I used to collect the match-day programmes back when I was a kid. It was usually for big games I’d ask for one (FA Cup final, etc), or for matches I was in attendance at. I don’t do it so much anymore, but when there is a potentially big game like Real Madrid at home last season, or PSG in the semi-finals, I pick one up. It probably shows where our performances are at (and maybe the opposition) that the thought never crossed my mind as I was heading into the ground.

I think part of it is to do with the fact that my eyes and mind have been worryingly fixated on the game in Manchester on Sunday, but also, I think we’ve had it rammed down our throats since the summer that the Portuguese league is akin to the Championship. In the summer, it was the gamble in relation to signing a killer in that league and whether it would translate to the Premier League (which has some truths about it), but last night it was in my mind as we thought about beating a side that plays in a league that is more like lining up against Wrexham, Oxford and Stoke.

The TIFO was out to bring the atmosphere nonetheless, and I thought overall, considering where a lot of us are right now with the Arsenal and the performances, the fans were in decent voice throughout.

Arteta named the same attacking line-up as Saturday, which was a slight worry, and in reality, whilst the stats will say we have eight attempts and one big chance, we were hardly peppering the Sporting keeper’s goal.

The ‘goal’ of the evening, however, was to progress. So we have to say that is a big ‘tick’ because overall Arsenal limited Sporting to barely anything. They hit the outside of the post towards the end of the half, but that was pretty much it. And in the second half, they offered very little threat overall. I think we have the key defensive components to thank for that; Gabriel and Saliba looked assured again, whilst Hincapie had an excellent game, I thought. He was strong and physical in defence, whilst in attack, he was getting forward and providing options on the wing in both halves.

If I’m seeming a little overly critical today, I think it is probably because I had hoped that this would be a bit of a ‘reset’ ahead of Sunday. I hope that Arsenal would come out all guns blazing, catch Sporting Lisbon out, control the game and maybe bag a goal or two. I do think we did come out well in the first half, but we were still found wanting on those wings. I do wonder how long we can let Madueke get away with these types of performances, but he came off with a knee problem in that second half, so Arteta’s hand might once again be forced, unfortunately. Throwing Max Dowman in for our biggest game of the season seems harsh, but we might be at the stage of saying “who else?” at this rate.

Let’s pull today’s musings back to some positivity, though, eh? And that positivity comes in the shape of Martin Zubimendi, who was excellent last night and picked up the man-of-the-match award.

The verticality of passing has returned!!!

I think a lot of that probably had something to do with the fact that Eze’s reintroduction into the team gave him an outlet to find further forward, and Eze himself looked lively and also played well, I thought. He was there to link up; he was further up the pitch in between the Sporting midfield and defence, and were he to have another forward in front of him who could receive the ball and make less static runs, we might have found ourselves ahead with a few chances. Having Ebs fit and with minutes under his belt for Sunday is certainly something that gave me cause for some optimism.

So too, did having Havertz come on for his cameo up front, because we haven’t seen that of late. Kai has been playing in that midfield role that doesn’t work for him at all, so when Gyokeres’ number came up for Havertz, a lot of the Block Fivers around me were very pleased. Kai has to start up top on Sunday, with Eze behind him.

Back to my ‘reset’ point, and I think a few players needed that, if we’re all honest. The back line needed another game in which the opposition’s xG was negligible. Zubimendi needed a game to remind us of his quality and passing range, and by picking up the man-of-the-match gong last night, his confidence will be flowing back in. Seeing him cut a sad and depressed figure on Saturday, as his teammates consoled him at times, was not fun. So if I could have chosen anyone to have a really good game and look a little more like the 2025 version of himself, it would have been Zubimendi.

Rice was his usual all-action self, and I thought Leo looked a little more spritely too, so hopefully he’s good to start at the weekend.

And if you think about that huge game at the weekend, there are some more overall positives we can take:

• Havertz only playing a cameo means he should be fresher
• Hincapie, with minutes under his belt following injury, means he will be ready
• Zubi’s good performance will give him confidence
• Eze getting 79 minutes means he should be good
• Trossard for Martinelli feels a bit of a no-brainer.

It would be lovely to hear news of Saka, Timber, Odegaard and Calafiori all being back for Sunday, but they won’t be fit enough to start, so let’s just take these positives for now and move on.

And move on we do. To the semi-final of the Champions League. Something that we’ve only managed three times in our history. That’s an impressive level of consistency that Arteta and his team should be applauded for. Can they go one better than last season and make it to the final?

Let’s get the small matter of Sunday and Newcastle at home out of the way first before we worry about that.

Catch you all tomorrow.

At this point, you just have to laugh. Because the latest guy to return to London Colney is Pierro Hincapie, who limped off against Morocco on 72 minutes, and I have to wonder what the actual eff he was still doing on the pitch at that moment. If he’s playing 45 to 60 minutes, I guess you have to say ‘fine’, but he’s on the pitch until the 72nd minute, and given he’s one of the best players for Ecuador, one has to wonder what the point of this was. Does the coach need to get an extra look at him? Of course not. This was pointless and now we have ourselves another player who could be crocked.

Honestly, at this point, it is just farcical. And then I check the sports websites and newspapers to read that Martin Zubimendi has also now been withdrawn with a knee injury.

What the frigg is going on?

These players should never have been called up to these pointless international friendlies. They should have been told that their place is secure and they should be resting up.

Of course, you now have a raft of opposition fans who are bleating about Arsenal withdrawing their players, but as a team, we are still fighting in three competitions, and these players are clearly knackered, so this should have been a decision taken out of their hands. All of them should have been told that they were fine to stay at home and not report for training. The only players who should have been called up are those who need the minutes. The White’s, the Norgaard’s, the Havertz’s – all fine. But Zubimendi? No way he should have been told to report.

And for those idiots who are now blasting out YouTube and TikTok videos calling this a disgrace – you’re a new level of moron. The players, and the clubs themselves, have to provide medical information for those players who are called up by their international sides. They have to show where knocks exist. The Spanish FA has even mentioned discomfort in the knee for Zubimendi; he’s teetering on the edge, and they’ve sent him back to Arsenal.

People are citing Ferguson, but we live in a different age now, because there has to be medical evidence for withdrawing from international duty. There is an obligation by the clubs, probably because of managers like Fergie, who have gamed the system for years and now we find a situation where players are reporting for duty when it is clearly in their interest to be resting up.

So now we have an ‘official’ injury list (in brackets because I think some players are due to come back, but that just hasn’t been confirmed yet) that includes:

• Timber
• Saliba
• Gabriel
• Hincapie
• Zubimendi
• Rice
• Eze
• Odegaard
• Saka
• Madueke
• Trossard

Just 11 players, at the most critical point in the season, who could be out. And the problem we all have as worried Arsenal fans, is that when Arteta does his pre-Southampton press conference, we’re either getting no information from him, or confirmation that a ton of players are out.

This game next weekend feels like it might now be one that Arteta basically throws by rotating out a lot of the above. And do you know what will happen if he does that? He’ll get accused of disrespecting the FA Cup.

Ludicrous.

Away from that though, because I’m beginning to sound like a broken record, I find it interesting that the discussions over Man City and the 115 charges have resurfaced over the last few days. And I thought the discussion that Tom Canton popped up on the Football London website was interesting yesterday. And I agree with Tom about his assertion on a possible points deduction happening towards the end of the season. Because if we do what we all hope we will do and win the league (fingers crossed, touch wood, etc, etc), that last thing you want is the 115 Charges being used against us to asterisk any kind of title.

Ultimately, none of us will care if we win the league, but it would be annoying to see this all unfold just at the point at which we want to be celebrating. Utopia for me would be for us to win the league, then the 60-point deduction to be applied for next season. Let’s have City start off at the bottom of the table and go from there in 2026/27, because I want a purity about the Premier League win, however, come back to me after the Bournemouth and City games, because if we lose both of those I think I’ll be taking that deduction buffer!

There’s not a lot else going on right now, so I think I’ll park any further thoughts for today. I’ll be back on the Same Old Arsenal pod tonight, as Amanda and I are doing a bit of an international break check-in, so if you fancy joining us at 5.45 pm UK time, you can do so here. Otherwise, I’ll leave you all be for today and catch you again tomorrow, when we learn that Raya has broken his fingers whilst in training for Spain.

Of course, there are two sides to this coin, with an upside and a possible downside. I don’t believe that Arsenal could get away with just chatting to international managers this close to the World Cup, and having an almost unanimous verdict from most that they will leave players at home because their World Cup places are secured. So, whilst the tone of today’s blog will be “good, players will get some rest”, I do think we have some knocks to be worried about.

For example, Big Gabi is not going to Brazil, good stuff. But the statement from the Brazilian FA, which talked about imaging showing that he has a problem in his knee, that’s bad stuff. I’m going to choose the upside, though, which is that the statement from the Brazilian FA also said that what is required is a period of rest to recover, and we certainly have that.

Our next ‘big’ game is against Sporting. Southampton in the FA Cup is important, but let’s get some real talk going here; if we have to, we have to play a heavily rotated team to get those first-teamers rested. The Southampton game is Saturday, 4th April. As of today, that is 11 days away. Sporting Lisbon is 14 days away. A solid two weeks stand between us and our next big one. I want to win the FA Cup; I love going to Wembley for the semi and the final, but if it means we are risking players, then as of right now, I’m saying “nope” to players who are carrying knocks.

I want to see a myriad of warm-weather Instagram snaps from all of the players who have withdrawn from international duty this week. These players have all looked fatigued, Declan Rice even admitted to it post-Leverkusen, as I’ve already mentioned in a previous blog, so we just have to sit as many down on deck chairs and sun loungers as possible. No training, no heavy lifting of furniture or anything like that – tell the wife that the trip to Ikea will have to wait, as there are bodies that need healing ahead of the final part of this season.

Trossard, Eze, and Odegaard are all out. Big Gabi is out. Saliba has withdrawn from the French team. This ain’t no Fergie situation though; these days you have to provide evidence to support issues, so Arsenal and these respective players will have done just that. So the order of the day right now is that every single one of those players needs to stay at home, or get themselves on a plane to somewhere like Portugal – it’s 21 degrees and sunny in the Algarve this week – get yer arses on the golf course!

The worry from the weekend was the clear lack of a creative eight to collect the ball from the back four, but I’m less worried about that, because it sounds like Odegaard was back in training, so I suspect he’ll be staying in London Colney to build up his fitness. But I’m already thinking about that rotated XI over the Easter weekend and, based on needing to sit players down and rest them, here are my initial thoughts based on the little we know:

Kepa

White   –   Mosquera   –   Calafiori   –   Lewis-Skelly

Norgaard

Odegaard   –   Dowman

Madueke   –   Jesus   –   Martinelli

Give Kepa a chance to still feel part of the team after his howler and overall poor performance on Sunday. Ben White needs minutes; he’s not going to play all of the football for the international team, but he does need some minutes, and so this call-up will boost him, so that’s all good. Mosquera, too, hasn’t played a ton of football, plus he’ll have got his first international call-up, so he’ll be buzzing as well. Calafiiro need to build up his cadence and momentum, whilst we all know Myles hasn’t played enough. The same is true for Norgaard. Dowman is an X-factor player, and playing against a team a division down would be good for him, whilst Odegaard getting a solid 60 would be useful. Madueke for Saka feels like the right move, whilst Jesus in so you can have Gyokeres as full power against his old club, feels about right for me. Martinelli hasn’t been favoured for Trossard of late, but he and Jesus have those connections, so it makes sense.

I know it is just under two weeks away, but that lineup for 70 minutes means you don’t put too much into the legs of Zubi, Rice, Saka, Gyokeres, Saliba and Big Gabi. It means you keep Timber out, who hasn’t gone to the Netherlands, and so will also have had more than two weeks out by the time the Sporting game comes along.

My hope is that we don’t get any wind of news that any of the injuries that are sustained are long-term. If we’re talking players needing a solid 10 – 14 days rest to recover, then happy days – for once, an international break has come at the right time. But we need those players who are going – the likes of White, Calafiori, Saka, Rice, Zubimendi, Norgaard, etc – to all come back in one piece. Get through this set of international games, then come back and sit yerselves on the bench for the FA Cup.

It feels a little scary hearing those announcements of players withdrawing from international duty, but none of them feels like they are ‘big’ injuries. Areta’s diagnosis on Eze didn’t sound great, but even if he’s out for two weeks, as I’ve said above, the return of Odegaard is timely for our current situation and the current period we have for the next two weeks, including Southampton.

As the dust settles, I’m going to do more ‘vibes check’ posts about how I’m feeling, and sure, I need to see those Instagram snaps of players resting up. Until we get those, or rumours of players being ‘fine’ from Athletic articles where an agent has fed them some info, there will always be nerves. But as it stands, I’m pretty chilled about the situation.

Back tomorrow with some more thoughts.

They’re a good team. A physical team. A team who know their strengths and is good at reducing its deficiencies. The data nerds may well raise an occasional eyebrow at how well they’ve done this season, but having watched them frustrate us and stifle us in the first half yesterday, I have to admit I’m surprised that their away form has been a bit, well, pants.

It took a bit of Zubi magic to unlock them, which then also meant they would have to come at us a little more, but I was still impressed at how hard we had to work. Zubi’s scored more goals than he’s ever done so before, but I bet if you asked him, he’d tell you that his highlights reel for this season has never looked as impressive. I love a goal that cannons in off the post and that one just before halftime felt particularly aesthetically pleasing. A real ‘have it!’ moment and worthy of winning any match alone.

It’d been tough going up until that point though. I thought Calafiori looked oddly at sixes-and-sevens at points in the game, perhaps still getting up to match fitness, but there was also a couple of weird moments in which Raya was a little sloppy too. Thankfully we weren’t punished, and in fact we did what we tend to do with these kinds of games – we basically locked out Sunderland for most of the match (Opta had their xG for the whole game as 0.17). Apparently Sunderland had three shots on target, but I’m struggling to remember whether Raya was troubled by any of them. Last weekend Daniel Farke spoke about how they essentially just don’t get a sniff and this week whilst Regis Le Bris didn’t exactly say the same, I’ll bet he was thinking it.

One-nil to The Arsenal at home earlier in the season felt like ‘job done’. But in 2026 so far we’ve conceded a few goals despite being ahead, so it did feel as though the stadium might get a bit antsy if that scoreline remained until the dying embers of the game. But thankfully we have a striker in form in Big Vik, so him bagging that goal on 66 minutes did make me feel like the game was essentially done. He’d only been on the pitch for six minutes, but his introduction clearly proved to be a master stroke by Arteta. His replacement Gabriel Jesus had hardly been in the game, same as Madueke, but the two coming on will have made their case to start against Brentford in midweek quite clear with their end product. Martinelli on the right is an interesting one; he’s barely ever been utilised there during Arteta’s time, but finds himself getting a few minutes here and there this season. Hey, if he can deliver like he did for Vik’s second in stoppage time, maybe Madueke shouldn’t be the defacto ‘next man up’ when Saka isn’t available.

It’s probably more to do with game state though. At 2-0 on 66 minutes, Sunderland are goingt o push forward a little more to see if they can unsettle us, plus with the fact that they are already basically safe, this one becomes a bit of a Hail Mary free hit of a remaining 25+ minutes as soon as we get the second goal. So perhaps that kind of game, where there is space, where there are moments in which Martinelli can run in behind like he did on 93 minutes, are perfect and the reason that he’s looked so good when coming on as a sub.

The same can probably be said for Gyokeres too. I really liked his first finish. It was instinctive. It was poachy. It was a good strike and a big to relief to all involved. At the start of the season I was very much minded to say if he gets 20 goals in all comps, then he’s done his job. That’s 13 now I believe, with plenty of football matches left to play, so if he keeps up this form, he’ll get to his target. We still need the other attackers to step up, for sure, but at least we have a goalscorer who will be feeling himself a bit after bagging a fair few goals over recent weeks.

Now there’s an opportunity to rest up, for those players to have a solid few days of light training, before a really tough away game to an in-form Brentford team on Thursday. This league is relentless, the same intensity will be needed and Arsenal will need to keep up the winning ways, despite being nine points clear. It feels great this morning, it’s handy that Liverpool and City play this afternoon and we know those Arsenal players have done their job. But if you ever want an example of how relentless this competition is, we play away to Brentford and away to The Scum in back-to-back Premier League matches. If City win today, that buffer we’ve built up could very easily be eroded, so it’s game faces on now and focus on the Bees next week.

Back tomorrow with more musings.

All talk pre-game was about the fact that this could officially be classed as a ‘wobble’ if Arsenal do not win. Three without victory, two goalless draws, a team that can’t score open play goals, etc, etc, blah, blah – you know the drill as well as I do. So when we also got the news pre-kick off that Saka had pulled up in the warm-up, you could forgive any Arsenal fan for being a little more apprehensive. His form in terms of goals may have dried up, but he’s still a talisman in this Arsenal team, as Odegaard been seen in times gone by too. But he was unexpectedly dropped – an acknowledgement from Arteta methinks, that his captain’s form hasn’t been great – and didn’t see any minutes until the game was practically won in the second half. A sign of things to come? Maybe, maybe not, because it was Havertz who replaced the Norwegian, and I think Arteta will have Kai earmarked for more attacking roles at the spearhead of our attack, when his fitness comes back up to the required level for him to be able to play a full 90.

Side note: I actually think Odegaard played really well when he came on. There was a definite verticality in his passing; it was almost as if being dropped had shot a rocket up his backside, and he realised how effective he could be.

The game itself started a little stodgy, though. Leeds got on the ball, the home fans were in good voice, they were keeping us at bay for at least the first 20 minutes, I think. And although we completely restricted them – as we often do to teams – in terms of chance creation, we weren’t getting in behind too much and creating loads of chances. It’s funny though, because for me personally, when the game goes on, I find myself seeing games differently to how the commentators do. I was watching on Sri Lankan TV and they had Lee Hendry and some other dude talking about how dominant we were, but until that first goal goes in, you’re always wondering if it’s going to be a game like that Forest one.

We have Martin Zubimendi to thank for the fact that we did get that all-important first goal, although Noni Madueke might have something to say about his role in the proceedings. I don’t know about you, but seeing him celebrate, I got a feeling that he celebrated that a little harder than normal – perhaps last weekend’s mistake was still playing on his mind? If that’s the case, much like Big Gabi at Newcastle last season, the best way to respond is like that. The ball from Noni was great (another guy who had a very good game in terms of delivery and end product – assist-wise), his header was well met and sometimes those bullet headers straight down the ‘keepers throat are really difficult to save.

1-0 to the Arsenal. Lovely. What you then need before halftime is that second to really make your dominance count. So of course, it was going to be a set piece that did it. I have seen Man City fans, Liverpool fans, as well as some of those scummy Spurs and Chelsea fans, talk up how we are anti-football. I couldn’t be happier to read it. They can moan all they like, but you don’t get half a goal for a set piece. You also have something in your locker that terrifies teams, which is the only explanation for why Karl Darlow flapped one in his own net. Of course, queue the Match of the Day and Sky Sports graphics talking about how ‘Own Goal’ is now our top scorer.

Cry me a river.

Lately, a 2-0 scoreline hasn’t felt like it was the ‘sure thing’ for an Arsenal win, with goals against us for Bournemouth and United, as well as two for Chelsea in the League Cup, which is probably why I felt a little more nervous than usual in that first 10 minutes of the second half. Leeds were always going to come out and ‘have a go’; their home fans would have demanded it. And again, whilst I personally was quite nervous, I think with the benefit of hindsight, the Arsenal players just took control and rode out the mini storm with relative ease in the end. A final nail in the coffin by way of an Arsenal third was all we’d need.

Did I mention the narratives about ‘Own Goal’ being trotted out? Well, step forward, Big Vik, who decided that on this day, that narrative was going to be quashed somewhat. Now, it wasn’t a scintillating performance from the Swede (he should have taken his shot on from a great ball from Trossard in that first half), but I think we’re all coming to realise that we just aren’t going to get that from him. He was fine, strong in places, held up the ball ok and I think his connection with Havertz looked good. What I will say, though, is that his goal was EXACTLY the sort of finish I thought we’d be getting from him this season. Odegaard’s ball in behind to set Martinelli racing was a little wide, but he did well to get on to it, and his left-footed cross in was begging for some good movement.

We got it. Gyokeres used his strength well. He got in front of his man, his finish was a bit of a shinner, but who cares? He’s there to do exactly that, and much like Zubi, you could kind of tell that he was very happy with that ball hitting the back of the net. He needed that just as much as Zubi must have felt he did.

Job done. But whilst we’re having fun, why not get a cherry on the cake, which Gabriel Jesus decided he wanted to be in on the action for? His goal was the pick of the bunch from a build-up and finish perspective. And it was a very ‘Gabby Jesus’ type of move. The type of goal where you think “if you could do that every week, you’d be an absolute legendary superstar”. We don’t get enough from him on a consistent basis (he was pretty crap against United), but he is still showing that he can have an impact this season.

And I wonder what impact this comprehensive win will have on the team? After a little wobble, we’ve scored four goals, some open play ones too, we can put the recent blip hopefully behind us and we go into a semi-final against Chelsea at home in which a win would get us to a League Cup final (probably) against Man City.

A good day’s work. Let’s build on it.

So why do I not feel completely sated this morning?

I think it’s probably the feeling that this tie could – and probably should – be practically over. We outshot them. We had more big chances. We won more duels. We had more corners. The only thing Chelsea had over Arsenal on the night was greater possession, but, as the eye test showed, that was a little more sterile for us. It felt like we gave Chelsea a bit of a lifeline with the goals we conceded to a Garnacho who I personally think is one of the most overrated players in the league. The goals he scored felt avoidable:

1. Garnacho at the back post, unmarked after Neto had been allowed to float the ball in from the other flank
2. A poorly contested corner that went through a sea of players as Garnacho semi-mis-hit his goal attempt.

This game felt like one that we should have taken a 3-1 lead back to the Emirates on, something I know Mikel Arteta also believed, based on his post-match comments. It felt like a game that – despite Chelsea getting a few chances throughout – was one that we were in control of. That feeling helps when you score early, and Ben White’s headed goal from one of the first corners of the game certainly did its bit to calm any initial lingering nerves I had. It was pretty shocking defending, though; if we’re going to say that we could – probably should – have done better on our conceded goals, I think Chelsea fans waking up this morning will be feeling a lot worse about the concession of their goals.

That applies to the second goal we scored as well. Sanchez won’t want to go back into the video room for this match this week, that’s for sure, because it was he who allowed the ball to slip through his palms for Big Vik to break his drought and put us two up on the night. And as I said on the ol’ socials, boy, did the Swede need that. He cut another solitary performance at first last night, and the stats guys who run the graphics on screen are never going to be his friend, with last night’s number on screen in that first half saying that he’d by far had the fewest touches of any player on the pitch.

It doesn’t matter if you score though

That’s what we’ve been saying for a while, so if I’m going to have choice words to say when he doesn’t score and looks forlorn like Liverpool this time last week, we have to hand out some flowers to the big guy when he does. Right place, right time, hopefully this helps his confidence.

And at that point, you’d expect Arsenal to shut up shop. We’ve been good for quite some time at closing down games, but Mikel Arteta will be a little disappointed in the concession of those two Garnacho goals. That’s happened a lot over the last six weeks or so. I think most of us Gooners have put it down to Big Gabi being out at the start, but he’s been back for a couple of weeks now. Yet, we’re still not keeping the back line completely water-tight, which is something I think Arteta will be looking at today and tomorrow when they do their analysis on this match ahead of Forest on Saturday.

From a tactical perspective, I really liked how high we pressured Chelsea in their half of the pitch. When Sanchez played the ball out from the back, it was never long, and Arsenal clearly knew this would happen, because there was always a guy in the midfield picking the ball up in their own half, which forced several high turnovers and presented a few opportunities. Rice, Odegaard and Zubi – all had their moments in which they did that, and you could tell it was clearly instructive. Arsenal had Chelsea’s number on the night, which is also why I guess I’m a wee bit frustrated, because it felt like we easily had the beating of them and were the better team on the night.

I definitely felt that when Zubi scored. What a player he is, eh? He does the six role to perfection, but he’s also been given the licence to go forward more than he ever did at Real Sociedad, which is resulting in goals for him too. He has four goals in all competitions this season already. Last season, he scored two. In fact, across his career, he has only ever managed a maximum of four in a season – he has only scored 10 goals in 236 games across seven seasons previously, so he’s already matched his best, and we’re only just halfway through the season. This is a guy who has very quickly become an integral cog in this Arteta machine, and you can see why Arsenal pursued him through such a long campaign as they did last year. He is a superstar, and I love that he plays in our red and white. I’ll also take this moment to say ‘props’ to the team themselves, who worked the ball really well for that goal, including Big Vik, who gets himself an assist on the night too.

The job isn’t done, as Arteta was pointing out afterwards, but we have ourselves a one-goal lead to take to our own gaff in a couple of weeks’ time, and that is good. Whether it will mean that players are rotated, I doubt, because that is quite a slender lead for you to be doing mass tinkering as we did against Pompey. But there is at least the breathing space, and Arteta was at least able to make a few subs last night too, bringing on Merino,Jesus and Havertz for Rice, Gyokeres and Odegaard. Martinelli got on too to keep his engine running as well and perhaps the subs made us a little less organised as those players came up to speed with the game, but I do just wonder if we just switched off a bit with their second goal.

Hey, I’m nit-picking though because let’s be honest, we’re in a good position, we scored three goals and should now be heavy favourites to go one better than last season. And you have to take that. All eyes now shift to Forest away on Saturday, which will be a really tricky game against a Sean Dyche who loves to spoil the mood, so let’s hope those players have those game-faces back on immediately, because we can’t afford any Premier League slip-ups, having had a bit of a hiatus from it over the last week.

Back tomorrow as we build up to that one.

• The Great Arsenal underperforming data machine
• The Great Aston Villa overperforming data engine

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, Villa have been a weird team from a data point of view, kind of defying the statistical models. Given they’d just gone through an 11-game winning streak, they rocked up at The Emirates in very good form and perhaps an expectation from their fans that they could very well cause an upset on our turf.

I felt it too, to be fair, because Villa had picked up a draw last season, and the season before that, they’d done us with a smash-and-grab, scoring two late goals. This could very well derail our season and I was very apprehensive ahead of it.

To add to that, the fact that the news emerged a few hours before kick-off that Rice wouldn’t be fit to play in this game, compounded the nerves. Arsenal would need to do this without our most in-form player of the season. But there was some positives that could be taken, with Big Gabi restored to the line-up, as well as Jurrien Timber and given that Hincapie was now getting into the team more regularly and had acquitted himself very well at both centre-half and left back this season, this was a back line that should be able to sure up any potential issues that Villa might pose.

But the absence of Rice was certainly felt in that first half and Villa caused us some challenges in midfield with one particularly impressive Tielemans ball through the middle of our team that Rogers nearly got the run on through on goal. Thankfully the back line spared our blushes, because in that first half Villa had the more presentable chances and, sadly, once again those half-decent chances fell to Big Viktor Gyokeres who didn’t take them. I’m not here to bag on him though; perhaps he could have done better with one of his headers, but he isn’t know as a striker who has a great scoring record with his head, so unlike the early chance against Brighton, I think those were a little tougher. But he’s still not getting into those positions and that continues to be a concern.

So was the gamesmanship from Villa players who, I thought, were playing from time and slowing the game down from the early parts of this game. I don’t blame them; they were content to frustrate a home team and crowd and given our record on our own patch, if they could slow everything down by taking time on the ball, going down a lot, then they’re entitled to do so. And let’s not forget that a fair bit has been made of Unai’s tactical subs in the second half and they certainly looked more impressive in the second half against Chelsea, so they obviously thought they had a blueprint they could adopt.

So Arsenal would have to change something in that second half and boy, did they, because we were out of the traps quickly and were ahead within three minutes of the restart. I’d read a Villa blog in the run-up to this game in which the author talked about how Martinez has some fantastic games, but he does get a little too preoccupied with opposition players and that sometimes causes him trouble. That happened against Chelsea and it happened last night too. His complaints about Big Gabi having fouled him were half-hearted at best and although it was hardly vintage stuff from the Brazilian, his mere presence unsettles all defenders and goalkeepers and he showed it last night. If you ask me, he’s the best central defender in the world not just because of his threat in the attacking box, but his presence at the heart of our defence too. You could tell the relief from the crowd when he came on as a sub against Brighton and today he showed his value at the attacking end too.

One goal hasn’t felt enough for Arsenal for a while now though, so the most important thing those Arsenal players needed to do was to get themselves a second and when you do that within a few minutes of the first, there’s always a big sense of relief and belief that this could go on to be a great game. What I liked about this goal was that it had everything the first half did not. I mentioned the Tielemans pass in the first half that split our midfield – well, this was an example of what happens if you press higher and win the ball back higher up the pitch to stop that kind of pass and move being made. Odegaard won the ball high – something that we know we are good at – his pass to Zubi was inch-perfect, the Spaniard’s flick over Martinez was done as if he was our centre-forward, it was 2-0 to The Arsenal and suddenly it felt like there could be more for us here. Villa, who had been getting away with it from a stats perspective for a few games now (if you listen to the data nerds), looked like the regression to the norm was upon us.

We were all over them from the beginning of the second half, but unlike in recent weeks, it was time to offer a beat-down to a team, and although we had to wait until the 69th minute for Leo to bag another goal and really seal this match up, we still created a ton of chances and I thought we were 100% value for that third goal. I have to confess I thought it would be ruled out for offside, but the good thing about offside is that it’s a little less subjective than things like a foul or a handball call, so once the technology had been checked and the goal was given, the relief could really set in.

And that relief just turned to joy with the goal from Gabby Jesus, who you could see was over the moon with his slot home to turn this in to a proper statement win. And it really was. The Watkins goal took a bit of the gloss off, but Arsenal played an in-form team (albeit missing a couple of key players) and took them apart. The narrative of recent weeks have been that Arsenal are wobbling, but this didn’t feel like it. This felt like an adrenaline shot for a team that is ready to go to the next level.

There’s no time to rest though. Bournemouth away was a place that we suffered last season, and so Arteta and his charges will be well-aware of the threat they pose, having lost last season. More on that in the coming days as we prep for that game on Saturday. For now, happy New Year’s Eve, with me off for a Cotswolds walk ahead of a boozy afternoon and evening.

Catch you tomorrow – hangover permitting.

That’s a lot of football.

And given our injury record this season, I totally get that he might be training indoors, on a ‘light’ set of training sessions this week because as the games come thick and fast over Christmas, losing him is not something we want to countenance. And he’s also going to have to do something he’ll have never done before having never played outside of Spain until this season: no winter break. La Liga shuts down on Tuesday until 2nd January and under normal circumstances Zubi might be back home and resting up any weary bones. But this season in that same period he could feasibly play four matches:

• Palace in the League Cup
• Brighton in the Premier League
• Villa in the Premier League
• Bournemouth in the Premier League

Alright, technically Bournemouth is on 3rd January, but this is still quite a schedule and not something the Spaniard will be used to. So for him to be taking it easy and the club being mindful of the change at this time of year is a sensible one. I do wonder if they will manage his minutes at all over Christmas too. If – crossing everything as I say this and hoping for Christmas miracles – we can be winning games by a sdecent margin, I suspect he might be a candidate for an early exit in games. We have Norgaard, we have Rice, it kind of makes sense. But these matches will all be tight affairs I suspect, so I am just hoping that we can be sensible and if players look like they are struggling, we get them off.

We need some to come back though. I thought I heard some rumours that Havertz is targeting the remaining December games to be fit and of course there are still opportunities for him to train this week, but I doubt he’ll make Everton. If we’re lucky he might be good for a cameo at home to Brighton on 27th December, but given he’s barely played any football in 2025 as a whole, I suspect his minutes will be managed until the new year. That means an opportunity still remains with Gyokeres and Gabriel Jesus and they have to see this period as an opportunity they have to take. We can’t be seeing games in which Gyokeres is having five or ten touches and barely any attempts on target. Yes, we need to feed him, but he also needs to be in those positions to be fed. And he needs to anticipate better like the Saka opportunity that came across the goal in the first half against Wolves.

There’s an onus on him, there’s an onus on our creative players to spot the runs, which I hope is one of the things they are looking at this week. I’ll start to do my previews of the Everton game tomorrow, but you’d expect Everton aren’t going to play “park the bus” football at home in front of their own fans on Saturday evening. They’ll want to show that they can mix it with anyone and with 24 points and sitting ninth in the table at the moment, they’ve shown they are no slouch as a team. They’ve beaten Forest, Bournemouth, United (with a man down), The Scum, as well as Brighton at home. There’s some decent results against decent teams in there so we will need to be properly wary of their threat.

We’ve also got a pretty terrible record there of late too. Last season it was a 1-1 draw, the season before that we picked up a scrappy 1-0, but in the five before that we’ve lost four and drew one. Everton have a good record at home against us and we need to address that on Saturday – won’t be easy with the evening kick off getting the home fans all riled up and intoxicated with the last league game before Christmas.

But Arsenal and Arteta have themselves another two days of prep before they travel up on Friday, so my hope is that they’ve done all their homework, some of those things that Arteta had said had “deteriorated” through not training can be reset, then we’re in the best possible shape to do the business come Saturday evening.

I’ll be back tomorrow as we start to look ahead in a little more detail on what Everton will bring to the table from a tactical and statistical perspective.

Catch you all then.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Catch you all tomorrow.

Arteta’s starting line up cause a few raised eyebrows amongst the fanbase, with Declan Rice rested, but with Bilbao in midweek and City the week after, he’d clearly looked at this small block of games and decided that rotation is needed. This is new for him. This is an evolution. I – maybe like you too – have long thought that he doesn’t trust enough of his squad to rotate, but yesterday proves he now feels like he can and the result was a victory that I have to say looked very impressive from where I sat (I had to watch the first half on a plane!). The fanbase has long told him “if you’re going to have a squad, use it!” and he definitely responded yesterday, playing Merino in back-to-back games, which he admitted afterwards had something to do with his impressive form for Spain and his goals over the international break. Perfect – meritocracy – that’s what we all want.

The rest of the team was as most of us expected and in came Eze for Martinelli and in that first half I thought Eze was quiet. He showed some flashes of quality with his turn of pace to beat a man a couple of times, but most of our play came down the right hand side, where Noni Madueke was absolutely terrific I thought. He is a nightmare to deal with for defenders because he has a very quick stop-start turn of pace and he had whatever full back Forest played on toast all day. He beat his man time and time again and whilst the end product wasn’t always there, what his performance did for the team yesterday was start to commit more Forest players over tot hat side and I noticed towards the end of that first half that Forest started doubling up on him to try to stop him. But he just kept on beating his man and for a guy who I didn’t understand why we bought him, he’s absolutely proving me wrong and honestly I couldn’t be happier about it.

400+ words in and I still haven’t mentioned the first goal. That is very remiss of me because it was a peach of a finish from Zubimendi and I tell you think right now, we’ll have ourselves a candidate for goal of the season when we get to May, that’s for sure. On the volley, swerving finish, Sels with no chance, it was of the highest quality and I saw an interview afterwards where the interviewing confirmed that he only scored two goals in the whole season last season. Welp, he’s equalled that already because his second and Arsenal’s third to seal the game, was a really good one from a guy who isn’t that tall and yet leapt like a slamon in the box to float the ball over Sels.

That third goal came on 79 minutes and as I mentioned before, if you’re going to plot out the ‘perfect’ 3-0 victory, I think you’d probably pick similar times for the goals we scored. Almost – I’d probably prefer an early goal, maybe on 15 minutes, but around the half hour mark is also fine. Then, you’d definitely pick a ‘straight after halftime’ and that’s what we got with Big Vik’s third goal of the season. It felt somewhat similar to his first goal at the start; a long ball from Calafiori down the left hand channel, only this time it was Eze sprinting down that left hand side and then when the Firest defender didn’t win the header to let the ball bounce of his shoulder, Ebs needed just one touch to instantly cross the ball over to the Swede to tap in from inside the six yard box. It was a classic poacher/striker finish and it’s exactly what we brought the Swede for. Power, positioning, box threat. He is not the most skilful player in the world, there were a couple of times in which his touch went awry, but there were more times in which he linked up with his fellow attackers and other times in which he made an impact with his power running; I’m particularly thinking about the effort he had that cracked the top of the post in the second half.

The relationship between Eze and Gyokeres was interesting. I think a few people have speculated that Eze would enjoy playing with Gyokeres like he enjoyed playing with Mateta, but yesterday we got visible evidence of this with the second goal, but also with some of the connections between the two and I think it’s no co-incidence that both players improved after halftime. This was the first time they’d properly got minutes together and with Gyokeres being a guy who naturally favours that left hand side, you could see the connections starting to form.

That’s really positive as well because if you think about how on our right hand side you have Odegaard (really unlucky to get injured on the same shoulder again but Ethan came in and did really well I thought) and Saka who combine, it’s good to see that Eze and Gyokeres might be starting a good connection with each other. Of course yesterday it was Madueke and with Odegaard going off he was isolated, but what we saw is that he’s fine being a lone wolf on the right hand side; Arsenal players can feed him the ball with little support and he will action it. Of course he did get some support and I noticed Timber overlapping on a few occasions which was positive, but in the main Noni is happy to get the ball and go at his man and at a time in which we have Saka and Odegaard out, his form is a welcome one. He got a deserved standing ovation and I loved what I saw.

But that goes for most of the team. We reduced Forest to basically nothing and the fact that their best chance came through a bit of a spawny whack off of Wood’s chest to deflect the ball towards the crossbar, shows just how controlled we were defensively, where we have now conceded just one goal all season and it has come from a wonder strike free kick at Anfield. I’ll take that for our opening exchanges.

And I’ll take the three points for the weekend to take us temporarily top. Liverpool will batter Burnley today I suspect, but at least we are doing our bit.

Now, on to Bilbao. Catch you all tomorrow.

P.s. I didn’t even mention ‘Big Ange’s return. Props to the home fans for singing “Are you Tottenham in disguise” yesterday. I liked that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Catch you all tomorrow.

Yesterday we got the official confirmation of Martin Zubimendi’s arrival from Real Sociedad, with the first pictures of him in next season’s kit, then later in the day there was talk of the striker situation finally nearing a conclusion. Thankfully.

Let’s start with the Zubimendi transfer. Yes, we all knew it was happening, yes, it didn’t come as a surprise to many, but until it’s on the dot com you still have that last 0.1% of doubt. So to see it all confirmed and ratified and to have him talking through his ambitions was still lovely to see. He came across as quite humble, down to earth and I suspect his character is as much of a draw for Arteta and Arsenal, as his ability on the pitch. And on the pitch we have a guy who is a Spanish international, who looks at home anchoring the midfield and who we hope will be an ever-present in an Arsenal side that needs to start picking up trophies. Zubimendi even referenced that need in his interview. He is a ‘win now’ player and at 26-year’s-old we’re getting somebody who – providing he acclimatises to the Premier League well enough – goes straight in to the starting XI.

That acclimatisation period is going to be aided by the fact he’s got some old teammates who are teammates once again in Merino and to a lesser extent Martin Odegaard, as well as the fact there are a few Spaniard’s and Arteta himself who will all be able to help him settle in. But by this deal being done earlyish in the window he’ll have time to do a bit of training at London Colney, before jetting off on tour to Singapore and then Hong Kong at the end of the month. He’ll also be given a taste of home over the next 10 days or so, because according to the Met Office it’s going to be a bit of a scorcher in London for just over a week after today! Martin, trust me, it isn’t always like this mate, so don’t get used to it!

This is a superb move any way you look at it. We have a duel winner, a guy who is a progressive passer, somebody who should be able to provide us with an even more stable base and not only that, but somebody coveted all over the top European leagues. But what also shows you how much work goes into these kinds of deals, is when you read articles like this on the BBC about how it unfolded, going all the way back to the summer. I  hadn’t realised that we had spent time talking to them as they were nearly about to seal the Liverpool deal. He’s a player that I think we’d been tentatively linked with before Liverpool, but nothing concrete and I remember last summer when that felt like it was about to happen, being a little apprehensive. “This guy is a winner and he’ll be really good for Liverpool” I thought. But I hadn’t realised that Zubimendi clearly looked at wanting to stay in La Real, as well as looking at the fact he might have something on the table from Arsenal for the following summer, had an impact on his decision making. These are the kinds of stories you love to hear – to think that last summer I was worried about losing a great player to a rival, when all the time he had his eyes on us, is pretty wild really.

Welcome to The Arsenal, Zubi!

And it appears he might soon be joined by a striker signing too, after Ornstein dropped his bomba yesterday about Arsenal being in advanced talks over Viktor Gyokeres, with the clubs nearing an agreement on the fee it appears.

I’ve been pretty clear in stating my case about Sesko as my preferred option, I just feel like it would be a better move for us overall, but with RB Leipzig supposedly wanting close to €100million for the player, Arsenal clearly had to act. I think Sesko was Arteta’s first choice and I think if Leipzig would have played ball a bit then a deal could be done, but I also think that Arteta wants his business done now so he can get everyone in and acclimatised to the style of play and how we set up before the pre season tour kicks off. If a deal can be done for a reported €65-€70million plus add-ons, as opposed to €100million, then you gotta do it. Arsenal can get it wrapped up this week, he can be training with his new teammates for a week, before heading off on tour and starting to get a feel of the ball at his feet as an Arsenal player.

It’s good to see the club making a decision. We’ve had a few transfer window’s now where it has felt like we’ve had a plan A and if that didn’t come off, there was no striker plan B. I think Gyokeres might be plan B, but if you’re going to have a guy who has bagged as many goals as he has, who is a style and an approach different to Havertz that means we can approach games differently between different types of matches and game states, then that’s a-ok with me.

I have a feeling that it might be a fair few days before this saga really reaches a conclusion, so I don’t think I want to have a deeper look at Gyokeres and give too many thoughts until it is done, but I think for most of us we’ll just be glad that this saga is reaching a conclusion. Go get the Swede, get him in, then let’s see if we have ourselves a goal machine like he was for Sporting. Even the talks about waving parts of his salary to get this deal done feel like there’s a player there who has a massive desire to join Arsenal, which will please Arteta too.

That’s about all I got got you today. I suspect we might even have the Norgaard announcement at some stage in the next day or so, which will be another positive bit of squad bolstering but for now, I’ll leave you be and hope you have a great Monday.

But today is another day and I suspect we will finally get that announcement. The chain of events will probably be an Arsenal and Sociedad jointly timed announcement, perhaps from the La Real side with the player saying some kind of goodbye message posted on some socials at some stage thereafter I suspect. I doubt it will be as amazing and heartfelt as the one that Jurrien Timber posted on the Ajax site when he left, but I’m sure it will be one that expresses gratitude and love for his boyhood club.

For us, we’re getting ourselves somebody who is an interceptor, a ball winner and who was in the 92nd percentage quartile of La Liga players last season for clearances. At five foot 11 he’s not the tallest guy in the world, but I was surprised to learn that he’s in the 85th percentage of players in the league who won aerial duels. He’s a man who loves a challenge, loves to be at the heart of the build up of moves and will look to play progressive passing football through lines from deep. I’m not sure whether I’ve seen enough of him to know if he’s a quarter back though; so I don’t know if we’re going to get somebody playing long diags to the likes of Martinelli or Saka from deep to spring quick traps on opponents, but we will get somebody who will look forward at every opportunity. This is no Denilson-style crab master; Zubimendi is somebody always looking forward and always looking to get the ball into that space in between the midfield and defence of opponents.

I think Martin Odegaard is going to love him.

Last season we saw Odegaard picking the ball up a little deeper at times and I think that takes him away from where he does the most damage. Odegaard in between the midfield and defence of whoever we are playing is where I think he can do real damage. Think about the goal towards the end of the season against Bournemouth; Odegaard popped up in between their lines, he reverse-passed it to a diagonally-running Rice, who ironically took it beyond Kepa and then slot it home. Now imagine what it might mean if Odegaard is given specific instructions to occupy those positions more, because Zubimendi is going to be looking for him. That’s what I think (and hope) we’re going to get from our incoming Spanish international. There’s also the small matter of them having played together whilst Odegaard was on loan.

Don’t get me wrong, the clearances, interceptions, duels won, etc are all important. If we know anything about Arteta he gets upset when he loses a duel! So we know that the defensive side of his game will be important. But I think this move is Arteta’s way of trying to speed us up through the park this coming season. Partey was a master at receiving the ball, quickly turning from his man and then shuffling out into space so he could release it, but I felt at times he spent a little too long getting the ball moving. Towards the end of the season especially, we saw one or two too many touches and I think that contributed to the general feeling amongst the fanbase that we were too slow in build up. It was all too methodical and sometimes we needed to go from back to front more quickly. My hope is that this signing will allow us to do that more from deep and if it means we aren’t seeing Odegaard pick the ball up and travelling with it from halfway inside our box (because he’s already on the halfway line when the ball turns over) then I think all of us will be a little happier.

There’s a lot of talk about the striker this summer and I get it, I want that guy in too and soon. But I suspect the reason this work on Zubimendi got done so early, the reason that they were courting him for the last year and even more so from this winter just gone, was because I think Arteta views getting the right player in this position was his most important move for the way we want to play next season. It probably helps that Arteta knows that position so well too; he will know exactly what he needs in that role and by getting his man, his first choice, he has an exact idea as to how he’s going to deploy him.

I do think Arteta wanted to keep Partey, but I think (and I suspect most Arsenal fans do too) that the idea was for Arsenal not to become reliant on the Ghanaian and to have him serve an additional year as the Jorginho guy. Partey not wanting to do that (which I suspect is why he asked for more money just in dcase that was the situation i.e. at least he gets a big wage whilst sitting on the bench) has resulted in the Norgaard signing, which will of course probably be announced tomorrow I suspect.

Which will conclude a heck of a week of activity for The Arsenal. Feast or famine, eh?

Catch you all tomorrow

Of course the reality was always going to be that the club would start to making moves as soon as July 1st came around. We needed to start the ball rolling, clearly this deal had been done last week and the club were able to formally announce the agreement on 1st July as the market opens and player sales start to move.

Kepa The ‘Keeper is a Gooner.

Back up: Tick.

And, in somewhat of an aesthetic little pleasure for me personally, he’s also got himself a proper reserve ‘keeper number too. Ooooh I like that. There’s so much of football these days that has lost it’s tradition, that having something that reminds you of the good ol’ days when goalies wore one, the reserve ‘keeper had 13 and your full backs wore two and three, send an irrational wave of joy through my body yesterday when it was announced.

This is a good deal for all involved, except Chelsea, which is also good. Chelsea get just £5million for a guy who was number one at an impressive Bournemouth last season, who I’d imagine they’d want at least between £10 – £15million from Bournemouth if they wanted to sign him permanently, but because of the release clause in his contract, is going for just £5million. That money, in today’s market, is superb work for a guy who will probably only start half a dozen games next season. I just did a quick check on the Bank of England Calculator for what £3million in 2014 is worth in today’s money. In 2014 we signed Ospina from Nice for that figure and the value of that in today’s market comes out at £4.15million. So we’re basically playing a little over what we paid for Ospina back in the day. No problem with that at all. If we get through, let’s say three rounds of the League Cup and have the same in the FA Cup, then maybe a Champions League dead rubber (fingers crossed) come next year, he’s probably only looking at six to ten matches, maximum. So this is brilliant. The loan deal for Neto last year was, frankly, a bit bonkers because we couldn’t play him in the League Cup and when the FA Cup came around we got yet another tough game at home to United (on paper, anyway), so Raya had to play. But I think if that same match comes along again, Arteta is happy to give Kepa the cup games and I think that is the right thing to do. He’s also a guy who has enough experience under his belt and was impressive enough last season, that his past under Chelsea when he used to throw things in the net, is hopefully behind him.

Back then when he was signed for Chelsea for £71million in 2018 he was a 23-year-old lad (a baby for a goalie) who was simply Nicolas Pepe’d; all people talked about was his price tag because Bilbao played hard ball on the release fee back then. Chelsea were desperate and they needed to make a statement signing after being snubbed by Alisson, so they went for a young guy who had plenty of year’s ahead of him but not a lot of experience; before Bilbao sold him he’d played just 54 times for them across a couple of season’s as a 21 and 22-year old. So Chelsea did what Chelsea do (and continue to do today) – chucked a shedload of money at the problem just to get it done.

Kepa was never a £71million ‘keeper and probably should have gone for about a third of that.

But that’s water under the bridge. Because now he has found himself to be a very capable goalie that we have locked in for at least this season. He will back himself to try to force his way ahead of Raya, which is what you want, then maybe next summer or the summer after if he hasn’t managed to do that, we can move him on for probably about the same money as we’ve brought him. Smart move from Arsenal.

But now you’ve whet our appetite, Arsenal, so we want more. I think most of us are guessing that comes in the shape of Zubimendi and if that deal can be announced today, then that’ll feel good too, because it means another one in the bag. Before then, however, I suspect the club will announce the Thomas Partey departure, but I suspect the way it’ll be managed in the media is you do that and then give it an hour or two before giving the good news on Zubi. That’s how I’d let it play out personally anyway. I wonder if the club with take the five jersey from Partey and hand it straight to the Spaniard? He wore four for Sociedad, three before then, but he’s also worn six, 18 and five for Spain. So my gut feel is that – in the most obvious and visual demonstration that he is Partey’s replacement – he will adopt the same number as the Ghanaian had.

Of course the club also have Norgaard coming in and perhaps there’s been chat’s between the club and the two players? Because KT’s departure means number three is free, so perhaps Zubimendi takes three and Norgaard can have five?

I guess none of this really matters, but it’s fun to have a little speculation in the absence of any real news. We all know the important thing is delivering on the pitch.

Apart from the Kepa news, which I think timing makes sense because it means he doesn’t get glossed over as an announcement by a bigger name coming in before him, there’s not really a lot else going on. I suspect it’s because they will be knocking down signings one by one and if I’m managing the announcements, I’m building up to them in order of importance. So that might even mean that Norgaard goes first. He’s the Jorginho replacement and rotation option, so do that one next, before making a big announcement towards the end of the week on the big one in Zubimendi. Let’s see if that’s the case.

Back tomorrow with musings.

I think a lot of fans, despite seeing some of our rivals do some initial deals, have been somewhat serene on the signings situation. But for me today is the point where my nerves start to kick in. I get that today is when contracts expire, it’ll be when Arsenal announce Zubimendi (or tomorrow if they’re really teasing us), so in essence the business will start to kick in. But what we’ve had in June is plenty of “make strides towards” stuff from the ITKs, with not a lot of actual ACTION happening.

My hope is that Arsenal have everything lined up to go on a number of fronts and those dominoes will fall one after the other. So Zubimendi, then Kepa, then Norgaard, all coming in relatively swiftly. These are all the easy deals to do and I even saw one of the head people over at Brentford admitting that it’s a great opportunity to join Arsenal that Norgaard has, so that one feels like it’s pretty much sewn up. So these ‘low hanging fruit’ signings need to happen asap really. Not because we are all transfer-starved fiends who demand shiny new things to look at, but because we have genuine need for these signings to replace departed players.

With Neto returning to Bournemouth, Kepa’s arrival is the replacement.

With Jorginho having been released early to join Flamengo we have Norgaard as the replacement.

With Partey’s contract expiring today we have Zubimendi announced as his replacement.

We also have Sterling returning to Chelsea to sit in the barren wasteland that is their reserves, stocked full of expensive talent on big contracts that they aren’t using because they chase EVERY shiny new thing, so there is a replacement there that needs to be filled.

We all know about the need for a striker, needed because we had to do it last summer and in January, but also because Gabriel Jesus is probably cooked as a top flight footballer when he returns towards the end of the year.

So action is the name of the game, because as it stands, as I write this, technically speaking we are weaker with the current team than the one that ended the season. We all expect that to change, but every day that deals aren’t official, are days in which players can’t be getting more embedded with their new teammates. And as we’ve seen with the disruption of the World Cup and Euro’s years, not having a proper pre season under your belt can make a big difference to the start of the season and building up that momentum.

Of course the longer term deals – like this current striker hunt – might not be done too quickly, but I suspect Arteta will be pretty peeved if he hasn’t got the bulk of his team in for when they go on pre season tour towards the latter part of this month. That, again, is a great opportunity for embedding players and so having this situation where we still don’t know who might be leading the line next season (wink wink, we all know it’ll be Havertz to start off with, at least) will not be the kind of preparation Arteta will want. We all know that this is a man of intense and precise detail; having a striker rocking up on 1st August is not going to be something he will be happy about.

It’s a little different with the wide forward, with Eze the current name linked in the press over the last 48 hours or so, as we already have Martinelli and Trossard who occupy those positions. Both are well-versed in our style of play, I’d be happy with seeing either start the season, but Eze isn’t always a left winger as it is. So I’m not 100% sure how somebody like that fits in. Don’t get me wrong, I think it would be a good addition and certainly adds something, but are you spending £65million for somebody to be a rotation and ‘x-factor’ player who can come off the bench? Doesn’t feel like it to me. Let’s also not discount Nwaneri either. He played in Saka’s role on the right when he was injured, but this kid is good enough to play wide left, as well as centrally, so I do think we need to be mindful of that when thinking about players like Eze. Nwaneri will be even better than he was last season and if that means he goes north of ten goals next season, then we’ve got a perfectly good understudy who will get game time and give us more of the end product we’ve been craving.

Perhaps it’s just Arsenal and Berta exploring as many options and different ways of playing as possible. Either way, I don’t see it as an immediate priority, because first we replace the players who have exited, then we address most pressing concerns (striker), then we look for that wide forward.

That’s all from me today. Hopefully tomorrow we’re talking about at least one confirmation of an arrival at the club.

A boring 0-0 draw.

I didn’t watch it, but Sky Sports thrust it into my eye-line on their website this morning with a match review, whose highlights included “Messi hit the die netting with a free kick”. Honestly, I hope this tournament is as boring as possible and that FIFA are put off from ever doing something like this again.

They won’t. They’ll be back again as long as there’s a Saudi bankrolling them somewhere. Gianni Infantino gets his stage, he gets his money, FIFA line their pockets. Night follows day.

In the Arsenal world, it’s all still about Gyokeres or Sesko and I think even the ITKs are running out of ‘angles’. I’ve seen some suggest (fans, not ITKs) that we should go for both players, but honestly, I couldn’t see that happening in a billion years. Why would we do that? We have Havertz who we’ve all heard everyone at the club loves, he’s beefed himself up whilst injured and was a guy on form before his injury. He’ll be the one kicking off our season regardless of who we sign I think, so the idea that we’d go and buy two centre forwards when we clearly need to strengthen in other positions, feels a bit mental to me. And we leave that to those muppets in West London who play in blue.

I do wonder if this situation with these two players is making things worse for decision making though. I saw a few articles yesterday and this morning suggesting Gyokeres’ first choice is The Arsenal and he’s waiting to see what happens with us before deciding anything else. That sounds lovely and sure, it’s good to know we have a player waiting for us, but eventually Arsenal have to step over the line with one of them. It’s starting to feel a little like we have two lovely chocolate cakes and we can’t pick between the two, so we just keep staring at both of them, resulting in us not having any of the delicious cake.

Just pick one of the delicious cakes, Arsenal. Stop staring at them both. They’re both lovely. You’ll be very happy in the tasting of both cakes.

There was something I saw yesterday about Zubimendi’s medical booked for Wednesday, but at this stage it’s essentially the worst kept secret and I’m kind of a bit ‘meh’ about those stories because we already know it’s happening. I’ll be excited to see him in the shirt unveiling, but stories about medicals ‘booked’ don’t butter my muffins.

I have no idea what is with my food-based metaphors today.

It will be a big signing though. It’s weird, you probably won’t believe me, but I was kinda sad last summer when it looked like he was going to Liverpool. We had Rice and Partey sitting at the base, but Zubimendi was a player I thought “he’d be a good signing for us. I’d like him”. I also think that his signing for Liverpool made me very nervous in terms of how he would bring a level of quality to Liverpool’s midfield that would take them up a notch. Now, with him on the verge of signing for us, I have seen videos doing ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ of him, how he might not be as physically ready for the Premier League and I can’t help but think that I never had that thought in my mind when he was signing for Liverpool last summer. It’s funny how when you’re looking over at somebody else’s garden, you automatically think the grass is greener and everything is perfect. It’s the same with the Wirtz signing. Great player, he’s going to be good for them we all know, but because of the fee I find myself thinking they are suddenly going to have all of their issues solved. Ultimately if they have Salah go down injured, or even if he just doesn’t run as hot as last season, then Liverpool won’t get things their own way all the time as they did last season. Even with Wirtz. But as champions, having just come off the back of walking the league, spending pretty big already, everyone is looking at them and automatically projecting more glory. All I’ll say is “we’ll see”.

Anyhoo, to more serious news, which is that it was a year ago today that we lost Kevin Campbell, who died at the age of 54 years old. On this Father’s Day here in England, I am thinking about his family and children who lost a husband and a dad at an age in life that you really shouldn’t be losing your life. He was such a loveable character, I know lots of Arsenal fans who knew him and said he was the loveliest man. I never met him, but I have read and heard plenty of positive stories about him and how he impacted people’s lives so positively. Rest in Peace, big man.

Catch you all tomorrow.

I’ve already talked about the fact that Madrid have a few guys in the position that Zubimendi plays already as a potential reason as to why this might not materialise, but there are plenty of other things we can all point to that make this story today merely a click-bait exercise from Marca to stir up a story where there potentially isn’t one.

The player himself has apparently already given his word, the two clubs (Arsenal and Real Sociedad) have been talking for ages, La Real would probably ideally not like to see Zubimendi in their domestic league, plus we have to take anything that Marca say with a pinch of salt.

What I’ve enjoyed about this morning is that Arsenal clearly have their own countermeasures they are willing to deploy, in the shape of a certain Mr Ornstein, who already this morning has released a message basically saying that Real Madrid’s interest was never fully confirmed and concrete, that Arsenal are expecting him to report to training when the team gets back together. Hey, Ornstein doesn’t speak unless he’s triple-checked his workings, but when you couple that with the fact that a few other people qwho seem to be reasonably well-informed have also given us all a pre-emptive strike based on the Marca story last night, I think we can all be pretty chilled on the situation at the moment.

It doesn’t mean something random couldn’t happen, it doesn’t mean that Madrid don’t do a dirty on us, but from all of the noise that surrounds this, it feels like this is one of those “one in a million” situations, so we just need to chill. That doesn’t mean that everyone will and there will be people losing their sh*t today with this news, but I’ve listened to the odd football podcast recently and the noises about how the club are very happy with how the summer is panning out is comforting for me personally. We all know City and Chelsea are making their moves, Liverpool are edging along too, but with Ornstein also saying that this week is expected to be busy for The Arsenal in terms of potential incomings, I think we can be perfectly happy with how things are unfolding.

If by 1st July we haven’t made a single deal, then I think there’s some cause for consternation, but not at this early stage in the window.

In the meantime, we still have these tedious international matches to worry about, of which England are playing tonight and Saka is due to start. Just let the boy stay fit and go on his holidays please, Tommy T. None of us really want to see him break down at any stage. Let’s have all of our lads given a clean bill of health and then over the next week let’s seem them on yachts and beaches across the globe as they rest themselves up for what is going to be a huge season for The Arsenal.

And if you think about it, it WILL be massive, because the weight of expectation now on the shoulders of those Arsenal players are big. I was having a drink with a work mate who is Leeds fan the other day. I was recounting to him the gloriousness of that first season we finished runner sup to City. Every time we conceded at home there was a sense of “come on lads, we believe in you” and the atmosphere at The Emirates was amazing. The second season we had that run at the end of the season which really hit home just how good we were and whilst the atmosphere wasn’t quite as good as the season before, it was still buoyant. Last season it was less so too, probably because we were out of a title race early on and it felt like the world (and especially PGMOL) were against us. Last season felt like it was our season but the fates had decided against that for whatever reason. So for me, in my head, I’m already looking at this season coming up and thinking “surely, it’s ours this time around, right?

I know it doesn’t work like that. We all do. We could have another injury-hit season again. We are pretty much nailed on to get shafted on refereeing decisions because we’re not a North West-based club. But I am starting to get a feeling in my belly that we are ‘destined’ for some kind of success next season and that is a dangerous way to think. But I can’t help it. We’ve had the best defence two-years running. City are still in a rebuild. Liverpool surely can’t have as much fortune as they had this season, so surely the football gods need to align to send us towards the trophy-laiden promised land, right?

Wrong. You have to get everything right and that includes doing the required things in the summer that puts your team in the perfect position to be that best side. The players we have are all now coming into prime age, whereas a few season’s back we were still a little on the young side. But they have to get it over the line. Nothing comes to you just by you wishing it into being, you have to go out and prove it. With others around us strengthening right now it feels a little like we’re standing still, but I have faith that we’re going to start to see some movement in the next week or so and when that happens, I suspect there will be plenty of Arsenal fans that will breathe a sigh of relief and look towards getting a good pre season under our belts.

But for now, as I’ve said before, let’s stay ‘calma’.

I saw the goal as it did the rounds on social media last night and it was a well worked piece and a very fine finish from our Spaniard. For somebody who never played striker before he was shunted in to the role against Leicester earlier this year, his adaptation to that position has been quite impressive indeed. I know he didn’t play that role last night, as he was operating on the left of what looked like a 4-3-3 for Spain (didn’t watch, just looking at a few data points online), but the advanced positions he finds himself in and the fact he stroked the ball away like a seasoned centre forward is impressive.

It was a bit of a stuttery start for Merino due to that freak injury at the start of last season, but as he became an enforced regular in the side, he came up with some really impressive finishes and by the end of it I found myself thinking what a good player he was, rather than what he gives to the Arsenal team. For the first half of the season I was a bit *Alan Patridge shoulder shrug emoji* about his role; he seemed to just be a bit of a ‘fill in guy’ for when we had injuries. Which, as it turned out last season, happened to be quite a lot; he played 44 times and racked up 2,600+ minutes in an Arsenal shirt. His versatility was clearly why Mikel wanted him, but also his ability to clearly adapt and learn to his surroundings makes you realise why Mikel was so hot on him last summer. He’s played a bit as a right eight, a left eight, plus – as we all know – as a centre forward, with nine goals and five assists bagged in his first season at the club. That’s a pretty decent return and when you think he bagged five goals in the Premier League as a centre forward, he proved his value in more than what I thought he’d be – a guy who is going to box crashing and bag headed goals.

How much game time he gets next season will be interesting, especially if we’d going to sign a striker, wide forward and Zubimendi in at six. It means he might find his time a little more limited but if he continues to put in performances and if he continues to be as useful across a wide array of positions, Mikel will definitely be using him plenty next season.

One player we might sign, but won’t use a lot, will be that chap Kepa from Chelsea. My first response when I heard that rumour was “what? Another bloody Chelsea player?? WHY???” but then I checked myself a little when reading up on the terms of that deal. It’s clear that we need a back up goalie. Neto goes back to Bournemouth after a grand total of four appearances and one absolutely crazy brain-fart moment in the Champions League that he got away with. He’s 35 and basically nearly never played all season. So the reality is that we don’t need somebody to come in play much football.

Kepa has just had a decent enough season for Bournemouth, but let’s be honest, he’s a guy who has been liable to throw one in his own net at times whilst at Chelsea. That’s where my initial reservation comes in, but when I hear that he has a £5million release clause and I think about how little Neto played, I kind of feel like this feels like a sensible move for essentially peanuts, that is a decent back up and I’m kinda ok with it. The real question will be whether Kepa himself would be ok with it. He’s just played 35 games for Bournemouth and might fancy a taste of more football at the age of 30. If he comes to The Arsenal Arteta might chuck him some League Cup games and some FA Cup games depending on how far we progress, but that’s about it. So if he’s coming to us it’s really so he can hope he claims a medal or two before his career ends. He’s been in the Real Madrid (!) squad that won the Champions League the season before last, then also in the La Liga team that won the Spanish title that same season too. He played 20 games in all competitions. He was also in that Chelsea team that won the Champions league against City, although he was a back up there too. So he’s no stranger to it, but the question remains whether he fancies that at all. I have my doubts.

But if Arsenal do that deal I think most Arsenal fans won’t bat an eyelid. We need a back up, he’s experienced, hopefully he won’t play much and we can focus our transfer kitty on more important outfield places. Feels like a bit of a no brainer. Plus, there’s no faffing around with this one if the player does want to join The Arsenal; we’ve quite enjoyed not messing around and paying release clauses in the recent past, it looks like we’re doing the same with Zubimendi this summer (fingers crossed), so this is a low-hassle deal that can mean other priorities are focused on. Get it done, move on to other things, Arsenal.

What those other things are remains to be seen. We are still waiting for any movement in other bigger deals but now that Zubimendi has finished his UEFA Nations League game with Spain last night, I suspect he’ll go have his medical, get some pictures taken, then jet off for a bit of holiday before re-joining us at the beginning of July for pre season training.

And until then, we wait for other news, like a striker, or maybe a cheeky Rodrygo, although I suspect that’ll be a slow burner, if all of the noises coming out last night from different sources are to be believed. So I’m going to park that for now and wish you all a wonderful Friday. Catch you tomorrow.

**Update**

literally as soon as I finished today’s musings, Big Gabi was announced as signing a new deal!

Will get to that with some thoughts tomorrow.

What might drive any Arsenal fan to drink this summer is protracted transfers and as James pointed out in the Athletic this week, the expectation for financial reporting purposes is that he will not arrive at The Arsenal until 1st July. That’s gonna boil some online piss, for sure, if what I’ve read so far, with the window opened just four whole days. People are getting grumpy and what happens with situations like this, is that they shout into the void that is the internet, which creates an echo chamber of irritation as any slight concern any normal human has, gets amplified when they read other people’s hyperbolic views on t’internet.

The hive mentality kicks in, suddenly you have a whipping up of angst that really ought to not be there.

Most of the self-respecting journos and people who state a career on being ITKs (The Romano’s of this world, the Kike Marin’s of this world, etc) have been pretty consistent with what is happening. Even being away with the national team this week and having Zubimendi say he didn’t want to talk too much about the future, about the comments re: his medical at Arsenal not being true, as well as the fact that he’s had Xabi Alonso as his idol, hasn’t really moved many to suddenly declare Madrid are ‘in for him’.

They could make a late move. They could pay the release clause from Sociedad and we could indeed have a situation where Zubimendi is staring at a choice between Arsenal and Madrid. But even if that happens, I still think we’d be favourites to edge any signature. Hear me out on this one:

1. Arsenal have spent a lot of time on this deal. They’ve been courting him for almost a year it seems, since it became clear he wasn’t going to Liverpool. They will have been whispering sweet nothings into his ears, they will have been very clear that he’s their choice, they will certainly have been making him feel like he’s going to be loved.
2. Arteta effect. Mikel is a Basque boy, which might have a little bit of sway, but not enough perhaps to lure away from the prospect of Real Madrid and his idol Xabi Alonso. But having just arrived at Real Madrid, do you think that Alonso is going to be telling Zubimendi “mate, get your arse over here, you’re my first signing and you’ll play every week”? Of course he won’t. Arteta will have explained in great – and meticulous – detail how he expects to use the player, what his hopes are for the impact on the system. Arteta has had ample time to make this player feel like he will be a vital cog in a midfield that has just got to the semi final of the Champions League.
3. The options at Madrid. Real currently have Tchouameni and Camavinga in their side. They have a fair bit of work to do this summer, so top of their list is surely not going to be a defensive midfielder, is it? That gives us the opportunity to steal a march on any transfer.

I think I’ve said this previously on one of the blogs,  but this kind of noise that comes from transfers like this that don’t come out of the blue, are to be expected. We had it with Declan Rice and Man City, as I’ve previously talked about, but Arsenal had approached that transfer in the same way that they are approaching this one. So for me, personally, I’m not really fussed about any spurious rumours coming from fan accounts of Madrid, Arsenal or football media accounts just trying to hype up potential shifts in expectations just for clicks.

As ol’ Unai used to say:

Calma. Calma.

I think that’s going to be the same for a lot of teams actually. The movement we’re seeing right now are the ‘low hanging fruit’ as I would call it. In other words, deals that are easy to do. It’s easy to sign Frimpong when you’ve been in touch with Leverkusen for months, you know Trent is leaving, he has a release clause (I think) and you just pay it. Then, if you’re already talking to them about that, saying to Leverkusen “do you want £100million+ for Wirtz?” is another easy one to do. Bayer know he’s going, they get the cash, deal can be done. Cunha was already on his way out and had a release clause. Same as the lad from Ipswich who’s just joined Chelsea.

These are all release clause deals. Arsenal are doing the same, it’s why everyone is talking about how Zubi is basically ‘done’, because it is. There are just the formalities. So as long as those are observed and we don’t get any U-turns from the Spanish side (which would also damage a relationship that has been good on both fronts so far), or from the player himself, then this really isn’t something to worry about.

So I think we just need to let this one play out. There will be rumours and counter-rumours, but ultimately we as fans just need to chill a bit, and let the natural process of a transfer play out. If we’d heard nothing until now, we’d all be excited, but because it’s been on the radar for for a while I think that’s colouring people’s judgement on what appears to me like a pretty standard transfer process.

Just food for thought on a Wednesday morning.

I mean, honestly, what is the point in having it closed for just six days? Why not just have it open the whole time? I’ve looked at the rules on Sky Sports and the Premier League and apparently it’s due to the fact that a transfer window is only supposed to be open for 12 weeks at a time. But honestly, these days, does that really even matter? Clubs still do deals and make announcements before and after that time, they just state in their press releases that “x player will join on 30th June as part of the regulated process” or something similar. It’s all a bit silly really because it’s just paperwork related. It means only that clubs can’t officially trigger release clauses like we are hoping to hear about soon re: Zubimendi, but all we’re really talking about these days is Arsenal having scheduled sends on their emails. The hard work, the negotiations, the contracts, the agents, the discussions between the clubs, have all been done before the window ‘officially’ opens anyway. So we’re basically talking about red tape here and it all feels a little pointless to me.

Anyway, Arsenal have another eight days to do a deal if they want to on that one, or the Sesko one, but I suspect that one will be a little longer in the process. The Zubi one feels like everyone knows the parameters of the sale and it’s just a case of working through that process, although the stupid and pointless Nations League match they play in on Thursday won’t help. It means he’ll be focused on that, but I guess the agents and two clubs can agree all they need to without him, so it shouldn’t be too much that he needs to do. I saw a comment from somebody from Real Sociedad suggesting that they have told him to go away with his national team, have a think, then come back with a ‘clear head’. After what happened last summer with him U-turning on Liverpool, we can’t completely rule out the possibility that the same happens again, but you’d think that if he did that again it would have quite an impact on him as an individual. He’d look like damaged goods a bit and whilst they have also said they don’t need to sell, the player himself must be thinking about moving on to advance his career. I’m not even looking at that through Arsenal-tinted lenses. They finished 11th, there will be no European football for them, Zubimendi has cemented his status with the fans by giving it one more season and I think most Sociedad fans would appreciate that. I think that’s what happened when Thierry left us. The speculation after the Champions League final was massive and I think he was probably ready to go, but Wenger told him to sign a new deal, give us one more season, which he did and then we sold him to Barcelona after that final season of his. I think most Arsenal fans acknowledged what Thierry had done and that’s why his exit was sad but it was something we accepted. My hope is that we see the same for Zubimendi, only this time we’re the beneficiaries.

There’s one more bit of gossip that I saw yesterday that I thought might be worth a word or two on, which is that Thomas Partey is apparently wanted by Barcelona. There are some comments about how we are on the verge of having him sign an extension, which is interesting given that it has been looking like the opposite for quite some time until recently, but given what’s happened (allegedly) in his private life, given his injury record, his age, the wages he has, etc – I’m kind of thinking we need to close this chapter. It would mean we’d have to go and get another central midfield number six I think, because Zubi and Rice as the only option puts a bit of pressure on them both to stay fit the whole season, especially given both will probably play a lot of games together with Rice as the eight. So it does feel like we might need a more experienced squad rotation player to come in and play as an acknowledged back up. A Jorginho-esque signing that doesn’t break the bank but is a clear back up for domestic cup games would have to be done if Partey leaves I think. But we’ll have to see how that one plays out. I have a sneaky suspicion that the club and player might end up doing another one or two year deal here.

And that’s about it for today. I’ll be back tomorrow with some more musings based on whatever rumours start to circulate over the next 24 hours. You have yourself a good one.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Catch you all tomorrow.

But I’m ok with that. I’m not interested in a man who wants to talk about “a different knock” when Arsenal come calling, or a figurehead telling us that we are aiming to be “bigger than Bayern Munich”, but instead I want a guy that gets his head down and gets the business done that is needed to take us to that next level and step that we’re currently missing.

Perhaps linked to that was a little mini Ornbomb that dropped last night, as David mentioned on his social media feeds that Arsenal are developing their interest in Gyokeres as a possible signing for the summer. IT’s interesting because I think many Arsenal fans’ eyes and expectations had been towards either the Bundesliga (Sesko and Ekitike) or the Premier League (Isak). I know people have spoken about Gyokeres, but it has seemed that this interest had been from fans more than the club, so I think many of us had just assumed that it wasn’t something the club were going to look at. But as Ornstein has mentioned, Berta is apparently a big fan of his and with Arsenal having played Sporting this season already, Arteta and his team have had a closer look at the 26-year-old. Although we did batter Lisbon, he did show some flashes of the player we have been watching from afar; he was strong (rolled Gabriel in one moment I seem to recall – not an easy task), he had a couple of powerful pot shots (somebody willing to have a go from a distance could be no bad thing), plus his hold up play was there to see. He’s bagged 42 goals this season having got 43 last season and so clearly he’s a man who knows where the onion bag is.

But I still wonder about whether he can do it in he Premier League. His physicality suggests he should be fine, but the time and space he’ll get in the Premier League will be less and the other question will be over his age. He’s 26, he’ll be 27 in June and the window for strikers to be at their peak is usually now. I’ve always said I like the look of Sesko, or that Ekitike guy because of their age profiles and so that would be my preference. Sesko is about to turn 22 in the summer and Ekitike is going to be 23 in June. It feels like Gyokeres is the ‘now’ option though. I’ve never liked the Isak option though, so give me Gyokeres, Ekitike or Sesko over that any day of the week, because as I’ve previously stated it’s that injury record that worries me. Isak would also probably cost twice as much as any of those players. And just look at this injury record. I know if you’re a regular reader you’ll proably be sick of me mentioning it, but now compare:

• Gyokeres’ injury record
• Ekitike’s injury record
• Sesko’s injury record

I know those players are younger than Isak (other than Gyokeres), but they still have better injury records compared to when the Swede was their age. That bodes well and hopefully signing any of those players mean we get availability as a more likely probability than if we spent double on Isak.

Whether or not this news is coming as a direct response to Berta’s arrival is interesting. Ornstein doesn’t usually report things unless he’s pretty sure on the source, but perhaps he’s been sitting on this information until the Berta arrival, as the two are in fact linked. One way to curry favour with fans is to get a quick win of a signing under your belt and so if that’s what Berta is looking at by way of a deal to be done. The noises on the fee seem like they’d be pretty feasible too; apparently he’s got a €100million (£83million) release clause, but there’s an expectation that a deal could be done for around €75million (£62million). That sort of cash would certainly be on the affordable side for Arsenal and I suspect pulling the trigger on that kind of money earlier on in the summer would be something Arsenal would be more happy to do. They know they need to do it this summer and so why not make a decision and settle on a first choice, settling on a player and go for it? The way the club operate is that they get all of the checks and balances in place so that the player is 100% convinced he wants to play for the club and by making moves now it could tee it up for the summer. Look at the way they courted Rice, the groundwork they seem to have done on Zubimendi, which they could replicate with Berta and Gyokeres. And if they can get those two deals over the line early in the summer, I think it’ll have Arsenal fans pretty pumped for the new season. Supposedly Zubimendi’s release clause is €61million) and Sociedad know that he will probably leave this summer, so they want to move fast to get the money in so they can re-invest. So if you’re asking me whether we should try to get Isak for £125million, or go get Zubimendi and Gyokeres for that combined price, then I’m obviously taking the latter option. And you could just tell that Isak would be a long, drawn-out, process. These feel like deals that could be done with little fuss.

Football transfers, eh? Simple job!

I’m going to leave it there for today. We have the prep for the Fulham game coming up today and Arteta will be having his press conference at some stage so let’s say what things he says about the Cottagers, Berta, as well as how Saka is getting on.

Catch you all tomorrow for a match preview.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Catch you all tomorrow.