if we can pick up a point or three points against the Italian Champions not only will it underline our credentials for going deep in this competition, it will also put us in a commanding position to consider more rotation when we get to match day’s seven and eight. The way this competition is structured it feels to me like it is a race to get to 15 points then, once that is secured, you can start to look at bringing in rotational options.

That’s a long way off just yet, but this win and something in Milan will make a lot of us start to think that way I think, although Whether Arteta see’s it the same remains to be seen.

And so it is onwards and upwards. We now have three days in which to get ready for Southampton on Saturday and hopefully that means Timber can shake off whatever muscular ‘feeling’ Arteta said he had at halftime and why he went off to be replaced by Kiwior, who I thought started shaky and grew in to the game. The strength in depth is real folks.

Back tomorrow with some more thoughts. Have yourselves a good’un.

“I always knew they’d win though” she said. What’s even weirder was that at 2-2 and 91 minutes on the clock, she turned to me really calmly and said “don’t worry about it they are going to score. I have a feeling”.

If she’s going to have ‘feelings’ like that more often then she can have my seat, because last-gasp winners aren’t the norm and whilst we’ve had a few since we’ve been good in the last two-and-a-bit season’s since we’ve challenged for the title, this kind of fortune of belief is something we might be able to use more of. Last weekend it was us that felt the gut punch of injury time goals at the death, but this weekend it was us who had those joys, and my oh my did we deserve it. Because for all of the wife’s sagely nodding and calmness, the reality is that we were just a few minutes away from a really disappointing draw and outcome that would have belied the reality of the game. I looked it up afterwards: the 36 shots that Arsenal had against Leicester equals the top ten most shots EVER HAD by a team in the Premier League era. Arsenal absolutely battered Leicester.

And it wasn’t pot-shots from distance, either. There were some in there, as well as shots that had been blazed over from the likes of Martinelli in the first half, as well as  Havertz and Calafiori in the second, but by the time the final whistle had gone the Leicester ‘Keeper Hermansen had made 13 saves to keep his side in it. We absolutely deserved all three points yesterday, but at the same time it was the kind of goalkeeping display that you’d almost say doesn’t deserve to be on the wrong end of a defeat with four goals conceded.

The game itself had started and got to half time exactly as you’d have hoped it would and expected it to be. As I mentioned yesterday Leicester were sitting deep, were having most of their touches in their own half and it was essential a game of Arsenal’s attack and Leicester’s defence. These sort of games are characterised by the timing of the first goal – if it comes – and Leicester’s approach was to clearly try to stay compact, get to half time and start to build in confidence as the home side became more frustrated. But when you get an early(ish) goal like we did through Martinelli on 20 minutes, the game state changed and it meant Leicester couldn’t just sit back and do nothing. The goal itself was something that of all of the players on that pitch that needed one, it was Martinelli, who has now followed up his assist last weekend by getting off the mark this weekend. Hopefully this can unlock him and he can relax a little more now he is off the mark. And we were off the mark and he problem the Foxes had now was that this was an Arsenal side in no mood to let them get out. We continued to press and not afford them any time to get out and by halftime we’d had 76% possession, xG of 1.32, three big chances, 13 shots in total and their goalkeeper had already made three decent saves. Leicester had one off target speculative effort.

So when Trossard scored smartly in added time of that first half, this felt like the most routine of afternoon’s you’re going to get.

The problem is always that football is a game of variables and any team can score at any minute regardless of whether they deserve it or not. Just two minutes in to that second half the free kick (that wasn’t a foul by the way – Vardy went down very easily and there’s no way Saliba deserved a yellow) that led to their goal took a fairly sizeable deflecting from Justin’s head on to Havertz and around us in Block Five we were all looking at ourselves like “hold on, what’s happening here then?”. When a goal is scored that early in a half the nerves set in that we’re going to have a half of complacency and if you’d have looked at the score line in isolation when Leicester got their equaliser, you might have thought that’s exactly what happened, but the truth is we continued to batter Leicester either side of their equaliser. And I’m pretty sure that when Justin scored what you have to say is a worldie of a finish, it was only their second shot on target in the whole match. They’d scored both of them.

It felt like a really cruel twist of fate for us, but with 30+ minutes on the clock, there was time for us to bang down the door, which we duly did. Nwaneri came on (and looked superb by the way) and immediately forced a same from Hermansen. Calafiori forced a great save. Havertz nearly flicked one home from close range – another save from Hermansen – then Trossard swung a leg and forced a brilliant palm from Hermansen to flick the ball away for one of our bajillion corners of the day. Then, just as you’re thinking that justice is not going to be served and we’re going to be repeating the result of last weekend, Trossard steers it in off Ndidi to secure the points, with a minute or two left for Havertz to get off the mark too.

We left it late, we deserved the win, but season’s are built on mini stories within stories like yesterday’s win. It was an Arsenal who were given maximum punishment from the oppositions minimum efforts on our goal, but the pressure and willingness to win did the job and we keep on marching. Two weekend’s ago people were talking about how defeat to the Scum and City could leave us eight points off them and out of the title race. Today we find ourselves level with them, having played harder games than them and just a couple of points off a Liverpool team that have certainly had a more favourable run of fixtures than us so far. Onwards and upwards. And it’s PSG next weekend.

I’m going live on the Same Old Arsenal pod at 9.30am if you fancy doing a bit of a digest – you can watch that on YouTube here. Otherwise, I’ll catch you tomorrow as we build up to PSG at home.

Zinchenko played 85 minutes for Ukraine in central midfield (more on that discussion during the week, I suspect, might even do a bit today actually) and so I think he’s ok.

Bukayo Saka came off unscathed having played 65 minutes for England, so he should be fine (another I have seen debated as a possible Odegaard replacement).

Havertz played the full 90 for Germany in a 2-2 draw against the Netherlands (another guy who can play in midfield, let’s not forget, even if he isn’t a right eight per say), whilst Jurrien Timber was on the other side and got 45 minutes for the Dutch. On that particular substitution, let’s put partisan domestic rivalries aside here, because the reason Timber was on so early was because Nathan Ake was stretchered off with what looked like a problematic muscular injury. I’m sure there are plenty of ‘banter’ City, United, Liverpool, Chelsea and Scum accounts that took the opportunity to laugh at it, probably a few Arsenal ones too, but I’m not having any of it. It’s just another needless injury at a time in which there are needless internationals that are costing players game time because of an already ridiculous schedule. Get all of these glorified European friendlies in the bin please.

On Monday Saliba got the full 90 and so one would assume he is ok and big Gabi played the full 90 for Brazil against Paraguay, so he should be fine (we hope), whilst Partey also played the full 90 against Niger on Monday.

So from a player availability perspective we have guys who should be ok and thankfully there are no more injuries. Arsenal were at pains to chill some of the initial Arsenal fanbase rage at this break by posting a video yesterday of players banging the ball in the back of the net and you suspect it was timed to be a visual message to people like me that is “calm down, we have this. We have plenty of very talented players and we will go to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium full of confidence and belief”. You’d expect that public message, but within the walls of London Colney, Arteta and his coaching staff will be re-writing game plans as we speak I suspect. Now that he will have an idea on who is available (barring any more training ground injuries which, let’s face it, it feels like we can’t rule out given our luck so far this season), the plan will commence on how to patch up the midfield. And herein lies a real conundrum, because it isn’t an easy fix. To be fair, any team losing a player for any length of time is probably not going to be able to replace them easily; for Man City De Bruyne out isn’t going to be replaced because as we know he’s just a quality player, for Liverpool you just can’t slot in a Salah 2.0 and for Villa Watkins was their ‘go to’ guy last season. Even The Scum will highlight Maddison or Son, although the former is injured for periods of a season every season, so you have to kind of acknowledge that when you buy him in the first place.

So we won’t be able to replace Martin Odegaard, but we have options on who can play there. The problem we have is that nearly all of them are untested, because Odegaard is just usually fit for us and basically plays all the time.

The first I mentioned above is Zinchenko. I’ve seen people say that he has never played for us in that position before, which of course is true, but it’s not as if he is untried there. Indeed, he plays in central midfield (and it is his favoured position, I think) for Ukraine and even played there last night in their 3-2 loss, albeit he played on the left hand side of the midfield. But I think we might be in a ‘break glass in case of emergency’ position right now and I think I’m leaning towards him as a starting midfielder for Sunday. Let me show you some initial workings on this, by considering the other options here:

1. Bukayo Saka – intelligent, versatile, has played at right back, left back, could probably do a good job in goal if we needed him. He’s a player who has a good passing range, will cover the ground both running back towards his goal and getting forward. The only question mark I would have with him there is leading the press. Saka is a man who is very clever in picking when he is sprinting and when he isn’t. He times it always so perfectly. I’m not sure whether he would lead our press with as much ferocity as much as Odegaard would. I also don’t think Arteta wants to move too many pieces out of position when he has to juggle his squad. We saw that in 2022/23 when we had the injury to Saliba in the Sporting game. Arteta’s first reaction was to not move White in to central defence but to play Holding instead. It was a failed experiment and eventually he brought Kiwior in to play in an unfavoured right centre-back role, rather than have White play there (although I acknowledge that White was carrying an injury too so that may have played some part in the end). So I think Arteta will have the same feelings about Saka i.e. he wants him in that right wing position and he wants him to see if he can do damage for us in the attacking third from a more familiar position. I will also admit that having him in there would also free up an opportunity for Sterling to play wide right and that enables us to keep a lot of the team the same, but I also don’t think he’s throwing Sterling in for his first game in an Arsenal shirt straight away. For starters he might not be fully match sharp having played no part in the first three games of the season for Chelsea.
2. Ethan Nwaneri – those of you who are on this kids hype train, I get it and I want to be there with you, but this isn’t a mid-to-lower league Premier League team, or a cup game. This is the intensity of a North London Derby and putting that much pressure on a kid like him to step up and fill the boots, feels harsh to me, so I wouldn’t do it. I also think Arteta won’t do it because as much as he has shown he will roll the dice on young players like he did with Smith Rowe in 2020 against Chelsea, he tends to be a little more cautious than chucking young players in to one of the biggest games of the season. That doesn’t mean I don’t think he won’t be involved at all and perhaps, depending on game state, he might be given a go. But it just ‘feels’ to me like a ‘last 15’ type move, rather than a starter.
3. Kai Havertz – I do get this one, because we bought him as a midfielder and Arteta has used him there, so unlike Zinchenko he has priors on this one, but again I’m just not sure that he’ll want to tinker with the positions of his key men just yet. Kai was also excellent in last season’s win and so I think Arteta keeps him there. Let’s also not forget that Havertz has tended to play as a left eight rather than a right eight. A subtle change and I’m sure he’d be fine adapting, but there are just slight differences in how the pitch is viewed based on the fact he is left-footed, that makes me wonder whether this is something that Arteta will take in to account and decide that maybe he isn’t the choice. There’s also another big factor in the fact that I don’t think he’ll play there – I think Havertz is going to play left eight given our lack of options in our whole midfield right now.
4. Partey – This one comes as a double pairing, because if you’re going to move Partey forward, then you are almost certainly playing Jorginho in as the deeper lying number six. I can’t see us doing that with the lack of mobility between them. At this point in time it very much feels like one or the other to me.

I’ve seen a few other suggestions for Timber or Calafiori, but if Arteta is risk averse when it comes to moving players around from other positions or not wanting to try to move players like Zinchenko (who has played in midfield) in there, he isn’t going to do that. So I really think it is one of the above options. And for me it feels like a midfield of Zinchenko and possibly Havertz (does anybody know anything about Jesus’ availability?) alongside him.

Whatever he decides, it is sub-optimal, but I guess we’ll need to find out what the status of the squad is from him on Friday. Two days of waiting it is then.

Catch you all tomorrow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THIS IS THE SAME GAME.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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