I think my biggest issue is that I am worried that nothing will change in a short period of time. As I said to somebody in the comments from yesterday’s blog, I was convinced – clearly misplaced – that we would see the likes of Timber, Calafiori, Odegaard, etc. But none were in attendance, and the result was the dross we got served up. My worry now is that, ahead of the Sporting Lisbon game, we’re not going to get from Arteta any difference in terms of the ability to change the team around much. We should, hopefully, have an Eze who can at least start, given that he got minutes on Saturday. But to me, it feels like that is not enough.

Hincapie being on the bench on Saturday would, I hope, mean that he can start tomorrow night. He hasn’t been out that long, so the ability to return to a better level of match sharpness should be there. That is good. Myles showed that whilst he’s still a good, young player who we all love, he still switches off where perhaps the Ecuadorian doesn’t.

I think the other thing that has me really worried about this week is that with every day that passes with certain players out, getting them back to a ‘best version’ of themselves takes longer. Odegaard was out for a while, came back against Sporting, and got injured again, which means his ability to be back up to match fitness has been diminished. If he’d have come back to Sporting and got 60 minutes, then played at least 30 minutes against Bournemouth, then you could be looking at the Sporting game tomorrow as another 60 – 70 minutes, to which the City game would be one that you’d hope he’d have enough minutes under his belt to be a better version of himself. But by picking up that knock against Sporting, then missing the Bournemouth game and having to find our information from that bloody Norway manager, it feels like it is two steps forward, one step back with him.

It’s worse with Saka. When he wasn’t featured against Southampton, having reported for England duty, I was thinking “that’s absolutely fine – he’ll get the rest and be a better version of himself for some of these massive matches coming up”. But by missing Sporting away, then Bournemouth at the weekend, it is nearly a month since he last played. That means his ability to be the Saka that we all NEED on Sunday is further diminished. Do you believe that if he’s in the squad, he’ll be able to have the impact we would need? I don’t. Not having just returned from injury, anyway.

It’s the same with Timber. He trudged off on 39 minutes against Everton on 14th March – exactly one month ago. With a month out, do we really believe that he can be back to full fitness for Sunday? To line up against a Doku who has just run Gusto ragged at Stamford Bridge? I don’t. If he’s ok to be in training, then Arteta can’t risk him tonight. Maybe he can give him 20 minutes, but then throw him in for the biggest domestic game of the season? That would worry me, if I’m honest with you.

And that’s why I’m so down right now, because the way this has all unfolded just feels like there is some kind of domestic curse that is enveloping us at this time of the season. The injuries, like last season, have been constant. The form has been pretty poor, but the performances have been dire, and when grouped all together, it just makes you feel a little weary, you know?

I guess you could say that City had the same problem in March. They drew to Forest, they lost to Real Madrid twice, and then also drew away at West Ham. But then they had that League Cup win and have been looking in great form ever since. One could argue that the very same could happen to us, and maybe a win tomorrow night against Sporting could help to boost those players ahead of Sunday. But it just doesn’t feel like it right now. As I’ve already said on the socials and in the blog yesterday, our record at City is utterly grim, so I don’t really hold up much hope for us.

Do you know what’s mental? Tomorrow night we play a Champions League quarter-final, at home, with a one-goal advantage, and I’ve spent most of today’s blog talking and thinking about that City game at the weekend. This is a Champions League quarter-final. We’ve got to the semi-final three times in our history so far, so a win or draw tomorrow means it’s only be the fourth time. Ever. But that Premier League title is the one that I’ve always wanted the most, and to see it slipping away as it has is, frankly, destroying. It’s one that I am going to feel the saddest about and, and even if by some miracle we were to then get ourselves into a Champions League final and win it, I STILL don’t think that will stop the feeling of the Premier League slipping away, if indeed that does happen.

Arteta will have his press conference this evening, and if I’m honest, all I want to hear from him is that some players are back and available for the squad. Even if not ready to start, I just want good news on Timber, Calafiori, Odegaard, Eze, and Saka. If we get some of that, then maybe tomorrow’s match preview blog will be a little lighter and airier one from me.

Catch you all tomorrow.

The Arsenal players have no such luxury, as they face Sporting Lisbon tomorrow and are likely to head to Portugal today ahead of that Champions League game. And suddenly, whereas a week ago we were looking at this tie, as well as Southampton, as one in which we’ll be potentially in two semi-finals if we beat opposition that we are favourites to overcome, we’re all getting a little nervous about this. After all, Sporting beat us over two legs last time we played them in the knockout stages. That goal they scored to lob Ramsdale at The Emirates, then going on to win on penalties, still haunts me. And when you learn that Sporting have replaced Gyokeres with a guy named Luis Suarez, one starts to wonder if the Footballing Gods’ sense of humour and desire to chuckle at Arsenal fans frequently is actually just cruel. We have a pretty bad record at Southampton, and the footballing gods decided that they like a bit of narrative being perpetuated. We have faced Sporting Lisbon for the last few season’s and they’ve made life dificult for us, so the footballing Gods have decided to drop some more narrative in there by pairing us up, with us having their former striker lining up, whilst they’ve got a guy whose name evokes a certain kind of narrative when you think about failed bids and goals scored against us.

But as I said on the Same Old Arsenal pod this morning with James, I’m kind of getting over the Southampton poor result, and I think the quick turnaround is good for all of us. It means that we can put all of our efforts into these final two competitions, which were the ‘main’ ones anyway. And, where we were talking about fixture congestion to us, the same will befall Man City, because our game against Newcastle at home won’t be moved, but their game away to Burnley will be. That means they’ll have to play it in midweek, possibly when we’re playing in the Champions League, so they have their own challenges with the schedule as much as we do.

For me, my dream has always been the Premier League. My ‘hope’ is the Champions League too, or at least progressing to the semi-final, but I want that Premier League title, and so if being out of the FA Cup means we approach games like that Newcastle one without it having been moved because of the FA Cup to a midweek game, then that’s fine. The absence of our involvement in that competition means there is a solid week between Man City away and Newcastle at home. That can’t be a bad thing.

What we do need from Mikel Arteta today is a confirmation that Gabriel Magalhaes is ok. That’s the one I am still worried about, but I am choosing to be positive with the mantra that No news is good news, as the saying goes. Again, I mentioned this on the pod, but by now, if there was a serious injury, somebody like The Athletic would have gotten wind of it and would have published a story on it. We haven’t had that yet, so I am hopeful that his exit on Saturday was purely as a risk-aversion opportunity.

He won’t give us updates, but there is an open training session literally going on as I’m typing this. We know that it means little in reality; Arteta loves to be able to pull everyone away from those sessions if there are any doubts over any of them, so we have to take it with a pinch of salt. But maybe we’ll see a Timber, or a Saka, which will at least give us some hope that their rest has been well-received by their bodies and they are ready for their trip to Portugal.

The next clue will come with the pictures of the players as they board the plane. The club’s social media team normally drop some snaps of the players, so that’ll give us an idea, but it will then be Arteta’s press conference that will be the interesting one to see who he says can play. He’ll give little away – he never does – but even just some crumbs of positive injury news would be welcome right now.

There’s not really a lot else to take from today, to be honest, so I think I’ll leave it for this one, be back tomorrow as we start to look ahead at Sporting Lisbon, then I’ll catch you all then.

Be good.

What it means for us, as we suspected, is that the team news is sketchy at best. We know that Noni and Ebs are out, but we all pretty much knew that already, so that’s no surprise. The fact that Mikel confirmed that Madueke was ‘days’ is a boost, though; he’ll surely be available for Bournemouth, and that means our attacking pains are short-term in terms of options. Eze was a little sketchy on, and I just hope it is because he didn’t want to give too much away, and the player is not fit for the next week or so. The rumours have been Man City at best, which I think is what we have to hope for, but if it is Sporting at home, I think that takes us to around a month, which was the original prognosis, so we have to say that timeline played out as expected.

The other news in which there was definitely more clarity was Timber and Odegaard, which Arteta confirmed are ‘in contention’ to be in the squad today. That is the closest you’ll ever get to an Arteta press conference answer of ‘they’re fine’, so I hope we can see at least one of them tonight.

And that one is Martin Odegaard. Timber is somebody we need for Sporting and Bournemouth, and so giving White the minutes this evening, having made two appearances for England last week, helps to continue his return to form, so I think (and hope) that makes sense for Arteta to do so.

With that in mind, and having already stated some initial thoughts on social media yesterday on what lineup I think he might do, I think I’m flip-flopping a little on what the starting XI might be. I do think he’ll stick with Kepa (there was a bit of fun on naming his ‘keeper yesterday that I enjoyed from the manager), plus I think one of Gabriel or Saliba might play. My thinking on those two is predicated on the fact that Calafiori got 120 minutes for Italy in midweek, and Hincapie’s update from the manager was not good. All he gave us on the Ecuadorian was that it was a ‘serious’ one, and suddenly you start to think his season might be over. Hopefully not, but you hear things like that from the manager, and you wonder if we’ll see him again this season. And if that’s the case, we’ve once again had ourselves an international break in which a player comes back broken. It feels like every break for the last two years has been like that, going back to last season with Odegaard for Norway in the autumn internationals. And I find myself saying, once again, that international football can go f*ck itself.

With that update from Arteta in mind, I think he’ll give MLS a run out, and suddenly, you’re looking at a player who had found game time limited, to be a guy who may well suddenly get a lot more minutes this season. Calafiori can’t play two 90-minute games in a row, I don’t think, so that means you need to start looking at Myles as the de facto understudy again. Imagine if he finds himself playing regularly, as a late shout for England? Highly unlikely, I suspect, but still, he might well think that a door has opened up for him, and a game like today could be a perfect opportunity.

I think Arteta will surely give Norgaard a chance in the starting XI. The Dane can replace Zubi to give him extra time to recover for Sporting, but because Norgaard has been decent enough for us when he’s given the opportunity, this needs to be one that we get him in to continue his stable place in the team.

He will have a look at Odegaard for at least half, maybe 60 minutes, I would have thought. I also think that Gabriel Jesus will get the nod, given Big Vik played twice for Sweden and Kai still hasn’t completed 90 minutes for us. But the rest of the team will be, I think, up for grabs. So here’s my stab at a starting XI for tonight:

Kepa

White   –   Mosquera   –   Gabriel   –   MLS

Norgaard

Odegaard   –   Havertz

Dowman   –   Jesus   –   Martinelli

There are a few in there I’m not sure on, if I’m honest with you, especially in those attacking positions. Havertz and Odegaard together as attacking ‘eights’ could be a little too much of a gamble for a manager who is inherently more conservative in certain instances. Whilst Dowman on from the start, I think it is a big question mark too, given his age. I’d like to see it, and I don’t think many Arsenal fans would disagree with me. He’s exciting, he’s expressive, and he will have a go at a Southampton defence that, as I mentioned yesterday, has had challenges defensively this season. There may be space for him to operate, and I think that he could be a real ‘x-factor’ player with his dribbling ability if he’s given the space to do so by the Saints’ back line. Martinelli, on the other side, is one I’m not sure on either; Trossard is very likely to also be selected, given that Gabby Martinelli did a fair bit of travelling in midweek, getting back from Orlando on Thursday at some stage I’d imagine.

As I mentioned yesterday in the blog, I have the feeling that Southampton will come out and have a go at us tonight, because a) they have nothing to lose as the underdog, b) they still have plenty to play for at this stage of the season, and c) it’s a night game and their fans will have had a few beers and will be well up for it. We need to be ready for that, and Arteta will have told his players accordingly to treat this one like a Premier League game, I think. Next season, it could very well be one.

Amanda and I will be podding tomorrow, I think, so I will be back tomorrow with the blog and maybe some pod thoughts on what might transpire ahead. See you then.

As I said yesterday in a little review and look at Brighton, this is going to be really tough. With all due respect to the other teams we have to play, given that this one is away as well and the style of Brighton, this will be the toughest one bar that match-up at The Etihad. If we can get through tonight with three points to take back to London, that will be massive.

Arteta has leant in to the ‘enjoy the ride’ and ‘fun bus’ narratives, but tonight will be the same as the weekend, I suspect. I think we’re going to suffer at points, maybe even at the final whistle, but if these Arsenal players really want to get over the line more than anything else, they have to find a way to overcome Huerzeler’s Brighton. They have to be better than we were both home and away last season, with the two draws we got. And they’re going to have to do it with Chris Kavanagh as the ref. Something dodgy is going down tonight. Need I remind you that he was the guy who failed to spot a clear pen inside the box in the FA Cup game between Villa and Newcastle? That was just one of a string of incompetent decisions that night, but it’s the one from last season against this very team in which his most heinous crime was committed. Remember the “I’ve got no choice! I have to send him off” decision when Rice was booted by Veltman and then got sent off? Yeah, that was Kavanagh.

For balance, I would point out that he has also referred us against Burnley, Liverpool and Bournemouth this season, which have appeared to have gone without incident, but his wrap sheet still has some uneasy reading on it.

The Brighton team news is as expected and Huerzeler confirmed that certain players just won’t start tonight, like Milner and possibly even Welbeck, although that one might not be as clear. Welbz loves a goal against us, so at some stage he will get mnutes and our centre back pairing will need to be mindful of that. They will replace Milner with Baleba, who will be there to break up play and win the ball, which means the expected battle with Eze will need to have Ebs delivering more than he did against Chelsea.

So, how will Arsenal line up? Well, the good news is that Rice appears to be ok, something that Arteta all but confirmed yesterday in his presser, so I’d expect us to go with this as a starting XI:

Raya

Timber   –   Saliba   –   Gabriel   –   Calafiori

Zubimendi

Eze   –   Rice

Saka   –   Gyokeres   –   Martinelli

I’ve switched out Hincapie because I suspect this was something that Arteta always had planned to avoid fatigue with the left backs, although the Ecuadorian’s form would suggest that it is a little harsh. He was good again on Chelsea, but Arteta has already admitted that there would be some rotation. The other option I toyed with was Mosquera at right back. That could very well happen. The only questrion si around who will be better to try to keep Mitoma quiet. He wasn’t available for the game at The Emirates, but I feel like he always has a decent game against us, so we need the best one-on-one defender against him and his pace. That feels like Timber to start, but I would absolutely be bringing him off in the second half as he invariably tires. It’s a shame White isn’t fit, but he’s also been given the runaround by Mitoma before. He’s played 20 games and has two goals and one assist, so not exactly prolific, but much like Ebs loves a game against the Scum, it feels like Mitoma is always up for it against us.

In midfield, we’ve all said that Zubi looks fatigued, but I just don’t think Arteta is popping Norgaard in there at this stage. I’d like to see another job share in the second half, of course, but I think Arteta will tell Zubi his rest is coming after this game against Mansfield at the weekend, so I expect the Spaniard to start. And the news about Rice (and also Havertz, who is fit and has travelled with the squad) means he goes in there, probably with Eze, given that Odegaard is out. And we need to see more from Ebs tonight. He needs to pick up those positions closer to Big Vik, and he needs to feed him. Brighton will play a higher line than most teams, especially at home, so there will be space to run in behind, which is why I am hoping that Martinelli plays too. There’s a narrative developing that Martinelli and Gyokeres can’t play with each other because they take up similar positions. I want that dispelled tonight, and I want us getting balls in behind when there is green grass to run into because of Brighton’s press.

We simply MUST see more from our attacking line. It hasn’t been good enough, Tottenham aside, and when you look at the fact Saka, Trossard and Martinelli haven’t scored in ages in the league, I want one of those guys to step up and bag a goal this evening. At least. I suspect we might need two goals, because I do think we will concede, given our back line has been more shaky in 2026, so I think to win this, we’ll probably need two or three. That means the forwards need to do their business.

This is going to be nerve-racking. It’s going to be fraught. But these players must recognise the opportunity and grasp for tyhis moment. Take your chances, go for the win, make us all happy. Mikel Arteta has the bench to dip into as and when he needs it, which I think should include Havertz and hopefully he can also make an impact if others are not delivering (I’m wondering if there’s a spot alongside Big Vik, as opposed to instead of, perhaps?), so we need to show the kind of fight that got us into this position.

I’ll be back, as always, tomorrow for a debrief/post-mortem. Catch you all then.

It’s a pathway that I don’t think you’ll have found a single Gooner not happy with when they did the draw yesterday. And for me, with Leverkusen literally next to Koln, I am hoping I can find a way to get a ticket for the away game. I suspect it will be a tough one to get, but I’ll be keeping everything crossed that I can secure one.

And to those fans of other clubs bemoaning our luck, I’m sorry, but I have no time for such nonsense. Do you know how we got this ‘luck’? By winning every single game of the group stages. If – and it is an ‘if’, because all teams at this stage of the competition are very good teams – we get through this phase of play, you can’t exactly say we haven’t played good teams on our way. Bayern, Atletico Madrid, and Inter Milan – all good teams and two of whom are already into this stage of the competition. And Leverkusen will be no slouches either. We have a mixed record of going to Germany, so I am not counting my chickens, but am I glad that we weren’t on the other side of the draw? If I speak, I am in trouble…

The reality of the situation is that we are fighting on multiple fronts and, if we can get a draw that – hopefully – affords more rotation for Arteta at any stage, then that would be amazing. Imagine if we can go to Leverkusen and get the win. It would be massive for the context of our season, because we play the return fixture just before the League Cup final. Man City play Real Madrid in their double-header, which I would hope and imagine is not going to afford them much room for rotation. We may end up not being able to rotate depending on that first result, but upon guesswork and estimation, you’d imagine that we stand a higher probability than City do. We could have done with them travelling away to Madrid before the League Cup final, but there you go, not a lot that can be done.

That’s a ‘future us’ problem, though. The immediate and most pressing problem we have is how to overcome a Chelsea side who will have seen Villa lose to Wolves last night, and will be seeing an opportunity to go for those Champions League spots with the Villains wobbling. Rosenior had his presser yesterday and confirmed that Reece James is back, Cucurella is out, as well as Estevao and Fofana through suspension. The rest of their players who are long-term absentees remain out, but Rosenior seemed pretty confident ahead of this one, saying that “what I would say is that they also know it is going to be a very difficult game for them,” which is fair. Chelsea are no mugs. They have players who tipover the edge, borne out by the number of red cards they have this season (including that disgraceful one on Merino by Caicedo against us earlier in the season), but they have some very good technical players too. Enzo, Caicedo, James, and Pedro Neto – all of those are players that I think are very good on the ball, and we will have to be at our best at both ends of the pitch if we want to get something from this game tomorrow. He did point out – which is a familiar failing of ours recently too – that Chelsea have “we have just given goals away”. IF Chelsea are looking at a weakness in us of our ability to have a brain-fart moment, we might look to them for the same issues.

I had another look at the Burnley game, but I also watched the Sun Sports tactics exposed column to see what Chelsea might try to do to us with a bit of a low block, and the goal they scored kind of resonated with how they might look to catch us out on Sunday. They like to control the central space in their own half around the centre circle, apparently, and the goal they scored against Burnley came through a bit of an interchange in that space, followed by a quick back-to-front movement with a defence-splitting pass from Caicedo to Neto, then Neto across goal to Joao Pedro. Decent goal to be fair. The goal they conceded from a corner was shocking marking, though.

As for Arteta, well, I guess I’ve focused more on Chelsea’s press conference because, as usual, we didn’t really get much from the manager. Half of me doesn’t mind that, because you are giving no quarter to the opposition, but it doesn’t make for easy reviewing for a simple blogger like me!

The training pictures/video don’t give away much either. No sign of Timber, although there was no real comment about his availability or lackthereof. But he did say that Kai would train today, so that’s a positive. I suspect if he’s only training today, it’d be a long shot for tomorrow, but they must have Brighton in mind – perhaps for the bench – as a game he’s been earmarked for a return on.

One thing I did think was interesting was his comments on the mood in the camp. His response of “not too high, not too low” kind of reassured me, in some way. It feels almost as if the stench of the Wolves game was completely neutralised from the high of the North London Derby, which is fine, and you don’t want those players to get carried away. They are professionals, they have a job to do, so getting the game face on and not thinking too much about past successes is exactly how you prepare for another intense football match against a local and hated rival. What was also good – although expected – was his rhetoric around Chelsea. He said that their preparation remains the same, that they aren’t sure whether they will approach this game in the same way as the League Cup second round, but I would be surprised if they haven’t modelled some in-game scenarios for tomorrow based on the first five or ten minutes and how the game plays out. There was an interview with the guy from The Sun who does the tactics column with Declan Rice, and he said something that I’ll paraphrase, but it was essentially “if fans could come and see how the manager prepares us, they’d realise just how detailed our tactics are”. I believe him. Arteta is meticulous; he tries to leave no stone unturned. I’d imagine he only sleeps a couple of hours a night because he is so switched on. That only gets you so far, though; you need the players on the pitch to do it consistently, and that has to go again tomorrow.

Right, that’ll do for now, so I’ll put a pin in today’s musings and be back tomorrow with some more thoughts on how we might be able to collect three points tomorrow. Catch you then.

From a fitness point of view, the news we have all unofficially heard is that Saka is out until probably the Spurs game, which is a real pain in the arse because as much as Noni was good against Leeds, I do worry about his consistency. He’ll get an extended opportunity to impress this time around, so let’s hope he can continue to add some G’s and A’s to his positive tally from Leeds. Odegaard too is supposedly a bit of a doubt, but we’ll have to see what Arteta says in a bit. It might be a good opportunity to give Eze a set of starts so he can start to build some momentum as we reach the crunch point in the season. I thought he showed some positive signs in the League Cup game in midweek, including sliding the ball in for what should have been a penalty on Martinelli. Let’s hope that if he does start tomorrow, he’s getting back to the earlier season form that saw goals against Palace and the Scum.

Sunderland are a weird team. Imperious at home, the opposite away from home, with the kind of metrics that make the data nerds blush. They are massively out-performing in terms of team form, but things like goals scored has them second from bottom behind Wolves with just 24 all season. They’re fourth from bottom on shots on target this season, they’ve conceded more shots than anyone bar West Ham and Burnley in the league, they put the second-fewest crosses in compared to any other team, they have the second-lowest xG for….I could on forever, baby…

What they have done well at is clean sheets. This is a well-drilled side. And, as we saw ourselves at The Stadium of Light earlier in the season, they have a playing style that is physical and industrial; they have no problem going long and deep into your box, which I expect we’ll see tomorrow. It’s also how they got their first goal against us earlier in the season, then they used their other weapon – the strength and physicality of Brobbey – for their equaliser in injury time.

Arsenal and Arteta will be well-aware of what they are coming up against.

Their fans are understandably feeling themselves. Lots of talk on the message boards of cheeky away wins, plenty of them predicting a draw, not a lot of chatter about a possible defeat. I can understand that; they have had a great season, they beat Burnley comprehensively on Monday, they’ve basically secured their place for next season with their home form, so there’s an element of ‘free hit’ about this one. For Arsenal, that is certainly not the case. We need this win. This weekend feels like it could be massive, and with us going first, there’s a real opportunity to open up a significant lead at the top. We haven’t quite been able to get there yet, though. What I mean by that is that it feels like every time we get six or seven points clear, we have a slip-up, so what I’m hoping for from this weekend is that we do our job, Liverpool do theirs, so we can start to feel like a bit of a buffer is appearing. If that happened this weekend, it would start to also feel like a psychological barrier would start to creep up between us and the rest, too. But every time it’s felt like we might start to pull away, something has gone against us. For example, the Liverpool game, the Forest game, the United defeat – each of those felt to me like ‘the moment’ in which we would pull away. Yet each time we’ve been dragged back to the chasing pack. Arteta must be very clear with his lads tomorrow – we need to handle OUR business.

The pundits clearly favour us too. Lewis Jones on Sky Sports goes with a 2-0, Merse goes with the same scoreline, Sutton reckons it’s 2-0 as well, although all of these pundits do acknowledge that this will be a tough one for us. It’ll be a hard watch, too, I suspect. For Sunderland a drab 0-0 would be perfect to take back to the North East, so they’ll play with a deep, low-block, they’ll congest central spaces and metaphorically say to Arsenal “go on then, break us down, because we’re not moving”. Then, when they do have the ball, it will be long and up to Brobbey to have himself a battle with our big two stoppers at centre half. I’m already not looking forward to this as a spectacle.

And do you know what everyone will say? “Man, Arsenal are not fun to watch”. Sorry, but it’s the other side you need to focus on guys, because it’s difficult to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, and we get sows’ ears regularly trotting their way on to the Emirates pitch against us each week. You bring a fight to us and we’ll show you a good game. And if you don’t, then don’t complain to us when we nod one in from a set piece.

Right, I’m off to have some lunch, so I’ll catch you tomorrow when we know more detail about the team news. Speak then.

We heard from Mikel Arteta yesterday and I guess the first thing to be happy about is that Hincapie and Calafiori are back in training. I suspect that tomorrow will come too soon for them, although you never know with defenders and given that Hincapie has only been out a few weeks, his recency in match fitness might mean he makes his way back into the starting line-up.

I also think that with defenders, they tend to be able to be moved back into action a little quicker than attackers do, probably on account of the fact that there are more times in which they are not stretching those muscle sinuses as much as attackers might. If you think about the whole ‘rest defence’ thing – where teams deliberately set up in phases of play so they can control and rebuild whilst controlling possession – it kind of lends itself to the fact that defenders probably come back quicker than attackers. Big Gabi, for example, was brought on as a sub before Christmas for 20+ minutes, then he was in from the start the next game. That just doesn’t happen with a wide forward like Saka, for example.

Mikel Arteta was asked some questions about Arsenal’s form, about how Pep Guardiola has once again been singing our praises as the best team in the world right now and predictably, Arteta was thankful for the positivity, but equally magnanimous over the team and how we are playing. I think all of us are going out of our way to remind each other, rival fans, the media and pundits that we know that we haven’t won anything yet. Arteta, as the captain steering our Good Ship Arsenal leads that charge and narrative just as much as anyone. I think that’s because he, like we, know that it doesn’t take a lot to find yourself burned. We have seen that for a few seasons now and as a result, we all have our guard up when we get questions like that, or comments about the fact that the league is wrapped up. You only have to see City’s three draws and a defeat as an example of how things can swing, and Mikel Arteta will be acutely aware of this, especially given we’re on back-to-back draws ourselves. Lose tomorrow, or even draw, and it will feel like we might ourselves be in a little bit of a funk too.

And as I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, the nature of this United team being somewhat of an unknown quantity under Carrick, doesn’t help. Arteta admitted that planning for tomorrow has been somewhat altered as a result of the change; he doesn’t know what version Michael Carrick’s United are and one game is not a big enough sample size to be sure.

What I think we can all be sure of, though, is that United won’t come for us tomorrow. They’ll come to counter, they’ll have ways to hurt us for sure, but they will know we have the depth, we have talent, we are top of the league for a reason. We have to show it tomorrow. I said it yesterday, I’ll say it again and I’ll repeat tomorrow:

Don’t play the badge. Play the team.

I think we’ve got enough weapons to hurt them, we’ve got enough bench options, but it’s about us taking our chances. That’s something we didn’t do last Saturday, or the previous week against Liverpool.

That will fall on the attacking players, and Arteta was asked a few questions on Kai and Viktor on it, as you’d expect. He was complimentary on both, but also stressed that the club are taking their time with Kai’s return. I don’t think there was anything groundbreaking in what he said, but I do think it is interesting that when he was asked about Big Vik, he specifically referenced Kai, but that he could also play in a few attacking positions. I do think we are going to see a time this season when both are on the pitch; that may be because we are chasing the game, but the very fact these options now appear to be becoming available to the manager, as we reach the run in and the crunch point in the season, could be massive for us. I really hope it is.

I’ve been thinking about what we need to reach our ambitions between now and the end of the season with our three attackers. I really do think we probably need a minimum of 20 goals between all of them. If we’re assuming that Bukayo, Martinelli, Trossard et al will all also be on the scoresheet, having those three players getting six each at least should be what we hope for. And I think if we do manage that, I do think we will be picking up silverware. Midweek was a great confidence-booster for two out of the three attackers, but we need to now show that form domestically too. Starting tomorrow would go a long way.

And we still have a long way to go. It’s back to the slog that is the Premier League tomorrow, in which we’ll have to show a ruthlessness that hasn’t been there in our last two Premier League teams.

Time to do the business, Arsenal.

Back tomorrow with a match preview. See you then.

I also think that we might see Saliba too because although the boss was all “I don’t know, we have another training session” yesterday, he admitted that he will be fine for Everton and so I reckon Saliba is ok for tonight. Whether or not they decide to be 100% on him remains to be seen because, with all due respect to Wolves, it is in attack that you would expect we will be spending most of our time. So even if they also want to rest up Timber (which will bugger up my FPL team but there you go) for this evening so he can be fine for Everton away next weekend, it remains to be seen. We do have Norgaard who played admirably as a centre half in midweek and I think the guys on the Arsenal Vision Pod made a really good point that Wolves and Club Brugge are probably of the same level in terms of opponent difficulty. So if Arteta is happy to play Norgaard in that game, he may well be happy to do the same again.

Personally, I suspect we might see a line up like this though:

Raya

White   –   Saliba   –   Hincapie   –   MLS

Zubimendi

Odegaard   –   Rice

Saka   –   Gyokeres   –   Eze

Here’s my thinking on the attacking side of it:

1. Odegaard is Arteta’s captain and when he is fit he plays
2. Saka got midweek rest and he’s another ‘first on the teamsheet’ kinda guy
3. Gyokeres needs more minutes and I think Arteta will want him in there tonight to get at least 70
4. Eze didn’t even get on the pitch and I think against what will invariably be a low block from Wolves, we have to have players who can dance their way around defenders.

On that last point, I suspect not getting on the pitch for Eze in midweek might also have a little something to do with his performance at Villa. He was ignominiously hooked at halftime for being asleep for the Cash goal and he had a bit of a stinker in Birmingham. If you let your foggin estandards drop then Arteta will let you know. So he saw zero minutes in the Champions League. But a home game against a team who will set up with a back five and holding midfielders and somebody like Martinelli just doesn’t really work. So I have a hunch it might be Eze asked to start from the left and drift in field to be involved centrally, as well as get shots off.

From Wolves’ perspective we got the good news that they will be missing Jean-Ricner Bellegarde through a hamstring injury. He’s been one of their best players this season and a key part of their midfield as an eight, so they will miss him, although Joao Gomes comes in from suspension, so he’ll slot back in to their midfield for sure. As I mentioned yesterday in the blog we know that Wolves will try to go long, they will try to get crosses in as their threat but we have to control everything tonight. Territory, possession, shots, the lot. This needs to be a game in which Arsenal have to show their quality. But there can’t be complacency. The longer it stays 0-0 the longer we’ll all get a bit antsy in the crowd of a smash and grab from the Black Country Boys – we’ve seen those over the years; one shot, one goal, but if Arsenal bag in the first half, the hope will be that the floodgates will open.

Wolves don’t usually park the bus, but I think they will today. I can’t see them sticking with their approach of trying to win tackles higher up the pitch and in some instances in the opposition half; if they try to do that they we will be able to cut through them so I think Rob Edwards will be pragmatic, he’ll stick his 11 men behind the ball and do a bit of “come on then – come and have a go” to us. Feels preordained that it will be the case today. So we need to find the answers, because if you want to win leagues then you have to find answers to every kind of opponent in every kind of way.

A lot of the pundits are obviously backing The Arsenal, but I’m with Lewis Jones from Sky Sports on this one. I don’t think this will be a battering – not in terms of the scoreline – because of the way Wolves might set up, but also because we always struggle to break down these types of teams. So I’d definitely plump for a 2-0 kind of score line. It’s the kind of score line you have seen us deliver already; we did it against Brentford, against Burnley, against West Ham, against Olympiajos, against Port Vale and against Athletic Bilbao. We get the first goal, we get the second goal, then that’s about it. And hey, I’d love that today because as bad as Wolves have been, they are still a Premier League outfit and they still have players on that pitch capable of causing an upset. Remember in 2020? They had themselves a victory during COVID and n February 2022 Hwang put them ahead on 10 minutes, only for us to come back in the last 10 minutes with goals from Pepe and an OG from Jose Sa. Hwang is still at Wolves and he’s still capable of magic, so we need to be mindful of that, because if we are complacent even Wolves can capitalise.

I’ll be there as usual and then tomorrow morning back on here for a debrief, as well as with Amanda and James for the Same Old Arsenal podcast. So until then, I’ll take my leave and wish you all the most happiest of Saturday’s, which of course can only happen if Arsenal win tonight.

Catch you tomorrow.

1. Big Name ageing player on big money loses form and starts to show his age
2. Big Name player’s power starts to wane and he ends up seeing less game time
3. Big Name player plays one of the cards in his deck – moaning publicly to the press

The result is that it causes issues in the dressing room, it destabilises situations and as supporters you have to watch it all unfold feeling helpless as the player and club eventually part ways.

The three stages I’ve listed above could have ‘Big Name’ replaced by Ozil or Aubameyang in our situation, but it is for Salah right now and it is for Liverpool that it’s happening. And I’ll be honest with you, I don’t think any non-Liverpool fan couldn’t already see this coming. Certainly us Arsenal fans could. Ozil got his big-fat-contract and basically that was it, his job was done. He was never really the same. Auba was always a bit of a diva – we’d seen and heard about it in his Dortmund days – but we needed his goals and impact and so he played brilliantly for us, but his age curve would always bite at some stage and so we saw him decline. The difference was that the ability for Arteta to turn the other cheek was waning as was Auba’s impact and eventually it came to that inflection point that we are seeing at Liverpool.

How much sympathy do I have for Liverpool fans? Maybe a little. But there weren’t many that I saw that had sympathy for us. They laughed it all off as we were in the doldrums. So I won’t be shedding too many tears for them. In fact, I will just hope that they go through the same pain that we do, because I have a feeling they will get off scott-free with this one, because they’ll offload Salah to a Saudi club who will not only take on his mega wages, but they’ll probably pay him a massive fee for them to re-invest in the club too. If they’re to get the full experience, I hope they have to pay Salah to go away like we did with Ozil and Auba.

Right, to The Arsenal then, with whom the manager has some decisions to be made I suspect. And I don’t think there’s an Arsenal fan out there who doesn’t want those decision to involve a fair bit of rotation tomorrow night. He’ll do a pre-match press conference this evening at some stage, but the big talking point I wanna hear from Arteta’s mouth is that we have to rotate players who need a rest. Having a quick look at the way our fixtures fall, it does feel as though this game can – with all due respect to Club Brugge and the Champions League as a competition – be sacrificed. It’s a natural consequence of the stupid new format anyway; the extra two games means that you can look at some of these matches and make them secondary in importance and so I hope that when I’m talking about the possible team line up, the focus is all on how many he will rotate.

We’re top of this competition, we’ve won all of our games so far, we’ve got a superb goal difference and if you look at this article from September last year, there’s a 98% likelihood that 16 points gets you through. That means we basically need a draw from our last three games. Surely, I mean SURELY, Arteta and his team of coaches must be looking at that, looking at the leggyt performances from some players last weekend, and looking at how some need more game time, then thinking about big rotation. There are players like Declan Rice, for example, that we could be giving a full week off to by not having him play any part tomorrow. We also then have that rarest of things at this time of the year – a midweek off next week. That means Declan Rice, who we’ve all worried a little about despite his awesome engine, could play just two football matches in 15 days. And if you count the Palace game as one in which we might be able to rotate too, then you could be looking at three games in 21 days. That would be huge in getting him recharged for Christmas. It’s the same for Saka, for Merino, for Zubi too. Let’s get these key players some rest time and let’s use some of that squad depth we’ve all been banging on about so much.

Club Brugge are also hardly a team in sparkling form either domestically. They’ve lost five of their 17 games in the Belgian Pro League and currently sit third. In the Champions League they have one win in their five and have conceded 13 goals, whilst scoring eight. I’m always reluctant to use stats too much in this competition because there are so few data points compared to the Premier League at this stage, but decided to have a look anyway today and they sit around about where they are on xG in 24th (they’re actual position is 27th our of 36), but their 32nd in terms of xG against and they have the second worst form in the whole competition, so they will give Arsenal chances. They haven’t lost at home in the competition, to be fair to them and have a win and a draw and one of them against Barcelona with the other a smashing of Monaco. So they’re clearly a team who can score goals at home. I watched the match recap of both of those games – Mignolet was silly giving away a pen in the game against Monaco but got away with it, then Monaco were just terrible at the back. Lot of statues for certainly the second goal and a good set piece for their third. By the time the fourth came around Monaco were a shambles. So were Barcelona to be fair, whose high line against Chelsea was on display in that game too. The first goal Brugge scored was a curved run that was almost on the halfway line. The second goal was because Barcelona left a two-on-two in the opposition half and Brugge countered. The third Barcelona conceded was another high line ball in. If Arsenal give up chances like that tomorrow night I think Arteta might explode into a rage ball of flames.

So I guess what I’ve learned with my admittedly small amount of research on them is that they will give us chances and if we are not playing suicidal high-line football then we might be able to negate their attacking threats in Carlos Forbs, Christos Tzolis and Nicolo Tresoldi.

And I think on that note I shall pause for today and bid you a fond farewell on this Tuesday morn. Have yourself a good one and I’ll be back tomorrow for a match preview.

If you’re taking Arteta by his word, then you’ve got to make the assumption that it’s the same with Kai, as Arteta used the same words to describe his arrival. He spoke glowingly about how much he loves him and how he is desperate to have him back in the squad, but as he also alluded to in his press conference, this has been the worst period for injuries he’s ever experienced. Certainly in his five years in charge I don’t remember us suffering as many injuries as we have this season and whilst Arteta referenced “especially in attack”, the reality is that we’ve had players out all over the pitch. Now it appears to be hitting the defence with both our main central defenders out at the weekend and whilst I – like you – am desperate to get Bug Bill back on the pitch, I wonder if they’ll play it safe tonight against Brentford and keep Mosquera and Hincapié on from the start.

I don’t there’s many of us who would have a problem with that, to be honest, because both players have come in and looked really good every time they’ve been asked to play. For our Ecuadorean, he’s played the intensity of a North London Derby and the physicality of a Chelsea game in which he was certainly tested more and came through it. This is a central defensive partnership that is still in its infancy and that is really impressive that they went to Chelsea and were able to hold their own and I think given that context, Arteta will probably feel more comfortable about getting them in tonight, so perhaps there’s no need to rush Big Bill back and have him ready for Villa on Saturday.

It’s the same with Trossard and given we now have Gyokeres and Gabby J available from the bench, there’s no need to risk him tonight. The one question mark that emerged yesterday was the availability of Saka, because he wasn’t spotted in training or in any of the training pictures. There was no mention of it yesterday but I think that’s because Arteta wasn’t asked and given how he likes to mislead everyone (think Odegaard on team walks, or Saka turning up to the Emirates with the team in his tracksuit when he was clearly injured), it wouldn’t surprise me if Saka wasn’t available tonight. Or perhaps he’s just on the bench and Arteta gives Noni the nod in his preferred position.

There are still plenty of decisions he needs to make though, not least up front and in those attacking wide positions. Martinelli hardly set the world alight at Stamford Bridge and as I referenced yesterday on Brentford’s playing style, this doesn’t quite feel like the kind of game he will excel in. Of course we may not get the choice; if Trossard and Saka are both out tonight, then it’ll be Martinelli wide left, Madueke wide right and I wonder if Arteta will rotate in Odegaard and Gyokeres for Eze and Merino. Both of those players have played a fair bit of football recently and so to give them some bench time might be good from a fatigue perspective. He could of course opt for Eze wide left, but given he was pretty anonymous at Stamford Bridge, my guess would be more on the Brazilian than Ebs.

Given Zubimendi came off relatively early against Chelsea to protect him from a second yellow, plus Calafiori came off at halftime because of his yellow, you could argue that both could play, but given Calafiori has been nursing an injury since the international break and there’s Villa to come at the weekend, I wonder if Myles will be given the nod to protect the Italian. I wonder if the same will be said of Saka too. 

So I suspect we’ll see a line up that looks a little like this:

Raya

Timber   –   Mosquera   –   Hincapie   –   Lewis-Skelly

Zubimendi   –   Rice

Odegaard

Saka   –   Gyokeres   –   Martinelli

That team is still a very strong side and as we’ve been saying all season it really hits home the depth we have, because in this scenario the bench includes Kepa, White, Norgaard, Eze, Madueke and Merino all available to be called on if needed. And I think given the load on the players there will be a few of those that will be called upon. I did wonder whether to suggest whether White might get a go, but Timber is proving so valuable and he’s so in form right now, that I don’t think Arteta drops him given there’s no Saliba or Gabriel. 

Brentford look like they have a pretty fully fit squad and their danger man is obviously Thiago with his goals, Damsgaard with his eye for that pass from deep, plus Kayode with the long throws. Brentford are a side that – as I said yesterday – will not want too much of the ball, but they will want to make the most of those set pieces, so we’ll need to be strong and physical in the duels to win this one methinks. 

I don’t think this will be pretty tonight, but you have to find ways to answer those questions asked if you want to be top of the league. City may have wobbled a bit yesterday in that second half, but they ultimately got the win and narrowed the gap to two points, so we need to be looking at getting a win here by hook or by crook. I don’t care if it’s scrappy, I don’t care if it’s ugly, we need to do our jobs against a decent Brentford side. 

Go out and prove your title credentials once again, Arsenal.

Back tomorrow with a review of what will unfold later this evening.

Arteta wouldn’t be drawn on Havertz and Gyokeres, saying that they are both close and whilst Nagelsmann’s comments the week before last suggested that Havertz would be somebody probably closer to Christmas playing for us, we’re still a little more in the dark about Big Vik. I do think it is weird; we haven’t really been told anything other than he picked up a muscular injury which was reported as a hamstring strain. A quick Google tells you that a hammy takes anything between a few days to months for a complete tear. We know it wasn’t a tear, it clearly wasn’t what they call a ‘Grade 1’ because that takes just a few days or a week or two. But there has been no mention of a ‘tear’ at all, which puts the recovery at between four to eight weeks. If we’re ok to assume it isn’t a tear of the hammy and just a strain, then as of Sunday Gyokeres has been out for essentially a month, because the Burnley game was on 1st November.

My hope is that he is surely in contention for Sunday, but I do find it interesting that nobody asked (unless they did and it hasn’t been picked up) about the two players in isolation, because surely Big Vik is more likely to be returning sooner than Havertz? I would have hope that we can see him this weekend but if not, you’d hope that we could see him on Wednesday against Brentford, surely?

In the meantime, it might mean Mikel Merino once again reprises his role in attack and Arteta was of course happy to give some flowers to a guy who I think almost all of us now are much more appreciative of than we were a year or so ago. I remember this time last year thinking we’d bought an okayish central midfielder who would be a backup if we needed it (and it turned out we bloody-well did need it). We ‘found’ ourselves an auxiliary centre forward last season and now that he’s bedded in, he’s been acting as a fantastic deputy for our injured guys. And in the meantime, we’ve shifted our playing style and I’ve noticed our Merino has adapted too, dropping on to the right at times, tucking in to midfield at times and then rotating with either Trossard moving into the central space, or Eze taking up those positions for which he scored his goals last weekend.

If Merino plays tomorrow it will be interesting to see what Chelsea do, because I suspect they might have seen how Merino is vacating those attacking spaces and they might put somebody on him to do a tracking job. I’ll save a little more tactical thinking about how the game might line up for tomorrow, but I do think this is going to be a fascinating tactical chess match between two of Guardiola’s disciples.

There was a question asked about Gabby Jesus, who along with Nwaneri played in a behind-closed-doors friendly against Watford this week (must be bloody handy to shout over a fence and see if the lads want a kick about) and whilst Arteta wouldn’t be drawn on how available he might be soon, I suspect we might see him in a match day squad or two in the next couple of weeks. If you remember what happened with Timber when he did his ACL, the club really took their time to bring him back and he only read made the return on the last game of the season, a full 10 months after he picked up his injury on the first day against Forest. Gabby J is a few years older, so the healing will take longer, but he’s done 11 months now and so I think Arteta might be thinking about maybe an additional week of training before he’s in for match day squad inclusion. He apparently came through that friendly unscathed, he’ll probably have some sore legs for a few days, so who knows? Maybe a cheeky subs appearance in midweek against Brentford isn’t off the table?

He was asked about Rice winning the Balon D’Or, which is the type of question I hate, plus about Estevao’s quality, which of course he didn’t want to talk on an individual, but I do wonder if we have a game plan for certain players if they play or not. For example, Maresca predictably said that Palmer is back in training, having said he had ‘no chance’ just over a week ago. He hasn’t played since September so it’s a little like Odegaard for us in that regard in that you wouldn’t think he could get a full 90 from Palmer, but does Arteta plan for Palmer from the start? Does he plan for Estevao from the start? Or the bench? We talk a lot about how our squad depth is immense – and it is – but Chelsea also have quite a deep squad, having spent the best part of three years stockpiling every player they could get their grubby mitts on. If you take their attack, for example, you’ve got the aforementioned two players, but also Delap, Joao Pedro, Garnacho, as well as Gittens. They’ve even been giving Tyrique George games too, so it isn’t as if they have a ‘bare bones’ team.

That’s a challenge Mikel is going to be set tomorrow but the good news is that we’ve seen how he can spot things and adapt in-game to them, evidenced by the second half against Bayern in which we just upped the gears and showed our power against the German champions. You feel like once the game kicks off and the patterns of play start to get set, we might need to see Arteta making similar tactical adjustments when he see’s what Chelsea and Maresca are doing.

But, as I said, perhaps that is for tomorrow’s blog, so I’ll leave it for today and hope you have a great Saturday and maybe we can get another splendid hate-watch day like last Saturday.

How ready they are to start remains the key question for Thomas Frank, but that’s the same for Arteta, who as usual gave nothing away on a single player. He simply said – as we all expected him to – that there was another training session today (Saturday) and they’d be able to assess who comes in to the match day squad. Standard Super Mik stuff. He was never going to give us anything and whilst Frank was a little more…erm…’frank’ about player availability, we still have to wait and see. But as I’ve already said, I’d be surprised if there were zero players available even from the bench. Noni is one I think most of us are pretty confident on, then probably Odegaard given some of the noises we’ve heard and not far behind him, I suspect Martinelli is one we’ve all got our eyes on.

There’s obviously no sign of any hints in the training pics, but I do wonder if there’s some psychological messaging going on with regards to the number of times Saliba and Mosquera appear to be pictured together. That’s us Arsenal fans, eh? If there’s an opportunity to read in to something, we’ll jolly well do it, that’s for sure. But having listened to a few more podcasts, watched a few more videos and listened to a few more Arsenal fans and their perspectives, I’m starting to think that Mosquera in there alongside Saliba is what he’ll do. I think if Hincapie had a few more minutes as an Arsenal player at this point, there would be an element of “you are the left-centre half understudy so you’re up” to the situation for tomorrow. I think Arteta will prize continuity of performance more than the side of where we have a weakness through injury in a game like tomorrow. If it was a Wolves or a Brentford at home, things might be different, but given the size and atmosphere of the game, I just have a Saturday morning sneaky suspicion that it’ll be the Spaniard.

The rest of the responses to the questions were played with the kind of straight bat that my old man would call ‘Geoff Boycott’. He’s an old cricketer for those that don’t know and my Dad used to say he would be so boring to watch, but so effective in test matches, as he’d just defensively straighten up his bat and block anything that was remotely dangerous. He’d then only pounce when a bowler made a mistake. Mikel is a bit like that with all of his questions he asks; it is boring for 90% of them, but if there’s one opportunity to say a little more knowing that it might not come back to bite him in the arse or give fuel for the opponents, referees or pundits, only then will he have a nibble at it.

He did say that “we have everybody healthy, or most of them healthy” and I think that means most of those players – Kai and Big Gabi aside – are all in training. We’ve even seen Gabriel Jesus in full training for a few days now and it was good to see him doing a piggy back with Mikel. It’s easy to have him as the forgotten man at the club having had us sign a new striker in the summer and him only just returning to training now, but I hope we can get some more juice squeezed from that particular lemon because it’s easy to forget just how good he’s been with us when fit.

Arteta said that he needs some behind-closed-doors games to play first, so I think unfortunately that rules him out for this weekend, but if he gets two or three of those in the next week or two, perhaps he might be able to make a bench come December? If Kai is going to be out for another month, for example, then that is a big bonus for us.

There’s also been a few words for Eze said as well, which I think most of us expected, given that The Scum were so close to signing him, with a good interview with Idris Elba that you can also watch here. It’s a really nice video and his smile is just so infectious. I don’t think he stopped smiling at all and now that the dust an excitement on the transfer has abated a little, it’s lovely to have videos like this to remind you just how much this means and just how proud he is to put on the shirt every time. The North London Derby is a big thing for him and you just know he’s going to give it his all this weekend. We’ll need that I think. I’ll touch on this a bit tomorrow on the preview blog, but I think this game is going to be a really stodgy one and so it might take a moment of magic to unlock it. That is what Eze has and if you think about the fact he won Palace the FA Cup, you know he is a player who is there for the big moments, which is why I am hoping that he does indeed step up tomorrow too.

But let’s leave it there for today I think. I’m going to do a little bit of analysis on the two teams tomorrow in an attempt to work out how the game will unfold, so I’ll catch you then, if you fancy checking back in ahead of the match.

Have a good one boys and girls.

Let’s start with some positive news, which is that yesterday afternoon Big Vik took to his Instagram to get pictures of himself in training. Given how Arsenal spend so much time trying not to give anything away by clearly selecting pictures they know won’t include any players who will have had question marks over them, this will have left Arteta absolutely FEWMIN’ I’ll wager. He loves every single marginal gain he can possibly grasp his mits on, so when he’s asked today about who is back, whilst he might still be coy and say “we have some players back who were injured” and not name names, I think a lot of us can guess who.

My original guess was Noni and Martinelli, but news also emerged yesterday that Odegaard was back in training and whilst I suspect the skipper doesn’t have a place from the start, having a bench that could include him, Noni and Martinelli to give us options, is a huge boost. In a week in which we lost Big Gabi to a needless and preventable injury (thanks Brazilian national team and Ancelotti, by the way), the boost of potentially Odegaard AND Gyokeres making the match day squad is EXACTLY what we all read right now.

And having listened to a couple more podcasts and videos yesterday looking at the North London Derby, where it might be won or lost, this was just what I needed as a bit of a boost going in to what is going to be a really tough weekend and subsequent week for us.

But how are those Scum fans feeling? Welp, as is my wont these days, I ventured well into enemy lines again to have a look. And I tell you what, they are not confident at all. There’s lots of talk of just making this a physical game, of giving it their best shot, ‘it’s a one-off game’ and the like. I’m really surprised actually. It’s funny that compared to the likes of Villa, Forest, Sunderland, etc, their fans are so negative. Maybe it’s a London thing because when we were in their shoes and coming up against Chelsea in their pomp I’m pretty sure that would have been the Arsenal forums, but I’d have expected more optimism given their away form. That’s what is doing me the most nerves this morning and has been all week. I had a look and going backwards from most recent it is an away win at Everton in which 3-0 really did flatter them, a tight 2-1 against Leeds in which again they had fewer shots, less possession, less passes, corners, etc. Then there was the 2-2 at Brighton in which it looks like they edged that one in terms of dominance, which came after the smash and grab at a struggling City side who had all the possession but didn’t really create too many chances for what you’d expect from City at home. I’ve just watched that game and Marmoush should have had two before they scored a counter attack from a long ball to Richarlison, a slip by the last man and then a tap in from wide runner Johnson. That is 100% what they want to do on Sunday, by the way. I’ll have a look at the style of play and approach in the pre match blog on Sunday, but the Blueprint for the Scum is to be compact and spring long balls to get the likes of Kudus and probably Johnson running three-on-three with Richarlison as well. The second goal was an absolute shocking from City playing out from the back and that came from them having seven of their ten outfield players in or around the penalty box. It came from City fannying around at the back and then making an absolute howler rather than spotting what the Scum were doing and going long into the middle of the park to contest longer balls. Within five minutes on Sunday we’ll be able to tell if the Scum are adopting the same tactic, so I expect Arteta to be aware of this and to be planning accordingly with Raya ready to go long if needed. City did create chances though and I’m stunned they didn’t score to be fair. But what I have seen is that when the Scum were ahead, it was all the bodies in their own box.

But what about the pundits? Well, for the second week in a row in the Premier League, Jones Knows on Sky has an Arsenal defeat in mind and I can understand why. Frank is a man who loves an ‘underdog’ tag as he points out and whilst that won’t be sustainable long-term with what their ambitions are, this is exactly the type of game he’ll fancy doing that and playing low-block, scabby football against us, which I will reiterate – I do fear.

Merse is going for a 1-0 and calls it right I think when he says he thinks it will be a cagey affair. Sutton thinks this has got 3-0 Arsenal stamped on it, saying that it is their front line he is worried about, which I get but I would say to be fair to them, they’ve had almost as many attacking injuries as we’ve had this season. I cannot see that in a million years becuase there’s no way we get three goals against a low block Spurs outfit. Olly Murs said he wasn’t impressed with Spurs last time out (he was the celeb doing the predictions) so he’s said 2-0 to The Arsenal. Finally, Alan Shearer has completed the (almost) full house by saying that we’ll ‘edge’ this game.

Heck – however it comes about, I’ll take any kind of win, but what we need now is some fighting talk from Arteta and some confirmation that we have some fresh, new bodies arriving to the match day squad come Sunday. Fingers crossed.

I’ll be back tomorrow with some post-press conference thoughts from both managers. See you then.

Me, I’m going to get myself out for a run, then I’m going to settle down to watch some football at home this afternoon, as the Management and the mother-in-law are in London watching Black Sabbath: The Ballet.

The hope is that there can be another weekend of hate watching with Chelsea up against Sunderland at three, United hopefully getting done at home to Brighton at five-thirty, then at eight-o-clock we’ve got Liverpool away at Brentford. I suspect in reality we won’t get anything go our way, but at this early stage of Saturday morning it’s nice to dream.

What isn’t a dream is the fact that whatever the results today, we shall still be top by the time our game kicks off against Palace at two and yesterday Mikel Arteta was of course all smiles and calm as the journos handed out their flowers about how well Arsenal are playing right now.

What a difference a month makes, eh? Because a month ago we were too passive in our attacking, we didn’t ’go for it’ enough against teams, we relied too heavily on set pieces and that was to be our downfall. Now everyone is queuing up to ask him what the secret of the success is on our marvellous set piece record. And of course, he divulged his secret sauce:

Hard work.

Who’d have thought it, hey? Arsenal and Mikel Arteta work really hard, on a consistent basis, at set piece routines and have been doing so for years. In fact, for around about a decade he said and given our record is so much more exemplary than any other Premier League side, I can believe it. This is elite football. This is a sport where the tiniest of marginal gains can make a difference, where all of the teams are really, really good, so to best them you have to be near perfect. And the way to do that? Practice. A lot.

I really enjoyed the conversation that the Arsenal Vision guys had in the aftermath of the Atlético Madrid game where they talked about how even if we don’t score from a set piece, the fear of conceding one to us is enough to make teams act differently. They were walking in reference to the MLS run and not wanting to foul him because then we get a set piece, so in a way they were dammed if they do and dammed if they don’t, which is a really valuable asset to have when you are competing at the top: unpredictability. It feels like we have that at the moment and with the squad depth we have, I feel happy that Mikel has all the tools he needs to get wins – including tomorrow.

That doesn’t mean we will win, but we have all the players and options available to put us in a good position, which is what the pundits and ex-players think too. Jones Knows has us down for a 2-0 on Sky Sports, Sutton over at BBC says the same, Merse has done the same and Shearer has also said we’ll win. It’s pretty much a full house across the board and with Palace having less rest time than us, as well as being away and having not won in their last three games in all comps, you can understand why.

Oliver Glasner’s press conference was interesting, because he sounded very bullish in it, of course saying that Arsenal were a good and efficient team. But for every bit of praise he dished out, there was a touch of the ‘yeah but we…’ about his responses, so he’s obviously confident that they are going to get chances to score against us. You can see why given the xG they create, the form of Mateta and the displays we’ve seen like their home game against Liverpool in which 2-1 was a flattering scoreline for the Scousers. Glasner conceded that he didn’t think they would get seven or eight big chances tomorrow, but maybe one or two, which would be more than one or two than most teams have got recently. But given how well they’ve played this season you can see why he’d be confident they will and I suspect that yes, they’ll get more than any other team has this season, so we need to be wary.

Talk of course inevitably shifted to Eze and his return to playing against his old club and Mikel said that he would be fine, as you’d expect, whilst Glasner simply spoke about how they are actually better off without him, citing that xG stat I used already, as well as yesterday. It wasn’t in a style that was a bitter “we didn’t want him any more anyway” or anything like that, but more just to big up his existing players. I do think Ebz will have an extra bit of impetus to impress tomorrow though. As a human it’s only natural to want to show your former club that you’ve moved on to bigger and better things, but if I’m in Arteta’s shoes I’m telling him not to force anything tomorrow, because we all have the recent cautionary tale of Declan Rice’s previous two season’s before this one when we played West Ham at home. He had such a nightmare one last season that he was hooked at halftime by Arteta, which I think is the only time he’s done that to Dec since he arrived at the club. The only other times he’s come off has been fitness related, so it wasn’t a shame to see that perhaps the game had gotten in to his head a bit.

I don’t think that we’ll get that tomorrow from Eze. For one thing I think our form is very good and I think he’ll have the support of a number of players around him to try to get the best possible outcome. But I do think he’ll start and I hope he can get on the scoresheet too, because it’d be grand for the ol’ #narrative.

Other than that I think there’s not too much to report from both respective conferences. We just have to hope that the knock that Big Gabi picked up against Atlei won’t rule him out of tomorrow’s match.

Back tomorrow for a bit more of a tactical look at how the game might play out.

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.

It’s a little like the summer friendlies. You can watch, you can have your preferences for victory being The Arsenal, but it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things, which is what I feel about the League Cup. Of course, there will be rival fans saying pathetic things like ‘warra trophy’ and all that nonsense which I just ignore and of course, it would be good to see Arsenal win something this season. The benefit of the League Cup is you can get one tucked under your metaphorical armpit in February if you get to the final and do the business, but Arsenal could – and should – have bigger fish to fry when we get to the new year. So I’m hoping that whilst I want us to go far in every competition, we’re doing this one in addition to our other exploits, not as a sole focus.

Mikel Arteta was asked about team news and not that we needed it but he made it pretty clear that there would be rotation tonight and, given the strength and depth we have in the squad (although judging by the Noni and Hincapie news one wonders how much longer we can have that – will talk about that in a bit), I suspect that we’ll see a fair few players who will get minutes that have been limited so far. We know that it’ll mean a start for Kepa because Mikel mentioned it, but I suspect there will be some for the likes of Mosquera, Norgaard and Myles Lewis-Skelly for sure. But beyond that, you just don’t know what Mikel wants to do, because we’ve once again been hit with another semi-lengthy injury to noni Madueke.

Honestly, at this point, I don’t know that to say. The Arteta Naysayers will say that he overworks them in training and that’s what causes the injuries. I’m not sure of that because a) we have no idea what their load is like compared to the likes of other Premier League teams, and b) we had a relatively injury-free season two and three seasons ago and I highly doubt the intensity of his training sessions have changed that dramatically by then. But here we are with Noni out for what Arteta described as ‘a few weeks’ but Ornstein said could be up to two months. We have to hope that we see Noni again in October but, once again, we have to try to manage load with an ever-increasing injury list. The hope was also to have good news on Kai in the not-too-distant future but Arteta said that was still ‘months’ and so I worry he’s going to be gone til’ November too. If we don’t see him until November then that’s one of our key potent attacking players that has missed just over a third of the season already.

Still, at least we got some good news about Odegaard, who Arteta said was back in training but I hope that we don’t see him tonight. Given how cursed we seem to be in every game so far this season, I just want to see all key players sat at home tonight. I mean no disrespect to PortVale, but we really can’t be seeing the likes of Gabriel, Saliba, Zubimendi, Saka, Gyokeres playing tonight. We simply can’t afford to lose those players. And with the news that Hincapie has picked up an injury too (a reminder of the Arsenal injury curse that afflicted Partey, who was never injured at Atletico Madrid before he put on an Arsenal shirt and spent half his time out) Arteta is going to have to think long and hard about how he sets up tonight.

With what we know from his press conference, my hope is that we see the following:

Kepa

White   –   Mosquera   –   Gabriel   –   MLS

Norgaard

Nwaneri   –   Merino

Dowman   –   Martinelli   –   Trossard

This is what I hope Arteta will do, although if I’m honest I’d rather not risk Big Gabi, but I can’t see what the other options are. Play Calafiori? Given his injury record I’d rather he sat this one out. I look at our midfield and I just think it would be better to see Merino and Nwaneri alongside each other. We all commented about how the midfield was a combative, duel-winning, midfield that we saw against City and that didn’t work against that opponent, but I think with merino and Nwaneri alongside each other you get the balance of the duel and the creative spark, so hopefully that’s what we see.

Then, up top, let’s have a Martinelli experiment as I mentioned in yesterday’s blog. Let’s see him and Trossard rotating in the centre and let’s see if we can pump up their confidence with a good display against lower league opposition. It is another opportunity for them to stake a claim and I think that’s what they should be seeing this as.

Normally I have a look at our opponent in these sorts of games but again, I think today is more about what we do and if you’ve got a team of first teamers out there like we should have, then you have to be just saying that we play our game and let our clear quality overcome our opponents. I know it doesn’t always work when you just rotate the whole team, but if the above side is selected as I’ve predicted above, you don’t have players who have been out in the cold suddenly being chucked into the first XI. With the exception of Kepa and Norgaard (because he’s been injured) every one of those players has got at least some minutes this season and so my expectation is that these guys slot into the team as if they are regulars. Play them, rest players for the battle on Sunday, to give us the best opportunity of picking up three points at a ground that has been incredibly hard for us to pick up points in recent seasons.

I’ll leave it there for today. Be back to more with a digest of what unfolded at Vale Park. have a good’un folks.

I’ve listened to podcasts, watched some YouTubes and read a few match reviews and almost universally, everyone has said that they thought Mikel got it wrong first half and we were far too passive. As I mentioned yesterday with my thoughts, a few have also echoed what I said by talking about how passive we were.

I find this interesting because normally we get a diversity of opinions in the fanbase. Normally you get some perspectives that are slightly different takes, different angles, different viewpoints on what went wrong. But in this instance almost everybody is aligned on the fact it was an incorrect first XI selection but for me, the more worrying thing is still the passive mentality of that first half. This got me to thinking – in the context of Arteta’s post-match press conference – whether Arteta and his coaches will have looked yesterday and perhaps hypothesised that yes, they did get it wrong and yes, there are approaches against certain teams that need to be applied differently.

The one thing I will say I’ve always loved about Arteta is his ability to learn and action quickly. Perhaps he even did this on Sunday with the halftime subs. He’s been labelled as a bit too stubborn, a bit too “I do this my way and I’ll prove you wrong” and I get that, perhaps I feel it a little myself, but I do think the halftime subs was a visual admission of his error, rather than a verbal confirmation which if I’m honest, I don’t think we would ever get from him. That’s because it might – in his mind perhaps – mean that he’s not reflecting his players well enough and therefore that’s why he has to protect them by not singling out anyone like Merino, Trossard, etc. I listened to his post match interview and the first thing he said was how proud he was with his players; he wants to send a message to the squad that he has their back, but what I think most of us want to see is that he now tries different things in those types of games. 

We have Port Vale tomorrow, he’ll surely have a press conference today and whilst I still expect him to double down on his decision making from the weekend, I do think the team line up he picks tomorrow evening will be instructive on what will happen at St James’ Park. I think a lot of what happens with our midfield will be predicated on odegaard’s availability. If the Norwegian is back fit, I think he comes in for Merino and the midfield looks like it has some more dynamism to it. If he isn’t ready, then against a physical opponent like Newcastle,  I think it’s almost a dead cert that he picks Merino for that physical battle. How does this impact tomorrow? Well, if Merino starts and plays most of the match, i trhink it is less likely that we see him from the off against Newcastle. If he is rested, or is just named as a sub, I think that it means Arteta is saving him for the weekend’s action and that Martin’s shoulder injury is a little worse than we feared. Of course if Martin is still injured against both Port Vale and Newcastle, but yet Merino still plays, I think that might be a sign that Arteta is willing to try Eze in that creative central role. 

He won’t give anything away today, but in 36 hours time I think we’ll know where his head is at.

We have the squad to give this League Cup competition a real go this season too, I think, which had me wondering about how the players selected would feel about starting against Port Vale. With all due respect to the West Midlander’s, it’s hardly a glamour tie for those Arsenal players selected unless we’re talking about a bunch of youth teamers making their debuts. But we have such a depth in team that you could literally field a squad of first team players tomorrow:

Kepa

White   –   Mosquera   –   Hincapie   –   Lewis-Skelly

Norgaard

Nwaneri   –   Merino

Dowman   –   Martinelli   –   Trossard

That’s a pretty good line up and if all of those players started, we’d have a whole other team ready for Newcastle. Notice how I also went for Martinelli through the middle and if there was one question I would get a journo to ask if they are in the press conference today, it would be whether Martinelli’s form and the fact he’s got two goals from those central positions in his last two games, should merit giving him the opportunity to play centrally as a bit of a trial run? What we’ve seen from Martinelli is his super power; out to in runs timed well in behind the last man to put him in on goal. When he gets those chances, he usually finishes them and I can think of about six or seven different instances like that which he has finished for us in big games from that similar position. 

I also think it is good for the team to try it too, if I think about the profile of Gyokeres, as well as the way in which we need to play with him in the side. The swede wants to be put in behind like that. He wants to be given the opportunity to win the battle against the last man in defence. So if we can rest him, but get the team continuing to work on how they can find Martinelli like that, then I think it would be good for all parties.

Let’s see what Arteta has to say.

Catch you all tomorrow. 

Although Arteta was tight-lipped on that arrival, the Ornbomb has already dropped and it appears we’re loan-optioning him for the season and clearly we’ll drop the actual cash on Leverkusen’s lap in the summer of 2026, which makes sense given that we probably don’t have the cash lying around to make this deal a permanent one now. What it means is that Jakub Kiwior heads to Porto for what Ornstein says is a pretty much guaranteed £23million from Porto. A Polish international who starred for our team towards the end of the season and proved he is a very good left-centre half, leaves the club for about £3million more than we paid for him. It’s been said on social media, but if he’s a Chelsea player, he goes for around £10million more from that, I assure you. They’ve just sold Renato Veiga, who made seven appearances for them last season before being loaned to Juve, for €24.5million. That player is nowhere near as established or good as Kiwior, yet they’re getting a couple of million Euro’s less. We can all be happy with the superb work of Berta this summer in terms of incomings, but the sales continue to be under valued and that is an issue we need to address.

Apparently Marseille are after Zinchenko but wages are a sticking point and with just over a day and a bit left in the transfer window, Arsenal have to ship him, Nelson, Fabio Vieira and Sambi Lokonga. It’s a lot to ask to get those turned in to permanent deals. If Palace cough up £15million for Reiss then I think that’s good work. If Arsenal can get £15million for Zinchenko then I think at this stage you have to take it. But I suspect Lokonga and Vieira will be last minute loans from one club. Which would be a shame for them and us not to sort their respective futures out.

These are the problems we need Berta to fix, because ours attention – and certainly Arteta;s – has to be on how we win at Anfield for the first time in 13 years. He was asked the usual questions about player availability and of course we know all of the absentees that are guaranteed at the moment (Saka and Havertz) but I was encouraged by what he said about the skipper Odegaard. His words when asked if it was serious were “there’s an injury there, but hopefully, if everything goes well, he can cope with it. But we don’t know yet”. The fact he’s saying that he can cope with it suggests to me that I think he might be alright. That is a boost because although Ethan performed well last weekend at home to Leeds I thought, I think away at Anfield you need somebody with Odegaard’s experience on the pitch. There’s also the fact that Liverpool barely have any injury worries, with Mac Allister having trained and Bradley back in training too, as confirmed by Slot yesterday.

Arteta talked about the ‘aura’ of Eze in his press conference and I think this time tomorrow there’s going to be quite the clamour for Arsenal fans to see him from the start. I’ll touch on team news tomorrow, but whilst Arteta wouldn’t be drawn on that yesterday, I do think he’s not going to be tempted in to using him straight from the off. We have Martinelli who always seems to play well at Anfield and there’s Trossard too, so there are options there and at least of that we can be pleased.

I liked that he asked whether he wanted to play Liverpool later in the season, because it’s a question I’ve been flip-flopping over in my mind. On the one hand it’s good to get it out of the way early, when the damage doesn’t feel as terminal as if we had to go there in April and win to keep any title hopes alive. But on the other hand it could be seen as an early blow and then when you think we have City to play within two games after tomorrow, it puts a little more added pressure on that game if we get beat tomorrow. Arteta didn’t really properly answer the question, but I do wonder if he’s happy that we are getting it out of the way now? I wonder if he’d also rather play City away than home in a couple of weeks too, in that same vein, because that would have ticked off Old Trafford, Etihad and Anfield within the opening weeks of the season. Meaning later in the year you get the benefit of home soil advantage for the crunch games. People who say “you have to play everyone twice it doesn’t matter” I think miss the point; look at how gee’d up Man United were on the opening day. Now look at them having just lost to Grimsby and their fans are turning. I think they’ll beat Burnley next weekend, but the next ‘big game’ they’ve got, I think they’ll have been softened up a bit by some of these results and so you can’t say it’s the same United side that we played versus one that looks like it is on its knees.

Back to the press conference, in which Arteta was asked about keeping everyone happy and what problem that might cause and he rightfully said he doesn’t worry about that, more that players are as happy as they can be. I think that’s where the communication comes in. Arteta might have Trossard knocking on his door wanting to play, but if he communicates in an effective way that they needed to bolster based on last season, that he is still a great player and one we value, that he will get minutes but he needs to accept that we needed a bigger squad based on last season, I think even the likes of Trossard will understand. I remember back to that Leicester City game last season and we played with Sterling, Trossard and Nwaneri as the front three, with Merino coming on in that second half to break the deadlock. We can’t have that situation again. Plus, I think with the injuries we have already, we can all see that players are going to play. When we get in to mid September it is sometimes three games a week, so Arteta is 100% going to have to rotate players in for those midweek games. That also links in with the question he was asked about Martinelli, who he was pretty emphatic that he wouldn’t leave this summer, which also makes me think about whether he’ll sdtart tomorrow, but as I have said above I think Martinelli might just start tomorrow. Just a hunch I’ve got.

Other than that there’s not a ton else that came out from it. Tomorrow I’ll take a look ahead at the game, who I think might play and also how Liverpool might approach this one but for now, you have yourselves a great Saturday.

It’s because of that lack of jeopardy that I am trying to parse in my mind what any particular outcome may mean. If we beat them, does it really matter in the grand scheme of things? Not really. Yet on the other hand, if we lose to them, it’ll be a world of “Tottenham are back!” and “Frank is going to steer them to glory!” that none of us really wants to hear. Equally, what we don’t want is a high intensity game in which players go down injured, like Joe Willock did yesterday for Newcastle out in South Korea. Thomas Frank’s sides have always been quite physical, played a bit of long ball and been tough to beat, so it will be interesting to see what approach he takes with a Scum side who are hardly a bunch of bruisers.

They’ve had an indifferent pre season so far, drawing with Luton and Wycombe and beating Reading, with a smattering of first teamers in their side, a little like us. It looks like Frank is adopting a 4-3-2-1 formation and that’s stayed pretty consistent, but the players have rotated around and they look like they’re about a week behind us in terms of their training schedule, so maybe that will play a factor. Frank himself ahead of today’s game said nice things about us, but he also said they ‘will be ready’ which I hope doesn’t mean there will be a few reducers on show.

Mikel Arteta did his presser and of course he said it was great to do a derby like this, that he respects Frank immensely and that our goals for the season are to do better than last season. I liked how he didn’t fall into the trap of saying the words out loud “to win the Premier League” because in this day and age of weaponised banter – from media sources too and not even just rival fans – you’re better to just take any kind of soundbite opportunity out of your pressers and go a bit vanilla with what you say. He did give an update on how Calafiori and Big Gabi are out and at this stage on the Italian I do believe we have to be looking at the Kiwior situation and saying that we simply can’t let him go. I’ve said it for a long time, I had worries about it last summer, but as good as Calafiori is, there’s no point in relying on him because sadly it feels to me like his body just can’t handle top flight football. Perhaps that sounds like I’m writing him off, maybe I am a little and that makes me sad, but I can only say what I see and feel and the fact that he’s missing another game and his pre season might be affected by yet another injury, doesn’t bode well for him from where I’m sitting.

Arteta also inevitably got asked plenty on Gyokeres and how he will fit into the team and there were a few bits I liked the sound of.

Firstly, although he wouldn’t be drawn on how much he might play today, I think what he did say points to him potentially at least being involved. Inevitably because of all of the hype around his arrival, there has been a clamour for videos and I’ve already seen one of Arteta giving Big Vik a plethora of instructions, as well as somebody filming a session in which Saliba and Gyokeres were up against each other in a training drill. Suffice to say I think Big Will beat Big Vik on that one, but for a one minute clip I hardly learned anything major.

Secondly, I did like how Arteta singled out his determination, which I think he will have loved from the Swede. You’re playing at The Arsenal, you’re now the ‘big number nine’ and you need to make sure you fill that shirt. He took the number 14 because he believed in it and for me – and clearly Arteta too – that’s a really good sign. So was his comment about him handling the pressure of being at The Arsenal – I think Gyokeres has already started to impress Arteta and hopefully if he gets on the pitch today he can do that more with his performance.

Martin Odegaard was with Mikel too and he was asked similar questions about Viktor and he talked about speaking each others language and how the Scandinavians always bond well together. He also talked about his experience at being a wonder kid and it was only when the press referenced it that I remembered how he had all of that pressure on him as a 15-year-old too. His was probably dialled up a notch too, as he went to Real Madrid, but despite it not working out for him and his career taking a few turns, when you look at how he has turned out as captain of The Arsenal, you can tell that he is happy and we are all happy to have him too. I think sometimes there’s a danger of projecting too much on these young kids; you see what they do at 15 and you think that by 20 they will be twice as good and by 25 they will be Balon D’Or winners. But rarely does a career take that path like a Messi or a Ronaldo. What is important is that these young kids have the right people around them, the right grounding, then they get the right opportunities at the right time. A big performance from a cameo appearance today from somebody like Dowman, for example, will go a long way to having people ask questions about getting him in the squad for the new season like we had Ethan there last season, but the reality of him getting serious game time I think is a little lower. And that’s ok. His career needs to be managed appropriately. He will get his chances and it wouldn’t surprise me to see he’ll get a few minutes today. Whether it’s 30+ minutes like last time out against Newcastle remains to be seen.

It’ll be a challenging one today, but hopefully what we get is another good step in the direction of the season, with it just over two weeks away. Fingers crossed for a win, but at the same time, ‘meh’ and – don’t get injured.

Catch you all tomorrow.

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.

That’s our game tomorrow afternoon and yesterday Arteta was in front of the press dolled up in the No More Red white kit campaign attire, to talk about what lies ahead for us in this tricky home tie.

There was the usual plaudits for the opposition manager, designed to give no opportunity for sticking his comments up on the away team changing room walls, as well as the usual “we’ve won this competition 14 times so we have a great affinity with it” type stuff. Nothing really to write home about.

Neither too, unfortunately (but not unexpectedly), was there anything particularly ground breaking about what he said when asked about transfers. You wouldn’t expect anything concrete, but in recent weeks he’s subtly suggested that we do need to re-enforce our squad and so for me personally, when I read his comments or watch his videos, what I’m hoping to get a hint of is more subtle undertones on buying this January. There wasn’t really any of that yesterday and he stuck to a well-trodden Premier League manager path of talking about how difficult it is to sign players in January, how we need quality not quantity, as well as how we have to get more from existing players.

And we certainly do, because there’s no doubt that the form of some – particularly in attack – has been patchy. But even defensively we have looked the tiniest bit less imperious this season I think. Perhaps I’m suffering from recency bias off the back of the Newcastle defeat, but we looked shaky, although given we were so blunt in attack I don’t think defence is the biggest of our concerns when it comes to recruiting. Mikel was asked outright if an attacker was on the shopping list and he kind of just waved it away, saying “No, the circumstances change because we have certain injuries for some big players, so it’s always a possibility but always it’s about somebody that is really going to make us much better.”

I get that, I suspect he just didn’t want to answer the question, but if you read that in isolation it makes you wonder whether he thinks another left back might be the solution!

I’m jesting of course, because there’s no way he’s looking at some of the profligate performances of our forward players and not wondering if a freshen up is needed. It’s just whether they can pull the trigger on an opportunity this January, or whether it has to wait until the summer. He did drop a stat about goalscoring not being a problem for us because we’ve scored the most goals in the Premier League in the 2024 calendar year, but he’ll know as well as we do that it is a statistic that can – and is – misleading. It’s better to win ten games 1-0 than two games 5-0 and lose the rest. We’ve had plenty of games in 2024 where we’ve battered teams and that’s because the football match has been opened up. Unlocking stubborn low block defences is still a big problem for us and the internal solutions we’ve got haven’t been able to do it as much as a team fighting for the title should be able to. Hence why the focus is on the attacking output and freshening it up. But he knows that.

He was also asked about Ødegaard’s form and him missing Saka, which is something we’ve all obviously spotted because of the great connection those two players have, but I think a little more is being made of Ødegaard’s form that is necessary, personally, because in the last week or so he’s a) had a kid and that might have impacted him a little with some initial sleepless nights, and b) had an illness that Arteta referenced in his press conference has kept him out for a week. In the midweek he was really poor, but that’s probably because he was getting over that illness and by now hopefully he’s recovered, with my bet that we’ll see a different Martin tomorrow and certainly in the North London Derby in midweek next week.

We need to. There needs to be more from the likes of him and there needs to be greater goal output from across the team with Saka. That means Jesus, Havertz, Trossard, Martinelli, Ødegaard, Merino, Rice, Partey – as well as our defenders like Gabriel and Saliba – all need to be upping their game now and, more than ever with Saka missing, the output needs to be upped. We can’t keep affording the types of misses from Havertz and Timber from midweek. We have to be more clinical – from players all over the pitch.

There’s not really a ton of other stuff from the press conference worth talking about really, so I’ll put a pin in today’s ramblings and be back tomorrow with some thoughts on how the game might pan out from a tactical perspective, particularly given United’s impressive performance at Anfield last weekend and how differently the match might be since we played Amorim’s United a couple of months back at the start of his tenure.

Catch you wonderful humans tomorrow.

Arteta was asked about those two games in his press conference last night and he said he re-watched them, but I think in reality the similarities are few and far between. Sure, Sporting lined up with Amorim’s trademark three at the back, four in midfield and three attackers, but in terms of personnel, only Diomande and Trincao remain in the first XI as regulars from the team we played 18 months ago. Our team that day will also look markedly different; Saliba, Gabriel and Martinelli will all play I suspect, but there will be no Ramsdale, Tomiyasu, Zinchenko, Nelson, Jorginho, Xhaka, Fabio Vieira or Gabriel Jesus I suspect. Perhaps a place on the bench for Zinny, Jorginho and Jesus, but I think the rotation of some players on Saturday was with this game in mind.

And that’s because I think Arteta knows he needs to see his team deliver a statement win away from home in this competition, having failed to score away so far with draws away to Atalanta and that 1-0 defeat to Inter before the international break. Arsenal sit in 12th – something Arteta was asked about and will be very mindful of – and if they want that automatic qualification, they’ll have to deliver a much improved performance than our last two outings away in this competition. Against Atalanta it felt like we were happy to keep them at arms length. Against Inter we dominated ball and created a few decent chances we couldn’t finish, but we looked leggy and out of ideas in that second half. Tonight Arteta will be charging his team with ball control, with more incision and with more purpose and drive than we’ve seen so far.

The win last Saturday will help and certainly it felt like we had more zip about us. A lot of that came from Odegaard and Saka, but I think the rotation of other players could play a part again tonight too. Rice has had a rest and hopefully is back tonight. Martinelli sat down for the whole game on Saturday so I think he’ll be chomping at the bit. Plus Havertz will hopefully have benefitted from taking a seat on Saturday. So what I’m hoping for is an Arsenal side full of energy.

But we have to be mindful of a Sporting side who will be so confident right now they’ll be expecting to create chances and do us damage. Viktor Gyokeres is Europe’s most lethal striker right now with an insane 24 goals in 19 matches. He has five in the Champions League and got a hat trick against City last time they played and whilst Arteta batted away individual plaudits for him – saying he preferred to talk about the whole team – there’s no way that he and his coaching staff won’t have paid particular attention to the Swede right now.

That City game was a real statement of intent too, although I will say that City absolutely battered them in the first half and probably should have been a few goals up, then Sporting scored against the run of play and it was because of the crazy high line City were playing. Then there was two penalties and Haaland missed a pen too, so whilst on paper it looks like a comfortable win when you don’t look at any stats, the reality is that Sporting did a bit of a number on City on the night and relied on a few things going their way.

We have to avoid that tonight. We have to dominate possession, be wary of the rapid counter, but most importantly take our chances because if we get space like City did and chances like City did, we need to be scoring where City didn’t.

Amorim may be gone and Arteta may have said that every coach is different and this will be different to when he was in the dugout, but there’s little a new manager would change when you join a team who have won practically all of the games they’ve played this season, so I’m expecting this Sporting side to still take on the persona of their departed manager. They will play their three at the back, they will be aggressive in their press and will probably look to squeeze the space between their defence and midfield to congest us and stop us running through. That’s where the likes of Odegaard will be vitally important, but I also wonder if Martinelli has a big role to play today. If Sporting do press high and if there is space out wide, with the way we play with our wide forward in having them hugging the touchline sometimes, I wonder if it might give Martinelli a bit more space to run in to. Maybe that’s where we can have some joy.

It feels to me like evading a Sporting press is where we create space, so whilst as a fan at times it will feel scary, we want to draw them on to us a little more to create spaces, because they won’t want to be pulled apart too much and the way Amorim has set up historically is to compress when they don’t have the ball, then spring transition traps – that’s what they did against City.

Tonight will be a tough game, we’ll have a noisy home crowd and one that is not used to seeing it’s team lose these days, so we have to be on it if we want to take all three points.

Let’s hope we can.

Back tomorrow with a match review of what transpired.

He confirmed that everyone from midweek is available to play tomorrow, which includes Odegaard, although I’d be stunned if the skipper started tomorrow. He played a few token minutes at the end and having been out for the best part of two months I suspect Arsenal will ease him in tomorrow by maybe giving him 10 to 20. Then over the international break he’ll be tasked with getting back up to full fitness and hopefully we see him from the start against Forest.

Merino and Havertz were questions too but I suspect they will be fine.

But will we be fine as a whole? We’re up against a Chelsea team who have had one loss in the league all season on the first day to City at home, as well as that defeat against Newcastle in the League Cup in which they heavily rotated, so this isn’t going to be a remotely easy game by any stretch of the imagination. There’s lots of talk about our recent form against them, but they will be coming in to this feeling pretty chipper, although reading a couple of the fan forums you wouldn’t have thought it. They’ve been talking up how their defence tends to shoot itself in a the foot a bit, how their last outing against Man United was a terrible game, which I think has coloured some of their views on this one. That, and the fact that Cole Palmer is supposedly a doubt, although Maresca seemed to suggest that they’re expecting him to take part in the session on Saturday so I am fully expecting him to be available and in the starting line up on Sunday. That will give them a bit of a boost if/when it’s announced, then we’ll have to see how it unfolds from 4.30pm onwards.

Our boost will need to come from the manager and players and Arteta admitted that the mood has been affected by the defeats and draws (one win in our last five and that was to Preston), but he came out in defence a bit of his team after the Milan game, saying he hasn’t seen anyone do what we did to them in the Champions League in midweek. It’s true we dominated them and yes, we might have been a little unlucky with the ball not quite falling for us, but when you’re in a rut that tends to keep happening. You need something to go for you and I don’t know why, but it just feels like we need the footballing gods to just for once this season, swing something in our direction at Stamford Bridge on Sunday. He’s saying the right things though; he said the team is “doing 10 times more better things than we used to do at that period, that’s the positive thing” when he talked about Dubai and whether the team needed a reset. I’m not sure what those things are, but it hasn’t been end product and that’s the bit we need to find solutions for, but Mikel clearly thinks he knows what is needed. He also said – rather cryptically – that they need “one particular aspect, to go from 95 to 100 and I’m not going to tell you what it is”. My hope that this ‘five percent’ isn’t “score more goals, innit” and that he has a tactical innovation up his sleeve that will unlock his team. I also hope it isn’t “get more players fit, innit”, because that’s not really something he can control. If this extra ‘five’ that he’s talking about is something that he has spotted that has the team working on, then it is within his control and hopefully we see some differences in results. That’s what I’m hanging my hopes on, anyway.

A quick look at the predictions from pundits online has us either drawing or losing and in most cases the gut feel is that it’s a draw. Jones Knows on Sky Sports seems to be the only one who is predicting us to snatch a one-niller, but he’s been off a fair bit of times this season with us already, so I’m not sure. The Opta Supercomputer has us at 39% winning versus 34% winning, which gives a crumb of comfort, but we need to see a better performance than Inter, Newcastle, Bournemouth before we were a man down, etc.

I’m not particularly optimistic about this one, unfortunately, which is a shame because before that Bournemouth game I was starting to think about games as ‘we should win this one today’. It’s taken me bloody ages to get in to that mindset, only for it to be washed away in recent weeks, so I’ll be a bundle of nerves tomorrow afternoon. I just hope we can do something special and get our season back on track.

Right, I’m going to leave it there for today, because I’ve got to hit the gym before I’m off to watch Engalnd egg chasers play the Australians at Twickenham. Quite why I signed up for that nonsense is beyond me, but hey, at least there’s no jeopardy or worry about it like there will be tomorrow, eh?

Catch you all then when I’ll have a bit of a look at how Chelsea might set up.

Yesterday I took a look at our opponents and the type of game we’re likely to face, their playing style and their form, so today I’m looking at what we might do in light of Mikel Arteta’s words and comments in his press conference yesterday. As you’d expect, he hasn’t really given anything away, but for me a big question that is unanswered is on Jurrien Timber. He came off at half time and Arteta said straight after the game that he felt something muscular. I had a chat with somebody on Threads yesterday and then this morning about his availability and they seemed to think that he was out today, which might pose a challenge in the full back spot, but Mikel didn’t really provide any clarity (as usual) and simply said on him, White and Timber:

We had to modify training for a lot of players. We’ve done the same today because of the load that they had, so it’s a decision to make this afternoon, whether to involve them, yes or no. They are close, and Tomiyasu as well is quite close to being involved, so good news.

Clear as mud then. My original thought was that he’s probably ok, but then I remembered that Arteta wouldn’t even admit that Odegaard was out for the North London Derby, which he was clearly never going to play in. I wonder if this international break might have a bearing on whether he decides to delve even deeper in to our squad this afternoon, choosing to rest Timber, White and Tomiyasu, which would also have the benefits of their international teams maybe not risking them either – ensuring they stay home and have a couple of weeks off.

That may be a cynical view, but having Tomiyasu not going to Saudi Arabia and then back to Japan the next week would certainly be better for us and if he’s in the squad today then it will give Japan the excuse to make him travel and play. The same with Timber. I know these players want to play for their international teams, but sometimes you need to think longer term. Tomiyasu can’t surely be called up having not played any football at all this season, right? And I mean no disrespect to Southampton, but if we keep Timber wrapped up, we still should have enough to beat them. The question is, if there is no White, Timber or Tomiyasu, no Zinchenko or Tierney either, who is playing at full back? And isn’t it just the most Arsenal thing ever that the positions we have the most versatility and numbers in, that we’re struggling to find players!

I suspect that if all of the above players are out, he’ll move Calafiori to right back and Kiwior to left back, which really does show the depth we have in defence that we’re talking about Kiwior as a fifth choice player who might get the nod today. We all thought Mikel was mad to have so many defenders in the summer – well we were wrong about that, eh!?

Further up the pitch it stats to get a little easier and we start to look a lot strong, you have to say, because Merino came back in midweek and he’ll be in the squad, plus we have Partey now on a run of games and looking decent again, as well as Rice, Havertz, Trossard, Saka, Martinelli, Jesus, Sterling and Nwaneri all options that Mikel can select from. That’s a pretty decent group of players – ten in total to select from the midfield and attacking six; and I haven’t even mentioned Jorginho to make it 11 players to fill six positions. As he said in his press conference yesterday, of course we still miss Odegaard and hopefully after the international break he comes back in to action (although Mikel would not confirm that either), but when you look at those options right now it looks quite strong. And Mikel reflected on that yesterday too, talking about how the team has adapted our playing style to mitigate the absence of our captain. We’ve seen how Trossard and Havertz are rotating between playing further up the field or dropping deeper, or drifting wide right or left, with the result being that teams aren’t quite sure who is playing where and it left the kind of space on Tuesday for Havertz to make a good run and nod the ball home for our first goal.

People make a lot about our off the ball movement when out of possession, but the fluidity in movement of our players across different parts of the pitch is what I love; it’s so hard in football to pick up a player if they are consistently changing their position – you can hardly man mark Havertz if you’re a centre half, because you’ll be all over the place!

Hopefully that continues today and whilst Southampton are the kind of opponents that all the pundits in the media are saying will be a stroll in the park for The Arsenal, last weekend proved that anything can happen. We battered Leicester, we deserved to be two up, but they scored with their only two chances. The same could happen today. I’m pretty confident that we’ll create more chances than them, I’m pretty confident we’ll put stress on their back line, but I can’t for certain say we’ll bag a ton of goals and keep a clean sheet – last weekend was a timely reminder of the quality in this league. Plus, the returning Ramsdale will want to show his old colleagues just what he’s about, so I’m expecting him to have the game of his life today, for sure. Mads Hermansen 2.0, mark my words.

So for us it will be about being professional, keeping the game face on, taking chances and creating a lot of them too.

I’ll be there in Block Five making my voice hoarse, so let’s hope that is rewarded with that most precious of things: Three glorious points.

Catch you tomorrow morning on here, as well as on the Same Old Arsenal blog, with the gang.

I drank a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon to myself last night, whilst making and then consuming a chilli con carne, listening and watching the two respective managers talk about the game on Sunday.

Firstly, Sky Sports were all over Pep, featuring him again and again and some of his comments on Arsenal ahead of the game. He knows very well about marginal gains, so he wasn’t minded to do anything other than give plaudits and clearly block any calls that could be used as motivators for Arteta and his team. When asked about Rodri’s comments about us playing for a draw last season and whether he agreed with Rodri, he just shook his head. When asked about us and why we had improved season-upon-season, he declined to comment, saying that he would be accused of mind games. I kind of get it to be fair; he was asked about Rodri’s comments for that very reason – to make it seem like he was doing mind games, then he was asked about our strengths, in which he listed the different ways and styles we can adopt as a team. Then he was asked to say nice things about Arsenal and I think he got to the point where he’d basically had enough so started to just shut down a few conversations. I would have done exactly the same if I was him.

He was also asked about the fact we’ve been playing away and with less prep time, to which he then said he could show many times when they have played more games and then had to have less time than an opponent. Which is true and clearly what goes around comes around with this sort of stuff, but I think what is different in this situation is the type of opponent you are facing. I’ve just gone on to Google to look at the last time City faced back-to-back away games. It was the Scum away on 14th May and Fulham away on 11th May. A Tottenham Team who played Burnley on the same day as they played Fulham and then a side who I think given the nature of the game were never going to be much of a match for City. There’s also the fact that the Scum played on the same day – so prep time is equal for both teams. The time before that? They played Palace away, then played Real Madrid away, but what was their follow up match from that?

Luton at home.

It’s why – whilst Arteta tried to make less of an excuse or soundbite on the fixture list yesterday in his pre recorded press conference. I wonder if the fact it was pre-recorded and with just one journalist was a bit of a public statement by the club in itself; Arsenal saying without words that the prep time we have for this massive match is so short that we can’t even get the assembled journos who are normally on the Arsenal beat in to the press room at London Colney. He referenced the extra day when asked the question, said

“we wanted the same as them, we’re not getting it, so we have to adapt and make the most of the time we have today and tomorrow and on the morning of the match to prepare in the best way”

I think he and the Arsenal coaching staff are probably quite pissed off about it. It’s fair enough when you are playing a team not in Europe, but playing another European side and for it to be such a massive game too, feels like we’ve been dealt a harsh hand here. And I mean that metaphor too; it is just unlucky, because it’s nobody’s fault. The Premier League’s fixtures came out first, the Champions League fixtures came out months later. Perhaps what they could / should have done is change some of the scheduling around, which is more on UEFA than anyone else. Man City’s round of away matches in succession comes in November, but as opposed to a local derby, the Champions League, then one of your expected-to-be rivals that you play away from home, City are facing Bournemouth away, Sporting away, then Brighton away. Brighton will not be an easy game, for sure, but it isn’t like they are playing us away with a day less to prepare and in Europe. When we play them in February? They have Club Brugge at home, then the following week Newcastle at home.

It is what it is, Arteta will not even be making a single mention of it to his team, they just have to get on with it and much like the NLD in which we had injuries and absentees that handicapped us a little bit, we have to go out there on Sunday and perform.

The only other soundbites we got from yesterday’s video is that there are no fresh injury concerns (thankfully) and we still don’t know what the situation is with the duration of Odegaard’s absence. I’ve seen a few fans suggesting they think it’ll be a January return for the Norwegian, but based on the physio accounts I follow, if the information they have interpreted from the club and Norway, it shouldn’t be that long. I suspect the best we can hope for is post the next international break. Let’s hope that we get some positive news at some stage in September about his recovery.

And that’s about it for today. There will be a bit more of a match preview from me tomorrow as we gear up for a huge and – frankly – quite scary game at 115 Charges FC’s home ground.

Catch you all tomorrow.

This is fantastic news.

He had been talking about how it was going to get done, there had been plenty of journalists saying there isn’t any issues and of course this was probably just a formality, but until you physically get that confirmation and see the announcement, you never really know. So to get that confirmation yesterday brought a smile to this here Gooner’s face. In December Arteta will have been at the club for five years and this time five year’s ago if you’d have told me that we’d have won an FA Cup and competed with 115 Charges FC for two seasons, amassing the highest number of goals scored and wins for an Arsenal team in the Premier League era, I’d have thought you were mad.

It kind of is mad to think how far we have come. The Emery era ended on a quite sour note, the signings we made were either bang average or terrible and when Mikel arrived he talked about getting that connection back with the fans. When he first did his first interview as Head Coach of Arsenal I remember thinking “lovely, but let’s see how he turns this in to reality”.

He has done just that.

When we were linked with Arteta before Emery got the job, my ol’ mate Dave told me that he’d spoken to Paul Davis about Arteta (or he’d spoken to somebody who had spoken to Paul, I can’t 100% remember) and Davis had been doing his coaching badges at the same time as the Spaniard. He’d talked of how impressive Arteta was; his knowledge of the game, tactical insights, his approach and also his intensity and drive to become a top coach. This is a driven man who during his playing days had been called quite an intense character. So there was no doubt he would be a top coach and that’s why Guardiola wanted him on his coaching staff. But that doesn’t always translate to success as the main man. I remember people talking up Steve McClaren as a great coach, or Brian Kidd, but whilst they absolutely nailed it as Fergie’s number two, they couldn’t hit the high notes as a manager.

I think that so far the signs for Arteta have been very positive. He even got the old ‘hasn’t won anything’ stick that is used to beat coaches with out the way early, winning the FA Cup in 2020 and whilst we haven’#t won anything of note yet, there’s no doubt in any real Arsenal fan’s mind that we are heading in the right direction. He has overseen an overhaul of playing style, of culture, of what it feels like to go to The Emirates, of the connection between fans and players and he has done it during some of the most challenging periods in football history. The global pandemic was unprecedented as we all know, but Arteta has turned Arsenal in to a competitive side that we all thoroughly enjoy watching. He has his naysayers in the press, rival fans and even some weird Arsenal fans, but you cannot argue that Arsenal aren’t in a better position now than when he took over.

His words:

“Together with the players and everyone at the club, we are looking forward to the coming years, with our supporters, who have emotionally transformed the club and the team. Our supporters have transformed individuals and we are different now. You can tell that we are different and for me, that is down to them. We look forward to continuing the journey together.”

The journey is still going and what’s next has to be to realise the amazing work he, Edu and the team at The Arsenal have done. We have to see the next evolution and that has to be winning trophies. Nothing is guaranteed and it is hard to win one of those important shiny silver trinkets, but we are in a great place to do it.

He’ll have his press conference today and I suspect that he’ll be given congratulations, there might be a reflection question or two, but it is his driven nature that will see that talk quickly ‘filed’, because he’ll be focused on the job that needs to be done on Sunday. And it’s another big task – and ask – for him to go this early in the season to a tough ground, with a bunch of injuries and suspensions, and pick up three points. It is going to be a massive game this weekend and many of us – me included – are fearful of what might happen in the next nine days given how tough each of these matches are, but in Mikel we have a guy who will absolutely not be making excuses, who will see this as an exciting challenge and who I think will be bullish in his press conference today.

I’ll pen some post-presser thoughts tomorrow, particularly as we’ll get an update of sorts (although I doubt he’ll give any timeline) on Martin Odegaard, Gabriel Jesus and Riccardo Calafiori, but for today I will leave it with the positivity that Mikel is here to stay for another three years and hopefully, he can realise the dreams we all have for The Arsenal, which is big prizes and big trophies.

Have a good one peeps.

And in my head I have spent this week making peace with it, so I am going to go in to tomorrow just enjoying the fact we’ve come so far and played so well, as well as looking forward and being excited for what this Arsenal team can deliver next season. And I think Arteta probably feels a bit like that too because he looked relaxed and happy in his pre match presser yesterday as he told the assembled media how excited he was.

He was asked about whether he’d spoken to Pep or David Moyes and of course the answer was ‘no’; these guys are professionals who have to prepare for a football match so they don’t engage in chit chat or WhatsApp’s to each other. He had nice words to say about Moyes, about Pep, even about Everton as is the custom for Arteta to give no opposition manager any quarter when we play them. I wrote about what to expect from Everton here if you fancy a bit more reading, but yesterday we also got to hear a little about Sean Dyche who simply said he wasn’t interested in us potentially winning the league and he wanted to focus on Everton and keeping their good form up. You’d have to expect that to be fair and I think Moyes said something similar in his press conference.

And Arteta’s approach to questions fielded about what happens in Manchester was similar as well; he talked about having a beautiful day on Sunday and going out there and doing our job. That’s all we can really hope for I think and regardless of what happens in the City v West Ham game, I will be celebrating the season that this Arsenal team has delivered to us, because this season there have been so many times in which I’ve been out of my seat cheering. To think that five year’s ago I’d go in to games thinking “we’ve got no chance here” and when we got to the final game of the season on so many occasions it’s been a bit “meh”. But this season at least the pre match chatter will be a bit more meaningful than it has been in the past and I for one am glad about that. We have Arteta and his players to thank for that.

Of course Arteta rightly said he can’t think like that. In elite sport mentality can be everything and if he’s in that dressing room tomorrow telling the players to just go out and enjoy it and not worry too much about the result here or in Manchester, then that’s the 1% that could even cost us the game. Because Everton will be up for it and will happily punish us if we don’t deliver.

The one stat I saw from the presser yesterday which has also kind of made me crystallise my view that we have little else to play for was that no team has ever overhauled the Premier League leaders on the final day in the Premier League. Again Arteta has to say things like “that won’t stay like that forever” but if you look at the reality of a situation then it’s fairly obvious why that stat remains in tact and will probably do so tomorrow; when you get to this point in the season most of the time you essentially have about 14 teams who have nothing really to play for. You can talk about pride and about finishing as high up in the league as you like, but the reality is that for many teams that 1% I mention above is missing. That desperation just isn’t there and so when there’s a 50/50 ball that you’re challenging for, if you’re one of those players who is playing for a team without any jeopardy, you’re not risking a big injury and losing your summer if you don’t have to. But if you’re fighting to win a title, you are going in for that 50/50 and you have that extra 1%, so you do go for it.

That will be us tomorrow and it will be City tomorrow and that’s why I have made peace with the likely outcome. I think I read somewhere that the Opta Supercomputer has us at a 13% chance of winning the title. That sounds about right to me. This City team has won nine in a row in this competition, they’ve slowly but surely completely eroded that massive goal difference swing we had. They haven’t played amazing in that time, they’ve just been relentless and got the job done. They are an emotionless machine and their stadium will be relatively emotionless tomorrow too. Don’t get me wrong, their fans will be singing and their voices will be loud, but there will be something just a bit sterile about their win. Six out of seven, four in a row and then when you see them rock up to Wembley to complete the double in a week’s time it wouldn’t surprise me to see there’s a few empty seats in their half of the stadium. We saw that for the Community Shield; we filled it up and made a big ol’ noise; their fans have been doing this so much that they only seem to half care about trophies these days.

Hey, it is what it is, as Arteta says let’s focus on us and just enjoy and celebrate that we’ve competed for the second season in a row. And hopefully next season too.

Catch you wonderful people tomorrow. Have a good Saturday.

And let’s be honest here, it is a ‘slim’ chance. I’m not trying to be deliberately negative or melodramatic by the way; this is a City team who routinely do the business at the end of every season and if they win their next three games will have won nine in a row and won every game (barring us at home and Liverpool away) in the league since the middle of February. They did it last season as well by the way. Almost to the day. This season they drew with Chelsea on 17th February and then have dropped ‘W’s ever since other than at Anfield or against us (in the league). Last season they drew with Forest on 18th February 2023 and then basically won every game until they drew with Brighton on 24th May, by which time we’d already dropped a bunch of points and they had the league won with a game to spare.

That’s what we’ve been up against.

And to be fair in Mikel’s presser yesterday he touched on that when prompted; he knows that we are up against a ‘Mike Tyson’ style monster as it was mentioned yesterday and whilst he played an expectedly straight bat with the answer in his presser, he will know the big task that lays in front of us tomorrow. At the press conference yesterday he seemed his usual calm self, but I wonder if the mega butterflies are churning in his stomach? How much of the nerves are kicking in inside of his gut? We’ll never know, his cool and steely exterior will ensure that we don’t find out, but I’d love to know just how much of him is feeling like we’re feeling right now. It’s exciting, no doubt, but it’s also bloody terrifying.

He did talk about this season ‘going to another level that I haven’t seen before’ and I wonder how true that is? Pep also mentioned it yesterday and said that it  was the most difficult season in his whole career and on previous years and I do find that debate somewhat interesting. After all Man City faced off against Liverpool in that season in which two teams went north of 95 points and that feels just mental. But if you think about it, what does it say about the quality – or lack thereof – of the league if two teams can get close to 100 points? Was the competition just not really that great and that’s what enabled Liverpool and City to amass that many points? Is the league more competitive now that you have City, Arsenal and Liverpool at fighting but not managing to get to that level?

I’m not sure. I guess you have to take the word of the guys that are managing the two best teams in the league but there’s probably part of that discourse that is living in the now rather than a reality of the difficulty of this season compared to that season in 2018/19. But perhaps the fact that it was three teams in this race as little as two weeks ago probably shows that the competitive nature is better. Ultimately though it has comedown to two teams in the end with us and City, although if we don’t win tomorrow I suspect it will be just one team that has itself an exciting final day of the season next weekend.

Because let’s face it, Fulham are getting nothing from the game today, with the media liking to see if they could fan some flames about the fact their players were kite flying during the week. It was easy fodder for the press to ask both Pep and Arteta about that and clearly it evokes feelings of literally being on a UK beach; the symbolism isn’t exactly subtle. But Arteta (and Pep to be fair) was having none of it and he simply said that sometimes team bonding takes different shapes and that he himself has experienced something as simple as a meal out with the team that has sparked a winning run. I’d love a bit of kite flying to spark a Fulham run – for the rest of the season of course (you never know, I don’t to jinx it and talk about a long Fulham run and then find out we play them on the first game of next season!) – but I’d be surprised if we get that today. But as Mikel said in his press conference we need to focus on ourselves and just do our job; if we don’t do that tomorrow then the hopes of other teams doing  us favours over the next eight days are kind of irrelevant.

Team news wise Arteta said that we seemed ok but that there was another training session today and I think given his response to the question about player availability (Saka was in strapping and Tomi wasn’t seen in the official pictures of training), we don’t have to worry too much about any major injury – touch wood as we speak of course – but it’s sounding ok at the moment, which is positive. It does feel as though injury surprises aside, we’ll have the same XI again tomorrow and against Everton and I think if you ask most Arsenal fans they’d tell you they’re ok with that.

And I’m certainly in that camp. I don’t think there’s any point in changing things that are working so well and I suspect that unless we get any unwelcome team news emerging tomorrow, that’s the XI that will start in Manchester tomorrow afternoon, which is good with me. We need to banish a horrible hoodoo there and that’s a whole other story that I’ll save for tomorrow, so for now I’ll tell you to have yourselves a wonderful Saturday, cross everything for a miracle in West London at Craven Cottage, then hopefully we can do our business against Ten Haag’s reprobates in the North West tomorrow.

Later’s peeps.

1. He hasn’t done that all season anyway.
2. The team news is a basically fully fit squad to select from.

Even Jurrien Timber has an outside chance of being involved in the matchday squad, which will be a nice bonus but I doubt we’ll see him too much. He’s been in training quite a while but he’s only played one under-21s game and so to expect him to be able to be available for a match with the intensity of this game, feels a little ambitious I think. I’ve seen some people suggest that he might get on because he has to play a part in the remaining games to get a medal for the club for this season, but I doubt Arteta thinks like that much. He is a man with such intensity and focus and ruthlessness that giving a guy minutes just to make sure he might get a medal feels like tempting fate on the one hand, but also smells of a sentimentality that he doesn’t have. Just look at the Ramsdale situation, he loved KT when he arrived and Gabby Jesus “changed our world” and yet he is being reduced in terms of his game time. Arteta picks his side based on the best available and fit players and I think it’ll be a surprise if we see Timber tomorrow.

On the Scum, he gave his customary platitudes and talking up how amazing they have been, like he does with every team and you kind of understand that given Arteta is a man who likes to use things like Ivan Toney tweets to motivate and ‘gee up’ his players. Arteta will be very keen to ensure that no quarter is given to any opponent, least of all The Scum, so there was plenty of nice things to say. Postecoglu did the same in his press conference to be fair, so there was little to take from the press conference other than team news as updates. The Scum have a couple of injuries, but they all have a rested team which I think equalizes any potential disadvantage they might have by having a perceived drop in quality by not being able to play their first choice XI tomorrow afternoon.

On the fatigue thing, Arteta was transmitting some pretty good energy on the preparedness of his team, which I loved. He said that there has been some time to rest, the team is prepared and they will be good to go on Sunday. We’ve had four full days of training and prep so far and whilst there will still no doubt be some tired muscles in that squad given the recent schedule, I’ve always thought Arteta is good at avoiding excuse making. He knows that is the manager is saying things like “we are tired” then it could potentially transmit to his players and so when I hear comments like he made yesterday in the presser, it definitely does give me hope that we will not get a leggy Arsenal, but one with steely determination and a single-mindedness to go there and get all three points.

It’s somewhat scary that of the three possible outcomes of tomorrow’s game, only one really gives us any hope of winning the Premier League. Man City WILL beat Forest tomorrow and that will put them two clear with a game in hand. A draw puts them one ahead with a game in hand which basically means they can afford to lose one and still retain the title. So for Arsenal it really is win or bust and going away to a ground where we have won once in ten year’s in the league really hits home just how difficult this game is going to be. There are zero margins for error, zero mistakes that can be made and I even saw this stat which suggests we’re going to have to be pretty special to win tomorrow:

No team has stopped Spurs from scoring in the Premier League in their last 25 home matches.#TOTARS

— Orbinho (@Orbinho) April 26, 2024

I suspect that might happen again tomorrow and that means Arsenal need at least two, probably three goals tomorrow, which again underlines the difficulty of this task. But this Arsenal team has gone to Manchester City and kept a clean sheet. We’ve had more shut outs than any team and despite a little wobble a couple of weeks back, we’ve had two clean sheets in a row in the league, so that gives some cause for optimism.

And that’s what we all need to be doing today and right up to the lead up to the game, channeling that optimism to those Arsenal players, because they deserve a heck of a lot of credit for getting us in to this position. I am still slightly scarred by the Christmas defeats, but the fact that I thought our chances were over at that stage and the run that this team has gone on since then, really has to be applauded. They have been imperious – Villa and Bayern aside – and regardless of what happens in the next couple of weeks, when we get to the end of the season I am going to work hard to remind myself just how impressive we have been at times.

One of the things which I thought was interesting, as a final point before I wrap up for today, was when Arteta was talking about Postecoglu and their style of play. He said that it was very clear how they would play and I wonder if that makes it Easier for Arteta to work out our tactical approach tomorrow, than say, against Villa? We know Emery is a tinkerman and he will change things based on the opposition, but The Scum will play how they have played all season (bit more on their approach tomorrow I think) and I wonder if Arteta and his coaching staff find that easier to work out what they are going to do as a result? It doesn’t always mean success and it doesn’t mean that you’re going get the desired outcome, but when Arteta talks about preparation in the physical sense, I wonder if in the tactical side as well he is happy because they have studied tomorrow’s opponents and know what they are going to get?

Hopefully they know exactly what approach we’re up against and hopefully they have a master plan for it. We shall see tomorrow.

Catch you then.

But that’s what you get when you want to be in the latter stages of competitions and when you are one of the top elite teams. I don’t remember them complaining as much about it previously, so maybe the stresses of having tough opponents and things not going their way is catching up with them?

Who knows. All I do know is that after we did our job on Saturday night, yesterday it was the job of others for which we could take the pleasure in, which comes chiefly through laughing at other teams. And I certainly had to laugh at Man United scraping through against Coventry. Being three goals up with around 20 to play in the second half should mean a simple procession to the final, but I was listening to Man United fans on the radio yesterday as I drove down from seeing a friend in Doncaster and there were a fair few saying “we WILL concede”. Such is their leaky defence, that truth outed and I managed to catch the dying embers of extra time as I managed to walk in to a pub in London to see VAR was ruling out the Coventry fourth goal. That would have been funny, but it wasn’t to be and now Man United can go to the final and lose to City.

Hopefully by then City are playing for their only trophy of the season but I still suspect that it won’t be. I have hope that it won’t be but we are inching closer and closer to the most ultimate of crunch times.

33 games played for Arsenal and 74 points. Liverpool played yesterday and we had about eight minutes of hope that Fulham would do something and play like they did against us, but perhaps they are on the beach a little bit having already accumulated 42 points and so the urgency isn’t quite there. I only hope that on Thursday Brighton don’t have the mindset, which I think might be a stretch because I think at this stage it’s unlikely that they’ll be able to creep in to the European qualification spaces this season. That only falls to seventh and at the moment that’s Man United on 50 points. Brighton are on 44 so that’s a six point swing and although West Ham lost to give them a chance, there are Chelsea above them and with a game in hand. We have to hope that if we can beat Chelsea it might give them hope, but in reality I suspect that Brighton won’t have enough for a City team who we are holding out hope will drop points somewhere.

From an Arsenal perspective there hasn’t been a ton of additional stuff that has come out in the last 24 hours (other than the Arsenal women winning 3-0 which was good and had another pretty full, but given there are only three games left and Chelsea are six points clear, I suspect Arsenal are going to finish third this season), probably because the players just got on the bus post Wolves, headed straight home and spent yesterday with a day off resting. I suspect they’ll be back in training today and whilst we often all joke about how it’s pointless asking Arteta about team news, he will literally have had bare any time with them today to assess what the full availability and fatigue levels of some players are right now. It will be a case of patching them up and sending them out against a Chelsea team who I’d have loved to have held on and played 120 minutes on Saturday, but sadly it was not mean to be.

I touched on it a bit yesterday but I do wonder what their mentality and levels will be like as well. That was pretty much their best chance of silverware this season gone and having seen pockets of that game and the chances they created, I wonder how that dressing room will have felt after getting a fair few opportunities from a tired City side. We will be tired too, but as opposed to the City FA Cup game on Saturday in which Chelsea had five days to prepare, they will have had roughly the same amount of time as us to prepare and so I wonder how Poch might shuffle his deck – if at all – for a trip to The Emirates. Arteta will no doubt be asked the fatigue question too, as well as how much he might need to rotate, which I suspect he’ll be reluctant as always to give any answers to, but I do think that he’ll have to rotate in some respect tomorrow evening. Who that might be and how that might be remains to be seen, but I suspect it’ll be at the sharp end of the pitch rather than in defence too much. More on that tomorrow.

For today I think I’ll call time on the Monday musings. Amanda did a morning pod with GeoffArsenal yesterday to digest the game on Saturday evening, so if you want to have a listen you can do so here.

Back tomorrow with a look at Chelsea and how we might line up. See you then.