And at this stage in the season, when we’re all looking at how neck-and-neck this is, we’re looking at teams like Newcastle and saying things pre-match like “out of form, lost their last four matches, few players out injured, plus ours have had a week off – we should be having a go at them today.

But on what basis, and by what evidence, did we think that would be the case yesterday? It was always going to be a tough one, a grind, separated only by that moment of magic as Eze swept the ball home in 10 minutes. The timing of goals often impacts games, and I remember turning around to those around me in block five and saying things like “no, we need to go on and make this a big win”. But the stage of the season we are at, the fragile nature of some of the psychology, I believe, is in this Arsenal team, meant that this was always going to end up being a nervy one. These sorts of games always happen when you don’t get that second.

I hear there were some comments from Sky saying that the Arsenal fans were nervous, edgy, and that was impacting the atmosphere. Nope. Sorry, not for me, because what I saw and heard was a collective of Arsenal fans who were loud and vociferous and were behind the team from the first minute. Of course, when you get down to the last 10 minutes of a game, and there’s still only one goal in it, there will be some tension. That is natural. But this wasn’t a day in which the crowd supposedly played their part in Arsenal dropping off.

I think the drop off in performance in that second half had something to do with the fact that we had to once again endure Madueke, Martinelli, and Gyokeres as an attacking trio. And as we all know, we’ve all talked about, we’ve all listened to various Arsenal fan-focused media, and heard that trio doesn’t work. There are too many runners, not enough ballers, evidenced at the end too, when Gyokeres had the simplest of passes square to set Saka in on goal, to which he couldn’t even execute. The Sweded is somebody who is essentially a bit useless unless he’s able to get a shot off or is in the right space inside the penalty box. I tell you now, if that was Havertz in that position, or maybe even Gabriel Jesus, they’d have found Saka in on goal, and we’d be talking about a late goal to prop up the performance.

To give him some props, however, I thought Gyokeres did ok when he came on. He hassled, he harried, he chased, and he held the ball up well. He was fine. He didn’t get into the kind of positions you want your centre-forward to get into, but there was one moment where he’d peeled away on the left-hand side, and instead of slotting him in, Odegaard just squared the ball backwards to Zubimendi, who tried a little flick/dink that didn’t come off. Odegaard should have gone to the Swede the first time, but I think some of those Arsenal players just can’t work out where to get him the ball, probably because, unless it’s in the centre by the penalty spot, they know he can’t trap it.

But, like I say, he wasn’t too bad, unlike Madueke and Martinelli, who I thought both had poor games overall. But that’s par for the course this season. Madueke did show a little more to his opposing fullback Dan Burn in the first half, but I thought once he got him on a yellow, he should have had more of a run at him. He didn’t, and when Saka’s number came up to come on, I think we all couldn’t be happier. And he almost instantly made an impact, forcing a deflected shot out for a corner. He’s clearly not fit enough to start, but hopefully he gets more minutes in midweek against Atletico, then we can look to start him against Fulham for the home game next Saturday evening.

And hopefully both Kai and Eze are fine too. Both came off, Eze seemed to be ok afterwards and said it was just precautionary, but I’d be wondering whether or not he’s at risk in midweek now. Arteta gave his usual “we will have to see” commentary, but he didn’t seem too worried about either player. Kai would be the one I’d have more concerns with. I think a lot of us probably suspected that it might be Kai starting yesterday, with maybe Gyokeres in midweek against Atletico. I think you certainly have to think about that now.

One other player that Arteta is going to have to think about in midweek is Martin Odegaard, as well, because I thought he faded in the second half. In the first half I thought he looked lively, I was pleased to see him getting on the ball and dictating play, but he was hardly mentioned amongst the gents in Block Five in that second half, which I think speaks to how he was probably feeling the fatigue of only just returning. He played the full 90. Can he go again in midweek? If we’re not going to risk Eze, he might not have a choice.

It’s similar to Zubimendi too, who came off on 81 minutes and who I read had been sick at halftime. If that’s a bug, then you wonder why he didn’t play, but it was interesting to see that Myles came on for him, although I suspect it is only because Norgaard hadn’t made the match-day squad.

And so we saw out what was a really nervy 1-0 victory. If we do four of those in the Premier League between now and the end of the season, we will all have aged quite significantly, I suspect, but for now it is good enough, and we move on to a big game in Madrid on Wednesday night.

I’ll be back tomorrow as we start to look ahead to that semi-final.

Quick P.S. on the Pope non-sending off. I know Arteta was insistent on it being a red card, but I’m not so sure. I think it probably is a little closer to a red than a yellow, but I can’t be saying that I 100% agree hand on heart – hence not really going in to much detail on it for today’s blog.

I went to bed last night and as I started to drift off, I was thinking about what a big and positive result the game on Sunday was, because it was the book end to the really tough start we had. But it was also a statement win under dramatic circumstances and that heightens the senses somewhat when it comes to collecting three points. Had we scored the penalty we got, then maybe got a second early in the second half, followed by Newcastle getting a consolation late on but we ultimately win the game 2-1, I probably won’t have been thinking too much about it other than it was a very valuable win. But the nature of the win and the late goal has given me personally such a boost, that I’m proper buzzing now about thew upcoming weeks. But I also don’t want that buzz to die down so quickly – I want to be able to hold on for it for a little longer – but I know I can’t because there’s more football on the immediate horizon.

Of course the reality is that football ebbs and flows and we are not going to see the same drama each week. We will probably see the same Newcastle set up i.e. low block football and a ‘try to break us down then’ mentality from all of our opponents, but we’re used to that now, but I think another element of the win was that we DID manage to overcome a low block. Plus, if I am buzzing, imagine what the players feel like after that win? They will have that belief that we are always in the game, even if we are behind or drawing late on, they will feel the confidence they can break down teams who just want to sit in and for Mikel Arteta I think he will believe that he certainly can do a little more kitchen sink throwing like he did with our selection of players who ended the game and the attacking threat we had.

And we still have players to come back to help aid our cause.

I’m not sure I buy the swing in betting odds though. I mean, I get it, because we’ve just come out of our ‘tough’ period and now have a series of games that everyone is describing as ‘winnable’. I think that’s a little bit of a disservice for the teams we’re about to play because West Ham have beaten us for the last two year’s in a row at home, plus Palace and Sunderland are flying, so this will by no means be an ‘easy’ set of games. But These are games that you’d think if you really want to challenge for the title you need to be picking up close to maximum points. But the swings in the betting seem a little extreme to me. I mean sure, Liverpool have ridden their luck at times so far this season, but they’ve also just kicked off the season winning five in a row and I’m pretty sure despite the tough run of games they have they’ll be picking up a big chunk of points in their next block of six. But what the bookies odds show you is that this season is going to be tight and hopefully not a procession for anyone (unless it’s us). It didn’t feel great season Liverpool get their noses in front early on with an easy run of early games that basically carried their momentum all the way through to the title and after match day five when they’d once again picked up maximum points, I was worried we were seeing a repeat of history. But the Palace game showed they are fallible and my hope is that the coming weeks show that too.

Aside: I said that I hope there isn’t a procession to the title. Of course if it’s us with the procession I’m absolutely fine with that!

But going back to the top of the blog and how a week is a short time in football, here we are today and we’re already going to get another Mikel Arteta press conference, as he prepares for the arrival of Olympiacos from Athens tomorrow evening. It’s a familiar foe, it’s an old foe and one that during those Champions League Group stages it felt like we played them every other year. This new format (which I still don’t like by the way – there’s something about going away from home and not winning and not being able to get revenge in the return leg that doesn’t sit right with me) means it’ll only be a home one for us and we won’t have to travel to Greece, which is helpful, but I’m sure Arteta will be full of precaution in his words so as to not give any ammunition to our opponents. But it will be interesting to see what he says about how the team are shaking up and how he is going to set his side out. In Bilbao he made a few rotational changes and I wonder if he feels the same for this one. Or, does this game inform us on who might start against West Ham at the weekend?

I’ll be interested to get his thoughts on tomorrow and see if there is any hint of rotation. I think we’ve already seen that he’s willing to mix and match and I suspect we might get a bit of that tomorrow night. But that is the beauty of the depth we have in our squad. He can play an Eze instead of an Odegaard/Martinelli/Trossard. Heck, maybe he even thinks that Nwaneri could start (I’d be surprised though)? I wouldn’t be avese to seeing MLS on the left from the start and with Trossard having started against Newcastle, what’s wrong with giving Martinelli the run out? Saka will probably get minutes, but maybe he could be earmarked for just the 60 given that we probably want him to do a full 90 against West Ham on Saturday and with Ben White back in the frame, maybe Jurrien Timber gets a rest?

We have so many options and so much strength that none of those players feel like a step down and I think we’re already starting to see an openness from Arteta to rotate more than he ever has before. That’s why I’m keen to hear any titbits of information from him and that’s why I’m looking forward to the press conference later on this evening.

Right, I’ll leave it there. Here’s another shout out for the pod Amanda and I did on Sunday evening straight after the game if you’re up for it. Otherwise I’m back tomorrow for a match preview. See you then.

I think I want to be broadly positive today, because when you snatch a victory from the jaws of defeat with a last minute goal in extra time, then you have to be feeling positive rather than dwell on some of the negatives. So I’m going to get those out of the way first I think.

Jarred Gillett should not be allowed to officiate Arsenal again. Or at least for a considerable period of time. He’s refereed/been involved in four of our six Premier League matches so far this season and considering he is not allowed to referee Liverpool because he is a fan of theirs, common sense should prevail with clubs who are competing with Liverpool. That includes us, it includes Man City, for sure, because even though I don’t think he is intentionally biased against us (or potentially City) it opens up the question of being compromised and that isn’t good for football.

Yesterday he and VAR took every opportunity to rescind the penalty that Gyokeres won. I watched Match of the Day (obviously) last night and Joe Hart made some gaslighting comment about how Pope’s foot was square and not moving towards the ball and that’s why this was different to last weekend’s sending off of Robert Sanchez when he fouled Mbuemo in the United vs Chelsea match. Sorry, but that’s bollocks, because both situations were almost identical. Both were penalties. Any come back from people talking about how ‘Pope touched the ball’ I will simply respond with the retort that if that had happened anywhere else on the pitch it would have been a foul be cause Gyokeres got there first. If a player goes in two-footed on another player but ‘he wins the ball’ do the officials do nothing? If Pope hadn’t initiated contact with Gyokeres, could the Swede have rounded him and put us one up? I tell you this much – Big Vik wants to score goals and if he’s got the chance of rounding the ‘keeper and tapping it in, he’s taking it.

That was on 14 minutes but before then Arsenal had already created two or three really good chances and were unlucky not to be a goal up at least. We played superbly in that first half. Eze was moved centrally and did what he does: he got on the ball, he was dictating play, he forced Pope in to a number of really fine stops. But it was not just Eze getting into this game. Trossard was unlucky to his the inside of the post, Saka forced Pope into a smart save in that first half and Arsenal were showing that they’d came to St James’ Park with a point to prove. We can argue the toss about poor officiating (the pathetic and pernickety show from Gillett to stop Calafiori from using a towel in the first half is one example), but Arsenal came to play and they were brilliant in that first half I thought.

Which is why it felt so typical that Newcastle would score with basically their first attempt of the game. Mosquera had a bit of a poor shank to give Newcastle a corner from nothing (he was hooked at halftime which if it was for that reason felt a little harsh), but they worked a corner well and Woltemarde was relatively unmarked in an uncharacteristically bad bit of organisational defending from Arsenal. I can’t be having Gabriel’s complaints for a foul with a push by Woltemarde; he barely touched him and we were behind going in to the half. There was a suggestion that Gabriel was lucky to stay on the pitch and maybe that can be said. But on the basis that I’ve heard on Sky with the ‘you can’t raise your hands to an opponent’ angle, I find it a little disingenuous of the media to be picking up on that issue, whilst ignoring the fact that Lascelles basically covered Gyokeres’ face with his hand and pulled him to the ground with it. On Sky they said “he probably should have gone down” – well Gyokeres DID go down and nothing was done.

The second half mostly played out exactly as we thought it would. It played out exactly as the last three or four defeats there have done: Newcastle sitting in a low block, compact shape, asking the question of the Arsenal players to respond. And for the most part it was a frustratingly slow and ponderous watch. We created some chances, but it always felt as though this would peter out to yet another 1-0 defeat and the same wounds would be left open about our inability to finish these teams off, tinged with an annoyance of yet more refereeing controversy.

But we have to hand Arteta some flowers today, because just like last weekend he acted with his substitutions and just like last weekend, they made the difference. First it was Martinelli for Saka which made sense as they are managing him back to full fitness, but the move to bring Calafiori off and bring Merino on to give us an extra attacking threat in the box worked perfectly, given he scored the equalising goal through a superb ball in from Rice. But on 82 minutes Arteta went further and brought on Odegaard for Calafiori, to effectively play as a deep-lying playmaker and as Gary Neville called him in commentary, the ‘quarter back’ role. It worked. Eddie Howe even said that changed the game and Odegaard was involved in the move that was well worked for the equaliser, then he was the one that swung the ball in for the winning goal on 90+7 minutes minutes. It was a perfect corner into the exact spot that Gabriel wants to be to attack the ball. I do think Pope was poor in terms of his positioning, but there’s not an Arsenal fan in the world that cares about that this morning.

Pandemonium. Everywhere. In the gods at Newcastle. In my house. In Arsenal pubs all over the world. It was amazing. This was a game that had gotten away from us. This was a big match that we had succumbed to again this season. This was the talk in which people said the challenge of Arsenal is wavering because when Liverpool slip up, we don’t capitalise. Except on this weekend, we did. We’ve come through an incredibly hard period in which we’ve played some really difficult games both away from home and at home and we are in touching distance of the leaders. Given the context of our injuries too, it makes it all the more impressive and those Arsenal players going in to work tomorrow after their day off will be bouncing.

Next up we need to do the job against another old familiar foe in the Champions League: Olympiacos await on Wednesday.

Amanda and I did a ‘vibes’ pod straight after the game that you can watch here if you fancy drinking in more of the joys of yesterday’s win. It’s here. Ill be back tomorrow as we look ahead of Champions League match week two.

One of the most frustrating part of last season – injuries aside – was that it felt like every time an opportunity opened up for The Arsenal to claw points back on Liverpool, we didn’t take it, so they ended up creeping away from us until the lead they had was so unassailable that there was no real battle for the title that happened. I remember playing Everton at home and we drew 0-0 and I think Liverpool had dropped points against Fulham in the earlier match of the day. I remember heading to the stadium and saying to a few of the lads I’d been in the pub with that “you have to make it count on days like today”.

That day Everton at home was a little more of a winnable game than today’s away match at St James’ Park, but if you want to be Champions then you have to take advantage of any little chinks of light that open up, when they do. Yesterday as a day might have been a great fun one to have a ‘Hate Watch’ given that all of our so-called rivals dropped points other than Man City (who were never going to slip up at home to Burnley), but today has to be a response from The Arsenal that shows our title credentials. Newcastle away has been a hoodoo for us; we haven’t even scored a goal there on our last three visits and the last two 1-0 defeats in the league have felt eerily similar to me.

The first one two season’s ago was that dodgy Gordon goal that Willock admitted afterwards was probably out when he salvaged the ball. At this stage you have to ‘whatever’ about that, but the performance itself i remember being really lacklustre; we didn’t win duels, we looked stodgy up front and we never really troubled an organised and very disciplined Newcastle side who have already shown this season that they have that part of the game as locked down as we do.

Last season’s encounter was probably worse though. I thought we were so poor and it was a game in which Isak scored early, but if we were playing that match for a solid week thereafter we probably wouldn’t have scored. We were so ponderous in attack that day and what I want to see from today is that we create chances. We have to be able to give something for Gyokeres to feed off and we have to stretch Newcastle more than they have been in the last three meetings. In all of those games once we’ve gone behind they’ve sat compact in to their shape and Gandalf’d us for the rest of the 90 left to play.

It’s why I think if we get the first goal today, the game opens up a bit and the dynamic shifts. If Newcastle score we know what they are going to do; they will sit back in to shape and ask Arsenal “go on then, see if you can get through our barcoded wall” – think last week against City, only this time with home advantage. The home crowd will be roaring for the start of this game and if we do what City did against us and score early, that will have the same impact that the Haaland goal had on our home crowd. We were muted. We need to mute the Geordies today.

Arteta has spoken of a couple of things he thinks they will do differently, but I think most of us hope that our line up – if we are sans Odegaard from the start – needs to have a little more creativity in it. I personally have nothing against Merino, I believe there’s a time and a place for him, but I don’t think it is in the midfield with Rice and Zubi today. Sure, it gives us the control we need, but it handicaps us of a more creative outlet on the pitch and if you go a goal behind early on, it can make you look a little stodgy when your opponent reverts to a low/mid-block approach.

Go from Ethan or Eze early in the game.

On the left there might be a question whether it is Eze or Martinelli too and given the week he had last week and how his confidence might be high right now, I suspect Gabi might get the nod. I’ve said it before on social media and I’ll say it here too – Martinelli is a ‘streaky’ player. His goals and his form comes in patches and two in a week, as well as an assist in Bilbao, means he’ll be flying high and so my gut feel says to me that he gets the nod. Arteta loves his work rate too and I have a feeling Howe is going to go with Elanga on the right and Gordon on the left, which means rapid pace and a need for ‘Nelli to do his shuttle runs defensively as well as going forward.

If that happens and if Odegaard is fit, it could mean Eze doesn’t start which will be hard on him, but the reason he took this job at The Arsenal is not just because he is a fan of the club, but because he wants to get better, he wants to improve and he wants to be at a big club and when you are at a big club like The Arsenal, you know that the competition for places is more intense than anywhere in the Premier League. If Odegaard is fit then I have no problem with seeing Eze from the bench.

If Odegaard isn’t fit and Arteta does fancy getting a more creative outlet in the midfield, then I do wonder whether it will be Eze or Nwaneri. Eze normally occupies those left eight positions and that’s where he thrived (albeit more as a ten) for Palace last season, so I would be tempted to tell him to go left eight and then maybe you ask Rice or Zubi to fill in on the right. Alternatively, we do what we’ve been doing this season and have Rice and Zubi drop into a double pivot and tell eze to occupy both left and right half spaces, with Declan alternating those left and right spaces where Eze isn’t. Rice is an intelligent enough footballer to do that, so I don’t see why that wouldn’t work?

Whatever we go with, the prize is clear: Victory puts us to within two points of the Scousers. It puts us to within touching distance with them having gone through the hardest part of the season and it would set us up to have a real run at that top spot between now and November when it gets tricky again.

Go do the business, Arsenal.

Depending on how the game pans out Amanda and I might do a post match pod, but if not I’ll be back tomorrow, then we’ll do a catharsis pod on Monday night.

Laters kids.

Why dedicate the first 75-ish words to another team today? Well, we’re up next against them and if they are as defensively suspect as they have been for these first two games this season (and also the Community Shield), then there will be opportunities for us to exploit at Anfield next weekend.

As I said on the Same Old Arsenal podcast that we recorded yesterday morning, I’m not particularly confident of us going there and getting anything (no win since 2012), but based on the small sample size I’m looking at so far, it is not a Liverpool team that look like they’re going to sweep everyone aside and whilst we know they have goals in them, we also know that defensively they are not looking rock solid.

Of course that’s one of the areas of the pitch in which Mikel Arteta has prioritised for some years now and with the news that we’re supposedly in for this Hincapie fella from Ecuador, whose plying his trade for Bayer Leverkusen, it seems as though Arteta and Berta aren’t quite done with their spending spree. This one looks predicated on the outgoings of the likes of Kiwior and Zinchenko it seems, but given the money that is supposedly on offer, you do have to wonder where we’re getting the cash from. Supposedly Porto want to give us €20million for Jakub Kiwior.

I’m sorry, how much?

We paid £22million for him, he’s improved since arriving, he’s a Polish international and he still has a few years left on his contract. How are we having the poverty card flung at us by Porto?? We need to be telling them that €20million is the loan fee, then they have the obligation to buy him next summer for another €20million. As somebody from my social media timeline remarked yesterday “If this was Chelsea they’d already have £40million for him in their back pocket”.

We’re all loving the decisiveness with which Arsenal have moved in the market to get the incomings this season, but that outgoings situation is still problematic and as I sit here today and type out these thoughts, we are still to make a significant sale. Remember when we all thought that by being good again teams would naturally come and take some of our rotational option players? Whatever happened to that? That’s what City and Liverpool have done for years as the two best teams in England. I thought we’d be able to get on that squad player gravy train, no? But instead we find ourselves with one week left of the window and still quite a bloated squad.

Do you know what though? Maybe it’s not just us? I’ve just seen this article on Football365 about the size of each Premier League teams’ squads. We’re joint 12th. We’ve got 28 along with Newcastle and Liverpool whilst Sunderland have 35, Burnley have 34 and Brighton have 33! So perhaps there’s been a trend of stockpiling this season anyway and this is a natural consequence. I suspect it is just that some clubs seem to be covered with deals across the media and one instantly projects that they are doing fantastic business whereas we can’t find clubs for any of our players, but the truth is probably a little more distanced from that I think. Many of these teams have been setting their squads up now and only the likes of Villa, Fulham and Everton are those that need to pick up some bodies as we hit the last week of the window. Fulham might try for Reiss Nelson again I suspect, but I do wonder if what James said yesterday might be the name of the game in the last week of this year’s summer window; lots of loan signings with options to buy from clubs both in England and overseas.

I suspect homes will be found for Fabio Vieira, Sambi Lokonga and Reiss Nelson, but whether there is a permanent nature to them or not remains to be seen. Stuttgart want to pay us €20million for his signature when TransferMarkt has him at 22. That’s probably a fairer price but for a player who is still 25 and cost us £34million (€40million), that’s quite some tanking in value. If Arsenal end up accepting something like that, you’d have to think they’ll be putting a fat old sell on clause in there too. It’s how we’ve managed to make our money back on Nuno Tavares, but with Vieira I think that’s a hopeful pipe dream to claw back all of the money outlay that we did back in 2022.

But we need to do something. Zinchenko isn’t being shifted because of his bug wages and so I suspect that will be an overseas loan where we pay a chunk of them, because I can’t see a Fenerbahce coughing up all of his £150k+-per-week wages. So we’ll have to find a solution that doesn’t mean we have a guy on our books who will take the cash and not get anywhere near the first team. I’m sure he will want that solution too, to be fair, because no footballer wants to be left to just rot in the reserves when he could go somewhere else and play regularly in the autumn of his playing career. Zinchenko is still only 28 and so has plenty of time left in his career, so I’m sure a solution can be found.

That’s me done for today. One step closer to the weekend thanks to the bank holiday yesterday, so I’ll be back tomorrow at the mid-working-week point with some more Arsenal musings as always.

Catch you then.

Annoyingly I couldn’t watch the game as I was in Cologne airport and they weren’t showing it anywhere, nor could I get a signal or stream good enough to view the match, but by all accounts it sounded like an absolute cracker and as Arsenal fans, seeing/hearing/reading about how it was the Arsenal girls that made the difference on the night (and throughout this tournament, actually) just puts an extra special cherry on top of the cake. Chloe Kelly with an assist for Alessia Russo, Ageymang playing her part by getting England through two of the knockout phases with her late goals, Kelly’s overall impressive performances in general, with captain Leah Williamson doing her part at the back – Arsenal won the Euro’s and after the Champions League win a couple of months back, this is an amazing achievement for some of those Arsenal players. Let’s hope it carries them over into next season as Arsenal try to dislodge Chelsea Women from their dominant perch.

Over the other side of the world the men were of course gearing up for their season ahead by beating a physical Newcastle side and again, because I was out and about I didn’t get to watch the game, but I’ve seen highlights of the key moments and clearly the biggest talking point is Max Dowman’s second very positive cameo against top-level competition. This wasn’t one of those ‘Newcastle Select XI’ that you sometimes see. This was a side full of their first team prepping for the new season and if anyone was in any doubt about what sort of game they were going to get, it was evidenced with Joelinton ‘leaving one in’ on Dowman. Big Man – slapping a 15-year-old in the face. Naturally some of their fans thought it was hilarious, but what was more hilarious was that Dowman had the last laugh, because he bossed some of their men and even won us the penalty that Odegaard converted to secure the win.

Arteta said it was a test and batted off the physicality of Newcastle, but I would imagine that if he gets an option for future games in pre season over the years, a club like that is the last you want to play. Perhaps it was because they’ve had a pretty rubbish transfer window so far, that has meant they’ve signed just Athony Elanga (who scored their first goal to be fair) to compliment their first team, whilst spending the rest of the time fending off the advances of Liverpool for Isak, which led them to feel like they needed some kind of ‘win’ by getting something out of us yesterday. But they got nothing for their efforts and the hope is that they continue to have a ‘meh’ window, because I suspect Eddie Howe knows that if they don’t strengthen significantly more than they are at the moment, that they’ll struggle to juggle the multiple competitions of the Champions League and the Premier League. If they lose Isak to Liverpool, however……sheesh…that will make their job a lot harder indeed.

Of course that prospect is hardly palatable for us either, because an Isak at Liverpool makes the Scousers one heck of an attacking outfit. They’re shifting on Diaz for €75million and then they’ll look to bring on Nunez so they can push for Isak, which will make them a force to be reckoned with next season. So let’s just hope they don’t get him, that he stays at Newcastle and that Newcastle give Liverpool the same runaround all summer that we all thought they’d give us when we wondered if we were after the Swede.

But back to Arsenal, back to Dowman and back to the questions about whether he’s ready to force his way into Mikel Arteta’s plans this coming season. Naturally Arteta and the club want to keep it low key on a child prodigy, but if he keeps up with cameo’s like this then it will be hard to ignore him. We have all talk about Ethan’s development and that not being stunted by signings, but if this kid puts in more displays like that, the question over the new signings should probably also be aimed in Dowman’s direction. He was fast, his ball control was brilliant, he forced Ruddy into a few good saves and also had an important role in the eventual winner from Odegaard. I suspect this will be a similar situation to Nwaneri last season in that we didn’t really see him until the new year, but this time around we have more squad depth I think; Arteta has already talked about how we have raised the base of the squad and unless there is another mega injury crisis like we had last season, I can’t see Dowman getting the volume of minutes that Myles and Ethan got.

But that doesn’t mean he can’t look to impress in the League Cup competitions, or if we get a certain level of opponent in the FA Cup, there will be minutes for sure. But these things need a blend of patience, timing and also fortune, as well as talent. Dowman is forcing the talent angle to make himself seen by Arteta, but let’s not forget about the curious case of Charlie Patino who, last season, made eight appearances and a total of 382 minutes for Deportivo La Coruna last season. Dowman could be somebody who forces Mikel’s hand, but even Nwaneri who has been doing bits for the last few season’s since he broke through as a 15-year-old, still had dips in form last season. Arsenal and Arteta will be super mindful of this and I think we, as fans, have a duty to try our hardest not to hype-train this kid too much. He’s in a good place, he’ll train with the first team this season, he’ll get some minutes in competitions and Arsenal will monitor his development closely. And that’s how it should be.

Right, I think I’ll leave it there for today because although I could talk about the fact Gyokeres is now out in Singapore with his teammates, all that really happened was a wave to the fans. I could talk about how Calafiori went down injured again too, but I think for now we have to park that, as we don’t know how serious it is. Let’s see if either players get some minutes against the Scum on Thursday night.

Back tomorrow with some thoughts.

The press is full of talk of strikers and if Arsenal value anything of the health of its supporters, I would urge them to get one in asap, because if we’re still waiting for one to arrive come July, I think we’ll have all driven ourselves into insanity with all of the different ‘takes’ and spin on what is essentially the same story.

• “Gyokeres has given the green light to a move”
• “Arsenal weighing up Gyokeres move”
• “Gyokeres has spoken to Arteta”
• Arsenal and Sporting locked in discussions over payment structure of deal”
• “Gyokeres deal hits stumbling block”
• “Gyokeres deal in danger of hijacking by Club X”
• “Arsenal weigh up Gyokeres alternatives”
• “Arsenal poised to confirm bid for Gyokeres”
• “Gyokeres flight booked”
• “Gyokeres refuses to board plane as Arsenal will only offer him a Premier Inn to stay in”
• “Gyokeres has named his cat “Declan”
• “Gyokeres spotted on holiday in Greece wearing red swimming shorts”
• “Gyokeres likes fan AI image of him in an Arsenal shirt”

Even typing out all of those headlines is wearing me down. I guess the upside is that for the Swedish international it is a release clause. The downside is that it’s rumoured to be £84million. Although Romano has suggested Sporting would let him leave for €65million (£55million). At that price I suspect the deal could be done relatively swiftly, but it does mean that there could still be a bit of haggling over the fee and knowing our luck, if they go in and offer that, Sporting will go “nah, fee’s gone up, we want £65million”. When you start to get messed around you have to walk away. But you also have to act swiftly to get the lay of the land and putting that first bid in at least gives you some idea.

Then there’s Sesko as an option. This is the one I like because:

1. He’s younger and so there’s more up side
2. He’s playing in a harder league
3. There IS a release clause with this one that I think is more doable.

Supposedly that’s a deal that gets done at €70million (according to TransferMarkt) and for £59million and an extra £4million over the rumoured Gyokeres fee, I say just pay that release clause and move on to your next target. Sesko has bagged 21 goals in 45 games including four in eight Champions League games and this is a kid that I would have my cash invested in to. If Arsenal want a relatively serene summer, paying Zubimendi’s release clause and then going and dropping £59million to pay Sesko’s one, would be a good way of going about it.

I also think Arsenal quite like paying release clauses. We’ve been doing it on the more regular ever since we prized Partey out of Atletico Madrid and in these two players you can do the deals, get them embedded in the team and have yourselves a better pre season without having to go around chasing for players that would eventually not even sign for you because the selling club has mesed you around. Like Newcastle blatantly would. Imagine if we started talking to them about Isak. Eddie Howe has already done a semi-cryptic “I can’t guarantee any player’s future” post match press conference from last weekend and whilst plenty of fans got excited about that, I’m not having it.

For the record I think he’s a fabulous footballer. He’s caused us a fair few problems this season and he would definitely thrive in an Arsenal shirt. But Newcastle will want north of £120million for him for sure. If Arsenal just said “screw it, here’s your £120million” Newcastle would drag this out all summer and lead us a merry dance before probably rejecting and telling us it’s now £140million. I’ve already said on here that he’s my least favourite option because of his price tag, but also his injury record, whilst this season as a ‘good’ season for him stands at nine games missed in all competitions. Last season it was 12, the season before it was 18, the season before that it was five games (TransferMarkt details here if you’re interested). So since his early 20s he’s always picked up knocks. What makes anyone think that signing him next season wouldn’t have the same results?

I’d like to say those persistent niggles every season are something that Arsenal will look at, particularly when you start to look at our volume of injuries this season, but we signed Calafiori knowing of his injury record, so you never know what they are thinking at the club. If you look at Sesko’s record, you have to go back to 2021/22 to see his last set of injuries and whilst Gyokeres missed five games this season through knocks, it doesn’t look like in record history he’s had many injuries either.

So to me this should be a straight shoot out between the two overseas options. Focus on that, get whichever one you can get that you think works best from those, then let’s go on to augmenting other parts of the squad.

What I’d like to also see is Arsenal acting during this weird first transfer window, which is open from 1st June until 10th June, because of the Club World Cup joke of a competition. Imagine if Arseal can tie up a Zubimendi deal in that time frame, then focus on getting on of those strikers when it re-opens later in June. Let’s have some of that action early, eh boys and girls?

The reality is that no club is likely to be rushed in to it unless they are in that stupid competition and wanting to register players for free like we expect Jorginho to do. Clubs who have to go in to haggling mode are surely more likely to just say “we can wait” because the second window only opens six days later, so what difference does a week make? Still, would be nice to see us strike mega early with our plans this summer. We don’t normally go hard and fast with our summer signings, so it would be nice for a change.

Right, I’m going to stop there, as it’s time to go do some exercise and then get cracking with another working day. Enjoy your Wednesday, folks.

I think our first half performance could probably be sniffed at though, because it very much felt like an Arsenal side playing at half pace at times. Sloppy diags, David Raya passing to Newcastle players (and then making up for it with some fine saves), then in attack we rarely threatened Nick Pope’s goal. We did force him into a reactive save from a corner and there were a few others that were pretty much down his throat in the first half, but it wasn’t vintage Arsenal and at halftime I read a message from one of my WhatsApp groups suggesting the team were on the beach.

In the moment I agreed, but there was another longer-term issue that I had in the back of my mind: I wonder if Arteta doesn’t know how to play Eddie Howe teams. They set up in a back three, they controlled certain spaces we like to play the ball in to and whilst they did have wing backs, it felt like we had a lot of space where Saka and Martinelli normally are, yet we weren’t finding them with our passing. There were just too many touches on the ball (Partey was driving me potty in the first half in particular on that front) and the distribution across the team just seemed…well…a bit…off. I saw a stat that this was the first goal we’d scored against Newcastle with our 52nd attempt in all games we’ve played them. There’s no doubt we’ve been profligate in front of goal against the Geordies and as the halftime whistle went I definitely had that concern again. Were it not for some excellent saves from Raya, who Sky gave man-of-the-match to (I actually think it should have been Kiwior who was excellent), I think we might have been behind and that would have been a problem.

Because over the last couple of season’s when we’ve played Newcastle and gone behind, they retreat back into a compact low block and we have no answer. They are a big team and going long doesn’t normally win you many aerials against a side like that (although I did enjoy MLS out-jumping ‘Big Dan Burn’), which at times we’ve resorted to in previous games. We did do that at times yesterday and I don’t think it ever really worked. It was just a frustrating game all-in-all in that first half.

The second definitely improved. I have spent the last few days before this game talking about how we ‘out-metric’ Newcastle every time we play them, but in that first half it was them who created more chances, good chances, who had us on the ropes a little bit. But in the second half it felt like we brought it back to parity a little and, in that time, we got what was to be the eventual winner. As opposed to last season where the ‘player of the season’ awards could go to a number of Arsenal players, if you think about this season, there aren’t too many ‘stand out’ players who have had absolute stormers throughout. I thought Kai might be on course for it until his injury, Saka too would be up there were it not for his, but one player who I think surely has to be one of the top contenders is Declan Rice. He didn’t start off the season too great and so perhaps I’m suffering from some recency bias, but certainly in the last couple of months, I think he’s been absolutely fantastic. Rice’s strike on 55 minutes was a peach of a goal and deserved to win the game, but in general he was once again one of our stand out players on the pitch. It was also bloody good seeing us buy a ticket by taking a shot from outside of the box!

After that, as you’d expect, Newcastle came at us but their subs on 63 minutes – Miley, Krafth and Osula – all felt very “ok lads, let’s get a few of the first teamers off and focus on keeping people fit for next weekend against Everton” to my mind. I’d spoken to a couple of the gents around me about this game being a free hit for Newcastle now, because they know that a win against Everton at home and they’ve done their job, so those changes felt like Eddie Howe was saying “hey, if these guys come on and make a name for themselves and score then great, but otherwise, let’s just protect ourselves here”. Newcastle still threatened, they had a few half-chances and Anthony Gordon against a half-fit Ben White was a bit of a mis match, but we held on for a clean sheet and that’s Champions League sewn up.

It should probably already been second place sewn up too. We’re on 71 points and:

• Newcastle can only get to 69
• Chelsea can only get to 69
• Villa can only get to 69
• Forest can only get to 68

The only ones who can catch us are 115 Charges FC as they play Bournemouth this midweek. They are on 65 points, they can therefore get to 71 with two wins, but their goal difference is 10 worse than ours. So they need to beat Bournemouth at home and Fulham away by a couple of cricket scores just to match us. And as long as we get a point against a Southampton side that has just two wins all season, then it doesn’t matter anyway. So yeah, I’m pretty sure that we should be alright, but let’s see what happens with Bournemouth and City tomorrow evening.

Job done for the season. Thankfully. So now it’s all eyes on the club to do the necessary in the transfer market over the summer.

Catch you all tomorrow.

Naturally he said that they would be lead by the medical team on whether he could play, but I don’t think you put a player like Kai in front of an open training session if you haven’t done more than enough tests, so I would be surprised if he isn’t in the squad at least for Sunday. He might only be good for 15 minutes, but that’s at least something, a boost for the squad and us as fans. There’s a little part of me that is kinda like “a bit late now, innit?” but I find myself having to check that line of questioning. This guy had a quite serious injury, it’s kept him out for three months and you never know how players’ bodies are going to react to any kind of injury. We’ve heard enough times in our lives that frustrating word ‘setback’ and so to see Havertz take part in training means that he’s almost there and that’s a good ting.

It also means that providing he can get a few minutes, perhaps a few minutes more against Southampton on the final day of the season, he’ll be able to go into the summer in decent shape and ready to kick off pre season when it comes around. Until you see or hear that players are back to full training, at this stage you have to assume that they might miss the beginning of next season, so seeing Havertz over that injury this season, is a bost for the next one.

Rice, Martinelli, Trossard and Timber have apparently all done partial sessions and so Arteta said he wasn’t sure, but I’d be surprised if all four are absent. If they are then we really are in trouble. This feels little like “once more unto the breach” type stuff on Sunday. If we get over the line and even manage to actually win a game of football in the league, then not only is Champions League secured, but second spot is 99% wrapped up too, as only Man City could get to 71 points and we have a nine goal swing in our favour compared to them. So A win on Sunday has a tiny bit of impact, or at least that’s what Arteta will be saying to his lads, I’m sure.

As you’d expect he was very complementary of Newcastle, of Eddie Howe and how he has different approaches in their game (attacking a low block, defending with a low block, transitional football) and I think Arteta will know from a tactical point of view what has to be done on Sunday. But as the man himself said, it’s about being clinical and it feels like with Newcastle over any other team this season (maybe PSG?) we have been guilty of not being clinical on multiple occasions, whilst they have been super clinical. As I mentioned yesterday we’ve pretty much dominated every aspect of the matches we’ve played against them, but they have been lethal in front of goal and we have been profligate. Arteta has on a couple of occasions referenced that in relation to Isaak and if we are on the wrong side of a result on Sunday, you can bet your bottom dollar that it will probably be a similar story he’ll be telling at full time.

That is a natural segue into the prevailing narrative we’ve had this season – that we haven’t got enough up top – which inevitably was referenced of sorts with the discussion around Andrea Berta and how aligned Arteta is with him. He’s hardly going to say “we’re already not speaking to each other” if that was the case, but there was enough in Arteta’s words to suggest this will be a very healthy environment for which the club’s officials are going to challenge themselves to do the best they possibly can this summer. I’ve already spoken about the cashola that the club got from the Champions League run, they’ll get more from the Premier League, those shirts are sexy enough to fly off the shelves and we’ve also got numerous sponsorship deals, so to my mind the money is there, it is just about using it wisely. That happens when you get Sporting Director, Manager, contracts people, intermediaries and agents all lined up. The Zubimendi noises are positive and it sounds like that is happening, unless something comes left of field, but more than anything else it shows the club are willing to act swiftly this summer (assuming it does get over the line quickly). The fact there’s a release clause of around £50million probably makes that a little easier than some deals that might require a little negotiation, but the signs are positive and Arteta seemed to be happy to talk about how everyone is aligned on the ambition, even if everything can’t be done. He said it, but I don’t think there’s a club in the world that get every bit of work done that they want, even the financially doped ones. Take Declan Rice, for example, who was the subject of a City bid but came to us. I remember Rio Ferdinand saying Rice had to go to City, but he came to us – we are super happy about that – and it shows that every club can have its plans derailed by another club. The most important factor is acting swiftly on other options. We didn’t do that in an attacking sense last summer and we ended up with the busted flush that is Raheem Sterling. We cannot make that mistake this summer.

I don’t think we will. I think the club know what they need to do, they do a lot of groundwork on these deals and I think Berta will be working super hard to deliver some early quick wins in his role. So I am optimistic. We just need to get over the line tomorrow with something against Newcastle.

Catch you then.

I saw that Jones Knows fella on Sky Sports suggest that he fancied a draw in our game on Sunday and, at this point, I’m a bit like “chuck another one on the fire, what difference is it going to make?” because a draw secures Champions League for us and for Newcastle it means they just have to beat Everton on the last day to get theirs. So maybe they’d take that too. Heck, we’ve had 14 draws, what’s another one really going to make? I don’t care about second, I don’t care about fans from other clubs going full banter and doing the whole “third in a two-horse race” nonsense. We know the reality of the situation, the season, how it panned out, so let’s just take our licks and wait for the club to take action in the summer.

I wonder if Mikel will be in reflective mood, or in fighting mood when he get’s asked his questions though? It could go either way. He was quite feisty at times pre Liverpool and of course when the game is on Sky TV you have to do those sanitise interviews that have been highly scripted inside one of the training ground sports hall complexes. This weekend he’ll no doubt be obliged to do the same thing, which will be taxing for him, but I’d imagine he can see to the horizon and the beautiful metaphorical sunshine that is no more talking about this season beyond next week. I feel ya, Mikel, I really do.

The club at least made us all happy yesterday by announcing the new kit and I have to say, it’s a very lovely one. Crisp, clean, looks good on the players, probably won’t look as great on me, but I’m going to get a version of it anyway. I suspect the club shop will be absolutely rammed on Sunday with people buying it. I’ll wait until the noise dies down before I pick mine up I think. But I do enjoy the nod between old and new that adidas leans in to. It’s the old Arsenal ‘A’ from the 90s badge (well, it’s longer than that, but that’s my frame of reference, being a 90s kid) and this kind of connection with the past is, I think, an important and clever approach that Adidas have always stuck with on our shirts. They recognise that Arsenal as a club may be a ‘brand’, but football is tribal and people value the traditions passed down of the history and success of the club, are what define us and our tribe. So speaking to that heritage, that tradition, that legacy, will resonate with all Arsenal fans of all ages and I for one am pleased that Adidas are embracing that legacy mindset.

In terms of team news for this weekend we’ll hear more specifically from Arteta, but I think most of us expect it to be mostly positive. We saw the open training session pics released by the club and various journo’s in midweek and we now know that we should – fingers crossed – be getting some key players back for what will be a Newcastle side who would probably find it quite amusing to make it four wins in a season against us. We need to make sure that doesn’t happen, but I think I might save some kind of tactical analysis or look at them for tomorrow. Suffice to say, having played them three times already this season, it feels like we know the approach we’re going to get from them. They’ll be physical, they’ll dig in, they look to spring transition counter attacks and do what they’ve done in every game against us this season – score with the few chances they get. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to suggest we didn’t deserve to get anything from the two cup games, but in the first game at the Emirates we had 23 shots to their seven and we dominated in basically every stat but the most important one. They had the clinical finishes and on more than one occasion Arteta has – rightly in my opinion – referenced that as the difference between the sides. Even in the League game at St James’ Park we outperformed them on every metric except the most important one, so I think the stage will be set and the difference between the two sides will be in the sharp end of the pitch. It has felt like Newcastle always seem to score with their first effort on goal against us, so we need to make sure that doesn’t happen this weekend.

More on all of that on tomorrow and Sunday’s ramblings though. For now, I’ve got a day of pencil-pushing so I’ll catch you in the AM.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have a good one peeps.

I guess the good news is the type of competition it is means that most of us Arsenal fans will get over it a little more quickly I reckon. It’s the least important of all of the cups, it’s not something you prioritise at the beginning of the season, so the ‘mourning period’ – if you can call it that – will be relatively quick I think. I hope. It might be extended a bit because of the fact we aren’t playing in the FA Cup this weekend, but maybe that will last just an extra day or so, tops.

And after the Scum confirmed their exit with the same sort of whimper we did on Wednesday night, that provided a bit of a Schadenfreude shot in to the arm of Arsenal fans. I have no love for Liverpool, but they were definitely the preferred choice and because of some of the antics of Newcastle players and fans over the last 36 hours, I think I even have a preference for them to go and beat Newcastle now. Because for some reason, Newcastle players have decided to bust out the “Stay Humble” lines. Hang on a second – it was City who started this with Haaland being a dick to Arteta et al, so why are we being labelled with that stick, just because we gave it back to City?

Those Newcastle players will certainly need to win the competition now, because the Internet keeps the receipts and Anthony Gordon and Bruno Guimaraes will certainly cop a bit of it from Arsenal fans if they don’t beat Liverpool in the final, that’s for sure.

For Liverpool, they will now have to fit in an away trip to Villa and if you want to inject a little bit of Hopeium in to your veins, maybe that game will be played in a congested period towards the end of the season that could see Liverpool drop point. That’s where we’re at right now, because as it stands they will be playing two to three games a week every week until at least the end of March at this rate, because I think they beat Plymouth this weekend and that means they’ll have another game wedged in to the beginning of March too. They’ll have the Champions League like us, but our midweeks are basically clear other than that and playing Forest on 26th Feb – they will have gone to Newcastle a day later than us just before that game so hopefully that’s a small gain and then they’ll probably have an FA Cup tie after us, so maybe there will be some eyes on that for Forest, but for us after we play Forest we can ‘leave it all on the pitch’ because that weekend afterwards is the FA Cup weekend.

So for Arsenal fans I think our hope has to be that Liverpool go deep in all competitions – hopefully get knocked out in a semi final of the FA Cup, maybe get to a quarter final of the Champions League and bow out, because it will cause some fixture congestion for them and perhaps (trying to put some more Hopium into the veins here) that fatigue will catch up with them. Admittedly it hasn’t so far (Salah and Van Dijk have played 2,800+minutes so far this season so if they play all of the Premier League games, FA Cup and Champions League, they could be on more than 4,500 minutes for the season which would be crazy good for two players in their 30s) but we have to hope that it catches up with them somehow.

As for us, we go to Dubai now to reset. It was nice to see White travelling with the team and I think Arteta had even said he expected to have him back after the trip. Even to have him on the bench will be a boost because it’ll take some pressure of Timber, who we have been flogging of late. It was also massive to see Saka in a tracksuit and travelling with the team. And that picture will have absolutely have been done as a PR exercise folks. The club are so fastidious about these snaps, they make sure to give nothing away, but after the January window was a bist what better way to give hope back to players than to see Saka getting on a plane for training. It is a welcome sight, but my gut feel is that at best we’ll have him doing some light jogging and that even after we return from Dubai to face Leicester on 15th February, we won’t be seeing Saka any time soon. Gut feel is that he’ll be with the squad doing individual sessions whilst they train, he’ll be in the team bonding exercises that aren’t too physical, then he’ll return to team training probably around week commencing 24th February at the earliest. From there it’s probably a week or two and so perhaps we might be lucky enough to see him in a squad for Man United away on 9th March. But even then I think the club will take it easy on him. If he’s making any appearances in March we have to see that as a win.

And on that positive note I think I’ll leave it for today. Catch you wonderful humans tomorrow.

We were – as you and I both know – given a reprieve. A marginal offside call had saved us, but it was the way that we were cut open on a loose ball in the middle of the park that had me the most worried. We looked rattled after only a few minutes and the evening wasn’t going to get any better after that, unfortunately.

Arteta’s naming of the same XI from the weekend kind of made sense. After all, the players had performed so well, had executed his tactical game plan to perfection and City didn’t have an answer. This would be a different game entirely though; Newcastle and their vociferous fans would be loud and would be aggressive and it would call for a different mindset if we were to overcome what was already a pretty slim chance of getting to the League Cup final. But what we ended up getting was anything but what happened last Sunday. For starters, I think Arsenal’s intention was to press high, to try to catch Newcastle out early with a goal by blitzing them, then to take stock of the situation in that first half. Against City we did get that early goal and it enabled us to get our foot on the ball and invite them on to us. It also allowed us to dictate the narrative of the game. But that was a game in isolation; this match had a two-goal deficit to overcome and so I think Arteta and his charges had a mindset that urgency was imperative and we had to ‘get at them’ to quieten the crowd down before we could start to dictate the game.

I think that early goal – even though it was disallowed – rattled our defence though. Because even before Newcastle got the first through Jacob Murphy, we’d seen Saliba and Gabriel wobble on the ball a bit and as Newcastle pressed us aggressively, I was surprised to see how poorly we reacted to it. It’s so strange, because the way we normally play is to invite pressure, invite teams to press, draw them in and then evade the press with good passing into those triangles that get us further up the pitch. But last night we saw players misplacing passes, dallying on the ball, just look generally uneasy and the result was that it emboldened both the Newcastle players and the Newcastle fans.

We know the Newcastle approach. We’ve seen it for the previous three games up there. They press aggressively, they give away ‘bitty’ fouls, they try to break up play and disrupt rhythm. Sometimes within the laws of the game, sometimes without. Sometimes the referee calls them up on it, sometimes he doesn’t. Rotational and repeat fouling is something that happens, Gordon gets away with a few, but as an opposition team you have to deal with it. You have to be up for the counter punch and whereas normally in these types of games Arsenal are, for some reason up at St James’ Park in recent years, we just haven’t been.

I’m trying to put my finger on it. Is it because Eddie Howe has found a blueprint that works against Arteta? Maybe. They’ve tended to get the first goal and that enables Newcastle to sit in a defensive shape, low-block if they need to, then wait to draw us out and counter on us with their rapid transition. And with players as quick and on form as Gordon and Isaak, you can understand why, because they are potent and will punish you – even if they only get one or two chances.

But it’s also in our attacking third that I’ve been really disappointed three times in a row up there now. We created a golden chance at 0-0 with Odegaard and I’m sorry, but if you’ve got the talent in his boots that he’s got, you really have to be burying his chance. Just moments later and we were behind. The difference between the two sides – one finishes its dinner, where the other doesn’t. And all we’ll hear from the media for the next 24-48 hours is how we missed up a chance to bring a forward in this January transfer window.

Except it’s not just the media, is it? Because we’re all doing that too and with Martinelli going off with what looked like a hamstring injury, we find ourselves less than three days past since the ending of the window and we’re already starting to fret about our forward options. We have Nwaneri and by George, we’re all grateful of that, but beyond that we’re staring down the barrel of the washed up Sterling. At this point the best thing about Sterling is that we don’t have to be the ones worrying about how to offload him in the summer – we can just hand him back to Chelsea to be their problem.

Ours right now is how we pick ourselves up from this disappointing performance and defeat, in which every player looked off it last night. Perhaps that’s just the fatigue from a mental schedule. Perhaps we’re going to get a reset from the players as they head off to Dubai once again to get recharged. They need it. We need it. Odegaard even talked about it last night after the game.

And to be honest with you, us fans probably need it too. It’s been a bit relentless of late and it feels like every time we take two steps forward, we have one step back. Arteta needs to get his players on the training ground, he needs to get their heads and bodies recharged, then we go again against Leicester in just under 10 days time.

Back tomorrow with some more thoughts.

It’s odd because when the first leg of this tie was played I was in South Africa, I watched the game in my villa in Cape Town, throwing out expletives and then insisting that we completely throw the second leg because it was ‘done’.

Ahh the benefits of time, hope and form, eh? Because since that result and the disappointing FA Cup exit to United (but unlucky given how crap they were in offering so little), it felt like the season was imploding, but we’ve been on a bit of a tear up since then beating the Scum, Zagreb, Wolves, Girona and then City at the weekend. The only blot on the copy book was that Villa draw but they took two of their few chances and we had injuries again which conspired to shuffle players around that had an ultimate impact on the result (Partey at right back, anyone?).

We’ve hit a bit of form in our performances and although we all wanted a striker – and we all know we are worryingly thin up top right now when you get beyond the immediate options (Arteta once again referenced this yesterday in his press conference and I get the feeling he’s just as frustrated as we are) – we have still scored 16 goals in six games, so our forward line is at least beginning to click a bit. We’ve also found players like MLS and Nwaneri who are not just getting ‘grower’ minutes, but are actively contributing, so perhaps there’s a little more cause for optimism?

I suspect it might not be enough for tonight though. I just had a quick look at the Opta Analyst and it says that only once in 32 occasions where a team has lost their semi final leg by two or more goals, when it has been overturned. That was Villa beating Tranmere Rovers in 94 and that was a Premier League side playing a side further down the football pyramid in another division. We play a Newcastle side who have admittedly had a wobble of late, but they are still a good Premier League outfit, a professional Premier League outfit, a side who have been good at frustrating us on plenty of times already under Eddie Howe’s reign.

And they’ll do just that tonight. They don’t need the ball. They just need their shape. They can approach this game like the first leg: cede possession at times, make the most of the moments that the ball turns over and then hit us on the break when we have not set in our defensive position. In the home game I felt we froze a bit in moments and to be fair to Newcastle, in that first half I thought they were pretty good. They certainly got their tactics spot on and we were very frustrating to watch on the night. That’s because we did enough to win. Martinelli’s ball off the post, Havertz’s completely  unmarked 50p header in the six yard box – we did enough to win that game and it was the worst iteration of profligate Arsenal. 3.09xG, 23 attempts at goal, 70% possession, but we fell to a team who have a forward in rip-roaring form and then a sucker-punch from Gordon. Again, you have to do the most important thing, which is score goals as those are the numbers that really matter and on the night, we just didn’t.

Tonight I think we will be up for it, of that there is no doubt and after that City win, I think the players will be feeling pretty good. We tore apart City at the weekend, whereas Newcastle were outplayed from a stats perspective (although they hit the post and the bar and Willock probably should have scored from one chance) to Fulham and lost 2-1 at home. Newcastle went ahead and it was a goal in transition after a turnover that Gordon and Murphy combined. The second half looks like it was Fulham searching for that goal but because it was Fulham and because Newcastle would have been expecting to go and get the second, I suspect it left a lot more space than we’ll be afforded tonight. I just watched Fulham’s equaliser – there were eight Newcastle players in the box. Tonight there will be 10 if that similar situation unfolds.

For us I think we just need to make sure we don’t fall apart when the ball transitions. That’s what Newcastle want; soak up the play, let us come forward desperate to get back in to the game, then hit us with quick back to front movement. We need to be ready.

For Arteta I think his pitch to his players is that we have this game and then there can be some resting of bodies thereafter when we go and do some warm weather training. So I think he’ll go with his strongest XI for the game, which to my mind right now is:

Raya

Timber   –   Saliba   –   Gabriel   –   MLS

Partey

Odegaard   –   Rice

Martinelli   –   Havertz   –   Trossard

There might be a question as to whether he wants to give Nwaneri a start, but I think he kicks off with this team and tries to give Ethan some second half minutes. If he does give the youngster a go then fair enough, but I just have a feeling that he’ll keep him on ice until he’s ready to let him loose in the latter stages of the match.

For us we need to be better than the last two times we’ve been there. I don’t think it was a Howe ‘tactico masterclass’ on both occasions, I just think on both times theyt’ve caught us playing really poor. So I want us to address that today. That means better, crisper passing, less slow build up and more intensity. Newcastle are going to come to this game today with runners and pace. They are going to chase down everything so we need to be able to move the ball around their heavy press quickly and with purpose – not so much triangles that just go round and around – more triangles of passing that evade a press and get us moving up the pitch a little more quickly.

I’m not expecting us to progress tonight and because of that, I am hoping it takes the pressure off us a little bit, but I do want to see us build on the good form of the last few games and if we are to exit at this stage let’s make sure we go down swinging.

Catch you all tomorrow.

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

And that’s exactly what Newcastle did last night.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It felt like an uncharacteristically six out of ten performance.

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

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

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

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

Catch you peeps tomorrow.

Newcastle are looking good if you look at their recent matches. They picked up a good win away at The Scum (even if they did have a slice of luck with some of the decisions that went their way), they went to Old Trafford and turned over United, before that they gave Villa a bit of a shellacking on their own patch (although Villa did play two-thirds of the game with ten men). So they’ve had a very good Christmas period and you have to go back a month before they last tasted defeat, which was away to a Brentford side who have been imperious at home.

So they will go into this game fancying their chances, but I suspect their game plan will be very different in both legs. If I was given a shiny free one pound coin to place a bet on how they will set up, it will be to replicate the dark arts of two season’s ago; you remember, right? We get accused of time wasting but on that day the ball was in place for a record amount of time – in a negative way. Newcastle slowed everything down, took forever on corners, goal kicks, throw ins and more. They got the 0-0 they wanted that day but of course when any Arsenal fan talked about their gamesmanship, we were given a “stop moaning” from the media and other fans. These days when we take longer on throw ins or corners, we’re the masters of the dark arts and it should be eradicated from the game. Figures.

But that’s what Newcastle will come for tonight; they will come for a dirty, dirty, low blow and then look to spring counter attack surprises when they can. Their danger will come from Isak – who is in form at the moment and scored with basically their only chance at St James’ when we played there early in the season and they will hope to replicate the 0-0 of two season’s ago just like history repeated itself this season on their own patch.

For us, it’s yet more injury problems, as Nwaneri won’t be able to be counted on now until at least the end of January / beginning of February. It’s just yet another body blow to a squad that is already thin on the ground and whilst this competition normally allows for rotation in it, given the proximity to the final itself, if I’m Mikel Arteta I’m going strong tonight and resting players in the FA Cup at the weekend against United. We’re the other big clubs got handed opportunities to play smaller teams not in the Premier League for their FA Cup ties, meaning they can rotate heavily, we won’t be given that chance. But for a change I think you have to go heavier in your squad rotation at the weekend rather than now. Especially because it is over two legs.

So for me my starting XI for tonight’s game has to be:

Raya

Timber – Saliba – Gabriel – Calafior

Partey

Ødegaard – Rice

Jesus – Havertz – Trossard

I’ve gone with Trossard because of his close control and ability to operate more effectively in small spaces compared to Martinelli, but also because I think Newcastle will go with Livramento again and he had a good game at St James’ Park against Gabby. In a foot race he can keep up with him, but I think we’re going to have all of the ball, we’re going to be trying to break down a low block and I think Trossard is better in that regard. His form hasn’t been amazing in terms of end product, but he’s started to show a few signs of life recently from the bench I think, so I’d be giving him a go. Then I’d be looking at Martinelli for the weekend.

I also think that given we are likely facing a Newcastle team wanting to be hitting us in transition when the ball turns over whilst they’re sat in a low block, somebody like Rice covering the ground is more effective than Merino in that left eight. Merino has been decent of late and is starting to improve, but he still feels a little chuggy when going back towards his own goal. That’s just eye test and what I see rather than any specific data to back it up, but one of Rice’s super powers – as we all know – is his ability to cover ground across the pitch.

Of course I’m speculating this side based on the illness that went through the camp to have fully cleared, because we played Brighton three days ago and Havertz and Ødegaard were still not right and Rice had been affected too. I just hope that we’ve overcome the bug and those players are a bit better and back to their old selves a little more.

It’s probably not going to be a fun watch tonight. Teams have seen the blueprint of a dirty Low Block FC approach to us at The Emirates and many will try to replicate that, especially Newcastle tonight. If they can make this as grubby as possible and then take us back to St James’ Park in a couple of weeks time level or even ahead, it puts them in the driving seat for a trip to Wembley. Everyone has started talking about how this Arsenal side needs to win a trophy and the League Cup could very well be that catalyst Arteta needs. But the job needs to be done tonight and in a few week’s time to make that discussion relevant.

Let’s hope we do the business.

Catch you all tomorrow.

After the disappointment of the Brighton game, I think a lot of us had thought “that’s it. All over. Liverpool to canter to the title now” but here we all are, the morning after they have drawn 2-2 with what has been described as an absolutely terrible United side, having not lost ground on them after our slip up away at the Amex.

I don’t know about you, but it feels like it’s been a bit of a double-edged sword kind of weekend. On the one hand I am of course delighted; we all breathe a sigh of relief and where we all though the mountain to reach to was too great to get to this Liverpool side who have blitzed through the first half of the season, we still have a chink of light and a small chance that we can. The performance of the Scousers shows that they are not infallible too; they have been conceding a fair few goals of late and when you do that you always leave yourselves open to slip ups. This season has been billed by many as ‘best attack in the league’ versus ‘best defence in the league’ between us and Liverpool, but if you can maintain your strong back line, you do give yourself a better chance of winning games I reckon. We have to hope that Liverpool’s defensive cracks start to widen, because that will result in more dropped points if it does.

The more I think about it, the more that it feels like what is happening to Liverpool now is what happened to us two season’s back. We were running hot at a 100-point pace until after Christmas (until the end of January if my memory serves me right) and a few key injuries to Saliba and Tomiyasu basically derailed our season, because Holding had to come in for a bit and it was a bit of disaster as we shipped goals left, right and centre. Even after we’d built up a lead and were still top, I think a lot of us Gooners were looking at the goals allowed column and furrowing our brows over the volume we were conceding, and had been all season that year. But Man City clicked in to gear and we ended up wilting.

I’m not sure the conditions are exactly the same this time, which might see Liverpool get over the line, because we haven’t shown the WWWWWW mentality of City this season. There’s still enough time for it to happen, but Liverpool have a bigger points haul than we did that year (think we got up to eight clear of City, but they always had a game in hand) and their rivals are slipping up every time they do.

That’s the other side of the double-edged sword that I mentioned, because although I’m delighted they dropped points, I’m also frustrated that every time they seem to drop points, we aren’t taking advantage. When they drew at home to Fulham, we drew to Everton. When we drew away to Brighton, they drew to Man United. You turn those two draws in to wins and suddenly it’s a two point gap and feeling very catchable. But we cannot afford to keep on dropping points when they do.

Perhaps there’s some mitigation. Brighton away is a tough place to go. They are draw experts. We’ve had a sickness bug going through the camp which has seen us lose Rice from the start, as well as Havertz and Ødegaard was impacted too and couldn’t play. The starting line up certainly looked depleted against the Seagulls and hopefully we get some players back tomorrow night against Newcastle. But we need to shape up if we want to chase down Liverpool. That points gap they have needs eroding asap because we are going to start running short on games if we aren’t careful.

There’s still a long way to go, we’re only at the halfway point in the season, but now we need to start finishing games off like the Brighton one. And that turns your eyes towards the transfer market, because you only need to look at the fact that Nwaneri is now potentially injured for a while having been taken off at halftime at the Amex, to see that again we are looking a bit threadbare. I hope the club are pushing hard and are looking at every possible option. If it means a loan deal from overseas then fine, but we need something, we need a spark, we need to inject something into an attacking front line who are looking a bit stuttery and spluttery. We have two games in the next week against tough opposition that will mean little rotation for Arteta I suspect, but he will need to have some kind of answer because Newcastle and probably United will come to frustrate us on our own patch. We have to be ready for that.

Right, I’m offski, as I’m travelling to Cape Town from Frranschoek today. Have yourselves a great one.

It’s my last working day today and also my last in the UK for the next three weeks, as I jet off to South Africa for the holidays, so it was fun to learn that the Scum almost blew a three-goal lead in the League Cup last night. Ol’ Mate-Mate was smiling in the end, but that team is batsh*t mental and it reminded me of that Sebastian Squillaci quote from about nine years ago:

It was very open, and often we found ourselves defending in the middle one on one with the opposition attackers. It was never easy.

Oh to be a defender in the peak Banter-era Wenger sides. Must have felt like that Jon Snow Meme:

Anyway, hopefully they learn nothing, they’ll most likely get smashed by Liverpool, so if we progress against Newcastle it’ll be us against the Scousers on neutral territory and that should be interesting. Of course we’ll have to go back to St James’ Park for the second leg, having played them at the beginning of the first leg and although we all knew whoever we played would be a tough opponent, the way the domestic cup chips have fallen has hardly made it easier for us.

The Scum also have basically a completely makeshift backline, which I only bring up because guess who they are playing this weekend? Yep, Liverpool. So Liverpool have played us with a completely decimated defence away, as well as now them down the road with the same. They played a Southampton side without a manager in the League Cup during the week, which meant they got to do a lot of rotation, whilst they play Accrington Stanley in the FA Cup after the League Cup, which will mean they can fully pull out all of their big guns and rest them for a weekend, whilst we get Man United at home, which means Arteta is less likely to be able to do that.

I reflected on how everything seems to be going Liverpool’s way – fixtures, lack of key injuries for a prolonged time, playing opponents with injury problems – whilst for us it is the opposite (we played Everton with them having had 10 days off, as an example). Arteta has been good and hasn’t moaned, but I’m a fan, so I get to do that on his behalf. It’s a little navel-gazing-y I know, it’s also a little too melancholy I admit, but I can’t help it. On the Same Old Arsenal pod we get constantly asked who is going to win the league and I am always a glass half empty guy, but this season it just doesn’t feel like it’s going our way. The silly suspensions, the constant injuries (admit it, you’re looking at the fact Rice didn’t make the squad in midweek and worried, right?), playing teams at the wrong time (I know everyone has to play everyone, but sometimes there are good times to play teams and bad times, right?), all seems to have added together to be working against us. Last season it was the opposite; we played a few teams when they were decimated by injuries (I feel like we played Wolves in a crisis on one game, as well as Liverpool without Salah) and we profited, but it’s almost like we’re having some kind of Footballing Gods punishment for some small slices of fortune last season.

I know, I know, it doesn’t work like that Chris. But maybe it does. Maybe, to win a title, you need to be good, have the right conditions, but also get your slice of luck. City previously mitigated it by essentially having 22 – 25 players who were all £40million+ players they built up over a number of years, but even their chickens are now coming back to roost. In the last time we won the league in 2004, we had a stable of players who basically stayed fit for the whole season; sure, we had injuries, but we also had core players who stayed fit. We were a superb team, but we also had things going for us, like the game at Old Trafford where van Nistlerooy hits the bar for the penalty. He leans over the ball a little more and keeps it down and we don’t go unbeaten and who knows, maybe we don’t go on to win the league.

Football can so often feel like a bit of Sliding Doors moments and this season it feels like every door is opening for the Scousers, but for us we’re walking in to them.

Then you realise that we still have two-thirds of the season left and that nothing is decided right now. There is still hope; the season could turn on its head and much like how we looked to have fallen out of any reckoning after the home FA Cup defeat to Liverpool in January of this year, suddenly things turned on its head and we went on that brilliant run post-Dubai. The games that preceded that trip were ones in which we battered opponents but looked profligate in front of goal. We got one spark – Crystal Palace at home in January as I mentioned previously this past week – and suddenly it all turns itself around. Maybe, in the most unexpected of twists, the spark from Wednesday night and Gabriel Jesus’ hat-trick, can be what we need to go on a goalscoring rampage? I certainly hope so.

There’s that privilege of the archetypal football fan – that word ‘hope’ again.

Maybe we can hope that Gabriel Jesus can go on a bit of a streak of scoring now? It’s not completely inconceivable. I feel like he’s always been a bit of a streaky player; his goals in his career have tended to come in spurts. His last season at City he scored seven in the space of about four games towards the end of the season and I think the season before he had a couple of spells of that. With us needing a ‘spark’ as I’ve bleated on about a few times in the last couple of weeks, and yet the January transfer window still two weeks and three games away (I’m counting 1st January as we’re not signing somebody the second it opens), we do need something to come from somewhere left of field. Perhaps Jesus can be our Christmas saviour (sorry-not-sorry)?

We have to hope so. But it will also be interesting to see what Arteta says in his press conference today and whether we get any hints as to whether Jesus is going to get another start on Saturday. He’s certainly put himself in a good position to do that.

Back tomorrow with some pre-Palace, post-presser, thoughts.

No team has ever won a Premier League whilst being more than six points behind at this stage of the season.

I read that again this morning – United in 2002/3, City in 2013/14, the City in 2020/21 were the biggest ever points gaps recorded – but that was six points.

So if Arsenal are going to win the league then they are going to have to break the history books.

That’s why I think title chances are gone. History is against us, we are seven points off Liverpool, five off City and whilst it still feels so early in the season and it feels a little hyperbolic to say that the title challenge is over after ten games, the reality is that there’s a reason teams haven’t overcome points hauls like this: because they’re bloody hard to claw back on.

Now, perhaps the very hard start to the season, the ridiculous red cards and the injuries are meaning that we have been put in an unusual situation that we can recover from, but as it stands and after that troubling performance on Saturday that was not the first of its kind this season, it doesn’t feel like we’re about to go on a mega run of wins to me. Our margins for error are already practically gone; we have eroded any advantage and now essentially need to be perfect, which is why I am thinking that we’re not winning the league this season. Sadly.

As a fan you’re naturally predisposed to trying to find patterns, something to hang your hopes on, so I also started to think “yeah, but what about the reverse fixtures last year? How did we get on? I’ve used a golfing analogy to describe below the corresponding fixtures…

Well, we won at home to Wolves (par), we lost away to Villa (birdie), we beat Brighton at home (bogey), we beat the Scum away (par), we drew with City away (par), we beat all three newly promoted teams at home so that covers Southampton and Leicester (two pars), we beat Bournemouth away (double bogey) and we lost to Newcastle (par). So for the same fixtures last year we are two points worse off. Doesn’t sound like much, but that two points would have us on 20 points and five off Liverpool, which again feels like we’re about on track. That game away at Bournemouth and that draw at home to Brighton feels like they have been quite costly indeed. It feels as though we are going to need to be basically perfect between now and Christmas for all of this title talk to feel remotely possible. It just doesn’t right now.

They say that the table starts to take shape after ten matches, but we’re at that point now and we’re sitting in fifth behind Chelsea on goal difference, who we play next weekend. Lose to them and it really is all over I think. I had a look at the last three seasons and what the table looked like and what our points tally was. In 2023/24 we’d won seven and drawn three, were on 24 points. Man City had 24 the same as us. Newcastle had a similar points tally to what we’ve got this season on 17 points and they finished with 60 points. In 2022/23 we were on 27 points with City on 23 points. Chelsea had a similar points tally of 19 and they finished the season on 44 points, so they had a bit of a shocker after the first ten games. I don’t think that’ll happen to us, mind. Then, in 2021/22 Chelsea were top on 25 points, we were on a similar number on 17 and the eventual winners – City – had 20 points. They finished on 93, Chelsea finished on 74, we finished on 69 points.

So there’s never really been a time in which a team on 17 – 19 points at this stage has ever got close to the title in recent years and it’s starting to feel like that for us. Which is why I’m a little melancholy today and it could get a lot worse unless we pull a rabbit out of a hat next Sunday. I watched bits of the United v Chelsea game and it didn’t look like a game of too high quality, but you would imagine that Chelsea will be much better on their own turf against us next weekend. But Mikel is going to need to find some kind of better solution to get a result, because it’s feeling right now as if we’re teetering on the brink.

I apologise for the morose and downbeat nature of today’s blog. I can’t help how I’m feeling when it feels like the season feels like it’s stuttering to a halt before its even got going. The tough fixture list has us perhaps feeling like there’s a crumb of hope in the mitigation of the tough away matches we’ve had, but that’s about all I have at the moment. I guess we just have to hope that the next couple of months can bring some signs of a spark back in to this Arsenal team.

I think I’ll leave it there for today. It’s downbeat enough as it is! Have a good one and I’ll be back tomorrow as we start to look ahead to Inter away.

Catch you all then.

Arsenal’s defeat at St James’ Park – their third in the last four going up there – was thoroughly deserved. Arsenal were out-fought, out-thought, out-gunned and outplayed. They were second to almost everything on the night and there isn’t one player who played in red and white yesterday who got minutes up there who could say that they had a good game. We got stinkers from almost every player and Arteta too must shoulder some of the blame today too, because his set up was just wrong from the off.

The line up he picked included Thomas Partey at right back and whilst of course we have to admit that we don’t know the physical condition of Ben White, I think there were other options that we could have gone with rather than him out of position. Partey himself didn’t play that badly, but it was his poor header in the middle of the pitch that led to Newcastle’s winning goal in that first half.

You have to say that Newcastle were excellent and it was a superbly worked goal. They moved the ball quickly, Gordon put in an inch-perfect cross and Isak’s header was a bullet. Not a lot Raya could have done with it but perhaps one of Saliba or Gabriel could have been closer? Maybe. Maybe it was just one of those inch-perfect goals.

What you can do if you are Arsenal is react. That goal was conceded within the first 15 minutes, so Arsenal had 75+ to show a reaction, to put Newcastle under pressure, to deliver the goods to get us back on track. But the Arsenal players offered little. Last season the talk was about how we were the best out of possession team in Europe. Yesterday we got none of that. Newcastle hassled and hurried us when they were off the ball. They pressed and that battled. And our players had no idea. We didn’t move the ball quickly enough, we played with a lethargy in possession and we didn’t chase the spaces to put Newcastle under pressure. Newcastle popped the ball around us like we were a rudderless late-Wenger side.

It was embarrassing at times.

Embarrassing because we’ve been told – and tell ourselves – that this Arsenal team are in a title challenge. Not now we aren’t. Talk of the title needs to be shelved completely. Because unless we get out of this funk that, let’s face it, has been with us for at least a month now, we are going to be out of any reckoning by the time the Christmas period comes around.

I was really surprised at how slow we were with the ball. It was like we had no idea what to do just because Newcastle held a relatively robust shape. We just horseshoe passed ourselves to death all afternoon. Martinelli looked like a lost boy. Saka was doubled up on and kept quiet all afternoon. I barely noticed Havertz on the pitch. But the midfield was just off. I thought Merino was meant to be a duel merchant? How many duels did he win yesterday? It doesn’t feel like many, that’s for sure.

The passing was weird yesterday too. Balls being massively overhit from Merino, Rice, Partey, Saliba, Gabriel, etc. All of them were at it. But there was one player who stunk the place out more than most, which was Leandro Trossard. He was selfish with a couple of chances in the first half when a better option may have been to shoot. He mishit passes again and again, he ran into blind alleys and when you add that to the Bournemouth performance, as well as being average on a few occasions recently, it feels like he is on borrowed time in terms of a starting place in this team. Odegaard can not come back quickly enough, I tell you that much.

But Odegaard alone doesn’t salvage that game yesterday. Even if he was fit and pressing like he does, the rest of the team would have let him down, because we were just so flat. It didn’t look like an Arteta Arsenal and you have to say Howe got his tactics spot on. What’s maddening though is that this was a carbon copy of what happened last season. Arteta seemed to have no idea of how to answer when Howe just rolled out the same approach for the second year in a row:

1. Commit and press bodies high up the pitch when Arsenal have the ball in the back line and particularly with it at Raya’s feet
2. Double up in wide positions on the wingers
3. Force them to go long into the centre halves to win the aerial battle with Havertz isolated.

Two year’s in a row. Six points gained for the home team. Just so, so, poor.

Arteta tried to change it, but the subs offered little. Nwaneri showed a little bit of a spark, but by the time he was on Newcastle were in shape and able to react to his cuts inside. At least the kid showed a bit of spark though. That’s more than I can say for the rest of his teammates. Zinchenko came on and almost immediately lost the ball carelessly. There was one Newcastle chance that he gave them on the counter attack just because he misplaced a pass about five yards in front of him. This guy is supposed to be on the pitch to give us more control in possession, yet he’s struggling to trap it?

It was just all wrong yesterday. But the fact that the team just seemed like they didn’t want to fight was the most worrying thing. It was like they were devoid of ideas. It’s not as if they had all played in midweek – many of them hadn’t even got on the pitch at Preston, or at least they only played a half or less. So fatigue is not an excuse I want to countenance today. It was mentality. Those Arsenal players just didn’t want it enough. And that is the biggest worry of them all.

I’ll leave it there I think. Back tomorrow with some more thoughts. On the Same Old Arsenal pod this afternoon. Let’s see if I’m still as angry as I was post game yesterday and first thing this morning writing out these thoughts. If you want to you can join us here.

Arsenal players; don’t give him any excuse – even the most marginal of calls – to make a crap call. Because if he’s given the chance, he will.

But parking any potential conspiracies aside, let’s have a look at this game and what the manager’s said ahead of it, eh? Let’s start with The Arsenal, in which Arteta said Ben White was a question mark for today, but Gabriel should be fine if he trains. That is massive. The sight of him limping off last Sunday – coupled with the fact we’ve had injury after injury this season – made me think that we wouldn’t be seeing him on a pitch for quite some time. So the fact it wasn’t serious, the fact he has been cleared to train and the fact that a lot of the more respected journo’s out there are saying he’s likely to start, is huge. Timber too is back and fine after another 45 minutes in midweek.

So if Ben White made it through training yesterday that will mean we have a very strong back four to kick off the game. Which is good because we will need it. It looks like there’s a good chance Ben will make it too; there’s a video on the official site with the squad coming together for a minute silence and he is in it in his training gear. Odegaard is there too, so maybe we can’t read too much in to it, but I have my hopes.

If that’s the back four sorted (we hope), then the next question Mikel needs to consider is what he’s going to do with his midfield, because it is starting to feel like we’ve got some real options now at last. By my reckoning we have Partey, Rice, Merino, Nwaneri, Jorginho, Havertz/Trossard all as options for that midfield. I suspect it’s unlikely he’ll go with Nwaneri – even if he did play so well in midweek – and I think it’s fairly obvious Jorginho is further down the pecking order, so for me the decision is whether the Trossard/Havertz axis outweighs the possible desire to go Merino left eight, Rice right eight and Partey sitting deep. I think given the midfield we’re likely to be up against – Joelinton, Tonali and Bruno – physicality is the aim of the game today. That and winning duels. So I personally would go with Partey, Rice and Merino. Big players, physical players, duel winners. Then you stick Havertz up top and have him flanked by Saka and Martinelli to have a run at Hall and Livramento respectively. The hope is that we get space and joy with those guys, because if we do, then that’s why we might hurt them.

Two season’s ago we drew 0-0 at home to Newcastle in that game in which they dived, time wasted and generally employed more ‘dark arts’ than Arsenal have over the course of this whole season (nobody spoke about that from the media after the game though, eh?), their success was predicated on doubling and sometimes tripling up on Saka specifically, but on our left wing too. You have to assume they will do the same today when we have the ball, so the emphasis needs to be on moving it quicker and if Saka is going to have that kind of attention, then other players need to be ready and near him so he isn’t isolated. Three players marking your right winger means you’ve got three players not somewhere else on the pitch, which creates space. Arsenal need to know and exploit that.

Newcastle will threaten us through Isak and Gordon, both of whom I think are quality players and can take chances if afforded them, so Ben White and Saliba will have their work cut out with Gordon and Gabriel/Saliba need to win the battle with Isak. Of course they have other players like Barnes and if he plays wide left then Gordon will move right and it’ll be Timber who needs to have his number. Barnes is a quality player too so it feels like it’s shaping up to be a midfield battle, with Newcastle’s answers coming from that front three. In response, our front three have to show their quality and deliver some end product. That wasn’t something we were able to do last season and it was a really poor game from The Arsenal overall. My hope is that we give a better account of ourselves because last season they just shut us down by stopping us in build up from the back and if I remember rightly we only had one or two shots on goal in the whole game. We have slightly different personnel this time around and hopefully that physicality (Partey instead of Jorginho, Havertz playing up top to put a duel winner in Merino in to the midfield, for example) can serve us better than last season.

As usual it’s a mixed bag with the pundits; Sutton’s going for a 1-1, Sports Mole is saying 2-1 us, Merse is backing us for a 2-1, Goal has gone for Arsenal to win but not predicted the score and Jones Knows on Sky has gone 1-0 to The Arsenal too. So the general consensus is us, with a few outliers. I can understand that; Newcastle haven’t won in their last five, they have a few key defensive players out, they haven’t been scoring too much but also haven’t been conceding, so this has all the hallmarks of a low scoring affair I suspect. Let’s just hope that we get that first goal, because it may open up Newcastle a bit.

This will be tough, it will be a bruising lunchtime encounter, but i’m crossing everything that we get the job done. We probably need to, because a defeat and we’re probably staring down the barrel of outsiders looking in on the title race. But let’s not end my musings today on negativity, because a win for The Arsenal, and suddenly things are looking very rosy indeed.

Catch you all tomorrow.

Based on some of my initial reading, there’s a fair few predicting an Arsenal win here, which is interesting. Of course there are a few that back their team no matter what, but based on the 15 – 20 predictions that I looked at, it feels like there’s about 60 – 70% who think us, 10 – 20% that think draw, then 10 – 20% that think they will win. Quite something because in recent years it’s usually swung in the other direction. As you’d expect on a  fans forum, there’s lots of “let’s kick the crap out of them” type stuff and I actually take some heart in that, weirdly. That’s because if they’re not talking about ways to beat us from their own game, it might mean that they aren’t so confident with what is happening on the pitch. I might be wrong, this is only one main forum I spent a bit of time on, but that doesn’t strike me as a set of fans who are looking at where ‘battles’ are going to be won on the pitch.

Which surprises me, because they beat us three seasons ago up there, then last season in albeit controversial circumstances. You’d think that they’d be looking at this game and having a proper debate about what our weaknesses are and where they can hurt us. Which looks like the middle of the pitch if anything. Bruno, Joelinton, Tonali, all technically decent players, but also guys who have a physicality that they will bring to the table.

There was one or two that have talked about the fact it’s an early kick off, something which I hope plays in to our hands, but by how much I’m not so sure. I’ll do more on a tactical preview tomorrow, but as far as ‘vibes check’ goes, I’m not seeing a bullish set of fans.

And when you look at their results, some injuries and the way they are playing, you can kind of see why. They’re currently 12th in the League, they’ve won three, lost three, drawn three, scored nine goals (16th in the league) but conceded just 10, which is joint fourth with us. Defensively they’ve been good on that metric, but when you look at their xG allowed, they are 11th, so perhaps there’s an element of fortune to the fact they’ve conceded so few. Although like us, their numbers are skewed slightly because of the sending off they got against Southampton, so it’s difficult to read too much in to it at the moment. Their last home game was a defeat to Brighton in which they had 21 shots on goal and looked to have dominated them for most of the game, with Brighton doing a bit of a rope-a-dope on them. Indeed, Newcastle had double the amount of xG than the Seagulls and seemed to have pinned Brighton back for most of the game, based on the numbers I’ve seen. The game before that they got a 1-1 draw against City and before that they beat the Scum 2-1, so this will by no means be an easy afternoon for us – not that I think any of us thought it would be. You may be playing the team 12th in the table right now, but I’d be surprised if they’re that low come the end of the season.

What will be a big one will be if Isak isn’t fit though. Eddie Howe said he wasn’t sure if he was ok as he was taken off in midweek and apparently was hobbling, but I suspect he’ll be ok. He’s accounted for 3.5 of Newcastle’s xG this season, with Gordon accounting for 3.3, so if one of those isn’t playing, then it does make their attacking potency all the more difficult. Those two players basically make up half of their attacking xG threat so if you keep those guys quiet, you keep Newcastle quiet.

For us all of the questions will be around who is fit and available, but I’ll do more on that tomorrow when I know a bit more. Suffice to say, however, that this feels very much like a ‘must-win’ game given how we are already a bit of a distance away from Liverpool and City. A defeat tomorrow and it might be another nail closer to the coffin being closed on any title aspirations. Even at this early stage in the season, eight points off City feels like an impossible mountain to climb.

I think I’ll leave it there today. A little later on the release of the blog this morning, as I have stuff to do this Friday, but will be back tomorrow with the usual pre match thoughts. Catch you all then.

Tomorrow night maybe less so, although I did have an interesting conversation with Kevin who I went to the football with at the weekend; he was making a case for winning the League cup as a way of spearheading a season to glory. The case in favour was predicated on the fact that when Pep won a bunch of them a few season’s back, City used that as a platform to go on and win things in that same season. It’s an early cup final in February and what that means is that by winning it you get the boost of having a trophy and momentum of the players feeling rather good about themselves.

I kind of get it and sure, City have used that to further add to their haul, but they’ve also had deeper squads that could have £100million players on the bench, plus I think on many occasions you have to have a little bit of luck at the right moment in terms of your opponents. Take tomorrow for example, in which we play a Preston side in 16th, not exactly ripping up trees, but are still a Championship side. I’m not sure whether they’ll play a fully fit squad but if they don’t, then you’d really fancy our chances and a good draw in the next round if we were to get through, then suddenly you’re starting to think like Kevin suggested. But given what lies in wait in terms of Newcastle away and Chelsea away, I think Arteta would be mad to do anything other than just completely rotate the shizzle out of this side tomorrow night. There would be absolutely no merit whatsoever in playing any player who will feature more regularly over the next couple of weeks.

The only case I can make would be David Raya – as he’s the ‘keeper and so fatigue is less of an issue – or maybe somebody like Kiwior, who hasn’t played very much and so giving him game time if Big Gabi isn’t back for this coming weekend, could be good for him getting his ‘feels’ back for first team football.

Arteta will have his press conference today and give us his thoughts and tomorrow I’ll try my darnedest to pick an almost completely rotated XI so we have a fully fresh squad for Saturday.

What is interesting is that Newcastle are at home to Chelsea, so if Eddie Howe plays a more full strength side in the competition because he fancies getting to the deeper rounds of it, then that might be beneficial to us. Hopefully he really goes for it tomorrow and we have players at home with their feet up who will play, so maybe there could be a bit more fatigue in those Geordie legs than ours.

One player we will all be sweating on is Big Gabi and by the looks of his Instagram post (something we briefly talked about on the Same Old Arsenal pod yesterday evening when digesting the Liverpool game) he is a little more optimistic about the diagnosis. Being no medical expert I’m not going to conclude anything with any real certainty, but if this is just a knock he can shake off within a week so that he is ready for Saturday, then that will be a huge boost. We may or may not get any hints from Arteta today, but regardless if there’s even a slight chance that he has any kind of knock, it just wouldn’t be worth it. I said yesterday on the pod that I thought Kiwior did well and I stand by that. Of course he and Lewis-Skelly got caught out for the Liverpool goal at the weekend, but this is one of the best attacks in the league who have been flying and that moment aside, I thought both players did well on the night. I also seem to recall that it was two or three season’s ago that Kiwior came in at St James’ Park and had an excellent game in central defence and I think some of the hand-ringing that we’ve seen on him from Arsenal fans is a little harsh, personally. Let’s not forget that he’s barely played as a centre half, he’s not been able to build any kind of rhythm – which is massive for elite footballers – and when he did get a run of games last season, he came in and was very good at left back for a number of games. If there is any doubt about Gabriel being not 100% on Saturday I think Arteta should have no problems in giving him minutes from the start as our left centre half.

Elsewhere there was the Ballon D’Or awards last night and honestly, I really couldn’t give two sh*ts about something like that. Individual awards in a team sport are pointless and having a top 30 or top 50 count down as they have makes even more ‘meh’. The fact that Real Madrid threw their toys out of the pram because one of their players didn’t win is kind of funny and the sort of weird thing you get from clubs like that. The reality is that it doesn’t mean anything and in a week’s time nobody is going to talk about the Ballon D’Or award.

There’s one other piece that I’ve seen with Merino saying that we will never give up on the title after the 2-2 draw. I get it, I love the mentality, of course you have to keep on fighting, but if we lose the next two league games, that game will most likely be more than 10 points and that in the era of Man City and Liverpool probably winning their next two games, feels like a step too far. I kinda don’t want to delve too deep into this just yet though, because it feels like it might be something for the build up to the weekend, or even in the fallout if it all goes horribly wrong for us. Stay positive though now, chris, stay positive.

back tomorrow for a match preview.

I saw talk yesterday that Arsenal won’t be accepting anything other than £50million from Aaron Ramsdale. Good. Whether or not we get that remains to be seen, but we signed him for around £24million I think, he established himself as a great goalkeeper in a side fighting for Champions League and then the title, so his stock should certainly have risen as a result of that. Admittedly it will have dipped a little because he didn’t play much last season, but he’s just featured for England in an international friendly and he’s going to the Euro’s despite not having played that much, which tells you that he is still held in high regard.

Transfermarkt has his value at €25million but that feels on the low side to me, plus they have his signing on value . He’s 26, still plenty of year’s in the tank and wherever he ends up he’ll be a very valuable asset for us. He is tied down to a long-term contract at The Arsenal as well and so for my money we should at an absolute minimum be looking at getting around or more than what we paid for him. If that means a club needs to pay between £25 – £30million, but Arsenal are setting a high bar through agent talk, then I think that would probably work out for all parties. Talk of Newcastle wanting him for £15million should be laughed off by anyone and everyone. The only way Arsenal should accept that is if ‘add ons’ consisted of a million quid for every game he plays for the first 15 games. Then sure, you can have him for £15million, chaps.

The other transfer rumours all seem to centre around players we’ve all already heard of. So there’s Zirkzee talk, there’s Onana talk, some Douglas Luiz stuff bubbling under the surface, but it all feels a little tentative to me. As soon as it starts becoming serious we’ll all know, but now it feels like there’s lot’s of agents doing lots of work in the background to hock their clients around. And given where we finished and how attractive the ‘project’ is at The Arsenal right now, you can understand why there would be plenty of players and agents dropping DMs to Edu on the down low. When you hear people like William Saliba talking about going to ‘war’ again with City next season, why would you not want to be part of a project that is aiming so high and has already been flying so high?

I gotta tell ya, I love this fighting talk from Big Bill. It’s what you want to hear as a fan and even as soon as that final whistle went against Everton on the last day of the season a few weeks ago, it feels like all of the players have been just gearing up to go again big in 2024/25. Martin Odegaard talked about it in his post match interview to the crowd on that final day; he talked about the fact he just wants to get back in to training again and go again and Saliba’s comments feel the same. Arteta has built a hunger in these boys that you just feel is so close to getting over the line and delivering silverware. Sure, it was disappointing to miss out and sure, it was clearly a crushing blow for those players to get so close and yet still not get over the line, but the energy and drive that this Arsenal team transmit gives me feelings that these guys won’t get their heads down. They want to go even further next season and I am all for that mentality.

We’ve even seen pictures of the likes of Gabriel Jesus dropping training videos and pictures in an effort to be ready for the new season. Personally I thought he was going in to have surgery to correct something on his knee, but hey, if that’s not the case and he just needs to get rest time, then fine. Although I’m not sure how getting yourself doing early training sessions this early in June is going to be the right kind of ‘rest’ that the doctors ordered mate! But at least the drive is there. Let’s hope we see more of it post the Euro’s and Copa America, because you just feel that we’re going to basically need to hit the ground running from day one next season to stand a chance of keeping up with 115 Charges FC.

Right, I’m going to leave it there for today, as there’s little else on. I might be doing a pod with James on the Same Old Arsenal tonight so keep your eyes peeled if you fancy listening in to a few Arsenal fans waffle on about…well…Arsenal, of course.

Back on here tomorrow with the usual ramblings. Have yourselves a good one.

Are Arsenal peaking too soon?

I know this probably sounds a little irrational, it probably sounds a bit crazy given how well we are playing right now and of course we’ve seen City embark on 12, 13 or 14+ winning streaks that have romped them to the season conclusion and the Premier League trophy. But I’m a 40+ year old Gooner who has the battle scars of Premier League campaigns of yesteryear and what I’ve seen over the year’s has given me enough battle scars to think very irrationally and nervously. Hence why I’ve had this little seed planted in the far reaches of my neural network in my brain that is sending seeds of fear to me over whether or not our current barnstorming form is about a month too early.

Crazy, right?

I mean, why look a gift horse in the mouth? Why ignore every single underlying metric that says that this football team under Mikel Arteta are that good and that this is in fact the Arsenal that has existed all season, not the stuttering one from earlier in the campaign?

And how long can a team ‘peak’ for? In my head a peak feels like it’s about a month and that’s probably why I have this seed of doubt creeping in that we can maintain this run for a prolonged period of time. We’re not City. We have an expensively assembled squad, for sure, but it’s not like City’s expensively assembled squad. Maybe we can get there, maybe we are already there but I just don’t see it because I have my preconceptions as to what we are and who we are up against, but I just worry that when the games start to really crunch, we might have used up all of our juice.

Or maybe not. Maybe we can ‘do a City’ and go on a run which see’s us peaking at the right time and that extending right in to May. It feels like we’re going to have to. We have a bloody hard April set of fixtures and if we’re still in the Champions League it’s going to get even more difficult. We’re going to need to show a really grind about this team and that’s where these returning players back from injury have to be vital to us. We’re going to need Zinchenko back. We’re going to need Gabriel Jesus back. We’re going to need Fabio Vieira, Smith Rowe, Partey, Timber and Tomiyasu all back and all ready to play significant minutes. It feels like we’ve been fortunate of late because we’ve seemingly had a fair few periods of time in which the players and coaching staff have been able to get full weeks on the training ground before we play again and this week we have the same. But if we go deep in the CL then that won’t last. April will get rather stretched and Arteta is going to have to be thinking about three or four rotations in his starting XI from Wednesday to Saturday, rather than just the one like he made against Newcastle this weekend just gone.

And we’re going to need the whole squad to peak, not just the current XI who are hitting form. We will need to see Partey quickly assimilate himself back in to this side, because he’s going to play (if he stays fit). So will Fabio Vieira and all of the others listed above. If we navigate past Porto we will have to play Brighton away, a Champions League midweek game, then Aston Villa at home. That’s a bloody hard run and so where my irrational fear of us ‘peaking too soon’ comes from is looking at that and thinking “£imagine if we’ve used all of our juice by the time that grind comes around”.

I know it sounds silly. I know that this Arsenal team has shown an ability to grind out results and perhaps the matches pre Christmas when we were picking up wins but it being a bit of a slog will bode well for this side, but I just worry that the ‘peak’ has come a month early. That is of course if you go by my arbitrary timeline of a ‘peak’ of footballing pinnacle lasts around a month. Heck, if this Arsenal team keep bagging goals like we have for another month, I’ll update my priors and be very happy to look back at this blog and call myself a muppet.

This has felt a very ‘glass half empty’ blog today and for that I apologise, but let me assure you my glass isn’t half empty – despite my words. I, like you I’m sure, am super happy at where we are right now. The team is playing fantastic football, they are a joy to watch, we are looking every bit the best and in form team in the Premier League right now as it stands. But we need that in April and May too, not just in February and I hope we all get our wish for that to happen. A lot will depend on the whole squad as I’ve already mentioned and so the right kind of re-integration of those injured players back in to the squad feels like it could be every bit as important as those players who are currently purring, maintaining their form.

Let’s hope our ‘peak’ can be longer than a month. Let’s hope it lasts until May.

Catch you wonderful humans tomorrow.

As much as the Liverpool/Klopp Farewell tour is a little cringe, the upside of yesterday’s League Cup victory for them over Chelsea is at least that the ‘Billion Pound Bottle Jobs’ as Gary Neville put it, haven’t won a trophy and therefore the blue side of West London is waking up sad today. That is certainly an up side. What you have to hope now is that they will win absolutely bugger all else in terms of trophies this season, leaving the Premier League to us.

That might be wishful thinking on this here Gooners part, but the sheer volume of fixtures will hopefully catch up with them. There has already been plenty of noise made about their current injury plight and if they continue to keep up the cadence of games they have you have to hope that it’ll come back to them eventually. We talked about that towards the end of yesterday’s Same Old Arsenal pod as we debated who has the tougher run in of fixtures. If you look at the league fixtures only it is probably us; we play Brighton away, Wolves are a good side, we have to go to City as well as the Scum for the North London Derby. There’s also the annoying reality that no matter how bad United are, they always seem to beat us at Old Trafford. So we have a super hard run in, but the hope has to be that the leveller is the volume of games. Liverpool play Southampton on Wednesday this week, they then play Forest on Saturday, then Sparta Prague on Thursday before City at home on Sunday. The following week they also play in the Europa League in the second leg before playing Everton away. I think you’d describe all of those games barring City as ‘winnable’, but you’ve still got to play them and if they progress in the FA Cup as well as the Europa League, then there will be yet more games after that. Given their perceived easier games in the league, we have to hope that the relentless nature of being in as many competitions as they are in catches up with them. In a weird way, we have to hope that they progress in every competition, we just have to hope that they don’t win anything else.

It’s the same with City. They may have been knocked out of the League Cup at earlier stages, but they are still fighting for the FA Cup and Champions League and tomorrow they go to Luton, before playing United, then Copenhagen, followed by Liverpool. We almost need them to beat Luton to chuck another game in there, although what you would say about City is that they have shown they can cope, by virtue of the fact that they won the treble last year.

As for us, we have a week off now because we’re not in the FA Cup, so you have to hope that Arteta will get the players on the training ground and focused on the next opponent of Sheffield United away on Monday week. It would be easy to just dismiss a team with the worst defence in the league as a side that we will just swat aside without any effort; this is the Premier League and we know that anyone can beat anyone on their day, so whilst we have to be hopeful of another victory next Monday, the work still needs to be put in by those players. They have been brilliant of late and are bagging goals for fun, but that doesn’t mean that they’ll have it their own way at Brammall Lane.

What I would say, however, is that the focus that Arteta and his players appear to have is there for us all to see. Just think about the way the players spoke about the Porto defeat; 15 years ago it would have been some platitudes from players saying “we know it wasn’t good enough” but now when you have players like Declan Rice and Odegaard saying things like “we know what went wrong and how to fix it”, you believe them. Arteta spoke after the Newcastle game about the players “feeling it in their tummies” when referencing the defeat to Porto and how that spurred them on to perform the way they did on Saturday evening. That’s the focus that we need. There is no “Ahh, we’re a bit fatigued” nonsense, because that’s an excuse, which doesn’t wash with Arteta. The ‘estandards’ are high and that manifests itself in performances like that first half against Newcastle. Then when you deliver like those Arsenal players did in the first half, you get the benefit of being ahead and you can rotate players out like we did at the weekend and have done for the last few weeks. Which also helps to manage the fitness of those players. It’s a virtuous cycle and the hope is that it’s enabling us to win more matches and keeping us in the conversation. But we have to keep on going. That City game at the end of March looms high on the agenda but before then there are games to be won if we still want that match in Manchester to matter. We have to beat Sheffield United, then Brentford, before possibly Chelsea if that game doesn’t get moved because of the FA Cup. Hopefully it gets moved to the couple of days after the sixth round, because that will enable us to be fresh before we play them, although I suspect it’ll get pushed back to a date in April. Although if we’re still in the Champions League then it’ll get a little tricky to find a slot for sure.

But these machinations are for another day. Today and for the remainder of this week we can bask, soak up more glorious Arsenal content, feel happy that the team are playing so well and just enjoy our respective social media feeds. You have yourselves a good one and I’ll be back tomorrow with some more musings.

Pre game discussion was all focused around how we were going to deal with the Newcastle sh*thousery that would inevitably come. They have the players, they have the recent history at the Emirates from last season, but they also had a blueprint laid down by Porto in the Dragao on Wednesday night in the Champions League. I was convinced this would be a horrible game to watch; they would employ just about all of the dark arts available.

“IF we don’t score early though”

That was the repeated sentence in the restaurant we went to beforehand. Because that caveat would mean that Newcastle couldn’t sit deep and play for the draw. If we got the first goal and got it early then there would be a game to be had and that is exactly what happened yesterday evening. The atmosphere was rocking, the crowd were massively up for this and so were the players, as Set Piece FC stepped forward for the first one. I got chatting to my mates Steve and Luke at halftime and Steve said that part of him wanted the goal to be controversial, maybe not go over the line but we get given it anyway, which I thought would have been a delicious bit of karma for those Newcastle fans who went hard on their winner against us at St James’. Did you see that guy who got in a bathtub fully clothed with the caption about bathing in our tears on the goal they scored? Yeah, that. Where’s ol bathtub boy now, eh?

We were excellent though. From the first minute there was a purpose, determination and press to this performance that had you convinced that Arteta’s team talk was about inflicting damage on the night. The team had underperformed in midweek and this was exactly the reaction we all wanted. Pressing, harrying, hassling, winning the ball high up the pitch and not giving Newcastle a sniff. It was brilliant. In that first half I’m not even sure that they had an attack up our end of the pitch in the North Bank. It was one-way traffic and just six minutes after the Botman own goal opener, we had doubled our lead and you sensed that the game was done.

How good is that by the way? That 24 minutes in to a match you know that you’ve got the points in the bag. Of course I can say this now, you can’t say it out loud in the moment, but deep down when Havertz slid the ball nonchalantly into the back of the net in front of delighted Clock End Gooners, we all knew that the points were ours.

We could have had more that first half too. Saka forced a good save from Karius and there was a header from Martinelli that I suspect he’ll have felt that he could have done better on. But by the end of the first half it was “job half done” and we’d restricted Newcastle to zero shots on goal, 37% possession, whilst we’d racked up 11 attempts at goal, four on target and an xG of 1.73. This was a performance with purpose and we weren’t going to let those three points slip. 

And the second half delivered more of the sane from a goals perspective, although Newcastle did come out and play a little more. I guess they had to; Eddie Howe wouldn’t have been happy with the complete lack of threat in that first half and they at least started to keep hold of the ball a bit more. But we were in control and were creating chances. Within a few seconds of the restart Havertz was in on goal and should have scored. I turned to the guy next to me – Nick – and said that we need that third to out the final nail in the coffin. 

Step forward Bukayo Saka. It was an initial mistake by Newcastle that forced the turnover in the middle of the pitch, but as soon as we got the ball back you knew Newcastle were in trouble. Havertz will claim the assist for the pass but let’s be frank here, it was all Bukayo Saka that secured the points. The way he keeps such close control of the ball is a nightmare for defenders and the fact he can go left or right and deliver end product just makes it all the more difficult to assess how to stop him. That’s 16 goals and 13 assists in all competitions – 29 involvements in 34 matches. This kid is class. World class.

The fun wasn’t over though. The points may have been secured but this Arsenal team are bloodthirsty right now and they smelt blood yesterday. So Jakub Kiwior stepped forward to bag number four with another set piece. It doesn’t matter how much teams prepare for us on set pieces, we are absolutely deadly, although when I watched that goal again I will say that the ‘keeper will feel like he could and should have done better I think. 

There was a bit of a blot on the copy book with the Joe Willock looping header goal as a consolation, but that’ll just annoy our back line more than anything else. Ultimately this a=was a game that was won early, involved total dominance and saw Arsenal keep up the pressure on Liverpool and City. Plus, our goal difference is now the best in the league, with us having scored one less than Liverpool and conceded two less as well. This Arsenal team is clicking and the hope has to be that we can sustain this form u=between now and the end of the season.

The good news was also that we were able to bring players off and Arteta did just that after that fourth goal, with ESREddie and Reiss all coming on with 15 minutes plus stoppages to go. It meant we couold rest up some of those legs who were perhaps a little tired and with a whole week until our next game, hopefully we can get more good minutes on the training ground and be ready for Sheffield United away next weekend.

It’s another weekend of smashing teams up in the Premier League and whilst we all know it won’t last forever, right now we can just bask in the absolute tonking we’re giving teams.

That’s me done on here for today, but in about 20 minutes at the time of writing we’re going live on the Same Old Arsenal podcast, so if you fancy a watch/listen you can do so here.

So yesterday I had a little mooch around and the vibe I got was that many of the Geordies thought they’re going to get smashed up tonight. They recognise that their team has been conceding goals, they acknowledge that we’ve been in good form of late (Porto slip up aside), plus there was even one or two of them who thought that the fact this is an evening game as well as the game at St James’ Park might give this a little edge to it.

And I think they’re right. Thats because I obviously also am immersed in the Arsenal world and what I’ve been reading from our lot is a general feeling of wanting to bring the noise, of making the atmosphere hostile, so that we can roar the lads on to victory. I hope that is the case tonight. I’ll be going and if my voice isn’t horse come 10pm, then I haven’t done my job properly.

Mikel Arteta spoke to the press yesterday and the team news whilst sounding sketchy as he always does, is hopefully better than it’s been for a few weeks. Partey has been in training so I have a hope that he might make the bench, plus when asked about Gabby Jesus Arteta simply said “he’s done a few things”. To me I read that as he’s been back in training – or at least I hope that’s what it means – and perhaps we might even get him back in the squad today. If he too can make the bench that will be preferable. The Zinchenko news still feels like it’ll be a case of at least another week for him I reckon.

He spoke about the need for a reaction from the players after the midweek loss, but I didn’t get the feeling of a man who has just told his players that they have to react, but rather a composed and measured response of “that’s done, we move on”. And I think that’s a good thing. Put away any lingering negativity or worry about us suddenly spiralling our form and instead focus on tonight’s opponent, who Arteta also mentioned a couple of bits that had me thinking he’s got an idea how they will play, tactically. He specifically referenced that they do things ‘off the ball’ and although I’m putting two-and-two together here, I do think that he was talking about how they will find their shape positionally and be compact against us. Last season’s game at the Emirates saw them work incredibly hard off the ball to double up on our wide forwards and we struggled to break them down. Then there was all of their time wasting and sh*thousery and we’ll get that tonight for sure, but they did also work very hard to maintain a disciplined shape and I think that will be their focus tonight.

That will of course be different to how they’ve played for a lot of this season, of course, because they’ve been more open, scoring and conceding goals at a much higher rate than they did last season. But I don’t see a game in which they want things opened up, because that’s where we’ll exploit spaces and will get joy. So for me what we’ll get is a return to last season’s Newcastle and they will look to hit us on the counter. Think West Ham at home.

In terms of our line up, I think Arteta might make at least one change to the line up tonight, which I have a feeling will be Jorginho coming in. He did well at St James’ Park when he wasn’t being punched in the head and he also will be needed to keep the ball and recycle it if we do get a Newcastle team that sits on the edge of their box. So I have a feeling he’ll come in and therefore it’ll be one of Trossard or Havertz to come out. That will surely be Trossard because he was virtually anonymous on Wednesday and with Havertz as more of a focal point than Trossard, it feels more natural to see him shift forward, then Jorginho to play a similar role to the one he played against Liverpool.

And if we get the same kind of performance and result as we did that day, then we’ll all be going home happy, because that would mean a win and a chance to keep up with City and Liverpool, who will have both picked up their points by then (Liverpool of course already have because of their win at home to Luton during the week).

This is a big game for us. It’s one in which fatigue could play a part, especially if most of the team remains the same as it has done for the last three matches, so I do wonder what impact the subs could make today? If Partey and Jesus can return, for example, then Arteta will have those two plus Trossard (if on the bench), ESR and Fabio Vieira who will all be able to come on and hopefully change things up. That’s so important if the margins of the game are tight and I suspect we might see more sub action tonight than we did in midweek. And that is probably a good thing, because three games in a week will catch up with some of those players, so injecting a bit of freshness in the team might be of vital importance as the second half starts to wear on. Newcastle have had a week off so their legs won’t be as tired and we need to be able to keep pace, so what Arteta does from the sidelines could be a difference maker today.

I’m hopeful that we’re going to get a good performance tonight but I’m not expecting a battering. I feel like this will be tight and I do think Newcastle might score on the counter, so we just need to make sure we have our shooting boots on.

I’ll be back tomorrow with a blog and then we’re going to be doing a morning show on the Same Old Arsenal, so if you fancy joining us you can do so here. Catch you all tomorrow.

I wonder if Arteta and the players have a word with the referees pre game or as it’s kicking off. I would. Nothing major, just say to them “ref, can you just keep an eye on the time wasting for me, please? This lot had the ball out of play for around 30 minutes here last season and I have a feeling they might try it again today”. Just something as simple as that where you can be civil, polite, state your case and sew the seed, could be vitally important in at least making the referee think. And then the first time it happens, probably in the first five minutes, you just make sure you’re near the referee and say “see? I told you” and shrug your shoulders. That’s the kind of counter-action that I hope we see from the inevitable sh*thousery of Newcastle tomorrow. Let’s get them on the back foot early on and do our bit to stop the shenanigans.

I wonder if Arteta is asked about that in today’s press conference? He said after the game that they were aware of what they would do and he also commented on the ’35 – 37 fouls’ that kept stopping the game. There will no doubt be questions from the reporters about ‘bouncing back’ from the disappointment of defeat, they’ll probably ask about the mood in the dressing room, but I wonder if they’ll probe enough about the similarities in game plan that we’re likely to see? I hope so.

Of course we also want to hear the team news and getting some of those players back fit in the shape of Partey, Zinchenko and Gabriel Jesus must be the immediate concern. Arteta made just one sub on the night in the shape of Jorginho and the bench looked a little light again, with only Fabio Vieira returning from the weekend game against Burnley. It means that these players are having to turn around games quite quickly and you wonder how much rotation will be needed to keep some of those players fresh. If we have the likes Gabriel Jesus or Zinchenko back then you’d think they might play some part, but having them on from the start feels unlikely given that they’ve been out for three weeks. But what we do want to hear is that Arteta says that they are good enough for a spot on the bench to give us options. We’ve hardly been given any news on the extent of these injuries and so we have no idea whether we’ll be without them again, but if you think about how they weren’t pictured in training and we only played two days ago, it feels like a stretch to expect them tomorrow evening. Let’s just hope for better news.

As for Newcastle, they’ll have their own issues to contend with, as Pope is still out, Wilson is now out until nearly the end of the season, with Isak having also been unfit along with Willock. I suspect both will get a place in the squad though as they’ll also be without Joelinton, who is one of their sh*thousing generals so that will hopefully be good news for us. They will still have the likes of Guimaraes and Almiron to can that baton though, so I am expecting a bit of play acting to play out at times tomorrow evening. We just need to make sure we bring the noise. An 8pm kick off will mean the stadium is rocking and despite the fact that some of our players might be feeling a little bit of fatigue from playing midweek, you have to hope that the atmosphere and roar of the home crowd will help to give our players that extra five to ten percent that we need to get over the line in what will be a tough game. Newcastle have played 12, won three, drawn two and lost seven away from home this season and they’re averaging just over two goals conceded per match. However they’ve scored 22 away and so they’ll fancy their chances of bagging a goal or two tomorrow. Last season they had the meanest defence but when you look at their last three matches – 4-4 draw, 3-2 win, 2-2 draw, it kind of feels like they’re not as steady and perhaps want to come out a bit. That is the hope anyway and when you look at their xG allowed stats, they have the second worst in the league, so that suggests they do give up more chances. That’s also backed up in the fact that behind the bottom three newly promoted teams and West Ham, Newcastle have given up the most shots on target against this season with 132. That’s an average of over five per game and hopefully we’ll get chances tomorrow because on Wednesday Porto limited us to zero on target. If we do then you’d fancy us to bag some goals.

I suspect they’ll want to revert to last season’s type and engage in a compact unit springing traps, however, so more on how we approach this one in the morrow I think. For now it’s a day of work and waiting for us to get that all important team news.

Catch you all tomorrow.

And inevitably it made me think about our own team. We were lamenting our profligate finishing over Christmas, but we never got chances like United had yesterday to kill the game off. Had we have done, I’m pretty sure that we’d have been able to pick up more points than we did, which again shows you that the media talk about us needing a striker is more because of their narrative and need for a story than anything else. United have scored 35 goals this season, yet the talk about them needing a forward doesn’t exist because they have Rashford and they have Hojland who has been bagging goals for the last few weeks. We spread our goals around, have scored 23 goals more than United, yet we are the ones that need a striker. Go figure.

I guess it’s probably also because we’re ‘in the conversation’ re: the Premier League title race. Were United the ones in the conversation then there probably would also be conversations about their scoring stats, but then again the reason they are not in the talk is because they don’t score enough goals. That’s why they’re currently sixth on 44 points and have a +1 goal difference.

As for us, our goal difference right now makes for very impressive reading and I’m reminded of a couple of conversations I had in the pub towards the beginning and middle of this season, in which friends were overheard saying “we’re due to give somebody a hiding soon”. We’ve seen the fruits of our labour in the last two weeks, but actually we’ve also done it on a number of occasions this season, which is a lot of fun I have to say. It makes for very entertaining watching when you do it the way we’ve been doing it too. a 5-0 win is great but if you’re only two up on 80 minutes and then get a flurry of goals at the end because the opponent has tired or is generally just trying to ‘having a go’ which opens them up, battering’s can take shape that don’t look likely at halftime. But last weekend and this weekend just gone had goals in the first half that effectively killed the game off and for me that has meant watching a second half of football can just be enjoyed as I did on Saturday. We’d also scored our third and fourth goals by just after the hour mark, so it became even more of a procession and those Arsenal players could play out the game with little worry or stress ahead of what will be a tough week for sure. Porto away will challenge us and so Arteta’s ability to bring players off with that game in mind could be massive. Saka, Trossard and White came off on 69 minutes, Rice on 79 minutes and that extra ability to give those players even that small bit of rest will hopefully bode well for us in Portugal and then at home to Newcastle on Saturday evening.

There’s been talk by a few Arsenal fans about the importance of rotating this week but if you can have your best players coming off for much needed rest two weeks in a row, then maybe you don’t need to worry about that as much? That’s the hope, anyway.

We won’t have it all our own way for the upcoming games like we have in our last two, however, I don’t think. Porto may be struggling at the moment in the Portuguese Primeira Liga table (their third behind Sporting and Benfica) but they will still cause our back line more stress than our two claret and blur opponents have done these past two weekends. Then Newcastle might be struggling to replicate last season’s form, but they still represent a big challenges and compared to other teams around them have a pretty decent scoring ratio (before this weekend’s action we’d scored 53 goals and they’d scored 51), so I’m expecting Raya to be tested a bit more than he has done recently. So to have our players looking like they are changing up the gears whilst also being able to get pulled off for rest and recuperation for two weekends in a row, really does warm the cockles of the heart.

The next thing we need for things to be falling in to place is for some of those injured players to be coming back from injury in the next few days. We’ve managed to get through these last few weeks ok, but it does feel like we need some reinforcements arriving soon as the games start to stack up, so I’m hoping that Arteta gives us good news ahead of his Porto presser and that we hear something about the likes of Tomiyasu, Zinchenko, Gabriel Jesus and maybe even Thomas Partey. He seemed to suggest that Fabio Vieira was in line for the trip to Porto and yet he wasn’t in the squad for the weekend, so I wonder if there’s a few that were just being given that little extra time in training to get themselves ready for a matchday squad, whilst the current squad were playing so well and bagging goals. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that Arteta and Arsenal were happy to leave it that couple of extra days and we’ll now start to see the bench looking a little more familiar in terms of those first teamers all all know and love.

But that’s a discussion for tomorrow and Wednesday. For now I’ll leave you with only positive thoughts and catch you wonderful humans tomorrow. Have a good one.