Let’s start in Bosnia, where Italy missed the chance to end their hiatus from World Cups by being knocked out on penalties, which I still find mad with regard to the lack of Italian competition. This is a four-time winner of the competition, a side who are one of the great international football nations, who now have kids who will have never seen their side in a World Cup. Three times = 12 years; if you’re a teenager, you basically don’t remember what it feels like. And as a kid of the 80s, I have just come to expect Italian sides in these stages. So this is a bit wild for me, if truth be told.

Under normal circumstances, I’d be a bit ‘meh’ about this whole situation, but we’ve got skin in the game these days. Riccardo Calafiori is an Italian national and, having played the full 90 in the last game, he played a full 120 minutes last night, although thankfully he didn’t suffer the ignominy of taking a penalty in the losing shootout.

He will be gutted today. He’ll head back to The Arsenal with his head down, and given we still have so much to play for at The Arsenal this season, that might have a psychological effect. My hope is that he’s a strong enough character to get over it, but we’ve all heard the stories about players and suffering after extreme emotions as a result of international football. There’s the well-documented Arshavin decline, but Big Per Mertesacker also said that he struggled in the aftermath of helping Germany win the World Cup in 2014, so it happens at both ends of the emotional spectrum.

Calafiori will have little time to mourn his country’s exit; he’ll probably be on a plane today, Arsenal will no doubt give him tomorrow off, then it’ll be back on the training pitch on Friday, I suspect.

Or will it?

After all, he is a guy who we all know too well what his injury situation has been like; it’s here for us all to see. So he’s going to be feeling it a bit this morning I think; not just the emotional intensity, but the physical intensity of playing 210+ minutes in under a week. He certainly hasn’t been doing that for The Arsenal this season. In fact, if my workings out are correct, the only time he’s played 180 minutes for us this season was on two occasions; in September when he played for us at away against Athletic Club Bilbao and then at home against City in the Premier League, then in December against Everton away and Palace in the League Cup. Those are the only two times this season he’s played, so I just don’t see him being remotely available this weekend – Arteta surely just can’t risk it.

Which is a problem in itself, because technically both Big Gabi and Saliba are out with knocks, whilst Hincapie limped off for Ecuador. Given we have so many centre halves, it’s quite amazing that we could find ourselves short on numbers for this weekend’s FA Cup game.

That’s an issue for debate this weekend, because as sad as it is for Calafiori, the opposite was happening in Sweden, as Big Vik Gyokeres was a late hero for Sweden to send them through to the World Cup finals. It was a classic poacher’s goal, but nobody in Sweden this morning cares; they go to the US and Mexico, and Gyokeres has just written himself into Swedish folklore, just like Beckham did for England with his last-minute free kick against Greece all those years ago.

And if we’re going to talk about the possibly damaging psychological ramifications for Riccy, we should probably also acknowledge the opposite effect that could benefit us from Gyokeres’ emotions right now. He too played 120 minutes, so I can’t see him getting much time on the pitch this weekend, but when he walks into London Colney over the next day or two, he’s going to be doing it feeling at least six inches taller. As Arsenal fans, we have to hope that this helps him with regard to his end product. We all know that there have been times this season where, frankly, he’s looked about as useful as Inanimate Carbon Rod, but we also know that he is a man who is fuelled by confidence. And in 2026, his confidence has definitely improved; I saw somewhere that for both club and country, he now has 15 goal contributions in 21 games. If you are a striker who relies on your form and a hot streak, getting goals as he has just done for Sweden this week could be massive for us.

We’re in the ‘Business End’ of the season. We need the end product above all else. The pretty/quality football is secondary to results, and you know what gets results? Goals. Lots of goals. We need that Swede to make his contribution, and we need it now. Again, as I’ve mentioned, I doubt that will be much this weekend, nor should it. We have Gabby Jesus, we have Kai who has played a few minutes to build up his fitness, so they can share the minutes with the Brazilian, probably getting most. But when it comes to Sporting Lisbon, you want Big Vik ready for a return there, for sure, methinks.

As the players all start to come back to Arsenal from today, we now turn our attention to the fallout on injuries from this round of matches, with Arteta due to speak to the press on Friday. We have to hope that there is no bad news to surprise us, so let’s just cross our fingers that he is his usual coy self on specifics of injuries, but that he doesn’t confirm that any  players are ‘definitely’ out for a period of time.

Catch you all tomorrow as we start to look ahead to another big weekend.

Because Last night he helped to get his Swedish team into the final of the World Cup playoffs with a hat-trick, all of which felt very much part of his MO. First one, a tap-in after a good move on the left, with the striker basically touching in to an empty net. Think Everton at home a couple of weeks back. The second one was a transitional moment in which defenders were backtracking, and he shifted the ball inside the box, to then slot into the corner. Think a little like the Leeds goal at home he scored at the start of the season. Then the third was a penalty he roofed into the net.

It’s good for us because it means he’ll be feeling uber happy and confident after the disappointment of the League Cup. We all said that we needed this break, but if it gives a double boost of positivity for players like Gyokeres to come back even more fired up, then I don’t think there’ll be a Gooner around who won’t be satisfied with that. He now plays for Poland, and apart from Kiwior – who is basically an Arsenal player in name only at this point – we have no Polish players that we really need to see boosted, so my hopes are now for Sweden to go through next week and Big Vik to come back feeling 10 feet tall.

Riccardo Calafiori will also be feeling pretty good, as he saw his Italian team go through at the expense of Northern Ireland and, more importantly, he managed the full 90 minutes. Given how he hasn’t played too much of late, that’s not too bad, but I hope the staff are mindful of his injury record this season, and of all the players on injury duty, he’s the one that I have my fingers crossed for the most. I’ve already shown my hand earlier in the week by talking about an early possible team for Southampton away next Saturday, but when I look at the fact that Calafiori may well play another full 90 for Italy, possibly even more if Bosnia send them to extra time, you do wonder whether he’ll be asked to sit that one out if he plays too many minutes whilst on international duty.

I think some of the games coming up mean I’d like to see Calafiori in there from the start if he can stay fit. The City game away, for one, is one I’d have him earmarked for. He played well there last season. He looked good and gave us more dynamism when he came on in the League Cup last weekend, so if I’m Arteta, that’s definitely one I want him fit for.

Christian Norgaard was on the scoresheet for Denmark, who now have to go to the Czech Republic to get themselves to the World Cup in the summer. Again, another player who hasn’t played as much and whilst I absolutely detest international football during the domestic season, getting minutes into his legs is probably a good thing for the context of the remainder of our season. Hopefully, he gets the good vibes and progresses as well, because like Poland, we have no skin in the game when it comes to the Czech’s.

Martinelli got 63 minutes for Brazil in France, who lost 2-1 to Les Bleus, but it seems he was fine when coming off, so that’s another one thankfully ticked off the list.

And so to the remaining players on international duty, and let’s start with Benjamin White, who Tommy Tuchel admitted the player will have to speak to his teammates about his absence. For his part, I think Tuchel has played it well, because he’s said he doesn’t care about what happened before, he has seen White do well in training, and that he’s a good lad. I suspect if Ben plays tonight at 7.45 against Uruguay, he’s going to be roundly booed by the England fans. That’s to be expected from some of the twats that will be in the crowd. Instead of asking the question: “Why did he leave the camp under Southgate and Holland and not return until he was asked by the new manager? I wonder if it was the old administration that had anything to do with it?”, they will bleat and whinge and sing ridiculous things like “you let your country down” and nonsense. But to anybody going tonight that boo’s, if I were able to speak to them as an individual and say, “Have you ever had a line manager who treated you poorly, didn’t look after your interests and made life horrible for you at work?” If the answer is “yes”, then perhaps those idiots who boo would take a second to have a think about what more than likely happened under the last manager. Because if Ben White hates playing for England, he ain’t picking up the phone and returning the first time he’s asked to under the next manager.

As for the others on duty, we have to hope that Madueke sees some minutes and is fine, whilst Saka and Rice are, I believe, not going to be selected for this game. Raya, Zubimendi and Mosquera will most likely be in the squad tonight, but given it is a friendly, I hope the Spanish manager is sensible about his minutes. I hope that Rodri gets a ton of minutes and Zubi is on the bench for both, but I suspect he might alternate. He’s another one that, if we’re all honest, probably needs a week off when he returns from international duty, so I wouldn’t even pick him in the squad for the FA Cup.

HIncapie plays in Morocco tonight, then Eindhoven on Tuesday, which hopefully can be a good thing, because it’s a very short flight back from the Netherlands, and so the long trip back to the UK from Ecuador isn’t on the cards. Martinelli is the one who will face the longest trip, because he’s in Orlando in the early hours of Wednesday morning, so I wonder if that puts pay to any possible start he might have next weekend?

There’s not a lot else worth talking about at this stage, though; we just have to cross our fingers and hope that no player picks up a knock. We haven’t been very lucky with that so far in these international breaks this season, so I’d like the football gods to at least cut us a break this time around.

Famous last words, eh?

Why the HELL is Saka playing the full 90?

Rice was taken off on 65 minutes, so that’s good, plus Ebs got on and scored a pretty decent goal from that left forward position (more on that in a sec), but Saka shouldn’t be knocking down 90s in a game like this. I hope on the game on Sunday he’s given rest time.

I will say that Tuchel appears to be more mindful of the players and their minutes compared to the horror that was Gareth Southgate. He’d give Saka the full 90 in an international friendly against Gibraltar, was such his ego needing stroking (funny how he has taken no managerial opportunities and instead is just content on releasing a new book, eh?), but at least Tuchel thinks and acts like an elite manager and is mindful of loading minutes of players. That’s my hope anyway when it comes to Saka, because he’s clearly decided that Rice can have an earlier sit down last night.

Gattuso and the Italy coaching staff are doing the same with Calafiori, who was left out of the team to face Moldova but might be in the squad when they play over the weekend. There’s apparently nothing to worry about, but that’s a clear sign that they know that he has a chequered injury history, that he’s played a lot of football this season and if he can have a few extra days off whilst still training (albeit alone) with the Italian National Team, then that is something. In a weird way, if he plays over the weekend that might be a good thing, because it shows that he’s ok. Italy play Norway on Sunday evening and if he plays a part, then he’ll have from Sunday until Sunday to recover and that is hopefully enough time (assuming he doesn’t pick up an injury) to be ready for the North London Derby.

Saliba also played for France in a game in which he will have basically been a spectator in most parts given their dominance over a Ukraine side that had zero attempts on goal or on target and just 33% possession. Talk about dominance. I looked at his numbers in that game and it was 62 of 67 passes for France and 29 of those attempts were in the opposition half, so I think he’ll be feeling fine off the back of that win. He normally averages around 67 per game for Arsenal so this feels like a pretty standard Saliba outing, which is good news.

The rest of the players are action in their first matches either tonight and tomorrow and I do wish Brazil would have played their games a little earlier. Big Gabi is off with them and they don’t play until tomorrow and then on Tuesday, but here’s the good news:

1. It’s a friendly and so hopefully he’s rotated
2. It’s in Lille, France – the borders of Belgium

A quick check on Google tells me it is a one hour and 22 minute flight from London to Lille; that’s like taking the trip to Inverness in Scotland, so he’ll be back and hopefully wrapped up in cotton wool by Wednesday night, meaning Arteta can have a look at him on Thursday and by Friday he’ll have had three full training days before the North London Derby on Sunday. Great stuff. Providing he doesn’t pick up an injury, that is.

I mentioned I wanted to touch on Eze today and I wanted to have a little look at where he featured for England. He came on for Rashford on the left wing position and a look at his heatmap showed he very much occupied the kinds of positions you’d expect from that position. But in the 26 minutes on the pitch he was very much not playing like a winger who is hugging the touchline and asked to drive at his man. If we think about how Martinelli plays that role, Eze feels a lot more analogous to Trossard as more of an inside forward in that position and the superb goal he scored last night was scored from that sort of inside-left position too.

We haven’t seen too much of that this season due to the injury to Odegaard and Eze has been obviously asked to play a little more centrally, which I think a few Arsenal fans have been left feeling like there’s a little more that Eze could give us. But I think that’s in part due to the fact he plays the ‘Odegaard role’ different to Martin. Odegaard is a pressing trigger for us and he is quite an intense one; Eze presses, but not nearly as intensely as Odegaard – can you remember many times when you see him closing down the ‘keeper like Odegaard does when we are out of possession? I can’t. But in my mind I can visualise Odegaard doing that every game. Odegaard also drops deeper to receive the ball than Eze does, as well as picking it up in different positions too, so when we are missing Odegaard it’s great we have a player like Eze who can look to perform that role, but I wonder if he’s been the victim of the fact that expectations are that he would be similar to the Norwegian. That’s simply never going to be the case.

Eze has to carve out his own niche in this Arsenal team. That means from a central position when he’s playing in for an Odegaard, or maybe even if Rice or Merino aren’t available and he slots in at left eight, or even if Rice slots in to the six with Zubi out. We almost got to see that against West Ham but Odegaard’s injury reduced it to just a glimmer of a showing. So the return of Odegaard might see Eze put in positions more like he was in last night and if he delivers end product like that, I don’t think many of us will be complaining, that’s for sure.

The challenge Eze will have when Odegaard returns is the form of Trossard in that position, as well as the competition of Martinelli and Madueke as the rapid, touchline-hugging wingers to offer something different. I for one am glad we’ve had him and his contribution with all those attacking players out has been valuable at this time. But perhaps he needs to find a way how to do the different roles a little differently to the others, to absolutely cement his place as a regular in Arteta’s Arsenal first XI.

back tomorrow with some more thoughts.

**Quick Shakespearian ‘aside’ to give some props to Saka for his fantastic goal as well last night. Good work Starboy – keep on doing that for us when you get back!**

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Catch you all tomorrow.

On the international stage, Jurrien Timber came off after 62 minutes of a 4-0 win over Finland and there doesn’t seem to be any talk of any kind of knock or injury, so hopefully that’s him sorted and he can return to us and prepare for the trip to Fulham on Saturday early evening. It doesn’t sound like he had a load to do, but he was filling in at centre half and so his 66 touches of the ball and 95% passing accuracy hopefully meant a relatively trouble-free night for him alongside Van Dijk. As an aside, I wonder if Van Dijk gets the same pass on fouls, kicks, etc, as he does in the Premier League?

I think Timber was the only Arsenal involvement (Kiwior too, I guess, but given he’s effectively one foot out the door with Porto I’ll not go in to too much detail) from yesterday, but one of the things I forgot to mention was that Calafiori played and starred in the Italians 3-1 win over Estonia on Saturday. SofaScore had him at a 7.7 with a full 90 under his belt and when you don’t bother watching the international matches like I don’t, reading that feels like both a blessing and a curse. The fact he played the full 90 means he came through unscathed (the blessing). But the fact he also played the full 90 means that he didn’t get much rest into those decidedly fragile bones of his (the curse). He played well though, at least, with five clearances, 107 touches and 92% passing accuracy. Looking at his heatmap for Italy you can clearly see his licence to roam like he does at The Arsenal isn’t there. Check these bad boys out:

Sorry for my shoddy cropping on my phone, but this hits home just how much Calafiori is asked to do a different job for his club team as he is for his international team. Part of it is obviously the stylistic set up; Italy play with a back three and he plays on the left of that, so you’d expect less likelihood to roam than as a left back. But I think the personnel makes a difference too. I don’t know who the regular partner is in the centre of that back three, but I bet he ain’t as good as Big Gabi. The way we set up too means that big Gabi effectively covers two positions for us when Riccy goes a’ wanderin’, so the heatmap for The Arsenal obviously results in more licence to drift.

It’s a key feature of our play this season. Calafiori has long talked about how he likes to be in different positions, with him even saying earlier on this year that he wants to learn to be a midfielder. Well he’s certainly going to get that chance playing ‘left back’ in an Arteta team, that’s for sure!

He’s already popped up this season in the right wing slot, he’s scored goals like the one against City from just outside the D just over a year ago and his very specific type of hybrid role he’s been given at The Arsenal often makes him the ‘free man’ when we’re playing. There’s a lot of talk about left eights, right eights, tens, etc, but to ringfence Calafiori at The Arsenal as a ‘left back’ is to call the mounting evidence like the above heatmap Fake News like some kind of mental US sitting President. The things that the Italian game heatmap does show, however, is that he is a very capable – and very good – centre half or left-sided defender if needed. And I think that is to his credit. When Myles came in towards the end of last season I have to admit that I personally wondered if Calafiori’s career would go the way of the Debuchy. We’d seen a young whipper-snapper in the shape of Bellerin come in and make the right back slot his own. I was also very wary of his patchy injury history which appeared to have come true for us last season with his multiple absences for multiple lay-offs during the season. But the versatility of the Italian has already been shown so far this season and (famous football cliche coming up) – if he stays fit – then I think it’s going to be tough for Myles to stake a claim in the same way he did last season. Calafiori’s form has been imperious for both club and country; in this game for Finland I’ve already mentioned the solid stats he racked up and in the West Ham game playing as a nominal left back he had three clearances, three tackles, five ground duels won and two aerials won. But it’s that added extra in an Arsenal shirt (hitting the post from the right hand side of the D just before halftime against West Ham, anyone?) that he’s giving us that is allowing us that extra man in attacking positions that is freeing up space for us to hit overloads so far this season that is so good. Imagine trying to put together a game plan for such a random outlier as Calafiori:

Ok John. You’re up against the Italian left back today. Man mark him. I don’t care if you’re a right winger, if he ends up on the left hand side of our pitch by our defensive corner flag you go with him. Oh, and if the ball turns over and we win possession, here’s a teleporter to get you instantly back into the right wing slot for a transitional counter.

Calafiori is giving us the ‘X-Factor’ that I’ll be honest, I thought most teams had figured out from us since the Zinchenko days. But the Italian does that role differently. It’s further up the pitch, rather than a standard inverting left back that sits deeper. He occupies zones in between the opposition midfield and defence that are, frankly, random and weird to an untrained eye such as me. But it appears to be working so far, so let’s hope it continues for a long time yet to come.

I’d better leave it there today. I’ll be back tomorrow with some more thoughts on the internationals, etc, but for now have a great Monday.

I have concluded that the following would be rather nice:

Calafiori’s legs don’t implode

Last season it felt like every time Riccardo went away with the Italian national team, something in his lower limbs went pop. We knew when we signed him that he had a history of injury problems and, if my memory serves me correctly, he even missed the start of the season for us. Then when he went away in September he picked up a leg injury which kept him out for a few weeks, followed by a similar injury at the beginning of this calendar year. I would verily much like it if – given his superb form for us so far this season – he has zero problems and comes back in one piece.

I’ll be honest, at the end of last season, I wondered whether we’d got ourselves another Tomiyasu and the only thing that tempered my frustration (not with him, the situation) was that MLS had broken through. I fully expected Calafiori to become a little bit of a Debuchy/Bellerin situation, but that just goes to show you how – as the kids say – “I don’t know ball”. He’s looked fit, he’s looked strong, he’s not getting done by tricky wingers as much, but I think that’s probably due to the fact that Gabriel is an absolute monster and plays two positions in our defence, but also that Calafiori seems to enjoy playing as a left eight more in games. Zinchenko liked to roam forward, but he didn’t find himself in the same positions as Calafiori and once again we find that left back role re-invented with his return to form and fitness.

Come back to us Riccy…

Timber gets splinters

I think Jurrien Timber might be one of our best players right now. He’s certainly one of our most in form players, so when I was reading that his minutes were limited for The Netherlands in the September international break, I was delighted. Yes please guys, let’s have Jurrien collect some splinters on the bench, because this is a guy who has already suffered an ACL in his career with us so far and last season admitted that he was basically playing injured for the closing stages of it. We have Ben White – also not called up to the international team, which is nice for us if not for him – ready and waiting, so we have the required cover, but having Timber fit and ready to play against Fulham needs to be the priority and if that means that we see him warm the Dutch bench and get some sub minutes at best, I am 100% on board with it.

Rice and Saka have managed minutes

Declan looked uncomfortable against West Ham just before he came off and when he picked up that knock at the weekend it was right in front of me by the corner flag. You could see straight away he wasn’t happy and thankfully, unlike Odegaard, he was hooked pretty rapidly afterwards. However, unlike Chelsea players, Arsenal players report for duty and perhaps the fact Declan has reported for duty should be seen as a good sign. I still want to see Tuchel go easy on him though. Arteta spoke in the press conference about the good relationship that he has with Tuchel, about how they talk a lot and my hope is that they’ve had another chat about our England boys. But predominantly I’m looking at Rice because of his knock, as well as Saka too. Bukayo has only recently returned from injury, we could all see how Arteta has been building up his minutes, so my hope is that Tuchel doesn’t go full Southgate and just slap him on for two sets of 90s over the next few days. Arsenal wouldn’t do that, so why should England?

I think Tuchel is a more pragmatic and modern manager than Southgate and I think he’ll recognise that shocing Saka on for maximum minutes right now won’t do the player, or England, any good. Let alone The Arsenal.

Some positive Odegaard medical news

All we’ve had so far is that Odegaard has picked up a medial ligament injury. Arsenal haven’t diagnosed the ‘grade’ of it, which means it could be anything from a week to 12 weeks, but I’m sure that the roving reporters at The Athletic will get a scoop at some stage over the next few days. And when that happens, I just hope that the news is that the knock isn’t as bad as we’d feared. Havertz, Madueke, Saka, Odegaard (twice already) – we’ve already had our fair share of “it’s not good news” so far already – let’s have some positive news for a change, shall we?

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

And that’s all I want. That’s not too much to ask for, is it? I mean, obviously I want all the other players on international duty to come back with a clean bill of health, but given we already seem to lose footballers in every single Premier League game this season, it would be nice if the international break could not follow on the start of season form in that regard, eh?

Catch you all tomorrow.

You can’t deny his output though. He got two assists in the Bernabeu, he scored in the first leg, he had a goal ruled out for offside in the home tie against PSG and when he was asked to play as a centre forward last season he bagged four goals in six games in the Premier League. Last season in all competitions for Arsenal he had nine goals and five assists in 2,600+ minutes and for a guy who is ostensibly a midfielder, that is pretty impressive, it has to be said. But there’s so many of us – me included – who still can’t quite work out what sort of player he is. At Anfield he operated in the Odegaard role but one could hardly say he excelled at it. We know what characteristics he brings to the football field – he’s physical, wins duels and has a high interception and recovery rate, is good in the air, scores goals and finds spaces in the final third to get those shots away. He’s 100% not a defensive midfielder. He’s not that suited to the creative Odegaard role either. Nor is he truly a centre forward. So what is he?

Maybe that is his super power and maybe that’s what will ensure he gets minutes in an Arsenal shirt when many of us thought he might struggle this season. In a team that has had its fair share of injury worries, Merino and his ability to play multiple positions makes him a valuable asset to Arteta. Will he get another 2,600+ minutes this season? I suspect that is less likely, but you never know.

Along with him in Turkey was David Raya who didn’t get on, as well as Martin Zubimendi, who played 71 minutes before being replaced by Rodri. There’s no suggestion that it was injury-related, so I suspect it was just a planned change and that hopefully means the Spanish lads can make their way home today with their limbs in tact. So too can Jurrien Timber it seems, who got 20+ minutes last night as the Netherlands beat Lithuania away, whilst Leo Trossard also started and played just over an hour for Belgium as they smashed six past Kazahkstan. No goals or assists for him though.

Today we’ll get Big Vik playing before he can head home, as Sweden are in Kosovo, whilst Calafiori and his Italian teammates travel to Israel in a game I think every Arsenal fan will be praying we don’t hear bad news. He’s been in fine form in an Arsebal shirt since the season started and I watched a really good tactical video on the Goonerverse channel yesterday about how Declan Rice is dropping down alongside Zubimendi to form a double pivot, whilst Calafiori pushes up and becomes one of the attacking players. It will be interesting to see what Arteta does when he wants to rotate in MLS, because so far he’s barely seen the green of the football pitch, playing just 44 minutes in all three games. Will Mikel give Myles the same instructions when he is on the field as he gives Ricci? Or does that left back role change when Lewis-Skelly is starting. Myles tends to be somebody – based on what I saw last season – who likes to drift in to that midfield role and occupy the position that was pointed out in the above video that Rice was taking up as that double pivot with Zubimendi. MLS also likes to carry the ball from that left midfield-just-inside-our-half space too. Is he going to be given instructions to play further up the pitch and a little wider to match Calafiori if the Italian picks up a knock, or is naturally rotated to protect him? That we don’t know, but if we don’t know, it also means Premier League analysts probably don’t know either, which as I’ve said already so far this season, makes us a little more unpredictable. I hope.

There are also going to be some under-21 matches played with England playing this afternoon and that means Nwaneri will get his chance. There’s no space for Max Dowman though, as he’s playing in the under-19s for England and breaking yet more records. I did wonder if they would fast track him into the U-21s and I think I’ve even seen Tuchel suggest he will be keeping an eye on him for England, but from an Arsenal perspective I guess the club just need to ensure they keep on keeping his feet on the ground. There’s still a lot of adrenaline and hype when it comes to Dowman at the moment and although I don’t like to link to that radio station TalkSport, there was a short snippet with Martin O’Neill where he talked about how he didn’t think Dowman would be getting that much game time this season, which I agree with. We have a super deep and competitive squad and although Dowman got on against Liverpool and made his debut against Leeds, I suspect what we will see as the season wears on, is a bit of dust settling and the kid will not have the same level of impact as he’s had with the football just kicking off in this last month. This isn’t me saying he’s not extremely talented, this isn’t me saying that I don’t think he’s good enough, I just think that we’re all super excited about him right now and when that excitement dies down he’ll have one or two games in which he won’t make an impact and I think we’ll all realise that “hey, turns out this kid is 15” kind of moment. Which is absolutely fine.

Anyway, I’ll leave it there today, then catch you in the comments and online.

1. Look a gift horse in the mouth
2. Scoff at three points at Old Trafford

There’s plenty of time for us to all look at the performance, the individual clunkiness of some of the players and the fact that this felt like a very ‘Un-Arteta’-like Arsenal performance, but what we got yesterday was what we came for, which was that first win of the season at a ground in which we have traditionally struggled at. Indeed, I’d even said it yesterday morning having read about it on Opta Analyst – we don’t normally win there and had two wins from the previous 18. Now it’s three in 19 and whilst Mikel Arteta was quick to admit that we weren’t at our best on the day, he was also right to praise the spirit of the team, because we held on and kept United at arms length when our main game was off on the day.

It kicked off with the side that I predicted and Gyokeres and Calafiori started instead of Kai and MLS. Given that it was Riccardo at the back post to stoop-header the ball in to put us ahead within the opening 15 minutes, clearly that was the right call, but we can point to a fair ol’ slice of luck on it because the flapping from their ‘keeper for the in-swinging corner was real schoolboy stuff. We all know Onana has a clanger in him, but the guy who they had in between the sticks yesterday looked just as clown-like with that situation and whilst the narrative instantly became ‘Set Piece again ole ole’ from the away fans and pundits, the reality is that United should have dealt with it. I’ve seen a few United fans claiming foul for Saliba on the ‘keeper but I’m not having that; you can’t call foul on that on and then say that Zubimendi wasn’t impeded in the same movement by Cunha inside the box. Equally, De Ligt did the same thing with Raya up the other end, but the only difference was our ‘keeper got a solid punch on it.

So we’re 1-0 in the early stages and I’ll be honest, I thought we would go on to dominate and control the game, but it never really happened. What I would have expected to happen was that United would have to abandon any hopes of a deep low block and transition-counter game on us, because we were ahead and could afford to get in to our shape. And at times I thought there was space for us to counter on them when they were venturing forward. But nothing seemed to come off for those Arsenal players. There was a series of poor decision-making passes in the United half and counter after counter broke down before it’d even got started. It was, by Arteta’s admission, a performance littered with mistakes and when they get back to London Colney this week and do the video analysis, there won’t be many outfield players who will come out of it with too much credit I don’t think. Maybe the defence can get a few plaudits, but in an attacking sense we really didn’t click. Saka was really quiet. Martinelli made some pretty poor choices and at a time in which we’re all wanting him to step up now he has more competition in Madueke, we didn’t see enough from the Brazilian. And Gyokeres was starved of pretty much any service whatsoever. There will be rival fans this morning happy to stick the boot in, but the way the game played out meant that he was cutting a very frustrating figure and was off on 60 minutes for Havertz. To be fair, Kai also struggled, so I don’t think we can put much down to Gyokeres’ first competitive match.

It was overall a very weird performance. I have a few mates on WhatsApp groups saying how they hadn’t seen us play this bad in terms of performance for years. It’s weird saying it when you’ve won, but we’re used to dominating the ball, the chance creation, the territory, etc, but yesterday we had none of that. United had more possession, they had more possession in the middle half, they almost matched us on duels, they had a better duel success rate, they won more of their aerial duels, they completed way more passes than us (475 to our 294), they had a better passing accuracy, a ton more shots, more key passes, etc. I could go on and on but in pretty much every metric we were second best. Dare I say it, but it felt more like an Unai Emery-style Arsenal performance, than a Mikel Arteta one.

And yet, here we stand, with three points and the season up and running. We have come to one of the more difficult places in the land and got ourselves going. If we can get a win at home to Leeds and put in a better performance than yesterday next weekend, we’ll head to Anfield with confidence and that will be essential. We’ve shown our quality in defence and how we are hard to break down and we’ve shown that, as always, we will once again be a threat from set pieces. During pre season we looked shaky at the back, but the game faces went on yesterday and we knew that we were better than Man United and could see out a game with another clean sheet. And you can’t complain too much about that.

Arteta will have them on the training ground now this week and they’ll take a look at things that can be done differently in attack and I think we’ll see a very different performance from the boys next weekend. At least I hope we will.

That’ll do for me for today, but for a little bit of extra Arsenal-related content for you if you fancy it, Amanda and James did a post-match review straight after the game on the Same Old Arsenal pod which you can watch here.

Back tomorrow.

But it did plant a seed in my head and that seed has been germinating all night until today, so I thought I’d share some predictive, conspiracy-theory-style, projecting thoughts to you today. Kick them around a bit and then see what you thought.

What is the rise of Myles Lewis-Skelly see’s the departing of somebody like Gabriel to Saudi Arabia this summer?

Here me out on this one.

Nobody expected MLS to break on to the scene, right? But he has done, he’s looked absolutely brilliant, he’s stayed fit and now he’s an England international with a couple of caps under his belt. We play Fulham on Tuesday night and surely there is absolutely no chance he isn’t starting that game given his form this season. He’s essentially used the injury situation at left back to fashion himself in this Arsenal team and he’s keeping Calafiori out.

Calafiori was bought in the summer and clearly Arteta loves him. I think we all get the ‘vibes’ for him too; handsome guy, likes a bit of Italian style and designer clobber, speaks really well and looks like quite a player when on the ball. Very silky, very glidy, very cultured. I like him a lot (I’ll come to the injury stuff in a sec). In fact, I think a lot of people have been saying that he’s more of a centre half than a left back and I’ve read a number of online content pieces, listened to a few Arsenal blogs and watched a few of the ol’ YouTubes with people suggesting his longer-term future might lie there.

That’s where the conspiracy theory starts to get into the next Inception style levels, because what if that IS his future? What if Arteta is looking at the left centre-half position and saying “hey, I want this guy”? It’s not beyond the realms of possibility, is it?

We all love Big Gabby. This season I think he’s easily been our best centre back and there’s no way in Hell I want him out the door. That’s not how I think we should be operating and there are a core of players with which I think we should be slapping a big fat ‘not for sale’ sign on. That includes the two centre-halves, Rice, Saka, probably Odegaard for sure and there are probably a few more but those are the key ones that spring to mind. But the fact that at the beginning of last season Gabriel missed the first few games for what has now been widely reported as an eye-watering amount of cash the Saudi’s wanted to pay him, has always stuck in my mind. Then, when you couple that with the noises Ornstein has recently made on an Athletic podcast about how Arsenal might have to sell a big name in the summer to get everything they have planned for…and my mind starts to jump a couple of moves ahead to that situation.

Imagine if the Saudi’s came in and offered £150million for Big Gabby. Are we all 100% sure that Arsenal would tell them to ‘do one’? I’m not. In fact, given how much Mikel loves buying defenders, it feels very on brand for him to see it as a challenge and with that money burning a hole in his pocket, plus any othe sales, as well as the kitty the club already has earmarked for this summer, it suddenly doesn’t feel unthinkable to me.

And if he loves Calafiori as much as I think he does, he might see that there is a natural successor who is already bedded in at the club and with our way of playing. of course there’s the big ‘injury record’ elephant in the room we need to discuss though. Because let’s face it, when you look at this injury record, I’m not sure relying on him is a viable option. The poor guy has been injured on five separate occasions already this season. He’s missed 15 games and if this injury keeps him out for a few weeks it’ll be up to around 20 by the time he returns. That’s just not somebody you can say is going to be robust enough to take Gabriel’s position and get the level of game times he gets.

There’s also the question about other players in and around the left side of the defence. Kiwior has barely played this season and is clearly out at the end of the season. We know that Zinchennko and KT will be gone in the summer. So regardless of what the future lies for Calafiori in terms of his position, Arsenal will need to do something in left back.

And finally…What about if MLS is actually going to become a central midfielder? That’s what a number of people have suggested and that’s where he’s played in at youth level. But to break in to the Arsenal first team is hard. Like, really hard. Just look at what happened to Maitland-Niles when he played the ‘I don’t wanna play full back, I wanna be a midfielder’ card. I doubt MLS would walk the same path, but it’s not like there hasn’t been historical precedent.

But hey, like I said right at the start of this blog, perhaps this is just the neurotic Tuesday musings of an Arsenal fan over-thinking. But I do wonder if there is a bit of a ‘no smoke without fire’ situation with those Ornstein words. I hope not, I hope both big Gabby and MLS just keep on doing what they’re doing at The Arsenal for a number of years, but I can’t help but having these thoughts planted and then they start to grow into 1,000 words like today. Food for thought.

We’ll have to wait until the summer to find out.

• United have nothing to play for in the Premier League and I’d imagine their fans would probably be just as happy to throw in the towel on the domestic season based on where they’re at right now.
• Arsenal have to fight for maintenance of second spot, but it’s hardly a blockbuster slog to the end of the season, so we just want to fast forward whilst making sure we maintain our top tier credentials.

Nevertheless, however, as a professional you still have to do your job and you get the feeling that Arsenal and Arteta are approaching this game in just that manner, judging by his press conference yesterday. He rolled out the usual format – talk briefly about the previous game but quickly say it was in the past, talking up Man United, whilst also reflecting on 200 matches as an Arsenal manager. There wasn’t anything ground-breaking in his comments, but I did like his comments about taking MLS off early in the PSV game. He said the situation was a ‘liability’ and that we’ve ‘learnt from that experience’ and I think given the number of times we’ve had trigger happy referees this season, it doesn’t matter if it’s PGMOL or not, Arteta isn’t taking any chances. He did the same by hooking Calafiori at halftime and whilst in previous seasons and maybe next season he might not react like that, given the context of how we’ve been shafted by referees in 2024/25, I think it was a prudent move and the right one given the current context.

We’ve got Anthony Taylor this weekend for the match at Old Trafford and that can go either way with him. He’s reff’d us three times this season and in that time we’ve seen him rule out the Havertz late goal against Liverpool (which was probably right in fairness), oversee the win at West Ham, then given another one of those “you’ll never see again” by awarding Brighton that penalty from the clash of heads of Saliba and Joao Pedro of Brighton, so I’m not quite sure whether we’ll get shafted or not on Sunday. We’ll have to see.

Arteta did also talk a little about Calafiori and how unpredictable he is, admitted that he’s been surprised about Calafiori’s attacking threat. Lad has dropped three goals already this season and when he finished the goal on Tuesday from an Odegaard through ball, I saw a fair few calls online for us to stick him up top. He certainly has the physical presence, that’s for sure, but would this be just another Merino situation for us? I don’t know. Apparently he did play up top when he was a kid (although in a recent interview he said he didn’t – I wonder if that’s since he turned professional) but he’s said he thinks he has the tools in his locker to do it. You wouldn’t bank against him making a good go of it, but I still have my doubts. His finishing for the goals he’s scoring has been great, but being a centre forward in a team like Arsenal isn’t about bagging goals like the screamer he did against City, or arriving as he did against Wolves. The goal against PSV is the sort of one you expect to see of a centre forward play, but even that one had an element of a run from deep to trick the defenders. Imagine if he was playing centre forward in that game; the position he would be taking up would be higher up the pitch, possibly occupying centre halves, so he might not get the running start he did on the defenders because of where he was situated on the pitch.

It’s why I think the fluidity of movement of his players is such an important part of how we are going to get goals without a Havertz focal point. Arteta was asked about that and said that we need to look at threats from all areas and you look at the way Rice is box crashing lately, as well as Calafiori too, and you understand that the disruption in opposition defenders we have to cause is going to come from that fluidity and deep running. We can’t really afford to be static and that’s one of the problems we had against both West Ham and Forest. Part of that was because of the opposition sitting in low or mid blocks, but I never saw enough movement from our forward line when off the ball, if I’m honest. Nwaneri is a guy who wants to cause damage with it at his feet. Trossard too, so that leaves Merino who doesn’t have the movement (not his fault – he’s not a striker) to pull apart defenders. SO we do need to rely on other players from midfield or defence to be taking more risks and getting in to those box positions.

You’d hope this weekend that United will want to come out at us a bit more. They might not, they might sit in a low or mid block, but at Old Trafford I just can’t see that happening. So maybe (fingers crossed) we can get a more open game like PSV offered us. I doubt it will be as open and i doubt United will be as bad as PSV, but with this game wedged in between a Europa League one and with a few injuries piled up on United’s side as well as ours, it does feel like this game will have a very different flavour to it than some of these matches of the past have had.

Right, I’ll leave it there for today I think. Back tomorrow with a match preview and possible lines ups tomorrow ahead of the game in the afternoon. Have yourselves a lovely Saturday.

Congratulations to VAR. A few weeks back we saw the Brighton player Estupinan get away with the most reckless challenge you’ll ever see a few weeks ago. It endangered and opponent and could have caused serious injury to Max Kilman of West Ham. But nobody on VAR decided to do anything. Yesterday there was an opportunity for Darren England to call Michael Oliver to the screen, or to have a word in his ear and say “you might want to just have another look at that” on the monitor. But instead you decided to just ‘back your mate’. Because that’s what VAR does. It doesn’t bring true impartiality in to the game. It doesn’t afford an opportunity for referees to admit that they are human. It is used merely as a rubber-stamping exercise to validate a peer. We’ve already heard from Mike Dean last year about how he didn’t want to go against an Anthony Taylor decision because his mate had had a tough game. Here is what he said:

“I said to Anthony afterwards: ‘I just didn’t want to send you to the screen after what has gone on in the game.’ I didn’t want to send him up because he is a mate as well as a referee and I think I didn’t want to send him up because I didn’t want any more grief than he already had.”

So we have a man who worked on VAR admitting that they make these kind of calls with the knowledge that they want to help friends out rather than apply the laws of the game.

Congratulations to PGMOL. You have manufactured this ludicrous situation. You and Howard Webb, who want to make it all about you, about putting yourselves in the centre of the spectacle, have exactly what you want. And the fans and everyone who watches football suffers. Last season we got “He doesn’t want to ruin the game” from Howard Webb, as a defence of his ‘top’ referee . Please show me that same rhetoric this coming week, Howard, I beg you, because you will just once again underline how broken the institution you head up is. This happens on a weekly basis and instead of addressing the problems, we get gaslit by PGMOL-favoured media like Dale Johnson and his absolutely mental ‘takes’ on VAR that are essentially designed to exonerate poor calls.

Congratulations to the Arsenal players. You stepped up lads. After the red card in that first half I thought I was going to be in for an absolutely horrible time. I thought that second half would be a ‘backs to the wall’ 45 minutes of us clinging on for a 0-0 draw, which wouldn’t have been enough anyway, because Liverpool were trouncing Ipswich. What I didn’t expect from that second half performance was a team who would come out and use the clear injustice dished out by Oliver to their advantage. Those Arsenal players were everywhere. They dominated the ball, they created chances, they pinned Wolves back and were absolutely magnificent. We can all be very proud today as Arsenal fans, because they represented the shirt brilliantly and whilst the bulk of today’s analysis will be focused on refereeing, we should not forget the absolute shift those Arsenal players put in.

Congratulations to Mikel Arteta. Whatever you said at halftime worked. We were already on top of Wolves before the red card, but we didn’t quite seem to have that killer touch. Thankfully the introduction – your introduction – of Calafiori, was the right call. It was the right call from a defensive point of view, but it was also the right call at the other end of the pitch, because his finish was good enough to find the net and I don’t think I have shouted that loudly on my sofa for years. It felt like a pocket of justice had been given back to us and with Wolves already down to ten men as well (that Gomes ‘challenge’ was worse than Lewis-Skelly’s, by the way, but only warranted a second yellow), we knew these players had enough to see out the game against a Wolves side who created a couple of chances and forced Raya in to a couple of good saves. It was a tough game for the lads, there were some knackered bodies out there by full time, but every single one of them did an amazing job and Mikel Arteta’s half time team talk must have inspired them.

Congratulations to all and to all a good night.

I’ll be on the Same Old Arsenal pod at 9.30am this morning – join us live or catch up afterwards here.

For this game Arsenal are the favourites, but it seems quite universal that these pundits are all predicting a tight game, which I think it will be, because Forest are a well-drilled, well-coached side who will look to be compact and give us little by way of space. They’ll sit in a mid-block and they will look to hit us on the counter as I mentioned in yesterday’s musings. They have a couple of players out in Danilo and Sangare and, perhaps unusually, they also have to consider players who went away on international duty too. Murillo was off with Brazil and Gibbs-White with England, so whereas in the past this sort of fixture will have seen Forest with a side who have been rested for a couple of weeks, they have similar challenges to us in terms of managing players coming back from international duty.

The good news from Arteta’s press conference is that we have some players returning and as opposed to what I think most of us would have expected, which was that Arteta would say there are doubts over a wealth of players like Trossard, Calafiori, Saka, Rice, etc, yesterday he seemed quite open. He seemed really buoyant in the press conference and you could tell that there is some relief kicking in after what feels like the whole season so far being without a number of players. It will have felt to him like one problem after another; as soon as one player comes back, another goes and even yesterday’s news wasn’t plain sailing with the news that White will be out and still no Tomiyasu return date (I’ll come back to White in a bit). But for tomorrow there are some good news with the likes of Calafiori for starters. The Italian is back, trained the last week and was with the physio’s last week too so I’d expect he’ll be in on the pitch from the off today. So too, I expect, will Rice and Saka be there, because they are two players that Arteta plays every minute he can. Trossard provides depth from the bench and I think that’s where he’ll be today, because it will surely be a front three of Martinelli (having scored in his last game), Havertz up top and Saka wide right. With Odegaard not playing for Norway you’d expect him to be fit and firing today and as already mentioned Rice’s availability means that Arteta’s main question from midfield will probably be who plays in that third position.

Does he go with Rice further forward and Partey in the six? Does he drop Rice in to the six and play Merino left eight? Regardless I will probably be happy with whatever Arteta goes for if it is one of those two combinations; Partey has been in superb form and Merino – having looked at the Chelsea game again – showed some really positive signs of progress as he beds in to the team. If I had a gun to my head I’d probably say he’ll play Partey because of form, which would mean Rice further forward.

The back five (including Raya) I think picks itself I think, because Timber Arteta said was doing fine and we know that White is out for what Arteta described as ‘months’. The initial rumours were an expected six to eight week period. So if Arteta is saying ‘months’ he’s not technically lying and that ambiguity probably buys him some time to not be asked about it. I have no intel, I’m not a doctor or sports injury specialist, but I suspect they’ll be looking at a mid-January return for White. Which means Jurrien is going to be needed for the immediate future and I think we will also need to see Tomiyasu return at some stage soon. It doesn’t sound like it by all accounts, so the ‘Partey at right back’ experiment may not be fully dead, unfortunately. I think Partey has equipped himself fine in that position, but his form has been such that having him at the six feels like we are a lot better in our functioning, than him in in the back four.

Nuno was asked about set pieces in his press conference, which makes sense given our potency, but he didn’t really give much up. He did talk about the fact they need to use their speed and the wide areas to hurt us, so that’s a clear indication again to what we’re up against. Forest to be compact, to try to frustrate, then to spring traps rapidly from front to back. So the name of the game today cannot be to push too hard, too fast, for that opener. But, also, we can’t commit too many forward if the game is goalless after a period of time (say 60 minutes, for example). If you’re Nuno or Forest fans today their blueprint is clear: get to halftime 0-0, or, if we can, a goal on the counter. Then frustrate Arsenal, then as the game starts to reach it’s final 15 – 30 minutes, look to hit on the counter if Arsenal are frustrated and pushing for goals.

That’s enough to make me nervous and I am well aware this will be a tough game today, especially seeing as what they did against Liverpool away, but there can be no excuses for an Arsenal team with lofty ambitions. It’s win or bust today. Let’s hope we don’t bust.

Back tomorrow morning for the blog, plus I think we’re gonna do an early morning Same Old Arsenal pod, so look out for that one from 9.30am.

Catch you then.

From Arteta

As usual on the injury front, not a lot really, but I think none of us expected to get any real detail to be honest. On Saka, Timber and Calafiori it’s probably varying percentage chance of availability, but I think you’d probably clearly say Calafiori is about a 1% chance of making the match day squad. It’s not 0% because Arteta didn’t rule it out and said there needs to be more tests that the club needed to do, but I suspect that’s code for “no chance”, even if he did say that they thought he had a bad injury before and he ended up only being out for a couple of days.

Next up is Timber, who you’d probably say is 50/50 for the match day squad. He has trained, but Arteta said that he’d only had one training session so far. He’s been out since the PSG game on 1st October, which is now three-and-a-half weeks, so he might need to be given a few more days of training, but not many I’d expect before he’s back and available from the start. I have a hope he might make the bench, but as I mentioned above, it feels a bit 50/50 on that one.

The one I think we can be a little more hopeful on is Saka. He’s been out for two weeks, but Arteta said he’d had a few more sessions. The benefit of his age is that he won’t need many sessions before he’s back up to speed and so my guy feel on that feels like he’s probably more than 75% likely to be in the squad. It’s a massive game, he’s a massive player for us, the chances are that unless he’s had another one of those moments like last weekend when Arteta said he ‘felt something’, he’ll be in that squad. And hopefully if he is he will also start.

He had his usual plaudits to hand out to Arne Slot, as you’d expect, plus he talked about enjoying a ‘beautiful’ day on Sunday, which made me crease my face a little for a wry smile when I heard it; I don’t know what you experience with these matches Mikel, but they don’t feel beautiful to me until the game is over and the points have been secured!

His ‘no excuses’ attitude is good though – culture is dictated from the leaders at the top of any organisation and the mindset Mikel has always adopted at The Arsenal has been that feeling sorry for yourself because of injuries, bemoaning luck, generally just being down, is not something he ever wants to entertain. That permeates down to the players and so you know their mindset tomorrow is not going to be of a team sad that they are missing key players; this will be a collective of players up for the fight.

Arne Slot

He was very similar to Arteta in giving plaudits to Arsenal, but also started off by saying he doesn’t know if Chelsea or Arsenal will be higher in the table, so I can’t quite work out if that was a little bit of a subtle dig at us, or if he was just saying nice things about how far Maresca has taken Chelsea. What is clear, however, is that he made it obvious that they have studied us. It’s not really super detailed and unknown to talk about our style of inverting full backs and having them come inside – everyone knows that about Arsenal by now – but I just got the vibe that he already knows how he is going to set his team up and he has a plan to counter us.

He also spoke about their defensive record and how a lot of that is down to dominating and controlling the ball. That’s a little insight to how Liverpool are slightly different under Slot, I reckon, because under Klopp they were back to front quickly, transition and rapid-strike football. Slot has them a little more patient in the build up. Tomorrow it will be interesting because you’d expect possession to be a little more 50/50.

In terms of their injury news he did confirm that all of those players already out will stay out, which means no Jota and given his record against us – eight goals in 15 games I think I read somewhere – that is a bit of a blow for them and bonus for us. They are missing players like we are, but their players aren’t as pivotal as ours. If Saka, Timber, Calafiori, Saliba and Odegaard aren’t playing, that’s like Liverpool missing Salah, Trent, Van Dijk. That would have a massive impact on how they play. But whilst Jota is an important player for them, they have a load of equally quality attackers to replace him. What they can’t replace is Salah, which is why we need to cross everything that Saka is fit and available.

I think I’m going to leave it there for today. Saturday will be a day of chores at home, probably avoiding football because I don’t want to see City pound Southampton, then tomorrow is the big one.

Catch you wonderful humans then.

Praying time.

It’s that period in which we still have a solid three-and-a-bit days before we play, we won’t get Mikel Arteta’s press conference until tomorrow, so all we’re doing is scrolling through endless speculative injury-update ITKs saying things like:

Understand Bukayo Saka is expected to be available for the upcoming match against Liverpool, having trained, pending any last-minute changes or niggles, meanwhile Riccardo Calafiori is set to undergo a crucial scan scheduled for today. #afc pic.twitter.com/zhBoqbDTho

— Sam C (@SamC_reports) October 23, 2024

I don’t know why a Man United fan account chap has an insight track into what goes on at London Colney, but because it is praying time I – like many other people I follow on social media channels – instantly latched on to it like a crumb of food to a starving man in the desert.

It’s just symptomatic of this season though, isn’t it, that the crumb of hope was also delivered with a side order of manky, slightly gone-off, despair, to sully what would otherwise be a welcome and tasty morsel. Riccardo Calafiori has a ‘crucial scan’ and given our luck this season, it wouldn’t surprise me if we heard from Arteta that he’s out for the season because of that knee injury. He fell awkwardly, it didn’t look like a nice one, plus he has this rather nasty looking injury history that I don’t want to be all ‘Negative Nelly‘ on you this Thursday morning, but it doesn’t read great and it is something I talked about when we were linked with him over the summer. And when we were linked with Zinchenko and Tomiyasu, I did the same look up on TransferMarkt and the issues seemed to feel very similar at the time, I have to say. And look how those two players’ Arsenal careers have turned out: blighted by injury and that we’ve all started to move on from them. I fear the same already for Calafiori. He’s been at the club around three months and he joined us not 100% fit, picked up an injury over the September international break, then now this. There’s no doubt that he’s a super looking player and when fit I’m sure valuable, but if he’s ruled out for any length of time when we know about this scan, then it’s all going to feel a little Tomiyasu-y to me.

But let’s get hooked back up to the hopeium, eh? And that has to come in the hope that Saka might be fit and might have trained to make him somewhat ready for the game at the weekend. He’s been out since 12th October and so we’re already talking two weeks as of Saturday that he hasn’t played. There’s not really been any update on what, exactly what it is, other than a few places reporting that it’s a thigh injury. I’m assuming it was a hamstring, which is tough because that’s obviously where a lot of the running power of a player comes in, so you have to be careful about exacerbating it too much and you can understand why Arsenal have been reluctant to do anything. I suspect they’ve been getting him to do light jogging and things like that, so Saka ‘returning to training’ could be just gym work, like what Martin has been doing for a couple of weeks now. The good news is that Saka has recently played, so you’d hope that from a match fitness perspective, that wouldn’t be as much of an issue.

There’s absolutely no chance Arteta tells us anything tomorrow though. If there’s an opportunity for him to not give Liverpool any options on studying our game plan, then he’ll do it, so we won’t really know until the team sheet comes out. Arteta has done it before where injured players have turned up in their tracksuits even though they haven’t been in the squad before, just to try to ‘give the eyes’ to the opposition and their approach, so I don’t really think we’ll even know if Saka is available until the whole squad is announced. It means that we’ll have to be reliant on these ITKs and for me right now when it’s report by just one individual (I haven’t seen anyone else more reliable saying anything just yet) then you always have to take it with a pinch of salt. But because I’m in a hopeful mood this morning (despite the Calafiori para), I’m going to fall on the side of it being delicious Maldon Sea Salt crystals, rather than the budget supermarket own brand low sodium crap.

Please Bukayo. Just be fit and able to play and play well) on Sunday. We need you.

And we really do, because Liverpool won again last night, that’s their 11th in 12 matches this season, Arne Slot is having a lovely ol’ time as Liverpool boss and it must feel like they can do no wrong. They’ve had a favourable fixture list, for sure, but they’ve still – by and large – got the job done and you cannot put a price on momentum and confidence and what that can do for a team. The way those Liverpool players will be feeling will be top of the world right now and when you think about how many key players we currently have out injured compared to them (Alisson aside, maybe Jota although he might be back for Sunday, but the rest I would class as rotational players), it feels like the wind is in their sails a little more than ours.

I’m already starting to get the nervous ‘feels’ for Sunday – that’s all I’m saying. Defeat at home to a side who is looking very much like a title challenger would be a hammer blow to us this season and in a season in which it has felt like we are lurching from one unfortunate situation to the next, this feels like it could very quickly slip away from us if we aren’t careful.

We’re not there yet though. So let’s stay on the hopeful side of the situation right now.

It’s praying time.

As for them, well, it’s kind of hard to judge after a game like that. Hopefully they can drop a few more points in the coming weeks so we avoid having to talk too much about them this season and they can fight for a sop six to four spot.

As for us, the news that emerged yesterday was rumours of a Calafiori injury that he sustained when Trossard scored his late goal on Saturday. The video I’m sure you’ve seen by now is when the players were celebrating he appeared to go down in pain and there are some suggestions it was his hamstring, but then I’ve seen some people this morning talking about jarring his knee in a headed challenge with Eduoard, in which he apparently then came off crying. That’s a worry. This is a guy who suffered a horrible knee injury in 2018 and in the lead up to us signing him in the summer, there was much talk about the fact he’s had a few injury worries in his time. He seemed to have recovered last season and only missed a couple of games for Bologna, but the fact that he’s already missed 11 days this season with a calf injury (sustained on international duty and to be fair, it was a bit of a freak one), should have us asking a few questions.

I had another look at his injury history, particularly in the knee, but there isn’t too much info on TransferMarkt. There’s a lot of ‘unknown injury’ stuff in 2022/23 and well as 2021/22, in which he missed 16 games for FC Basel and then eight games for Genoa and Roma respectively. He also missed 33 games in 2020/21 for Roma over the COVID season and when you start to see that all laid out before you, you start to worry for the 22-year-old. We all might have thought it at the time of signing, but that injury record is a real worry and if he’s picked up another one already, it will be frustrating for him, for us and for the Arsenal team.

He’s already looking like such a Rolls Royce of a player too. He covers ground, he has a goal to his name, he’s athletic and he is a decent defender. He’s got aerial prowess too and if he’s going to be one of those guys in which we’re going to suffer because he can’t stay fit, that will be a shame. Perhaps it’s early days, perhaps it’s just a knock he can shake off, but the rumours of him coming off with a tear in his eyes don’t sound promising.

Arteta is still without Zinchenko, plus Tomiyasu has only just started back training, so for PSG tomorrow we might end up reverting back to Timber and White as our full backs. That’s a pretty decent fall back option given that in theory we could have three players who can play left back not available for us (four if you count Tierney). And yet we still have those options in Timber or even Lewis-Skelly, who looked impressive against Bolton and did a pretty good cameo the weekend before coming on in the dying minutes against City. At times I do wonder why we’ve got such depth in the full back positions, but then when I realise about some of the injury prone players we have, I kind of realise why. But not only that, because it’s also the importance of the modern-day fullback that the likes of Pep and Arteta place on their full backs, because I suspect Arteta views that position as arguably the most important in his team.

If you think about the way we play, how we like to make the pitch as wide as possible with our wide forwards, then the importance of removing the opportunity of opposition players from doubling up on the likes of Saka, Martinelli, Trossard et al, the role of the full backs is integral. Saka gets more space when White overlaps. Zinchenko has shown us that full backs can create more bodies and control space in the middle of the park by overloading, Timber and Tomiyasu have shown us that being a duel monster and winning individual battles is important when you’re set in your defensive shape and being attack on, plus at the weekend the Dutchman also showed how they play a vital role in goals too, as he bagged an assist for the cut back which Martinelli swept home to make it 1-0. The modern day fullback is a swiss-army knife position that needs to be versatile, can operate in multiple sections of the pitch, is covering a lot of ground and has to be everywhere. Calafiori has looked like he can do all of the above things and do it as a big lad as well, so he wins aerial duels too, so if he’s out injured for any length of time it’ll be another blow for us.

It’ll also be another player that we’ve had missing this season and I think arguably we’ve been hit with more injuries than any of our rivals by a mile so far. I’ve just had a look at TransferMarkt and if you count first team players (i.e. likely to play some part – either as a sub or a starter if they were fit) this season alone, we’ve had a total of 23 ‘absences’ (one player, missing for one game, is one ‘absence’) in just six matches. Man City have had 18, Liverpool have had 11, The Scum have had 17, Villa have had 18. So that’s City and Villa who have had the closest to volume as us, but theirs is still five worse than we’ve had already – just six matches in to the Premier League season.

What that does say to me, however, is just how strong our squad is, because despite more injuries and absences than anyone else of the big clubs, we’re still able to compete and we’ve been able to do it with the toughest fixture list as well. That’s impressive and shows our depth. Let’s just hope any potential injury to Calafiori isn’t serious though, because he’s just started to look like a player who will make his mark on the team, so it would be a shame to have him missing for any prolonged period of time.

Anyway, I’ll leave it there for today, because we’ve got PSG on the horizon and Arteta will no doubt be talking to the press today ahead of a home game that we really need to be getting three points in against the French Champions tomorrow evening.

Back tomorrow with some pre match thoughts.

The team news was positive in that Saka and Calafiori trained and I have a sneaky suspicion that both will start tonight) and are available, whilst Arteta gave a further, less positive, update on Odegaard. He didn’t put a specific timeframe on it – which you’d expect him not to – but he did say it was a ‘significant injury and that the Norwegian will be out for ‘a while’ which in itself is a worrying level of vagueness from the manager. I’ve seen some suggest that it might be three months, but I’m choosing to err on the side of caution, as well as physio’s who know a lot more about this stuff from me, with most of the people who have read words from the Norwegians and the Arsenal manager suggesting it might be around four to six weeks. Four week’s from today puts it at 17th October and on 10th and 13th October there are another batch of bloody pointless internationals, so that is at least a two-week period in which we won’t play any football. But I suspect the club will be looking at having him back and fully fit for November, which means he could miss anything between seven and nine matches in all competitions (including the League Cup). That’s a massive blow, but personally when I was reading a ‘minimum of three weeks’ from the Norwegian medical team, I’d kind of written him off until after the next international break anyway. So if we can get him back at any stage at the end of October, it feels like that’d be the best we can hope for.

In the meantime – including tonight – Arteta will need to find alternative solutions to what he admitted was a ‘massive’ blow for us. Martin is our Captain and leader and the creative spark in the team, who also forces the high and intensive press on many occasions, so we’ll have to find an alternative way of playing for the foreseeable future. And I don’t see it replicating the NLD approach each week either. That worked for that specific opponent and so even for tonight I don’t see us trying to do the same thing; in fact, I think even Arteta didn’t want us doing what we did against The Scum the whole time and I think he even referenced it post-game on Sunday too.

So, how might we line up tonight then?

I think we’ll see a few changes from Sunday as I suspect Arteta will be mindful that he won’t be able to play the same XI for all three games, so I am thinking he might go:

Raya

White   –   Saliba   –   Gabriel   –   Calafiori

Partey

Havertz   –   Rice

Saka   –   Jesus   –   Trossard

Here’s my thinking on that line up:

1. Calafiori has trained, he looks fit, he’s back in Italy and he knows Atalanta well enough. He will also be bang up for this game to impress and I also suspect that Arteta will want to use Timber as our left back on Sunday and given he is still coming back from that ACL, it might be a risk to play him tonight and then have him at 100% on Sunday against 115 Charges FC.
2. Jorginho and Partey was a tough call here, but I just have a feeling that these two are time-sharing their games in the next couple. Playing both given they are in their 30s is a risk because I think Arteta will be mindful that he will want both available for each match, so I have a gut feeling we might get a 60/30 or 70/20 from one tonight, then the reverse on Sunday. Arteta does like to play Jorginho in those big Premier League matches, but he will also be thinking about Jorginho back in Italy and wanting to impress. In the end, I think Arteta will probably go for Partey because he’ll see City as the bigger game of the two.
3. I know there has been some talk about Nwaneri starting, he looked very composed on Sunday when coming on for Saka, but Havertz is such an ever-present that I just can’t help but feel that he will opt for him instead. Of course he could go Nwaneri in Odegaard’s position and then Havertz up top, but I feel like getting Jesus on Sunday just gone was the first step to giving him minutes, plus we know about Gabriel Jesus’s Champions League record – he loves it. Hence why I think Havertz will drop in and Jesus will come in up top.
4. I’ve opted for Trossard ahead of Martinelli because I think Arteta will want Martinelli and his pace to hit City on the counter on Sunday. I also think that Havertz and Trossard rotating tonight could be a good blueprint to disrupt an Atalanta team who like to leave space and rely on 1v1 defending. That too could be a reason to use Martinelli isolated and in a foot race with an Atalanta defender or two, but I just have a feeling it might be Trossard.

I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on Atalanta, so if you want a little more intel you can read the piece on the official site here which goes in to a little more detail. What we do know is that Ademola Lookman is their rapid wide man who they will look to feed, although it looks like this season he has been playing centrally, so it will be interesting to see where they deploy him, because this lad Mateo Retegui has four goals in four games and so he’ll be feeling pretty confident tonight I reckon. They’ll play in the 3-4-2-1 and they will look to press us high, so being able to move the ball quickly around the press could be the difference maker today. Let’s hope we can do it.

I’ll be watching from the sofa tonight with hope and expectation. Let’s hope we can continue our winning ways because the confidence of three points tonight could be massive – especially when you think what is in store at the weekend.

Have a good one folks. If you fancy it I’ll be chatting with James on the Same Old Arsenal pod straight after the game here.

Otherwise, I’ll be back tomorrow for a debrief. Catch you then.

So it could be another player out injured or suspended for Sunday and if any more players come back broken it’s going to feel like an even bigger task than it already is. So all eyes tonight and tomorrow will be on:

• Saliba against Belgium (Trossard wasn’t selected so we know he won’t play)
• Odegaard against Austria
• Saka and Rice against Finland
• Partey against Niger
• Timber and Havertz for The Netherlands against Germany
• Zinchenko against Czech Republic

We know Raya played last night so thankfully he’ll be heading home today but there are still a fair few players from the first team who we have to sweat over, with Big Gabby also playing the furthest away on Wednesday in the early hours of the morning, which means he probably won’t get back until Thursday during the day some time, so he’ll have Friday in training and Saturday before the North London Derby. So Arteta will honestly be in a position where he’ll do his Friday press conference before one of the biggest games of the season and he won’t really know the availability of his whole team until Friday afternoon. Which is absolutely crazy.

He will have had most of them back for a day or two, thankfully, but the fact he can’t really do full planning for such a game until around 48 hours before it starts is completely bonkers to me.

Anyway, focus for us Arsenal fans will already be turning towards the big showdown on Sunday and I started my preparations already by starting to go in to enemy territory and find out what some of their lot are saying and in the most part they’re quite bullish about the game. I guess it’s early in the season, they’re seeing that we have one or two players out, plus they’re at home, so I can understand their optimism. We haven’t clicked fully yet either and whilst you look at their results from a zoomed out perspective it looks lovely, they have apparently been playing well – they just haven’t taken their chances. I’m up in Northumberland at the moment and the Management’s uncle and I (Newcastle fan) were talking about the win they got against that ‘orrible lot along the Seven Sisters Road and he basically said Newcastle scored with just a couple of chances against the run of play. The Scum left themselves open, but they created a lot of chances. They had no Richarlison or Solanke either and I think Solanke will be back by then at least, so they’ll have more presence in attack than they did against the Geordies, which is something Arteta will have to prep for. As the week unfolds we can start to look at how the game might go, but yesterday and this morning I wanted to check out the ‘vibes’ and as expected it’s tense on their side as much as it is on ours. Let’s see how everyone is feeling on Friday, Saturday and then Sunday morning though, eh?

A final side note for today, which is that Rob Holding is now training away from the Palace team and looks like his football career is on the brink of collapse. He left us for £1million just over a year ago and at the time I thought it was a bit low. He was a model pro, he’d played a ton of games for The Arsenal and I thought he’d get plenty of game time at Palace, but injuries and not getting on with the current boss appears to have scuppered any hopes of forging a career with the Eagles and he’s now training alone, as confirmed by the Palace boss Glasner recently. He’s also apparently deleted all record of Palace from his social media profiles and so I guess that’s another sign of a complete breakdown between manager and player. It will be a sad and acrimonious end for a player who has never struck me as a trouble maker. He was nowhere near good enough for us towards the end of his time at the club, but he still feels like a lower-end Premier League defender and at 28 years old he should still have a career ahead of him. Hopefully he gets that stuff sorted and he can find a club in January but it looks like he’s going to have a tough few months just watching on and waiting for his career to get jump started again somewhere else. Shame.

A final final shout out to the lasies, who also beat Rosenberg to progress to the next round of Champions League qualifying. Big up to them.

Right, that’ll do me for the day methinks. Back tomorrow with hopes of clean bills of health from our players who are playing in these pointless international games this evening. Catch you then.

We’ve all done a fair bit of talking about him online and so I’m not sure what more there is to say of our latest recruit, but it’s a deal that has us looking very good defensively and I enjoyed the way the club announced it. It was the same last season when they showed a training session and then the camera panned around to Declan Rice in the crowd, with the Arsenal media team going for ‘part II’ yesterday with Riccardo.

He said all the right things, that’s for sure, and I have loved hearing some of the sound it’s from the player and manager. The first one I saw was them embracing and him saying “is this real?” It is becoming quite clear that this kid really wanted to join The Arsenal and whilst we can all be proud of how big we are as a club, let’s be honest here, what Mikel has built has a big bearing on how players view Arsenal right now. We are an employer of choice; players see the direction of travel under Arteta and they want to be a part of the ‘project’. By all rights Calafiori doesn’t have a connection to London (that I know of), he doesn’t have family here, he didn’t grow up supporting The Arsenal, but by the sounds of it he rejected Italian, Spanish and other clubs to join us. And Arteta referenced that when speaking about him too and when they first spoke it was Calafiori who apparently said something along the lines of “when you are ready, let me know, I will pack my bags”. I bet Mikel would have loved that.

This doesn’t sound like a guy coming for a pay day in the Premier League. This sounds like a young, impressive, football player, wanting to challenge himself at the highest level. This sounds like a guy who is serious about his craft and as we know from the All or Nothing documentary from a few years ago, these are the types of people Arteta likes. When you are competing at the highest elite level in sport, you have to be a bit of a mentality monster and I know it’s only words at this stage, but this kid sounds like he has a bit of that.

Quite how Arteta fits all of these defensive puzzle pieces together remains to be seen, but the signs were there in his interview that I saw yesterday, in which he reference Saliba playing every Premier League game and how it isn’t really sustainable. I think Mikel is looking to do more rotation this coming season and Calafiori is an example of that. And I think we also have to hand out some kudos to Mikel as well, because he learns and evolves all of the time. Two season’s ago accusations (tentative ones, mind, because it’s not as if there were raging mobs on the streets) were labelled at Mikel that he didn’t seem to be able to impact games from the bench. I’ve heard a few people talk about how his subs were sometimes a little late, that they didn’t always have the impact you’d hope a manager could do, etc. But last season I thought he was much improved in that facet of his game. But last season’s questions that arose were around not rotating enough. Now we find ourselves stockpiling in certain positions and I think it’s just another example of how Mikel is learning, adapting, analysing where he could make his own improvements, then trying to act on this.

We look like a serious outlet now. We have a strong and deep defence. Midfield still needs some work but the noises of Mikel Merino and that possible arrival (more from yesterday’s blog where I gave some thoughts on that possible arrival here) will probably start to hot up now, whilst our attack is pretty stocked at the moment you have to say. Martinelli, Trossard, Gabriel Jesus looking good, Havertz, Saka give us some quality. We will probably need one more if Eddie and Reiss depart, but I guess that is more to do with exits rather than a big hole that needs to be filled. Ideally you want to shift them on and buy one wide forward who can operate across the front three to cover Saka if needed, but Gabriel Jesus did that against City so even if the season started tomorrow, it feels like we have cover. So I’m not massively stressed about our attacking options.

Instead, I am excited, because this team is taking shape, the squad is looking good, plus I haven’t even mentioned the likes of Nwaneri who will be hopeful of getting minutes too. It’s an exciting time to be an Arsenal fan. Let’s hope that excitement can continue in to the summer and for the first very tough half-a-dozen games or so. 

The other news that emerged yesterday was around ESR’s exit and whilst some are saying that £27million plus £7million in add on’s is a decent deal, that feels on the light side to me. It wasn’t that long ago that Villa were after him for around £40million. I’ve seen some suggest that it’s because he can’t stay fit, but for large chunks of last season he was, in fact, fit and ready to play. Arteta just didn’t feel he could use him for whatever reason. If he maintains that fitness then Fulham will have got themselves a bit of a steal in my opinion, a bit like they did by getting Bernd Leno for just £4million. This ESR deal is pure profit to be banked, that’s good, but it doesn’t 100% exonerate Edu on the charge of not being able to recoup decent fees for players. During a summer in which we’re seeing deals for some players going at £40million who have barely played any Premier League football, this just feels a little like we’ve caved. Not by a lot – I would have said something like £34million with add on’s would have been market value – but every little helps these days, doesn’t it?

Let’s wait until that’s confirmed though before we can say our farewells and thank you to a Hale Ender who will always be thought of fondly at The Arsenal.

Until then, catch you tomorrow.

It’ll no doubt be a Riccardo Calafiori-infused week for us ahead of the Liverpool game and I’m sure that no sooner have I hit ‘publish on today’s ramblings, that they club will have announced his arrival. I guess it doesn’t matter too much; we’ve said all there is to say about this guy and we know all there is to know after the deal has taken what feels like an eternity. The first time we all heard about it was during the Euro’s which was almost a month ago, but in summer transfer terms that’s almost an eternity. Then the focus will turn to the next shiny thing, another one which we’re all familiar with which will be Mikel Merino. €20million for a Spanish international seems like pretty good business to me, but I’m just not sure how much he ‘moves the needle’ as they say. By all accounts he looks like a decent player, he wins duels, he scores some goals, but he’s not a progressive passer and he’s just come off a peak season in which he played 45+ matches. He wouldn’t get that at The Arsenal and so I’m wondering what our expectations of him as a fan would be?

For me he doesn’t massively excite me, if I’m honest. I was recently up in the North East with The Management’s family and I got chatting to her uncle, who is a Newcastle fan, where Merino spent a season. Apparently he was bought by Rafa in the season that Benitez then left the club, so was in limbo and that’s why he was eventually sold the following summer. He didn’t seem to have anything bad to say about him, he was a decent player, tidy on the ball, but it hardly got me out of my seat with excitement. The fee is such that I guess it doesn’t really matter if it works or not, but if Merino is coming in to replace the vacant spot that Smith Rowe is about to leave, I’m not sure how much of a massive upgrade that really is.

But perhaps that’s because I have my Hale End rose-tinted specs on; Smith Rowe is much loved by the fans, but he’s also one of those players who is easy on the eye. He’s good running with the ball at his feet, he does score goals, plus we all have a relationship with him because he has played for us for years. Merino comes in with many of us fans not knowing a massive amount about him and with expectations of filling the Smith Rowe void. The reality is that he’ll be a different type of player to Smith Rowe and we’ll all have to get used to that. By the sounds of it he’s an off-the-ball merchant, which was one of the failings in ESRs game and probably why he didn’t get as many minutes. Merino wins balls and is good off the ball, he feels like your archetypal Arteta midfielder that he loves and wants to see in his team.

To be fair what we want from our left eight is somebody who knits the play, who wins duels, who bags a few goals, but doesn’t have to get in to double figures. If Merino came in, scored five or six goals in the season, did a passable job of Granit Xhaka, we’d probably all be reasonably satisfied. But for some reason, I don’t know why, I am just not 100% sold on this as a potential signing. It doesn’t feel very sexy to me. But I have to admit neither did Havertz. In fact, I was dead against it right up until it became obvious that it was happening, so I’d have to support him. But last summer I was frustrated that we were signing a player who when deployed as a striker didn’t score goals, then when deployed as a midfielder didn’t really seem to create goals. What we all know now is how Kai has been for us in so many different parts of his game that are suited to our style of play. And besides, he ended up bagging 14 goals last season anyway, so he did his job in the scoring stakes too.

So I’m open to the idea of Merino coming in and being flipping good.

Other than that there isn’t tonnes of stuff going on for this Monday morning musing. I’ve seen some noises about how Forest want Ramsdale on loan for the season without any obligation to buy, but Arsenal should be scoffing at that. That feels very much like a WhatsApp message where you get the two blue ticks, you know the other person has read the message, but they aren’t responding. We’ve blue ticked them but unless they’re going to come back by saying they’ll give us £10million loan fee as well as pay his wages for the year, then maybe it’s worth Arsenal countenancing it. But unless they do something special with their loan offer, I think we should reject out of hand.

That’s it for today I think. Let’s see what comes out in the wash re: Calafiori today and then maybe either today or tomorrow we’ll get some noises about his signing just before the Liverpool game on Wednesday. It’s a beautiful day today so I’ll be looking to spend some of it outside I think. Have yourselves a good one, whatever you’re doing, and I’ll be back tomorrow. Laters.

But from a footballing point of view it looked like it was a decent enough outing. Apparently Fabio Vieira played well, Karl Hein did a decent job with some fine saves (I’ve literally only just read about) and when you look at the timings of the subs there was a good outing for a decent chunk of the first teamers, with White, Timber, Partey, Vieira, Nkwtiah and Nelson all getting a run out for an hour. Then for 30 minutes there was 30+ minutes for Kiwior, Trossard, Gabriel Jesus, Zinchenko and Jorginho. So we’re underway with this pre season in earnest and the next game or two will be about finding that team rhythm and dynamic and getting back in the swing of things, building those ‘automatisms’ in prep of the start of the proper stuff in three week’s time against Wolves at home.

One notable absence from the field, which would have had a few of us a little bemused had an Ornbomb not landed at around 12.30am last night before the game started, was Emile Smith Rowe. Apparently Fulham are close to a deal that will see him join for £35million, plus add-ons, plus a release clause and having shafted us a little on the Bernd Leno transfer a few season’s ago (£4million was peanuts for a guy with his experience and ability), Fulham have decided against trying to lowball us this time and are paying what seems to be more ESR’s market value.

£35million plus £5million in add on’s (you’d expect it maybe is a mixture of staying in the league, getting in to Europe, etc) seems like a very fair deal to me. I don’t know many Arsenal fans who are desperate for him to leave given how important he was at a time in which Mikel Arteta needed a saviour in his second season at the club. We all have a lot of love for Emile and as Arsenal fans we’re all conditioned to being amateur accountants these days, so getting a good deal for a good player softens the blow, but he’s still one of ours and he’s still a talented player. But he needs to play, he needs to be given the opportunity to be the ‘main man’ and he needs to stay fit. That will be one of his biggest challenges, because every time it’s felt like he’s getting back in to form, he’s suddenly picked up a knock that has halted his progression in the team as a regular.

Fulham are getting a good player. He could be a great player. Hopefully their fans will love him as much as we do, but that will come if he can get a run of games together and show why he was that saviour from that Chelsea game all those years ago, which then helped get us out of the doldrums and on our way upwards.

So yeah, good money for Arsenal, good player for Fulham, player gets the game time he has been craving for a while now.

As for us, we move on and that will be with Calafiori, expected to do his medical in the US this week, but there will also need to be a hole filled in the middle of the park. Fabio Vieira scored last night and I’ve seen a clip of him and Mikel in deep conversation at some stage in the game that happened this morning, so perhaps now Mikel is going to be asking Vieira to show his stuff. There is a player in there, I’ve always thought that, but now he has to step up and prove it. And perhaps like Emile, he needs to do that by having a good pre season and avoiding injury for the whole season. If that happens, with ESR out of the picture, Mikel will I’ve got no doubt be looking at Vieira to show more and deliver more on the pitch than we got last season. Think the Fulham home game from last season, but that happening at least half a dozen times during course of the season coming up. In that Fulham game he game on and turned the momentum of the match around, winning a penalty and also getting an assist. We need more of that, please, Fabio.

If Fabio Vieira is the attacking and creative replacement for Smith Rowe, then you’d expect Arsenal to pull the trigger on Mikel Merino from Sociedad as soon as the ESR Fulham deal goes through. That is rumoured to be around £20million and if that happens then the question is where will he play. Is he a six or an eight? He wins a lot of fuels, which makes you think he’ll be a defensive midfielder if you don’t look further beyond surface metrics like that, but if you look at his heatmap here, that looks like he’ll be operating in the left eight role, so that’s interesting. Interesting because I think we’re going to see Rice there more often than not so it would appear that Merino would be an understudy. That’s fine, but it still leaves the question in the six role. If we’re going with Partey and Jorginho I have my reservations. Two older players, one of which doesn’t seem like he can stay fit at all any more, the other of which is getting in to his mid-30s. Is that enough?

I’m not sure. You can of course argue that should we need to, Rice can drop in to the six and Merino as the left eight, so perhaps that makes more sense. Perhaps I’m just overly worrying where I really shouldn’t. We’ll just have to see what shakes out as the transfer dominos for ins and outs at The Arsenal start to fall down.

Right, that’s yer lot for today. Enjoy your Thursday and I’ll be back tomorrow with some more musings on all things The Arsenal.

Have a good’un.

That’s what it feels like with this Calafiori deal, eh? Last night another couple of journalists dropping the “here we go!” soundbites, in an eagerness to be the ‘first past the post’ in declaring a transfer confirmed. At this stage however, I’m not sure how much kudos it actually garners, because most of us Arsenal fans know it’s basically done and we’re just waiting for the pics and interview to come through on the official site. I wonder if Jorginho will be there for him to be his translator as well, if he doesn’t speak English? Perhaps he does; so many mainland European schools do a better job than in this country, where we speak a language so easily recognisable and used so much across the world, that it becomes a bit of a de facto second language to use for so many non-native English people. But regardless of that, having a fellow Italian international – even if it’s just for this season (Jorginho’s contract expires at the end of the season in June next year) – will, I think, help our young Italian to acclimatise himself. Tomiyasu too will probably speak some, given that he is treading a similar path to our Japanese international (and whom I touched on maybe a slight concern or two I had in the blog a couple of days ago).

His arrival will inevitably spearhead chatter about who could potentially exit, with a couple of candidates supposedly Zinchenko or Kiwior, but it feels to me as though Kiwior might be the one more likely to be moved on. As of this morning, Fabrizio Romano is talking about how there hasn’t been any contact from other clubs for Kiwior, but that is probably natural. Arsenal will want Calafiori in the building before they entertain any deal, but I expect there are some noises happening in the shadows about finding him a home. It’s a shame really because I’ve always thought he was a good player; never really given much chance to play in his natural centre back role, other than a few Europa League games, then he was ostensibly turned in to a left back when we had Zinchenko, Timber and Tomiyasu all unavailable and I thought he coped quite well. Against 75% of the teams in the Premier League he probably does a good job in at left back, but it was that game against Bayern at the Emirates which probably didn’t help his long term future and given he still has a pretty good reputation in Italy, you’d expect he just wants to get some game time and be playing a bit more.

The noises – if you believe Romano – are that Arsenal only want a permanent or loan with obligation deal, which makes sense, but it’ll be interesting to see what clubs think of when coming to Arsenal with a proposal. We signed him for £20million, I wouldn’t say his value has tanked at all, plus he still has three years left on his existing deal. Arsenal do, in this instance, hold a pretty decent hand, I’d say. We all know TransferMarkt isn’t the be-all-and-end-all when it comes to transfer valuations, but sometimes it feels like they’re pretty close on their estimations and they put his value at €30million. To me that feels pretty reasonable, if I’m honest, because he’s shown versatility by developing his left back game, he’s still a young player, he hasn’t been injured much at all, so if we were to get what is just over £25million for the player, then I think Arsenal would probably take that, to be honest. It doesn’t really matter how that is split, so if a club wants to do a £10million loan fee and £15million next summer, I suspect Arsenal would probably be fine with that. If the noises of the likes of Eddie and Reiss end up coming true, then there will be up front cash banked for PSR and if you’re looking for a decent sized loan fee for Kiwior then it probably won’t be a problem. There’s the Smith Rowe stuff but Charles Watts’ comments on his channel (re-purposed in text on Twitter here) shows that Arsenal are in what you’d probably say is the perfect position regarding any deal there. If a club comes in and blows us away with a good offerm then fine, but I’ve heard a couple of people say that the club aren’t overly enamoured by the number eight market right now, so if there’s nobody out there they fancy and they’re happy to have ESR as a rotation option, why should they sell for anything other than a really chunky fee?

The only other stuff I’ve seen knocking around this morning revolves around pictures of the players in the gym doing weights. And blow me, it shows you how much more physically impressive they are than the average man. I have some weights at home and I can get through a fair amount of 15kg and 20kg dumbbells when I do my bench pressing at home, but Ben White has 40kg on each arm and I think it was Jurrien Timber I saw pushing up 60kg dumbbells!. If you ever want to make yourself feel physically inferior, go watch a video of Premier League footballers working out, that’ll certainly bring you down to earth!

Right, that’s me done for the day I think, so I’ll take my leave and then give you your day to do whatever it is you do best.

Catch you tomorrow peeps.

Poor ol’ Tomi, eh? Takehiro is not on tour with the rest of the squad over the next week and a bit because of a knee problem that some of the Arsenal journo’s on the beat are saying relates to his knee. It means that he’ll have two-to-three weeks in which he won’t be training and at this stage of pre-season that’s a massive blow. If he picks up that knock two weeks ago then he’s probably going to be fine for the start of the season, but at this stage, if it’s two weeks in which he isn’t able to train, you’re looking at the week commencing 5th August in which he’s back into training. If we’re assuming that he’d need a minimum of a couple of weeks after that before he’s properly fighting fit, then you’re talking about the home game for Wolves that he could be named in the squad.

It was only on Friday that I talked about the impact of a pre-season that is truncated and how that last season impacted Gabriel Jesus, potentially for his whole campaign last year, so to get this news for Tomi doesn’t feel great. But we can’t say it is out of the blue. Look at this for an injury record. He’s 25 year’s old and every season for the last five season’s he’s missed at least ten games and at least 50 days absent for his club and national side. Unfortunately for him – and for us – I think we just have to accept that he is an injury prone player and that will never change. We’re going to be looking at an Abou Diaby-style guy by the time his contract expires in a couple of year’s and you can absolutely understand why the club only gave him an additional one year additional to his deal last season.

It’s a real shame because I’m sure you, like me, absolutely love him when he is playing and fit. He’s versatile, he’s strong, he’s good in the air, has good pace and is a duel monster when available. But that’s the biggest problem of all; he just isn’t always available. I’m sure you – like me – have looked at the Calafiori deal and wondered what the situation will be with all of the players in that left back position. But it feels like we’ve stockpiled in that position because we can’t seem to have one guy robust enough to play regularly. KT is the same and he was also confirmed out, but Zinchenko too is injured a lot, plus Tomiyasu as we’ve talked about above and although I thought Kiwior did a stand-up job filling in at left back during the run in last season, we all know it didn’t quite feel like a natural fit.

The Calafiori deal feels like it is Arteta looking to mitigate having to rely on Kiwior again for a big chunk of the season, but he’s also going to have to show that he can be robust enough for the physical demands of the Premier League. Looking at his injury record we are going to have to be very mindful of his availability. Last season he missed just two games, but at 22 year’s old he’s already missed over 150 games for the clubs he’s played for and the season before last it was 16 games, the season before that it was 20 games and the season before that it was 33 games. The hope is that his body has developed enough to be at a stage where he can stay fit like he did last season at Bologna, but I’ll remind you wonderful people of the path that Tomiyasu had trodden before he signed him from the same club:

• 2020/21 season it was 10 games missed (he was 21)
• 2019/20 season it was 12 games missed (he was 20)

Tomiyasu signed for us at a very similar age to Calafiori and I just have this worrying feeling that we might see the same from Calafiori. I hope not though.

One way of looking at it could be another body means the gap could be plugged, but we all know what happens in that situation; it isn’t a job share situation because usually those players all get injured at the same time.

And having our best players fit for most of the season has been a big reason as to how and why we’ve been able to compete at the top of the league for the last two seasons. It’s the reason why I hope – and expect – the current Arsenal transfer team to have done a heck of a lot of due diligence on him and that they know that if we are shelling out £42million of him, he’s going to be fit more than not.

Other than that all eyes start to look Stateside; and not because of Biden but because the team are up against Bournemouth on Wednesday night. It’s early hours of the morning UK time so I probably won’t bother watching, but it’ll be interesting to see how some of the young players get on and whether there are any of those young lads on tour who might have a bit of an impressive breakthrough. It would be nice to see somebody like Ethan Nwaneri get his chance and grasp it with both hands; we’ve all seen flashes of what looks like a very impressive player last season and I think a few are thinking that he might get more games like the League Cup and maybe early rounds of the FA Cup to see what he can do in the first team. The first team squad seem to be quite impressed by him and Arteta even joked that they were whispering behind him for the West Ham game to get him on when we were a few goals up. That whispering will only get louder if he can strut his stuff in the US over the next couple of weeks. We shall see what this kid can do.

Right, I’ll be off for today, as the wife has her grandmother’s funeral so I’ll be at that.

Catch you all tomorrow.

I wonder if other teams are as critical of their national side as the English? Maybe. I mean after that laboured win yesterday the French press might be asking some questions, but I guess the difference is that at least they looked decent in points, as opposed to the shambles that is the England side under Southgate. Honestly, I know I’m late to the party here (because of the party in Somerset, mind), but that England performance was woeful, disjointed and a bit of a mess. Southgate has a concentrated period of time to get things prepared for international tournaments. There are friendlies, there are qualifiers, there are options you have to try different things in case the worst case happens and you lose players to injury before major tournaments. Mitigate risk, factor in the unexpected, be as prepared as you can.

In March England played Brazil. This was the team line up:

Pickford

Walker   –   Stones   –   Maguire   –   Chilwell

Foden   –   Rice   –   Bellingham

Gallagher   –   Watkins   –   Gordon

Tell me what you can learn from that side? I get that it’s Brazil, but Southgate shouldn’t give a monkey’s, because he was three months away from the Euro’s and he should have been experimenting. He should have been experimenting a year away from the Euro’s, when it comes to Friendlies. But instead he just played his faves in meaningless games and here we are with him bemoaning not having a natural left back at the competition, or that we miss Kalvin Phillips.

Gareth, you’re an excuse maker, and not a very good one. This is on you.

Anyway, at least the transfer window is now open, so we can officially start to get hyper-sensitive to every single rumour that comes out. Apparently we’ve triggered Raya’s signing with Brentford, which is no surprise, but what is a surprise (well, to me, anyway), is that we’re interested in this Italian lad from Bologna Riccardo Calafiori, who apparently would prefer to go to Juve but Bologna don’t like Juve, so they’re looking for suitors overseas. I get that the kid wants Juve though; they’re the perennial winners in the Serie A and even when they don’t win, usually they go back and get close within a year or two and if you’re Italian then that kind of kudos is big. They haven’t won it for four years, as it’s been Inter, Napoli, Milan and Inter since Juve last won it, but given their record is of winning it 30 times where Inter’s is 20 times, it shows you that eventually they do end up getting it right.

I’m also not sure on Italians adapting to the Premier League, although there have of course been some that are a roaring success, but they’ve tended to be from the 90s and the influx we had. Just look at this list voted by fans of the ‘best’ Italians in the Premier League era. Some of you might be arguing Jorginho for us shows it can be done, but let’s be honest, he’s Brazilian that decided to declare for Italy. He moved to Italy at 15 years old so I don’t think that quite counts – he had his grounding as a Brazilian (even if he’s not really the flare player we come to expect of Brazilians).

What about defenders though? After all, Italians are known for their love of the art of defending, right? I had a Google. I’ve found Ogbonna at West Ham, who’s alright, I guess. Marco Materazzi was at Everton, but that was in his formative years before moving back to Italy after one year and doing the business for Inter. This article is a bit old but still they’re choosing Ogbonna as one of the ‘best of all time’ Italian defenders in the Premier League, so I’m thinking this might be a bit of a stretch to get this Bologna kid and expect him to bang for The Arsenal.

Does that mean I will be devastated when he goes to Man City and becomes they’re greatest ever player? I prefer not to speak…

Anyway, I’ve eeked that rambling on as much as I can, so I think I’ll put a pin in today’s utterings. There’s a couple more games in the Round of 16 tonight and I think most people are thinking it’ll be The Netherlands and Austria who will go through to the next round. The Netherlands have flattered to deceive but the Austrian’s have looked pretty good, so I am thinking we’ll see those two sides face off on Saturday when the quarter final is shown in Berlin on Saturday night. By that time we’ll know if England have progressed and we’ll have also have seen what looks like an interesting evening with Spain against Germany and Portugal against France on Friday – that promises to be intriguing.

I’m trying to sort out a pod for tomorrow so will also keep you posted if that goes ahead. But until tomorrow, have a good one.