Except two times in my life. The first was when the Super League announcement came and it was depresssing to see that Arsenal were willing to go down that US model route and announce they would break away from the Premier League and other competitions. That hit me and I had a rage and sadness about the way in which my club had acted.

The second was yesterday when, after we’d just released Thomas Partey from his contract, he was officially charged with five counts of rape and one count of sexual assault. And today I am sad. Firstly, I’m sad for the women who are caught up in this, because they have had to sit on this for literal years before it became public. Lord knows what they have been through and whilst I don’t know them, follow them or haven’t seen too much about them, I think I’ve seen some stories about how they have been abused online because of this situation. I’m sorry but that is utterly inexcusable. To abuse somebody because they have been wronged and you have an affinity with the predator of this situation? Unacceptable to me. They will get their day in court and they will be able to tell their side of the story and that is important. We are talking about one of the most heinous crimes you can get; a violation of somebody that no human being should have to go through. Of course at this stage we have to say that these are merely allegations and Partey – via his lawyer – has said he welcomes the opportunity to finally clear his name.

That last bit tells its own story – finally. So basically this is an acknowledgement that everyone knew this existed. Which also means the club knew about this for a long time. Yet no action was taken. Worse than that, Partey has played an integral role in the back end of this season and that in itself is bad enough. I was talking about this yesterday with the wife and we both agreed that there would – and should – have been things Arsenal could have done. They could have suspended him pending the conclusion of this situation. They could have sacked him outright. They could have told the world he was injured. There’s lots of ways they could have handled this. Yet it was swept under the carpet and then cynically it has all come out now that he has departed the club. I’m sure you’ve thought this as well, but I also think about how there were noises that the club wanted to renew his contract! Knowing what they will have known, how on earth they could have even remotely entertained that idea is utterly baffling and really quite tragic to think about. The ‘look the other way’ nature of this leaves a blemish on Arsenal’s history and I hope there are some serious questions being asked about how thie should have been handled. More importantly, that this never happens again.

I am also slightly concerned that it wasn’t until he was released that this process has been made public. Why is that? I really hope it isn’t because he is a famous and high profile person. Again, I do not know the in’s and out’s of this situation, we all have to be careful how we talk about what is a very serious crime, but the timing of this announcement has left me with a knot in my stomach because I immediately start to think about sinister reasons behind it all coming out now as opposed to previously.

I don’t really want to comment too much more on this, because of the sensitive nature, but let’s just say it’s not a great day to be an Arsenal fan.

I wanted to say a few final words about Tomiyasu though, as a way of looking at a positive contribution to the club. I remember when we signed him – I was in Portugal and I had Sky Sports News on in the hotel room. The wife was like “are we going down to the pool now?” and I made her wait five minutes so I could read and watch all of the breaking news on it. His first season was immense at right back but that first injury he got set the sad tone for his Arsenal career: Blighted by injuries and unable to put together any kind of rhythm. It’s testament to the man himself that, despite that, the club offered him an extension last summer. But it said a lot that it was just one year with an additional one year, so that he could prove his fitness, which sadly he has not done and now he’s exited the club. I believe he still has four or five months of rehab left so my hope is that the club still offer him their facilities. Tomi, you were a fine player and by the sounds of it a lovely person, so I don’t think there’s a single Arsenal fan out there who wouldn’t wish you the best of luck.

Right, I’m wrapping this up for today, with the hope that we have some good news at some point.

Catch you tomorrow.

I wrote it on social media and that’s a commitment to print in this day and age, but on Friday last week I said that every time I go to Portugal over the summer, we sign somebody. I was here when we signed Rice, I was sat at my folks’ gaff when we announced Fabio Vieira, I was Algarve-stationed when the Tomiyasu deal happened. I could even go far back enough to tell you that we got Mertesacker when I was in Tavira that August all those years back. So I’ve been confident that we’ll get something over the line.

If I’m honest, however, I thought it would be Kepa. That deal is basically done and unlike Zubimendi’s deal being delayed at the request of Sociedad, Chelsea have no real issues about us announcing it. So I thought that would be the ‘low-hanging fruit’ transfer that would go through. So to see that it’ll be another player and one from completely left-field, I’m kind of glad that my powers remain in tact.

The player himself is a smart move for the club; they clearly wanted to tie Partey down for at least one more year, but the Ghanaian wants more money and a longer-term deal by the sounds of it. Arsenal are right to walk away. His injury record is such that you know that no sooner would the ink be dry on that contract, that he’d be treatment table bound, so finding somebody else to plug the whole in the squad is a sensible move.

And this move feels very Jorginho-like to me. experienced, good pro, has picked up a few knocks this season and last season but his overall injury record is much better than Partey’s has been over the last five years. He will know his place as the back up to Zubimendi and that won’t rock the boat. At 31-years-of-age he brings a wealth of experience and he is ‘prem ready’, but not only that, he’s the captain of Brentford at the moment. So on the pitch we have somebody who is a leader and will bring that experience to the table. We’ve just lost two 30-somethings from our squad and Norgaard brings that maturity and experience to what is still a relatively young squad overall. We may not have liked the deal, but Sterling was apparently fantastic for the younger players. Jorginho was too, so we have been missing some of that older head wisdom that this signing fills.

He’s also not going to break the bank on wages. The rumours are that he’s on roughly £40k-per-week. Arsenal will clearly give him a bump and so let’s just say we offer him a deal like Jorginho’s; that’s going to be two years long and let’s just call it something like £60k. That is £3.1million a year. So if Brentford get £11million they have a fair bit of cash for a 31-year-old that they can re-invest. The player gets a bump up in salary, the chance to get minutes in a team towards the top of the league who are also in the Champions League that he will inevitably play in. And Arsenal pay £17.2million over a two year deal, with probably the option to activate and additional ‘plus one’ on the contract length. If you think that Partey probably wanted a bump on his £200k-per-week to, say, £250k-per-week, then you can see why this is a better deal for all involved. £250k-per-week is £13million a year. If Arsenal caved and gave him a two year deal, you’re sinking in £26million into a player whose off-the-field stuff leaves an unpalatable taste in the metaphorical mouth, but who on the pitch is not going to suddenly become indestructible. It would have been a bad deal for everyone except Partey. The Norgaard deal represents the total opposite.

From a player perspective, this will obviously not be the same as a Partey or a Jorginho-type signing. Norgaard is your more traditional defensive midfielder; he’ll be the one to anchor the base of midfield and break up play. He won’t be seen as a progressive passer, but maybe that’s just because he wasn’t asked to do that under Frank? I for one didn’t think Jorginho would be as progressive a passer as he turned out to be and my Chelsea workmate told me he’s a bit of a crab-sideways passer. That’s not what we saw and maybe Norgaard – when given more licence to be forward-thinking in a side who dominates the ball for most of their games – maybe we might see him be more progressive?

We don’t know, but we do know that this deal is progressing rapidly and that appears to be the clubs first move into the market. Maybe that’s the one that starts the ball rolling on our business this summer. I think we all have to hope so.

Still, at least it gives me the opportunity to be hysterical about tomorrow, so there is that.

Of course there is the ‘leaks’ that you get access to and I’ve seen some of those. By the time you read this you’ll already know, but it sounds like another tough start for us. I’ll elaborate with thoughts tomorrow, but United away on the opening day won’t be easy – they won’t be bogged down by the poor season last season, we have a terrible record there historically (one win in the league going back about 15 years I think – will double check for tomorrow), so it’s not one to be taking for granted. Liverpool away a couple of games later and as Charlie who I follow on Twitter said – if you think these fixtures are random then you’re a silly Billy (or word to that effect).

So in lieu of me being able to talk about fixtures, shall we delve back into the murky waters of transfer tittle-tattle?

Thomas Partey

The noises are that he has rejected a contract offer from The Arsenal because he wants a pay rise. Interesting. I saw a couple of week’s back an offer from Barca might be incoming, but they aren’t in the habit of increasing wage offers to players; they love nothing more than getting players to drop their wages to play for them, so I can’t see that happening. My only thought on this one is that he must be getting some sizeable numbers passed his way from Saudi Arabia. He has said previously he’s happy at The Arsenal, Arteta has said he wants to keep him, but I guess at 31 if somebody comes in and offers you a two-year deal that doubles your money, you take it.

Partey is a contentious player for a number of reasons. I am not going to go into the rumoured off the field stuff, which needs to be a consideration in itself for whether to renew his contract, but on the field too he has never really delivered consistently. That’s because his body constantly let him down and having spent five years at The Arsenal now, the fact that just two of those five have felt like he has been fit an able to contribute, should be cause enough for concern. We can’t have him signed up for another year in the hope he would stay fit, because invariably he’d end up injured for most of it. The club are clearly moving on from him anyway with the expected and impending deal for Zubimendi, but this decision of Partey’s – if it turns out to be true – does mean that we will have to think twice about our options. Sure, Rice can play in the six as well as Zubimendi, but we saw last season that he’s best in that left eight role and whilst Merino can play the left eight, as well as Kai at a push, I think we will still need another body in there for cover. Maybe that’s MLS, but he’s got left back locked down right now, so do we really want to be making our squad smaller by not finding a replacement if Partey leaves at the end of his contract in just over a week’s time? 

I don’t like the sound of the Jorginho may not have been used much last season, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need a body. Is there an experienced centre midfielder who would be happy to play the rotation option, who has Premier League experience, that we could have a look at? I see Doucourre has left Everton, although he’s not as much of a ‘anchor the defence’ player – I also think I heard he might be off to Saudi for big cash too. So maybe a bit more work will be needed to be done by the Arsenal transfer team than they first thought.

Benjamin Sesko

I saw an interesting article on Sky Sports yesterday, talking about how Sesko won’t force a move from Leipzig and that Leipzig want between €80 – €100million for his signature. If it’s getting close to the €100million mark, you can see why Arsenal haven’t pulled the trigger, despite him seemingly being their first choice. If there was a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ in place to let him leave, it does make me wonder why these agents and players do these things. Apparent Gyokeres is pretty pissed off with the Sporting Lisbon president for the same reason. I mean, come on now guys, have you learned nothing from all of football transfer history? Forget the ‘gentleman’s agreement’ and focus on release clauses. And make sure they aren’t astronomical like in Spain. 

If Sesko is desperate for the move, however, then I think he’ll be putting pressure on Leipzig to get it done. And done at a fair market price. According to TranfsferMarkt that value is €70million, which is around £60million. I think if Arsenal go to them with a solid £65million (€76million) then that is more than acceptable. If Leipzig are messing around, then you can understand why Arsenal are still in dialogue with not just Gyokeres, but also Watkins too. And if both clubs keep messing around, it wouldn’t surprise me to hear that the Watkins deal is back on the table this time next week.

But what this does at least give us an insight in to, is that Arsenal aren’t just ‘dallying’. They might be getting messed around by these clubs who keep changing their stance. We just don’t know. All we know is that it’s mid-June and there appears to be little movement and that causes – rightly, because I feel it too – angst amongst the Arsenal fanbase. But perversely, I did find that Sky Sports article giving a crumb of comfort, when I read it. We’ve praised Arsenal for being able to quickly pivot in the past (Mudryk/Trossard, Caicedo/Jorginho) and how they stick to their guns. If they’re doing it now, we can’t criticise too much I don’t think. 

Having said that, come back to me on 1st July and let’s see how I’m feeling.

Right, better get this out the door before the fixtures do come out and make me look like a wally for believing somebody on the internet.

Catch you all tomorrow.

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

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

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

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

He also confirmed that William Saliba is getting better in his press conference yesterday, saying that this game will come too soon for him, but the very fact he used those words suggests to me we might even be able to have him back for this weekend. That’s good news, as is the return of Calafiori and Nwaneri to training, meaning that Arteta’s options are starting to look a little better. Will both start this evening? I suspect it’s unlikely, but if they can get some minutes to bring them back up to speed, it means there is an option for them at the weekend when we travel to Wolves.

So who will start then?

I suspect it won’t be too different to the weekend’s disappointing draw at home to Villa and, having seen Arteta bristle at the comment about playing Kiwior in at centre half (which he’s done before, so I’m not sure I agree with his answer about him being a left-sided centre back), I think we’ll have “once more unto the breach” approach from Arteta this evening, which means Partey once again at right back. It’s a weird one because as I’ve said previously, apart from the two goals I don’t think he played poorly against Villa, but those lapses cost us and the very fact we have such a poor record with him there is more to do with shuffling too many parts of the system around. I’ve mentioned before that I’m sure Arteta has talked about not wanting to disrupt too many positions before (previously it was in relation to Ben White player as a centre half) and yesterday’s press conference he was on the front foot when asked about Partey, saying that Kiwior is a left-sided player playing in a wide right role which doesn’t work. He talked about not having a right footed player against a right winger, which was interesting, but against Villa we had Jacob Ramsey on the left, who is right footed, so I’m not sure that the analysis stacks up. It does sound like there was some method to his thinking and I suspect we’ll still see Partey tonight – I’m just saying that given the choice I think a lot of us would prefer we try some other option.

That could be Rice, but I suspect it won’t be and I don’t think Arteta is too keen on that idea, so I think tonight’s team will look the same as the weekend, perhaps with Sterling coming in for one of the wide positions. Of course Arteta could adopt the thinking of playing Martinelli and Trossard from the start, trying to get to a good lead and then bringing both off in the second half to preserve those tired legs. With Ethan and Sterling both set to be on the bench, that option is there, so we need to be mindful of that opportunity given that Wolves don’t play this midweek and we will need to go up against their tired legs.

As for Zagreb, they currently sit third in the Croatian league behind Rjeka and Hajduk Split, a solid seven points behind them and with a new manager in Fabio Cannavaro. He became manager three week’s ago and is yet to manage his first game for them, with the Croatian league having been on a hiatus since 22nd December. I can’t work out if that’s a good thing in terms of a rhythm and cadence of playing football matches and those famous ‘automatisms’, or whether it’ll end up being a benefit for them because they are fresh. He’s had a solid month to work with them on style of play, tactical approaches, etc, so they will be ready. We need to make sure we are too.

His arrival makes their approach also more difficult to assess and when I look at their team I can’t say there are any players that stand out to me as those that I’m aware of. Their danger man is Kulenovic, who has eight goals in the domestic league and to be fair to him he also has three in the Champions League too. Google Gemini (AI) has him as an atypical number nine and calls him a ‘bruiser’ and ‘relentless and just on that description alone you think it will need to be Gabriel’s job to have him marked this evening. But if he drifts off to Timber – who I think will play in that position – I suspect he’ll be able to handle him too; Jurrien is a little more stocky but we all have seen how the Dutchman is a bit of a hard man too.

What we do need to see is a better overall defensive performance in those individual moments, because I suspect tonight will be a bit like a lot of the games we’ve played recently, i.e. we’ll see most of the ball and our opposition won’t create chances, but they will have one or two openings. We just have to make sure this isn’t another ‘one shot, one goal’ kind of evening.

I’ll be there, I’ll be cheering the lads on and hopefully, I and you will be watching us get back to winning ways. It feels like we need this one after a spluttering and stuttering January so far.

Catch you all tomorrow for a debrief.

Chelsea should also beat a Brentford side not great on their travels, but pretty decent at home and given it’s at Stamford Bridge, they will most likely also occupy second spot come 6pm tonight.

Which means we have to beat Everton. I already think our chances of winning the league are bleak, as I’ve said before, but anything other than 100% success rate for the rest of 2024 means that we will be well and truly out of it.

Arteta faced the press yesterday and he gave us a bit of an update on the status of his squad, in which it seems Gabriel could be the closest one to coming back, which is good news. Having him back to partner Saliba will be big for us, but it also might mean we can do a little bit of shuffling in the full back positions. For example, I’d either put Kiwior in at left back or give Myles Lewis-Skelly another shot after his impressive showing against Monaco. The question will be on whether he can handle the physicality of two top flight games in four days. From a fatigue point of view the question will be whether his lack of experience means that he’ll be challenged potentially and with Palace in the Cup coming up in midweek where I’d expect the expectation is for him to play then, perhaps Arteta gives Kiwior the nod today. He’ll be up against Illman Ndiaye, who whilst I don’t know too much about him, apparently he’s a guy who likes to carry the ball and loves a dribble. He’ll be a tricky winger to go up against. But it feels like if MLS is fit enough, he’ll have the pace to handle it perhaps more than Kiwior, so I think Arteta will certainly be thinking about him as an option today.

Either of those two will enable us to shift Timber over to the right, which feels like it’ll have a bit more balance to it, which I think is what we need. Dwight McNeill is the more established Premier League face on that side and you’d hope Timber has the better of him today if that is the match up. In midfield I think Arteta will persist with Rice in at six and I think it’s the right call; I listened to Charles Watts on his YouTube/Podcast channel yesterday say that he thinks Partey/Timber will share minutes given they are our only right back options with White and Tomiyasu out, which I think makes a lot of sense, so if they are going to job share I’d have Timber in today and then maybe Partey next weekend against Palace. Or hopefully Calafiori can be back by then and it becomes Timber playing more regularly if he has a week off in midweek. Odegaard will assume his normal position, so then the question is on who plays midfield and given Everton are a physical side, I’d be going for Merino.

In the front three it has to be Saka and Havertz, who was rested in midweek, so then we’re talking who is best positioned for the wide left role. I think given how Everton play, which will be to sit in, be compact, try to deny space and launch long balls, it’s a day for the trickery of Trossard rather than the in behind running of Martinelli. We all know what Dyche wants to do; he wants his team to give no quarter in their back line, to sit in their own penalty box and tell us “go on then, break us down”. The numbers bear that out; Everton have the fewest number of touches of the ball in the league, they have the lowest number of touches in their defence, they have played the highest number of long balls and they launch from Jordan Pickford basically every time they get it. Which is why you want Saliba and Gabriel both playing today, because Calvert-Lewin is there to contest aerial dual after aerial dual.

This is the archetypal “don’t let them go one up” game. If Everton go ahead it’s going to be a bloody difficult afternoon as they want to frustrate and make it as scabby as humanly possible. Remember the last game of the season? We battered them from start to finish, Idrissa Gueye scored with pretty much their only attack on 40 minutes and they were set for a frustrating second half. Thankfully Tomiyasu’s equaliser came just a couple of minutes later, but even then it was a second half of Everton taking all the time in the world, gamesmanship, frustration and ‘ahhs’ from the crowd, as we frantically fought for that winner that we eventually got in the 89th minute through Havertz. If Everton go ahead again today, expect more of the same. If we can not start slowly like we’ve been doing at times this season and get ourselves ahead early, the narrative of the game is completely different. This is the sort of game that either is incredibly frustrating throughout, or has Arsenal scoring early and making it (hopefully) a comfortable afternoon. Knowing Dyche, we’re in for the former rather than the latter, unfortunately.

So we as home fans need to be ready for a stinky game. It’s easy enough to say now, but patience may be the virtue we need this afternoon, because it’s all set up for the Toffees to be party-poopers in North London.

There’s not really a lot else you can say about Everton; we know exactly who they are, what they are, what the style is and how we are going to have to play. It might feel a lot like the Fulham game, so let’s just hope there’s a few players with their shooting boots on today.

I’ll be in the ground assuming my normal praying position in Block Five, so let’s hope for a good performance and all three points.

Back tomorrow morning early on the Same Old Arsenal podcast with Amanda if you fancy joining us.

Pre match talk was of how impressive Forest have been this season; they know their strengths and they play to them with rapid forwards, a defensively organised side, who can rope-a-dope you if you aren’t careful. But Arsenal were ready for whatever they could throw at us and you could sense within the opening minutes that we meant business yesterday, even with Arteta rotating the team, which raised a few eyebrows. In came Calafiori, Jorginho, Trossard and Jesus, with Havertz, Partey, Martinelli and Rice all dropping to the bench. I’ll admit that made me slightly more nervous before a ball was kicked because it kind of smelled a little like we were de-prioritising what was on paper a tricky encounter. But if you think about how many games we have coming up, about the fact we have to play Sporting on Tuesday and how busy the schedule gets now, it makes sense in hindsight. Some of these players need to get minutes so they are ready for being called upon and so Arteta made the call and ultimately it worked perfectly.

And within five minutes we thought we were ahead through Timber. The free kick in to the box was good, the ball spilled out towards Timber as it came back across goal and he knocked it in. To be fair, although the VAR took a bit of time and it was a very tight offside, because the lino had his flag up in the stadium I personally didn’t feel like it was a goal taken away from us. Instead it kind of felt like a ‘oh that will be nice if we get it’ rather than the disappointment of it being chalked off if the linesman hadn’t raised the flag.

But the fact we’d opened them up within the opening few minutes was positive and it was a sign of things to come, because we only had to wait until 15 minutes before we were ahead. Step forward that Starboy, who really is something special, eh? In true Championship Manager 97/98 style, I am running out of superlatives to describe this kid. I’ve seen the Forest Fan TV channel talk about how bad their players were, but I think they just came up against an Arsenal side ready to prove a point and Saka did it emphatically with his finish. It was a rocket and it was worthy of winning the game of its own.

But 1-0 always feels like a scary score line, so when in the second half Partey made it two with his “you only get one of these a season, guys” moments, I started to feel much more comfortable. That is very much a trademark of his; edge of the box, the way we shapes up to hit it like he did, then whipping the ball with top spin – delicious stuff. And now, with the benefit of hindsight I can say, it was comfortable and ‘job done’ from thereon in. To be fair, in the first half Forest had offered little anyway and in the second they had a few half-chances including a looping header from Chris Wood that I thought Raya had pretty much covered, but other than that it was pretty much all us and the stats showed it too. 67% possession, 19 shots and seven on target (where Forest had zero on target), 18 key passes to Forest’s five, 587 passes to Forest’s 295, 91% passing accuracy – whatever way you look at it this was a dominant Arsenal side that were thoroughly worthy of all three points.

And we were treated to a first Premier League goal from the wonder kid himself, Ethan Nwaneri, who came on and once again looked imperious. Arteta referenced it afterwards, but his first action was to pick the ball up and drive at Forest players. His goal was accurately and expertly timed and it was even nice to have Raheem Sterling pop up with an assist too.

That match yesterday was Arteta’s 250th game and it went probably as perfectly as Arteta would have wanted it to go. Goals, clean sheets, dominance of the ball, control, all doing it whilst rotating the team so we have players fresh for Sporting on Tuesday and then West Ham next Saturday. In his post match presser Arteta also referenced that for the first time in months this last week we’ve been able to train with 19 first teamers out there rather than 12 or 13 and that he’s been working with. That is, I think, a really important quote because it shows you how we’ve been operating with one hand tied behind our backs. But now we are hopefully starting to see the real Arsenal and hopefully just in time too, because City’s defeat yesterday has narrowed the gap to them to one point and although Liverpool will go back to being nine points clear of us when they beat Southampton today, I think we have an opportunity to build some momentum and test them over the coming weeks if we can get in to our rhythm.

I don’t think I’m quite in the place where I’m willing to be bullish about the title being ‘back on’, but this was a very positive baby step in the right direction.

I’m also delighted in some of the performances of some of the rotated players. I thought Jorginho kept things ticking over in his 45 minute opening half and it was only his harsh booking that had Arteta bring him off at halftime for Partey. The referee felt rather trigger happy with his cards in that first half, so it made total sense that Arteta would do that. Trossard too did ok I thought and much better than his form has been recently. It was, of course, our big players who stepped up though. Saka was brilliant. Odegaard absolutely ran the show. Saliba and Gabriel ensured Forest never got a sniff and Awoniyi – who can be quite a handful for sure, never really looked like he was getting any change all day. And to have Calafiori and Timber doing their bit and looking strong was great too. Both were subbed – although Timber’s was in the 88th minute – but both will absolutely be needed on Tuesday and next Saturday.

Let’s hope this is the start of things kicking off for The Arsenal now. Enjoy your Snday.

Bonus content – we’re going early on the Same Old Arsenal podcast if you fancy joining us – we’ll be on YouTube from 9.30am UK time here.

Back tomorrow as we look ahead to Sporting.

Ultimately, we got the job done. We all sit here today with another three points in the Champions League, seven in total, fourth in that stupid league format that it is now (albeit without a number of teams having played their third games tonight), so things are looking fine. But this feels like one of those ‘scratch beneath the surface’ kind of games. What I mean by that is that if you watched the game and saw how it played out, there are a few things that I think everyone will be a little concerned with, not least Mikel Arteta.

The team performance

I thought it was fine. In the first half we created chances, we were clearly the better team overall, we ultimately deserved the win. But this is a Shaktar team who haven’t been in great form, they haven’t really mustered anything of note in this competition, they shouldn’t have really caused us some of the problems they did. We got the goal on the 30 minute mark through Martinelli’s finish fortunately coming in off their ‘keeper Riznyk, which was a decent shot from him and a little luck deflecting in off the post, but we should have probably have had more in that first half. Calafioti blazing over from just outside the six yard box, Havertz had a chance where he ended up in the net as the ball flash across the goal, as well as Gabriel Jesus forcing the ‘keeper in to a smart save with his feet right on halftime.

The second half felt a little ‘bitty’, but we still created a few chances, with Martinelli forcing another decent save from the ‘keeper. But we gave them a little too much of a sniff I thought and although Raya didn’t really have much to do all game, he made a smart save right at the end of the game just to make sure the points were secured. Hey, you can’t talk about the fact that their ‘keeper made some smart saves, so when that happens up the other end you look at your team and immediately tut; that’s what ‘keepers are there to do. But it was just a bit of a sign of a little complacency and I thought the Leo Trossard penalty pretty much summed up the night – it was a very ‘meh’ attempt, following a ‘meh’ VAR call that I thought was a little harsh (barely even saw it in real time), on a night in which Arsenal were very ‘meh’. It was functional, it was keeping an average Shaktar side at arms length, but without that second goal it was never comfortable.

Individual performances

I thought there were some good performances on the night that hopefully we can see as positive signs. I thought Thomas Partey was excellent. He covered ground across the pitch, he won duels, his passing accuracy and progressive passive seemed to be backed to what we expect of him and I thought he looked comfortable and composed in the middle of the park. Gabriel Martinelli was the most lively of the forwards and although he doesn’t officially get credited with the goal last night, he gets it on moral grounds because his performance deserved it. I also thought Gabriel Jesus had a better outing than his last start against Southampton. He ran at Shaktar defenders, he fashioned some chances, he looked a little more menacing than his previous matches, so hopefully that’s a good sign.

Unfortunately there were a few more ‘meh’ ones though. I thought Trossard wasn’t great and didn’t really impact the game as we would have liked given he was played in a more central role and you naturally expect him to be better and more comfortable. But he misplaced a few passes, plus there was the penalty miss and when you layer that performance after his mistake and all-around anonymity at Bournemouth, it’s not great. I also think that Sterling didn’t offer too much from the bench and Merino looked a little heavy-legged to me. It felt like there was a lot of trotting around on the night from him, but that might be me being harsh from my low-level seat view in Block Five.

Injuries

This is probably the most worrying thing for me this morning. Calafiori – as we all know – has suffered from knee injuries and he jarred it last night with Mikel saying ‘a bit of a worry’ and given we’ve already missed him a couple of times this early in to the season and his Arsenal career, I have to say I’m already starting to get ‘injury-prone player’ vibes. Hopefully that’s not true. I’m praying it’s not true. I’m just telling you what I’m already feeling – are you feeling the same? Or is it just me?

There’s also the case of those players not in the squad. Being told Saka is unlikely to play on Sunday is a bitter pill to swallow. You can tell the difference in quality he gives between Sterling and Jesus and if he’s missing on Sunday it’s going to be a massively difficult task to overcome Liverpool. Especially if we have absences from tonight and then players still missing. By my count the worst-case scenario for Sunday could be Arsenal without:

• Calafiori (from last night)
• Tomiyasu (I know he’s always injured but think about the good games he’s had against Salah)
• Saliba (suspension)
• Timber (still not in the squad yesterday so you’d assume he’s also a doubt for Sunday)
• Odegaard (still not in the squad so unlikely for Sunday I would have thought)
• Saka (as per Arteta comments – unlikely)

It feels like we are being repeatedly punished by the football gods right now and very little is going our way. It’s one thing to challenge for a title when it’s the likes of Man City, but it’s a completely different kettle of a fish when you are repeatedly having four, five or six players out. We’re now getting to three months in to a nine month season and we’ve had injuries, suspensions and more – some of which we can control, but a lot we can’t it’s a real worry and personally I’m a little concerned that any attempted competing for a title is quickly going to be beyond us if we keep having players out and keep having absences to key players.

I’ll park too much worry on that front for now though, because after a win ultimately you have to be happy, but as I said when I started off this blog underneath the surface there are just a few bits to be mindful of that Arteta needs to find a solution on.

Catch you all tomorrow.

You could tell that both sides were cagey and not giving an inch in that first half. It felt a bit of a drab one. Saka had forced Martinez in to a decent early save and I was hoping that it would be our blueprint for another match in which we would dominate. But Villa weren’t giving us as much; they were content to stay disciplined, stay resolute at the back and then fashion whatever chances they could get. And to be fair to them,. they did get a couple in the first half. I thought it was a foul on Gabriel that allowed Rogers to set Ollie Watkins in, but the England man uncharacteristically (and thankfully) dragged his shot wide). At that point I wasn’t too worried though. We’d gone with a strong line up and Timber was in at left back in the space of Zinchenko, which meant from a defensive duel perspective, we stood a better chance. I thought Timber did well; he was slotting in to midfield every time the ball progressed up the pitch and although he doesn’t have the passing range of Zinchenko, he’s still pretty tidy in possession and I thought the way he handled Bailey on their right wing more than made up for it.

The halftime stats told the story that Arsenal had all the ball, Villa were still dangerous, but we needed to up it a little bit in the second half. I thought Kai was particularly quiet up top and had a really good opportunity to set us in when he got in behind on the right hand side, but his pass was poor. Saka and Martinelli struggled and particularly the latter, I thought Martinelli had a couple of things that looked like they would come to something but his final ball was lacking, or he’d run down a blind alley.

Which is why the substitution of Trossard felt timely. He’d had a good pre season, he’d had a great end to last season, so it felt a little harsh that he wasn’t starting, but I think certainly now he’ll have staked a claim to play from the off against his old team next Saturday. His arrival gave us the end product we needed and his finish in to the corner from the cut back was brilliant. Classic Trossard, classic sub impact move, classic finish to get beyond Emi Martinez and inch us ahead.

Then it was whether we could hold on. I should mention the game could have swung in the other direction were it mot from David Raya, who kind of had his ‘Ramsdale at Leicester’ moment yesterday when he saved from Ollie Watkins header. It was super reactions, I have to say; as a former ‘keeper myself I know how difficult it is to get up after you’ve made an attempted save and as Big Gabi’s deflected ball hit the bar, Raya’s reaction to quickly stick out a palm like he did was immense. And these are the kind of swing moments that define games, because just a minute or so later Trossard had put us ahead and we had something to hold on to.

I don’t know about you, though, but I sometimes feel even more nervous when we’re winning, than when we’re losing. My pacing up and down the lounge continued at an increased rate and the nerves really started to up themselves. “This could be a big statement win. We HAVE to hold on to this” I was saying out loud to myself, perhaps trying desperately to manifest it in to being, but in reality I should appreciate just what we’ve got in this Arsenal team: resilience in spades. For just ten minutes later Thomas Partey stepped up with a very fine finish indeed to secure the points and the one thing we can say about this Arsenal back line – when we are two up, we’re likely to hold on – and such was it so yesterday evening too. The finish from Partey felt quite trademark; we’ve seen him do that in to the top corner against the scum too, using the defender as a screen to unsight the ‘keeper and curl it around him. Usually we get what happened last weekend and the Ghanian puts it wide or over, but every once in a while – usually once a season – he finds the net. I was very thankful that yesterday was one of those times and we saw out the game to collect three precious points.

Which makes it two from two for us and six points on the board. Last week was a celebration of returning, but yesterday felt like the first statement of intent. We now find ourselves in a position in which we are up and running, we face a Brighton side at home full of confidence, but we will take a lot from those points that we got on a tough ground. Arteta was rightly delighted, but he will also perhaps be a little concerned because we were hardly sparkling yesterday. Perhaps we can put it down to early season rustiness, but we need to find our rhythm, because it feels like 115 Charges FC are also up and running. Even if they did have a relatively easy styart with Chelsea away and Ipswich at home.

Right, that’s me done for the day. James will be doing a post match pod later on the Same Old Arsenal stream, so check that out at 7pm if you want some more post match goodliness.

Laters peeps.

I’m not even going to go in to detail about the new third kit rumoured to be being released today (with a nice little cameo from Vieira in a video posted last night, I might add), although it does look sensational.

Instead, it’s the 2-0 win over Lyon that we need to talk about, as Arsenal prepared for the big kick off next weekend in the best possible style.

Now, admittedly, Lyon didn’t really provide much of a threat to us and perhaps this is the Arsenal side of my brain that has neurosis when it comes to my football team, manifesting itself in me overthinking about how “we probably needed a bit more of a test, otherwise what have we learned?”, but other than that corner pocket of my mind I thought we looked very impressive indeed. Mikel named what I think most of us – barring maybe a couple of positional questions that are up for grabs – would have though would be the team to start next weekend. Raya in goal, a back four of White, Saliba, Gabriel and Zinchenko, Partey anchoring the midfield with Rice and Odegaard further forward, Martinelli, Havertz and Saka being the front three. It looked very familiar in set up and it kicked off with us dominant in front of a jubilant Emirates crowd, not having to wait long until we got our first. Saliba’s header was firm but the ‘keeper probably have should have done something about it. Maybe. As a former member of the ‘keepers union I will cut him a little slack; sometimes when the ball is pumped straight at you above your head you don’t always have the time to react quickly enough and get your hands there. But from an Arsenal fans perspective who cares, right? One up inside the first ten minutes and it was two on 27 minutes, this time from Gabriel on a corner and hopefully it’s a positive sign that we’re going to once again be a big threat from set pieces. In fact I’ve noticed a bit in the last couple of games that we seem to be happier to swing the ball in and Saka got his head on a couple of chances yesterday too, which was interesting. Arteta has already spoken this summer and at the end of last season that we needed to have more solutions and be a little more unpredictable, so selecting different ways of attacking a box will certainly do that.

We also created chances in behind as Lyon played a weird style that I couldn’t really work out what their gameplan was. On some occasions they seemed to hit with a high press, on some they sat back, so Arsenal exploited the space in midfield by finding pockets through the always excellent Martin Odegaard, who found Havertz and Martinelli quite easily throughout the game I thought. Martinelli was getting on the ball a lot; he got in behind a few times and got to the by-line to get the ball in a few times. He was also put in one-on-one in the first half and whilst he didn’t quite get his shot away which he’ll be disappointed in, I don’t think there’s too much to be frustrated about just yet. For sure he needs to improve his end product this season (something that has been labelled as a deficiency in the past – both from an assist and finishing perspective), but I think it was David Hillier on comms yesterday who said that when you’ve taken a knock in pre season just before the full season kicks in, the last thing you want to do is exacerbate a potential injury by going at full speed. Hence, Hillier thought (and I’m inclined to agree with him) he probably only went at 75% when in behind the defender, which gave him the opportunity to nick the ball away from Martinelli.

For me though it’s more important that he’s getting in to those positions, because not only does it show that we were able to approach the game differently in terms of chance creation (crosses, corners, balls in behind), but it also showed that we have different players to answer different challenges this coming season. And I think that’s where the biggest selection headache for Arteta will come in for next week, on that left wing, because Trossard and Martinelli have both had good games in the last seven days. My gut feel tells me I think Trossard will get the nod on Saturday against Wolves, because he finished last season the strongest, but having somebody like Martinelli there waiting in the wings is very good indeed for us, I think.

Left back will also be a question mark for Arteta eventually, but I suspect for Wolves it will remain with Zinchenko because although we got to see Calafiori in at left back on 65 minutes, it was only for about 10 – 15 minutes that he played there, because off came Gabriel around the 78 – 80 mark and the Italian slotted in at left centre back. Arteta is not starting him ahead of Zinchenko with just 13 minutes of football in that position for Arsenal and with the news that Tomiyasu is once again out injured for a few more weeks, Zinchenko kind of gets that start by default with Timber also having been rested for the last two games. Whether he keeps it for Villa away will be interesting though.

So left back is a selection question for another week for Arteta, left wing will be one for Saturday, but I think a lot of the other positions will be pretty easy to predict. Even in that number six role we saw Thomas Partey get 77 minutes and I thought he performed well. Again, I don’t think we were as tested defensively and so perhaps that is a question we still need the Ghanaian to answer, but he popped the ball around, he looked fit, he was strong and with Rice alongside him as well, we looked like we were comfortable in controlling the middle of the park.

The second half was a little bit more of a non-event on account of Arsenal playing within themselves and the substitutions from both sides turning it in to a scrappy kind of game with little flow to it, but the job had been done by halftime and it meant we could once again see cameos from Nwaneri and Lewis-Skelly. No place on the pitch for Nketiah though, which only heightens the suspicions that there might be some movement this week, plus I thought it was interesting that Nelson got on instead of Vieira. Perhaps that was a ‘shop window’ exercise, which would explain it, but I don’t think it bodes amazingly well for the Portuguese that he didn’t see a single minute of a game that I mentioned yesterday was basically a dress rehearsal for the start of the Premier League season. Perhaps he had a knock, perhaps it was a chance to give more minutes to the younger players because we won’t see as much of them this season and Vieira will naturally be given more of a chance, but I don’t think it augurs particularly well for him if I’m honest.

That’s probably enough from me on yesterday’s Emirates Cup win. I’ll be back tomorrow with some more of the usual ramblings, so until then have yourselves a good one and I’ll catch thee in the morrow.

They are in a race against time to be fit enough and have shaken off the rust and fatigue of a long season, the Euro’s and then some holiday, but these days these footballers probably never really take a proper break from keeping their fitness maintained. There were times maybe 30 years ago when footballers would spend their summer doing whatever they wanted on holiday – pies, booze, laying around on a beach – but the levels needed to be an elite footballer are such that the demands needed during the ‘rest’ period probably still means that they have to spend every day in the gym when their on holiday anyway. Gabriel Jesus has had a bit of an extended holiday period by not going to Copa America, but we all saw that he got himself going with his personal trainer pretty early on in the summer and I suspect there are many more players who have been doing just that in the Arsenal squad.

Arteta won’t have long before he gets a decent look at his fully available squad either, because on Wednesday we have Leverkusen at home and the return of a certain Granit Xhaka. I saw some quotes from him talking about how Arsenal to Leverkusen wasn’t a step back, it was two steps forward, which a few fellow Arsenal fans have taken Umbridge with. Not me though; he joined a team who then went an entire season unbeaten and he won the league, why on earth would he say that he took a backwards step in leaving The Arsenal? I don’t think he meant it in any way to be derogatory to the club and I think he’ll get a fine reception on Wednesday night when he returns. He got his redemption arc in his last season against us and he joined a team who performed fabulously and who at the moment have kept the bulk of that winning team together this summer. They will be a force to be reckoned with in Germany and Europe next summer so it’ll be interesting to see how we line up on Wednesday night. Our last pre season game ended in defeat to Liverpool and there were bits about the performance I don’t think Arteta was 100% happy with, but all-in-all he didn’t seem overly fussed from the interviews I watched. What will be interesting is if he starts to get more animated from now and in the game against Lyon on Saturday, which will be our final match before that Wolves game the weekend after next. I suspect he will because he knows that it’s time to put ‘game faces on’ from now; we can ill-afford not to be ready to go given that we have such a tough start, as I’ve already talked about in recent weeks.

There’s not really a lot else going on. The Mikel Merino stuff keeps rumbling along and as the noises become more consistent, I’ve started to watch a few more compilation videos of a player who looks tidy on the ball and who occupies a zone of the pitch I think Arteta will be interested in exploring. Apparently he too is due to be back in training with Sociedad and I suspect that will be the case regardless of what is happening with any potential transfer. Much like we saw Smith Rowe on tour in the US, then even named on the bench in the games but not playing, Merino will probably have the same situation because Arsenal could ultimately decide against him and then he has to get his head back in to the place where he’s a Sociedad player for the season. These guys are professionals know and they know the game and how its played; you have to just forget about potential moves until they’re basically but done, because anything could make it fall through.

So until it becomes a ‘thing’, it isn’t a ‘thing’ – simple as that.

The final thing I wanted to speak on today relates to a comment I saw on Twitter from somebody I quite like to read their opinion on, which was about a comment made by Rohan Jivan on Thomas Partey:

Some takeaways from the US Tour

– Switches
– 344 build up (Hein CCB) a regular story
– Improved LHS dynamics
– Hale End class
– Timber, Reiss, Jesus, Kai all sharp
– Partey’s physical drop off
– Noticing Raya’s influence in his absence
– Vieira’s quick decision making upfield

— RohanJivan (@RohanJivanAFC) August 4, 2024

This is find interesting, because at the end of last season there’s no doubt it seemed he had a physicality on him that was missing. He just didn’t seem like the Thomas Partey of old. There have been a few who have been quick to say he’s washed, but I haven’t wanted to jump on that bandwagon just yet. Yes, he wasn’t great towards the end of last season and yes, he seemed to be off the pace. But he’d spent so long out injured and then had a set back just as he was coming back to fitness, that I am still not 100% ready to declare his Arsenal career completely buried yet. He could be a valuable rotation option and although we know he’s not going to give us 38 games next season, if he can play a decent part in some games and maybe be rotated in and out of the team, I’d still fancy that he can be a valuable player for us.

Quite how that lines up in our midfield, I don’t know, because as Rohan mentioned when I asked him, he said his timing in the tackle and interception was off and he struggled to keep pace in games. Whether that’s just a pre season fitness thing remains to be seen. I hope it is because if we’re not cashing in on him this summer, we need to be ready and willing to use him this season.

Right, Going to call it a day now. Off for some work.

You guys have yourselves some good times.

Laters people.

Anyhoo, back in the real world, let’s start with the more troubling news from yesterday, which was that Bukayo Saka was confirmed as withdrawing from the England squad yesterday evening, which had my heart sink when I watched it on Sky Sports News. “Here we go again” I thought; it feels like we are destined to never play City with a full strength team, because Saka was missing for the home game against them this season, Partey missed the home game last season and it was Saliba and Tomiyasu in the away game last season too.

Can we just play them with a fully-fit squad please??

There have been some rumours about it being precautionary, but I don’t expect we’ll really get any idea until next Thursday or Friday when Arteta has his press conference. And even then we won’t get an answer from him. If he’s out then Arteta will say “it’s touch and go” or something similar, but if he’s fit he’ll still say “I don’t know”. I saw some ITKs suggesting that it’s just precautionary and that Arsenal fans shouldn’t be too worried; apparently he reported to training with a knock and hasn’t been able to train whilst with the England squad, so I guess we all just need to collectively hold our breath that he’ll be ok for nine days time.

If he isn’t training though it does cause slight concern. Nine days feels like a fairly decent time frame for recovery but if he has been carrying a knock for a while and he’s just had 10 days off since we last played Porto and has had zero training in that time, will an extra nine days make a difference. Arsenal will be very mindful of any niggle he has and so they’ll probably give him a week and see where he’s at, but a couple of week’s off the training ground will surely have an impact on rustiness. We are talking about elite sport here and players that are one or two percent off can look very different. At this stage of the season their bodies are like well-oiled machines; we just have to hope that his recovery time allows him to be fit for City away.

We had 13 internationals out on duty according to the official site, which also lists Saka and Gabriel, so that means we’re now sweating on availability of Zinchenko, Kiwior, Ramsdale, Rice, Saliba, Havertz, Trossard, Raya, Jorginho and Odegaard all in action. Kiwior played the full 90 and Jorginhgo came on as a 66th minute sub for Italy. Zinchenko played 76 minutes last night and it doesn’t sound as though he came off with an injury, so that sounds positive so far. The rest will play tonight and tomorrow, with matches concluding on Wednesday next week I think. For somebody like Zinchenko 76 minutes is a good thing; he hasn’t played much lately, there will be some rust in there too, so getting minutes in those legs yesterday and then on Tuesday next week could be a good thing.

That’s also obviously what the club thought too when they arranged a behind-closed-doors friendly, as we faced QPR yesterday with both Partey and Tomiyasu getting a run out. Partey played just over an hour and Tomiyasu got the first 45 minutes and it seems as thought they came through it ok. For Thomas you’d think that it was the most valuable given he basically hasn’t played since right at the start of the season, but I wonder what the quality was like given we fielded a bunch of youngsters alongside him? The Arsenal XI lost 4-0 which obviously shows the gulf in class against a pretty strong QPR team by the sounds of it, but for me – and for Arsenal’s coaching staff – it was probably more important to look at how rusty Partey looks too. He looked incredibly heavy-footed when he came on against Brentford the other week and I suspect he will look like that for a few games now, regardless of getting this run out against QPR. I doubt he’ll be in a position to impact such a high-intensity, chess-game-like match like City away next weekend, but just having him on the bench as an option for 10-15 minutes must be a positive for Arteta. Let’s not forget that this guy was the lynchpin to our team last season and we even managed to get something like 33 out 0f 38 Premier League games out of him last year, so the sooner we can have him back fit and giving us the elite option that he can be, the better.

There’s not a lot else going on at the moment, as you’d expect with many of the squad away on international duty, so I think I might leave it there for today. And kudos to the club for banning some so-called ‘supporters’ for tragedy chanting at the Liverpool game. We are a club that prides itself on our class and as supporters we need to embody that too; there is no place in football for chanting like those Arsenal ‘fans’ did.

Right, catch you all tomorrow for some more ramblings, so enjoy your Friday and I’ll see thee in the morrow.

I say let him have the award, let them keep doing what their doing and hopefully let them finish outside of the CL spots. If that’s the only award the Scum can cling to for the foreseeable future, then that’s a-ok for me.

As for us, we – and our manager – have bigger fish to fry and Arteta was giving updates about the status of the team yesterday in his pre match presser. The first good news is confirmation that Partey has been back in training for over a week and will be in the squad for Monday. That’s good to hear but I doubt we’ll be seeing him make a start any time soon. He’s been out for almost half the season and his injury record is such that if I was forced to put my house on it, I’d be guess at a max of 10 minutes against Sheffield United, then maybe 20 minutes against Brentford, tops. But that’s ok, because we’ve proven that we’ve been able to live without him and you’d hope that this Arsenal side should have enough to pick up points against those two sides without him. But it will be a big boost and especially so when you think that after Porto our next game is against City on 31st March. There’s also no African international break in March when a lot of our players will be travelling, which means that he’ll have more time on the training ground getting ready for that City game, although I’m not sure that will be the same as Tomiyasu who Arteta said they were waiting on the outcome of the Saturday and Sunday training sessions before making a call on him and Zinchenko. Tomiyasu is due back in Japan for World Cup qualifiers against North Korea home and away over five days between 21st and 26th March so it will probably be just out luck that the Japanese sent him back to us broken, then just as we get him back up to speed he has to travel halfway across the world again to play for them. Whether he’s risked much as a result by us remains to be seen, but with the current options we have and the fact that we might also have Zinchenko back, I suspect they will err on the side of caution with Tomi.

In any case we’ve had Kiwior who has done really well and I wonder if Arteta once again sticks with the same team for that game against the team bottom of the table. We’ve been in scintillating form of late and Kiwior has been a big part of that, so rewarding him with another game feels like the right thing to do and for Arteta you’d think he’d be wanting to do the same for a player who has only been here just over a year and this is the first time he’s had any sort of consistent run of games. He’s proved his worth and I suspect we’ll see the output of that on Monday night.

Arteta did talk about the threat that Sheffield United pose and I think he knows that in the Premier League it doesn’t matter how bad a teams form is, they are in this division for a reason. There was a question from one of the journos about the value of goal difference and I suspect that was aimed at Arteta to say something to suggest we want to rack up a cricket score, but whilst the metrics, our form, the respective league position of both teams and probably expectation of everyone is for Arsenal to win, I certainly am not going in to a game like this and expecting a steamrollering; I don’t think Arteta will either and that’s the right mentality to take. He was asked follow up goals about Sheffield United conceding a lot but he had no soundbites, only platitudes for Chris Wilder, along with a comment that he analysed them many years ago and would be doing the same under Wilder now. I guess the other benefit about having over a week before the next game has also been that Arteta has been able to take a proper look at Sheffield United. He’s had time with there not being a midweek game to prepare for and he will not have had to focus on that, travel to that game, then have just a few days to prepare for what Sheffield United will bring. So my hope is that every tactical eventuality has been analysed by Arteta and the hope is that we have a team ready for anything on Monday.

This is a game where the pressure is on though, because by the time we play everyone else around us will have already played and already collected their three points. Villa will have won away at Luton, City will have beaten Man United at home, Liverpool will have picked themselves up a grinding out victory over Forest and even the Scum will find it easy pickings at home to Palace. The Premier League table will once again look like a bit of a gap with Arsenal just three points ahead of Villa and four off City with Liverpool picking up that five point lead too, so we simply have to react and Arteta acknowledged that too. We may have a pretty good goal difference now but we all know the premier currency you need to deal in is points, so that’s what we will have to be zero’d in on when the new week begins.

And as this one finishes, I’ll wrap up for today. Not sure if I’ll have time to write anything tomorrow as I have the parents over from this evening for the weekend, but sure I’ll be back on Sunday with some thoughts.

Catch you all then.

And I think, if we’re all honest, given the players injury history the ‘days’ comment from Arteta can be ruled out almost immediately. This is a player who has repeatedly been unavailable for us every single season and has finally tipped in to the Abou Diaby zone of being a talented guy that is just not available. And as a result, it is a bit of a waste of resource for the club, who will have missed one of their top earners for the best part of more than half a season if and when he comes back. I hear Arteta saying “weeks” and all I’m thinking is “we’ll see you in May for the lap around the pitch and the clapping the fans as the season has ended.

If I sound a little negative, if I sound a little downbeat, it is because I am. I had so much hopes that we might see him soon and as we all know, when he’s been fit and firing for us he’s made such a difference to our approach. But when he’s fit and firing since he signed has been less than any of us would have expected or wanted. I wrote about this a year or so ago, but before he joined us he had missed seven games in seven years for Atletico Madrid. He had made 132 appearances for them in that time, 37 for Mallorca on loan, 31 for Almeria on loan, so in that seven years he’d played 200 games. When we signed him we were signing a player who had rarely been injured and who looked a safe bet to be mainstay in our midfield. But since he has signed for us he has missed 64 games for us in four seasons. That’s an average of 16 games a season he has missed for The Arsenal. If we average 50 games a season in all competitions, every single year since he’s signed for us he’s missed a third of the season.

That simply isn’t good enough.

I know it isn’t his fault. I’m sure he hates being injured, but the club have to make steps to completely remove any reliance on him in the summer. I think you and I both know that they will. Arteta shipped Tierney on because of his style of play as we all know, but I also think part of that evolution from him was because he was injured half the time we were playing. It’s the same with ESR, although Arteta hasn’t shipped him on we have brought players in who play his position because ESR hasn’t been reliable enough from an injury perspective and I am 100% convinced that we’ll go out and get another top class, first team, six this summer. It’s why those noises last January about us wanting Caicedo and Rice were I think fed to the press with a grain of truth. Arsenal need to move on from Partey.

It’s a massive blow but I’m also reminded of the season we signed Sol Campbell from the Scum. He signed in 2001 and we still had Tony Adams as a first teamer and our captain. He was still a great defender and I was licking my licks at the prospect of Adams and Campbell as our two central defensive units at the back. They would be an absolute rock for us. But it never transpired that way. Adams played just 13 games for us all season having got injured in September and then returned at the end of March. We got to see him and Sol towards the end together and we got to see them partner in defence for the FA Cup final against Chelsea in which we won 2-0, but after that he retired and the amazing central defensive partnership that I thought we might have for a couple of seasons never really happened. Now if you fast forward to this season, how many of us have salivated over the prospect of a Partey/Rice/Odegaard midfield? Most Arsenal fans I reckon. Yet we will most likely only have seen it a couple of times come the end of the season, but this time, I’m a little older and wiser and I’m not going to hold out hope of ever seeing it. Let’s move on and look towards the future.

That’s summer thinking, but for now Arteta has to be doing some ‘in the now’ thinking and that means he needs to work out how to keep Declan Rice fit for the remainder of the season, because he has become a lynchpin of our team and when he is in it we are infinitely better. At the start of the season people wondered how much game time he would get! To be fair, I did too as I thought he and Partey would rotate, but having seen what we’ve seen, there’s absolutely no way that Rice was going to be anything other than first name on the teamsheet and at times this season he has held us together. Whilst the forward line has misfired at times and the two eights haven’t exactly been scintillating, Rice has shown what an elite player he is. Let’s just hope he continues that form.

Speaking of the two eights, more info emerged yesterday about that Havertz deal from Chelsea yesterday as David Ornstein was on an Athletic podcast talking about the deal to bring him to us. £65million and Arsenal matching his £275k-per-week wages. Blimey. I am desperate for Kai to succeed, he will get all of my support as an Arsenal player, but that kind of money is a ‘game changing’ footballer in this team. He is the club’s highest earner. He should be influencing games left, right and centre. Yet what we have had so far is an ‘in and out’ footballer who hasn’t exactly set the world alight. I get it, he’s halfway in to his first season at Arsenal and there are new things to learn and an adaptation period, but when you think he’s already been in the Premier League for a number of seasons, you can’t call the language or culture an issue. And if I’m completely honest, I haven’t really seen anything to suggest that even after one whole season, we’re going to get a player next season who is the best at the club. And that’s the money he is on now.

Let me re-iterate: he gets my support and I am hopeful he will come good. But it just feels as though we’ve had the wool pulled over our eyes by both Chelsea and the players agent here. For that kind of money I expect more and hopefully he can deliver, because he hasn’t delivered value so far.

Tomorrow would be a good time to start.

Catch you all then for a match preview.

But let’s be thankful for the warming sensation of a bit of Arsenal #Content, as yesterday the club released footage of Jurrien Timber in Dubai lacing up his boots, then getting himself out on the pitch for some ball work. If you haven’t done so already see for yourself here.

This was enough to send plenty of Arsenal fans – yours truly included – in to excited messages online and many praying emojis and that one that looks like a whole arm doing a bicep curl. It was juicy stuff indeed. And after the last few weeks we’ve had where we’ve seen the players underperform (in terms of score lines and results), where we’ve all admitted that many of the players look tired but there didn’t seem to be much opportunity (or that Arteta was willing to) for rotation, where we’ve all resigned ourselves to the fact that due to FFP it is unlikely that there will be any reinforcements, this is a welcome bit of news.

I think most of us – despite a few people mentioning it online that he was ahead of schedule, probably had Jurrien Timber down as a guy who would probably start training in March, be up to speed in April an then maybe in May we’d see him on the football pitch. Seeing him out on the field doing ball work in mid January is a bonus indeed. So, what should we start hoping for in terms of seeing the player back again on the field for The Arsenal, now we’ve seen him doing ball work? I did a bit of Googling and found this site which talks about ACL injuries and footballers recoveries. That site suggests that three to six months after surgery footballers are running, but that regular tests have to be undertaken and a physiotherapist will want to keep monitoring. It suggests that it can take up to a year for recovery. But here’s why I’m dismissing that last bit:

1. That site is talking about the average amateur football – not a professional footballer who has medical teams on hand all the time, the best facilities money can buy and by sheer mechanics their bodies are built and conditioned for sport and physical activity
2. Timber is 22 years old – In your early 20s your ability to quickly recover from injuries is greater than mid or late 20s. I remember myself as an amateur being able to overcome knocks way quicker than I could at 30, so I would expect the commentary of ‘up to a year’ is universally applied because the context of age isn’t really given and so they’ve gone for worst-case scenarios. A 40-year-old man who has an ACL is probably taking a year. Not a 22-year-old professional athlete.

Don’t get me wrong though, I’m not suggesting that like Partey we’re going to see Timber for Forest away on 30th January. Clearly Timber will need much more monitoring and it will probably be at least another two to three weeks before they start involving him in light training with the rest of the players. He’s been out with a serious injury for five months and there is no way the club isn’t going to treat this with the extreme caution that it needs. But let me play extremely amateur doctor here for a second…

Let’s just say it’s three weeks of training on his own before he steps up and is training with the team. That takes us to week commencing 29th January before he might be in with the group. Then let’s say that before he can be in a match day squad he might need a couple of weeks of training with the group. That takes you to week commencing 12th February. Then let’s say Arteta wants to just have him as part of a match day squad but not play him – just for a week so he gets the ‘feel’ for it again – week commencing 19th February. So we could see him getting on the pitch for Newcastle at home on 24th February. That – I think – feels like quite a long and conservative timescale, but it would mean that he has March, April and May to continue to make an impact – the season is around nine months long and he could still have an impact for almost a third of it – a massive boost for Arsenal and Arteta.

And suddenly with the Partey news as well, you’re looking at the team and thinking “maybe it’s not too bad – squad depth wise”. Sure, we’ve got a few weeks in which it’s going to remain challenging, but by the end of January things could be looking up.

Of course we still don’t know the extent of the Zinchenko and Gabriel Jesus injuries and if both of those players are out for a few weeks then that is a problem; we saw that Kiwior just doesn’t look as comfortable at left back and both Nketiah and Havertz are a bit (or a lot) of a downgrade on Gabriel Jesus. So short term it could be quite uncomfortable, but in a month’s time we could be shaping up a little differently. All we’d need between now and then is to ‘get through’ games and that would start with Palace at home the weekend after this one.

There’s not a lot else to pour over, really, and understandably. Be careful what you click on though; don’t want to be giving your precious time to some of the absolute charlatans masquerading as journalists. This morning I fell for the ol’ “Multiple deals expected to be agreed in the next days” click bait. The “journalist” in question got a precious 15 seconds of my time, but when I realised that the article was basically about the fact Arsenal are looking at tying up a few commercial deals in Dubai this week, I realised that this utter gutter trash journo basically had zero story and was turning it in to an opportunity to try to get a few people to click on a link which basically told you nothing. I’m not linking to it – but try to avoid ‘Football Insider’ if you can folks.

A quick ‘P.S.’ – check out the two James’ player ratings on the Same Old Arsenal last night here.

• Will Arteta go full strength? Does he have any choice?
• Will Klopp rotate given he also has a League Cup Semi final to contend with?
• How many players can pick themselves up after back-to-back poor defeats?
• Where is the morale right now?
• How do our attacking players get themselves back in to goalscoring form?

On that last point, I listened to an interesting podcast with my old mate Harry Symeou yesterday as I was running. Harry talked about a few tactical bits but the stuff that stuck out to me was about how Thomas Partey’s absence has had a bigger impact than anyone originally thought. You can listen to that podcast here. I have been absolutely smitten with Declan Rice holding our midfield together in Partey’s absence and his performances, marauding runs, as well as a few important goals, have at times led me to think that we haven’t really needed Partey. Up until this point Rice has been almost always available and as a result Partey being out when you look at a teamsheet and players fitting neatly in to positions, it’s almost felt as if we haven’t missed him.

But the reality is that Partey gives us something that other midfielders does not and as Harry pointed out and I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, he is a man who is a line breaker more than anyone else in the team. I’ve seen people suggest that Jorginho can do that job well enough and yes, we’ve seen some evidence of that, but it feels to me as though that is not enough of a regular occurrence each game and, in fact, I’d say that he does it no more than Declan Rice. So having Jorginho in there and pushing Rice further forward doesn’t, I don’t think, solve some of the problems we’ve been having. I’m not sure that if we move Rice in to the left eight position it suddenly unleashes us to be playing more progressive passes in to the final third and that will create more space for our attacking players to run in to.

What I do think we need is Partey back fit and the news that he isn’t going to the AFCON was certainly taken by me as positive. The last words on Partey were from the Ghana manager and all we have had in press conferences from Mikel Arteta is that he is progressing well. I have heard some suggest that him missing the AFCON is a bad thing and a sign that he could be out for longer, but I don’t see that as the case. Ghana are seen as something like eighth or ninth favourite to win the competition depending on which betting site you want to go with, so that suggests to me that the expectation is that they aren’t getting too far in the competition. Let’s say that the bookies are right and it’s a quarter final exit. That means their competition could be done by 3rd February. If you take AFCON completely out of the picture and just look at the fact that Partey hasn’t supposedly started training yet, then that would suggest that even if he started training with the first team today, he wouldn’t be in the matchday squad this weekend. With a week of training under his belt after an injury that required surgery, you’d probably say he might be part of the match day squad next weekend at the earliest (which is when have a break, but I’m doing hypotheticals here) but he’s unlikely to get any minutes other than a few token ones at the end. More likely Arteta doesn’t risk him until the following weekend, which would be 20th January. Maybe he gets on the pitch for 15 – 20 minutes in that game, with a view to potentially giving him a half the week after, which would be 27th January. The first time he’ll even be a potential to start a game wouldn’t be until 3rd February, which is the quarter final stage of the AFCON. So if we’re looking at timelines like that, then it completely makes sense that Hughton wouldn’t take him. At best he’d have a Partey who could play around 60 minutes by the time the quarter final comes around and what does that say about his team and the player that Partey replaces if they get that far?

I’m not even counting the fact that Ghana would have to be super cautious with his minutes and an international tournament is not one that you look to build a player back up. By staying at Arsenal they could get him training this week, or at least next week when they go for warm weather training, he can be slowly integrated in to the first team, then they can earmark a matchday squad place on the bench for Palace at home on 20th January. For once, it appears as though common sense has prevailed.

And from an Arsenal perspective, those timelines might just work out for us. We play Palace at home and Forest away, both games in which I have my fingers crossed that Partey can get some minutes, no matter how small, with that game at home to Liverpool the one that we have to cross our fingers that he can be ready. Because if he is, then it could be a very timely arrival back in to our first team. Of course him not breaking down between now and May is another question entirely, but if we start to get noises from Arteta that Partey is training, then there is another reason for us to be cheerful. Because if we want to see a better second half to the season than the first, Partey is going to need to be fit and available for us.

Catch you all tomorrow.

And all-in-all it wasn’t a bad day. Liverpool were always going to beat Burnley, so I didn’t pay too much attention to that, but Villa losing to United was good, especially in the way they did because it felt like a really Unai Emery-at-The-Arsenal kind of collapse in the second half. Plus United are so far down the league that I didn’t look at the fact it was them coming from behind and just saw it as some mid table team beating a side around us at the top. It’s sort of the same with Newcastle and if Everton can somehow miraculously beat City tonight, that’ll feel like it’s been a decent enough set of results for us so far this Christmas and as long as we do our business and hopefully Brighton can against The Scum, you’d have to say we’ve got to be happy with that.

Our incentive for tomorrow is clear, because we’ve already been knocked off of top spot by Liverpool winning; victory at home to West Ham therefore becomes and imperative, although we’ll have to do it without Havertz, who has picked up his fifth booking this season. This is the time of year when you start to see this stuff; there will be players all over the league who are walking the tightrope and for us it’s Kai that will sit it out. People used to joke that footballers in the old days used to try to time it perfectly so they get to have their Christmas off by being suspended on Boxing Day, which of course is just a bit of a Christmas chuckle, but even if it was true the first team have this period off anyway because we don’t play until tomorrow, so they’ll be back in training today and prepping ahead of the game.

There have been further noises that Partey is back in training and if that is true then we might be able to see him from the bench, but I doubt he’ll be anywhere near ale to play for more than a few token minutes at the end, so we’ll need to find another solution for our three man midfield tomorrow. Could that be Emile Smith Rowe? Maybe. He’s a guy who is now back in training, people have suggested that he works better as a central number eight rather than on the flanks (and we have Saka and Martinelli anyway so his path is blocked as it is), plus the enforced absence of Kai means that the spot needs to be filled. But I suspect that Emile – like Partey – might not be quite fit enough to start in a game like tomorrow evening’s encounter with the Hammers. He’s only had about 10 days of training I think, so throwing him in to start given how much he’s broken down in the last couple of years when not fully fit, suggests to me that he’ll be eased in. Arteta has spoken more highly of him, which is interesting to note and I suspect he’ll want to get him more involved- than he was pre-injury, but this still feels a little too soon. I’ll speculate who would come in for Kai on tomorrow’s preview blog I think, but suffice to say I think we have plenty of options (Trossard, Jorginho if fit, etc). There was a time in which a suspension or injury to a first XI player would mean a lot of concern ahead of any game, but we’ve got a squad of players who are trusted by Arteta and whoever comes in I’d be pleased enough with. It goes to show how likeable this squad is; there are players with whom you used to be like “oh god no” when they were starting, but those players are now thankfully few and far between.

We’re just a few days away from the transfer window re-opening and so Arsenal will be looking to add to that ‘likeable list’, but I look at our squad and injuries at the moment and wonder how you get players in without over-packing the changing room – Chelsea style – because in the next six weeks we could have a number of players back and fit. Tomiyasu, Partey, Jorginho are all technically out, although the first two will be off with their respective national teams for the AFCON and Asia Cup. This means that it won’t be until mid February until we see a potentially fully fit and available team and the problem with that is that whilst you can’t win the league in the early months of a new year, you can take yourself out of any running during that time. So do Arsenal stick or twist with some loan signings or short term deals? Maybe, but that’ll be even harder to do than giving a team cash for a player; the type of player we’d be after to support our squad won’t be a cast off that isn’t playing for a club, it’ll most likely be one of the better players in the team, so why that team would sanction a short term loan deal is a bit of a weird one. But the club have done it before so if they can pull an Odegaard-esque loan rabbit out of the hat, then that’d be quite something. Less have more Odegaard and less Denis Suarez-style incomings.

I’ll leave it there for today. You enjoy your Festive Christmas Wednesday and I’ll catch thee all in the morrow.

I gotta say I’m surprised, because we have become pariahs in the media and Mikel Arteta is the chief perpetrator in the views of the football world right now, so I was half expecting a three, four or five game touchline ban. But when you read some of the details in the statement and the amount of legal mumbo-jumbo that went in to the documentation, it feels like Arteta has been on trial and been found not guilty by a selection of Joe Public. I’m sure these processes happen all of the time and maybe because it isn’t The Arsenal I am not as invested and therefore tune it out, but this feels very much like a full on trial for what is practically the same as getting a speeding ticket. It is over the top, it’s taken too long and it feels politically motivated.

I had to chuckle at the bit about the use of the Spanish term ‘desgracia’ versus the English terminology of ‘disgrace’ being used as one of the reasons why this needs to be thrown out. I gets on a technical basis it’s true, but if we’re really saying that Mikel Arteta didn’t know the exact meaning of what he was saying having lived and worked in this country for almost two decades, then I think there’s a little bit of cheeky naivety going on here. I’m all for it to be honest and as I said on Twitter:

https://x.com/SuburbanGooner/status/1735473335176220719?s=20

LOLZ.

Anyway, the good thing is that Arteta is cleared, he’ll be back on the touchline and able to impact games from this weekend with his barking instructions of all of his players. The down side might be, of course, that we get a bit of backlash. I’m not fussed about some of the gutter trash journo’s pulling out “this sets the tone and a bad precedent for football managers” nonsense; they weren’t saying the same when Klopp was literally spitting his rage in the faces of fourth officials, so don’t come at my manager now, please, sirs. You want to start a staunch defence of the shoddy standards of refereeing then you go right ahead, but do it every week when every manager makes comments, don’t just go for Arteta because it’s easy to have a pantomime villain and general ‘bad guy’ in your narrative. They’re all at it.

Instead, I’m slightly more concerned that the PGMOL Old Boys network, having had seen that the law isn’t in favour of them, will now be refereeing us very differently to others in the league. That 50/50 call that Liverpool get? Yeah, that ain’t gonna be us boys and guys – that’s my big worry. Hopefully I’m wrong, hopefully it can all settle down, but just seeing how some of the 50/50 calls were just ignored last weekend against Villa, makes me wonder if we’ll start to see a regular pattern emerging. Hopefully not.

The other news that I’m excited to find out about is when we get Thomas Partey back. It was only yesterday that I was saying that if he isn’t around for Anfield then we’ll have him for probably just a couple of games before he flits off to the AFCON, but seeing him in training with some pictures I’ve seen released today is brilliant. He’s such a transformative player for us and if fully fit can be a huge boost to this team at a time in which we’ve been seeing people drop what feels like every week. Seeing ESR return to the squad earlier in the week, now noises of Partey coming back, is brilliant. I’d be shocked if he’s anywhere near the matchday squad on Sunday, but if he can get an additional week of training under his belt next week, to add to his return this week, then that would be awesome for us. And given the schedule we have, if he can play minutes against West Ham and then Fulham on New Year’s Eve, well, that could be very important in the context of the season. We still lose him to the AFCON in January, but let’s embrace a few games with him now if we can.

Let’s see what Arteta says in a bit though, as he’s often quite cautious about this stuff and although he doesn’t give anything away in these pressers, we’re just looking for little hints, a smile, anything really, that has us at least a bit tantalised about the return of the Ghanaian in midfield.

I think I’ll leave it there for the time being. Time to get on with the ret of the working day.

Have yourselves a good’un and if you feel like tuning in to a pre match pod with me and my mate Merv, you can do so here on the Same Old Arsenal podcast.

I’ve been thinking about this topic for a while so thought given that we’re in the middle of the tedium that is the international break, I’d pen some thoughts about our £100million man Declan Rice, who by now we all absolute adore and are thank our lucky stars that Mikel was so forceful in his desire to get him in to the club in the summer. We can all see why now, because as we all know, he has been absolutely immense for us and at times it has felt like he’s carried the team on his back with his performances.

And it is because of some of those performances that I thought i’d drop in that slightly provocative title, because I’ve been thinking for a while who our most important player is at the club right now. Who is the player that above all I think we would struggle the most without? Who is the guy with whom we would see the biggest drop off from the team?

And the best news of all is that this is a more difficult question to answer than perhaps three or four years ago. It speaks volumes to the levels that this team has raised in itself thanks to Mikel, Edu and some of the performances we’ve seen; there has been such a steady growth in the side that this question could legitimately include multiple candidates that you could argue for. So I thought I’d drop in some words with my perspective.

For example, some might think that Saka is the one player we couldn’t do without and certainly there is an argument for that. He’s picking up goals and assists left, right and centre this season, despite most of us acknowledging that he probably hasn’t been at his best this season. He’s being doubled up by teams on that right flank, he’s constantly booted about the place when he comes up against defenders who don’t have the ability to beat him by legitimate means, so they have to do it illegally. We all love him; he’s our Starboy and anybody who wants to argue he’s the one we don’t want to lose above all and I think that’s fair enough to argue, but with Saka my only counter point would be not him, but would be the other players we have that could replace him. Now, I know there is no option that could really  replace Saka fully, but the difference in quality – the drop off – between Saka and the next guy,  compared to Rice and the next guy – is the reason why I would say that Rice is more important to us right now as it stands. If we lose Saka, we have Trossard, Gabriel Jesus (eventually), we could play Fabio Vieira, etc. So we have options.

With Declan Rice the drop off feels quite significant. If we lose Rice now, who is going to be that engine in the middle of the pitch? Elneny? I don’t think so. Jorginho has been playing well, but he doesn’t cover the same ground or offer us the same defensive safety that Rice does. His ability to win duels is unmatched in our team and if we were playing tomorrow and we had Rice out, our midfield three would probably be Odegaard, Havertz and Jorginho and we saw with the West Ham game that there is no bite in that midfield when Rice isn’t there.

And with Partey out for the foreseeable future, it does feel as though our reliance on Rice is even more amplified. With Partey out we simply can’t afford to lose Declan Rice in this team and that is why I think he is – certainly at this point in time – our most important player. Now, if we get Partey back in December, if we start to get a fully fit squad for the first bloody time this season, then perhaps my thinking will change. perhaps then it will be Bukayo Saka, or Gabriel Jesus, who in his absence and with our reliance on Eddie or Havertz up top (not that we’ve seen that too much to be fair) has shown just how much we miss him as the central striker in our three-pronged attack. But at this moment in time, with the team shaping up as it is with injuries, suspensions, etc, then I can’t see anyone else as more important that Declan in that midfield.

He’s just a phenomenal footballer. £100million is a ridiculous amount of money to spend, but the only time people mention it is to confirm that nobody is actually talking about it! His acclimitisation period has been next to nothing. He came in for a few friendlies in the summer and bang! He was away and performing with us. And at both ends of the pitch too, with that goal against United effectively winning it for us, although of course Gabriel Jesus added a gloss to the final result. But it was that goal that really sealed the deal deep in to stoppage time and in a game that at one point felt that we were going to get utterly skanked by an undeserving Man United.

Declan Rice adds a steel to this Arsenal team that we lacked last season. We’ve all talked about how we haven’t been playing amazing, but what we have been doing is keeping the back door shut and I bet if you asked Gabriel and Saliba how much of an impact he has made for them and their ability to keep out the goals and I’ll be they’ll tell you that he has been integral. I think I’ve said this before, but the way he wins the ball back, his ability to win ground duels and come away with it whilst still on his feet, is massive. From a technical point of view it is so important in transitioning from defence to attack. Picture this scenario: An attacker is dribbling with the ball and your midfielder goes to ground, wins a slide tackle, we all roar as fans. It looks good, it sounds good, but if he’s on the floor and he’s won the ball, there are a lot of times in which a player will rely on other players to mop up the pieces. Now picture that same player winning the ball whilst still on his feet. He is able to change direction, he saves that extra second or two in physically getting up, so that means he can distribute the ball a few seconds quicker. In elite sport where marginal gains are so important, seconds matter, because they are priceless when an opposing team is trying to set their defensive positions and body shape. So we have ourselves a guy who can literally turn a moment of potential weakness (defending without the ball) in to a strength (hitting teams more quickly in transition).

He’s so valuable to us, he has been so good so quickly and that, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, is why I see him as Arsenal’s more important footballer.

What do you think?

Arsenal must surely now be looking at fast tracking their search for a central midfielder to this January rather than the summer. The Ghanaian has had rotten luck with injuries since he joined us, he’s missed a chunk of the season every year since he signed having always been available at Atletico Madrid, but you can’t build a regular XI with him in the side and whilst that is a sad thing to admit given his talent, it is just the sad reality of life that we need to start thinking about moving on from him and finding a regular replacement. If he’s out until 1st January he’ll need a couple of weeks to get up to speed fitness-wise, then by the time he might even be moderately fit he’ll be off to the AFCON which starts on 13th January. Ghana are roughly 10th in the odds to win the thing from multiple bookies, but if they get all the way to the final it’ll be mid February when he’s back. Then he’ll probably have a few days to acclimatise and travel back to The Arsenal, so worst case scenario we could have him out until Burnley away on 17th February next year. That’s in 13 Premier League matches time and takes us to match week 25 that he’d be available for us. He’s missed the last three games which means in total in this spell he’ll have been out for 16 matches – almost half the season.

If the club aren’t already putting the wheels in motion – assuming these reports are true – that we need a replacement asap in January, I’d be stunned.

Arteta and then club wouldn’t admit it and of course the media will go into overdrive throwing names out in the hope of some clicks and hits on their channels, but the truth is that if we really want to compete on multiple fronts this season when it gets to crunch time, we need another solution. As it stands for the three options in the middle of the park we have Jorginho, Rice, Elneny, Odegaard, Smith Rowe, Havertz, Vieira. If Odegaard and Rice stay fit then fine, but if either get injured – particularly Rice – then we are in a world of trouble. We saw against West Ham the lack of physicality in a Jorginho, Havertz and Vieira midfield, so we have to just cross everything that Rice remains robust enough to play as many important matches as possible.

The main question will now turn to who takes up that left eight spot, I reckon, because personally I think that is the area that needs solving. For games like Burnley at home you’d expect us to play Jorginho in at six, then Rice playing left eight, but for those games in which there are powerful midfields who want to do you on transition, you don’t really want the lack of mobility of Jorginho to cost you. So for me I am pondering what our options are and I think about options like ESR in at left eight with Rice in at six, perhaps? The problem with that is that we’ve seen Smith Rowe switch off when we need our players to be switched on when we don’t have the ball. Perhaps Zinchenko at left eight? I wouldn’t be against this for a game like Liverpool away or Brighton at home. Having played ostensibly as a left back during his time at Arsenal and at Man City, it feels like he’d be better off the ball and tracking back and with somebody like Tomiyasu behind him ensuring that he doesn’t have to worry about getting run in behind, it kind of makes sense to me to try. But Mikel has shown a real reluctance to do that so far. Does this Partey situation mean he has to think differently? I would certainly Arteta gives it real consideration.

Burnley this weekend could be an opportunity to give it another tester, providing we do the business early on. If we can be winning by a couple of clear goals (not that I’m counting my chickens, just hypothesising because of the current situation and the opponent we play tomorrow) with half an hour to play tomorrow, then why not try once again moving Zinchenko to left eight, have Tomiyasu at left back, then see what the balance looks like? He tried Zinchenko as a midfielder when we were two up against Sevilla and it’s not as if it really sucked. So why not build a few data points in which you can have a better view as to whether it works or not?

I just think we need to start thinking of different options. One of the things that Arteta has done well is find good players who can play in multiple positions. Now is the time to test whether this can work in practice.

I was going to do a bit on the PGMOL announcements after the Newcastle game, but their responses show what a joke of a protectionist Old Boys Club that entity are. Kai Havertz was a unanimous sending off situation, but punching people in the head is undecided and you can now push people over in the box if you are an attacker. Great stuff – I look forward to us bundling over defenders tomorrow by slapping them in the head and the referee saying that it’s perfectly fine because the ‘lads’ in Stockley Park and PGMOL “independent” panels will back them up. Grand.

Catch you wonderful humans tomorrow.

So for me it all starts with the result which, given we don’t exactly have the best record away in Spain over the years, is a very good one and one that we can be very happy with. The draw in the other game between PSV and RC Lens means that we are back at the top of the group, it is now back in our control and if we can win our home game against Sevilla in a couple of weeks time, then depending on what happens in the other game, we could be on the verge of qualification. A draw in the other match on game week four and a win for Arsenal, for example, would put us on nine points, Lens on six, then the other two sides on two points and only able to accumulate a maximum of eight points. So after a disappointing night in France, we are probably only a win and a draw away from qualification and that is thanks to the boys doing the business in Andalucía yesterday evening.

Mikel kept most of his team in tact from Saturday and I can understand that; Tomiyasu was very good against Chelsea so deserved the start, Partey we now know picked up an injury in training (which in itself is a worry if that’s going to keep him out for a few weeks) so Jorginho kept his spot, then the Raya question was answered by giving him a start. I think most of us just want transparency and equity amongst the competition for the ‘keepers, but it was the right call to keep Raya in last night, because you don’t want to dent his confidence by making a move that could be construed as him being ‘dropped’. Having read a few comments on the game last night, however, it sounds as though there was another errant pass in the first half and a couple of iffy moments in the second too. I’m not going to labour any point on that, however, as I couldn’t watch the game and so it would be unfair on him for me to dig him out when I haven’t actually seen what happened.

I did, however, watch the two goals on replay and my, there was some stellar work from Gabriel Jesus on display for both. On the first one, the Saliba clearance was perhaps a tad fortunate to drop to him, but his turn to create space and bamboozle two Sevilla defenders was impressive, but that was followed up by the perfect kind of pass to set Martinelli off on a one-on-one with the ‘keeper. It was as cool and calm as you like as he rounded him and tapped in and given the timing of it too – just on halftime, it was the perfect end to what seemed like a good half.

Then Gabriel Jesus decided to get in on the scoring action himself in the second and his finish was the kind of well taken effort that makes you wonder how he doesn’t bag a lot more simpler goals. Great control, couple of little touches towards the goal from the left hand side, little shift of the ball and then foot wrapped around it to swerve it out of the ‘keepers reach. Brilliant stuff.

And then, by the sounds of it, we pretty much controlled the game. Looking at the stats come the final whistle it seems as though Sevilla had more ball, more passing and more attempts than us, but by the sounds of it that was more down to after we conceded from the corner, than for most of the game. It was a bit odd that we left Gabriel Jesus on the tall centre half (I think it was the centre half) for the corner, but thankfully that didn’t cost us eventually.

And so we’ve gone away to a tough and hostile ground and we’ve done the business. It sounds as though it was the perfect European away night in the end and Arteta will be happy with what the lads delivered. There’s a little bit of worry about the Partey injury and if he’s out for any length of time then it will of course be yet more concerns we should be having about his availability long term, but we have to wait and see how bad it is in the coming days and when Arteta delivers the next press conference injury update. The other slightly concerning news was Gabriel Jesus asking to be taken off, but the fact that he came out for interviews and said himself that he has had an initial test and hopefully it isn’t too bad, should allow us a little less concern. Our next game is at home to Sheffield United and if he’s out of that but it ensures he’s back the following week, then we should be able to handle it. Better to be safe than sorry with him and Partey and so I suspect the club will be thinking long and hard about whether to bother risking for the weekend. We’ll find out either tomorrow or Friday I suspect. For now we can continue to bask in the away day victory and even though the Chelsea result wasn’t the best performance, any lingering doubts or concerns from that display can be assuaged somewhat with a good away win.

Onwards and upwards and I’ll catch you wonderful humans in the morrow. Have a good one.

Quick p.s. – I quite like that green kit. It’s growing on me. More of that during the season please.

I gotta tell ya, I have absolutely no idea what we’re going to get this evening. Usually I have a feeling one way or another; we’re either playing a very good team and this will be difficult, or a team that we should beat because we are better than them, but it comes down to the variables. But tonight I really don’t know. It feels like I have two competing opinions in my brain about how this match should pan out.

On one side I am looking at the fact Sevilla have already sacked their manager, they sit 13th in La Liga having won just two matches of their first nine. They have an ageing squad of players like Sergio Ramos, Adil Rami, Ivan Rakitic, Jesus Navas, as well as a few players north of 30 like Erik Lamela. They are a side with whom I hear will like to be physical and aggressive in the tackle and that they will look to ruffle us up this evening, but that we should have enough to be able to play around given the quality of players we have in our team.

On the other side I have already seen us fall foul of one Champions League away day defeat to RC Lens in which a vociferous home support, coupled with a couple of wonder strikes and a goalkeeper mistake from Raya, that all led to a defeat in a game that really we shouldn’t have lost. Sevilla picked up a respectable draw at the weekend against Real Madrid and by the sound of some of the podcasts i’ve listened to in the build up to this game, they could have even won it at the end. They have players like Ramos who love a big game and tonight their home fans will bring the noise to make it feel like it. As well as that, however, there is also Arsenal in Europe. We don’t tend to travel too well and haven’t done over the years, so I’m really not sure what sort of flavour of Arsenal we will get this evening.

My hope is that it is a side looking to make amends for what was a poor performance for three-quarters of our game at Stamford Bridge on Saturday evening. It was played under torrential rain and as I went for my run this morning I listened to the Arsecast in which James reported from Seville that it was bucketing it down there too. Some sort of bad omen or sign of what might come this evening perhaps?

We must hope not. And Arteta must have a think about what he needs to change for tonight’s game, because we can’t have the same lacklustre display as the weekend. The passing was off, the rhythm was never set until towards the end of the game and just like that match against Chelsea, Sevilla are in this competition because if you aren’t on it from the first minute, they will punish you.

So, what sort of line up do I think we can expect tonight?

I think that we’ll probably continue to see Raya in goal. He’s looked a bit shaky but I actually agree that it is probably the best thing to do; after a performance in which he looked shaky this weekend just gone, you can’t kill his confidence by hooking him from the team. I do think there is a conversation to be had about Ramsdale for  this coming weekend against Sheffield United, but for now I would stick with Raya and hope he picks himself up and gives us a good game this evening.

In defence I don’t think he will make many changes, although rewarding Tomiyasu by giving him a start at left back this evening could be an option. But I’m not sure Arteta will. Suso is a good player, but I’m not sure if he’s the same style as Raheem Sterling and with Jesus Navas likely to play behind him he may get overlapped and doubled up, but I think Zinny could probably handle that. What will be key is the likes of Martinelli pinning Jesus Navas back in the evening and that’s why I think Martinelli will certainly start tonight, alongside Gabriel Jesus and Bukayo Saka to complete our front line. We need to keep that Sevilla back line busy and pushed back and I think given the personnel they have, we should be expecting Arsenal to be able to create spaces and fashion chances. I don’t know enough about Spanish football to be sure, but I’m pretty confident that our front three have the beating of their defensive unit if we have space and time to find the right passing, but we have to be better in the final third than we were against Chelsea.

A lot of that will also come down to Odegaard, who was really poor at the weekend and barely featured for large swathes of the game. He needs to be able to find space in between the lines like Havertz did when he came on and we need that connection between Odegaard and the attacking trio to be better than it was in our previous game.

This is a must win, or at least a ‘must not lose’ game and as a result I’d complete the midfield line up by having our best three players in there, which would mean Declan Rice and Thomas Partey joining Odegaard. We need Partey’s line breaking passing tonight because I think that will help Odegaard and if Arteta goes with that then I’d be feeling pretty confident that we’ve got a good chance of getting all three points. Zinchenko, Partey, Rice and Odegaard as that midfield box would give us a lot of technical security on the ball and I think it is also intense-running enough to be able to cover the ground if we’re hit in transition by Sevilla. The rest of the defensive doesn’t need mentioning because we all know who is playing at centre half and at right back.

And I just wonder if this is the closest to the ‘best’ XI we have that will start tonight. I also wonder if Arteta might have had an eye on this game as an important one to play that ‘best’ XI and that’s why he opted for Jorginho on Saturday evening, perhaps? A win here puts us in a commanding position to then play Sevilla at home to take control of the group; we can ill-afford another defeat to see us probably drop to bottom, so I could understand if Arteta’s juggling of the XI happens more at the weekend at home to Sheffield United, as opposed to tonight away in Spain.

Unfortunately I’ll miss the first half at least this evening as it’s the mother-in-laws birthday, but I’ll hopefully be able to get the second half in if the Management drives me home from the restaurant, so fingers crossed there. And fingers crossed The Arsdenal do the business tonight. Catch you all tomorrow for some thoughts.

At this stage of the process, if you’re like me, you are basically scrawling through pages and pages on the internet for any signs of any knocks and niggles. And not just for our players, too, because I’ve even taken a look at the Chelsea website (bleugh) to see what player availability they have. And there’s a big picture of the Chelsea captain Reece James back in training over the international break, which would suggest to me that he’s fit and available and most likely to play on Saturday. It is a big boost to them and a blow to us; I remember being at the Emirates for Unai’s first home game and he played brilliantly. He was a constant menace down our left hand side and bagged a goal along with Lukaku to sink us in August in what was a pretty depressing match if truth be told. When I’ve seen him play he looks like a decent player and having him back will give them a boost. But it appears as though they do have a number of players who will now be available for our game against them in two days time and it is when you start to look at their injury list that they’ve had at the start of this season, that you realise that they’re not as terrible a side as you might think. They’re a horrible fanbase, a horrible club, with very few redeeming features, but it is fair to say that they have been pretty decimated for the start of the season. So unfortunately for us I think we’ll get a more accurate picture of a Pochettino side this weekend than perhaps their defeats to Villa and Forest showed.

The good news – we hope – is that we don’t appear to have suffered any major injuries over the international break:

**touches any piece of wood in the local vicinity**

The hope is that after Partey got minutes in his belt, Saka didn’t play, Rice seems ok and Havertz was an unused sub this midweek, that when Arteta delivers his update on player availability (which could be today or tomorrow – I haven’t checked yet) he is a little more open than usual and just says that we have no new injury concerns. The big one we’ll all be waiting on is Bukayo Saka, but whilst Arteta may not give anything specific away, if he truly was ‘in contention’ when we played City, then surely two weeks later he should be fine, right? I mean it has been 18 days since he limped off and so he’s had nearly three weeks to recover, so surely he is in with a shout of making the squad?

The worry will be if he’s still out. Because if he is still out then it might suggest a slightly more worrying prognosis from the Arsenal medical team about the injury he sustained. I hope not. You hope not. We ALL hope not. We have all already seen just this season alone how important he is to our end product and in the final third of the pitch; he’s had the most goal contributions of any player this season and whilst Gabriel Jesus did a fine job filling in wide right against City, I think what we all want to see if our first choice front three finally lining up for the first time this season. We’ve had a variety of players who have all come in and done a decent enough job – Trossard, Eddie, Nelson a couple of times from the bench – but it ain’t the main trio and that’s what we are all itching to see. Gabriel Martinelli got 45 minutes and has had some time over the last fortnight to do more training and be ready to the trip to Stamford Bridge, Gabriel Jesus has been in the team and playing regularly for a while now, so now we all look to Bukayo to complete the trio and give us the best possible chance of getting another win at the weekend. I’d love to see if Martinelli can have a proper run at a returning-from-injury Reece James. It would be awesome to see Colwill against Saka, or Jesus against Thiago Silva. Then perhaps even we can have a bit of late arriving Martin Odegaard also testing himself against those Chelsea defenders too.

But we need to hear from Arteta’s lips that Bukayo is ready. When we get that,I think a lot of us will feel that wee bit better and also it will give us a boost ahead of  – as I’ve already said – a game that I don’t think will be as easy as some Gooners are suggesting.

That’s it from me today. More thoughts and the usual ramblings tomorrow as always. You have yourselves a fan-dabby-dozy Thursday.

Had a rubbish night sleep – work stuff playing on the mind – so feeling like I’ve been hit by a bus. Haven’t even touched a drop of alcohol either, so it makes it even more annoying. But there you go, such is life and all that jazz.

There isn’t even a bunch of Arsenal-related news going on to sink my teeth into either, on account of the internationals still going on. Elneny played the full 90 last night against Algeria, Tomiaysu will most likely play tonight against Tunisia, Partey will be in America on Wednesday in the early hours of the morning paying for Ghana against the US no doubt, then there will be Jorginho, Rice and Ramsdale all in the squads for England v Italy, as well as Havertz in Mexico in the early hours too. So it won’t be until Thursday until we know who is likely to be available for the game on Saturday.

Imagine playing in the early hours of Wednesday morning, then probably flying back Wednesday Evening UK time, then having to report in for training on Thursday. I’d assume the club would probably gift those players travelling that far the Thursday off, then you’d expect them to be in on Friday. But if you are Havertz or Partey, your match finishes around 3am on Wednesday morning UK time, which will be . You then have all the warm downs, press, etc, before probably heading back to a team hotel or your own hotel at around…what…5am UK time, which is 1am Philadelphia time (where the match is being played)? If he goes to bed around that time, then he will be getting up at say 1pm UK time on Wednesday. Then it’s off to the airport for probably a flight around 4pm UK time, with a seven hour flight to London that would touch him down at 11pm UK time. If he’s home for 1am he’s done pretty well. Then he has to get to bed and probably report to training for 10amish?

It goes to show you what life these guys have to lead. Yes they are paid handsomely, yes they have to perform and yes they are expected to deliver, but I think about when I’ve had to travel for work and how shattered I often am when I get back, yet I’m not doing a physical job like these guys do. These athletes’ bodies are highly tuned engines and in an ages of marginal gains, this kind of travel on the body could be the difference between getting an extra 1 – 2% from a player. And it isn’t the international teams who pay the wages of the players. They just use them for pointless friendlies and send them back in a less than perfect state than when they received them.

This is why I detest mid season internationals and, specifically, when they are for meaningless friendlies halfway around the world. It just doesn’t seem right.

Anyway, it’s happening, we have to be prepared for players to not be at their best and hopefully we have enough of the currently injured players returning and ready to deliver.

To cheer you up and make the mood a little lighter after my rant, here’s an interview with Mo Elneny about how he cried when he found out the club was going to extend his contract for a year. It is the kind of class that Arsenal show when you talk about how we behave as a club and whilst from a football perspective I’m not sure how much value it will give us this season, from a humanistic perspective it is lovely to see the way the club behaves and treats people. They haven’t always got it right (remember the whole redundancies during COVID and Gunnersaurus being binned off?), but in the mean there is an element of class about The Arsenal and that is something that we should all be proud of.

The interview is great and it’s nice to see a player speak in such glowing terms about the club the way Elneny does, but I suspect that after this season there won’t exactly be a massive clamour for him to sign an additional two or three year deal just to be a cheerleader for the club. I suspect that when he has found his form and can remain fit this season, the club will have put him in a position where he can start to look at other options and given he said he wants to play until he’s 36/37, I doubt that it’ll be at The Arsenal at that time. There’s no doubt that he is a great addition to the squad from a personality point of view – the players and staff at the club seem to love him – but if you’re thinking about a practical point of view and the 25-man squad rule for how many overseas players you can have, then after this season I suspect the club and Elneny will be having a natural conversation about a parting of the ways.

For now though he is getting back to fitness, I’m sure he’s over the moon he’s back in his international team, so his story can continue to be a positive one.

Other than that there isn’t much going on, so I’ll put a pin in today’s ramblings and hopefully come back to you with something else Arsenal-related tomorrow.

Have a good one folks.

How optimistic are you that we might see Bukayo Saka on the pitch tomorrow, eh? A bit more optimistic than a couple of days ago I’ll bet. That’s because we’ve started to hear some whisperings that he might be ok from Sunday, with even Mikel Arteta admitting that he is ‘in contention’ to play against the champions. Then yesterday I saw a few journos in the afternoon and evening say that he’d been cleared to play, that the club had been speaking to England as well about managing his minutes, so you have to assume that we might at least see him in the squad for tomorrow.

And given that we’re already more than likely to be missing Martinelli, who I don’t think has trained yet and so must be pretty unlikely to feature, that is a morale boost, for sure. The question will remain on how able he is to play from the start. I always find that a little bit of a weird one though, because when you have a player who has been playing so regularly, then surely it is a little more black and white than Saka being named on the subs bench. Players coming back from longer injuries will of course need time to get up to speed and if you look at Partey, or maybe even Martinelli, then if they’ve missed three or four weeks+ of training and matches then they probably do need to be eased in. But Bukayo has been playing in most matches as we all already know. So physical fitness to cope for an entire 90 minutes shouldn’t be the problem. The problem comes if he isn’t ready because he is still experiencing discomfort/pain caused by limping off on Tuesday. If he is, then the club need to take the difficult decision to just not have him involved at all. And if that happens then you have to be looking at those two England games and agreeing that he should be nowhere near at least one of them; the friendly against Australia he should not even be getting his tracksuit on.

But that’s England and that’s next weekend. This weekend all eyes are on the second toughest fixture of the season for us domestically, the first being Oil Whores FC on their own ground. And for us it is even harder than other sides as well, as we have one of the worst records against City in the Premier League and certainly the worst of all of the ‘Big Six’ clubs. No win since 2015, 15 losses out of 16 against City, including 12 in a row in which we’ve been defeated. Arteta was asked about that in his press conference yesterday and although he dismissed the psychological impact of so many defeats to them, citing different players playing over that period, there’s no doubt in my mind that there is a big psychological barrier for us to overcome tomorrow. He also dismissed it as a ‘season defining’ game and although it is in the interests of the broadcasters to make that the case, I have to agree with him on that one. We are seven games in to the season and after tomorrow there is another 30 to go. I doubt that this game tomorrow will define our whole season, but what it will do is reconfirm that we’re not ready to compete for the title just yet given some of the changes that have happened to the team since last season. We’ve all talked about how we haven’t quite clicked yet, we had a disappointing away result in midweek against Lens and I’ve even been saying since the summer that I think this is going to be more difficult for us to compete in the same way we did last season, because of those extra Champions League games. So to me whilst I don’t think tomorrow is season defining, I would agree that talk of the title should probably just be pushed so far down the discussion topics if we pick up yet another defeat to them tomorrow.

He was asked about other players like Partey and Rice specifically and as you’d expect, he was pretty positive on both. He’s ‘ahead of schedule’ according to the manager and I suspect we will definitely see him tomorrow in some capacity. Arteta confirmed he’s in the squad but the big question – a line-up one – will be on whether he is fit enough to start tomorrow. If the answer is ‘yes’ then it could be very big for us.

Equally important is somebody like Ben White and as good as Tomiyasu is, White is clearly the best right back we have at the club. Arteta described him as a ‘fighter’ and there’s no doubt that’s a pretty accurate desctiption of him. He seems to be so unfazed by everything, quite laid back, yet when he’s on the pitch he is a beast. You could see from the Lens game just what he adds compared to Tomi in an attacking and overlapping sense and there was one overlap Tomi made on Tuesday that he got in behind, but his cross in wasn’t the best. I remember thinking to myself “Ben White finds an Arsenal player there I think” and that is testament to just how much he has developed in that right back slot. He really doesn’t get enough praise; he’s quite an unsung hero at the club but any Arsenal fan you speak to about Ben White, we’re all telling you about just how brilliant he is.

There was a little bit on Pep that I thought was interesting too, where Mikel was asked whether Pep can still surprise him. He cited last season’s efforts at playing Bernardo Silva as a left back as one, but I think the way they also went long against us at the Etihad could also be shown as an example on how flexible and adaptable Guardiola is as a coach. He will shift anything around to find a solution to the opponent he faces. I’m sure with some teams lower down the league there is an element of ‘we’re just better than them, let’s just play our game’ and because of that, those teams are more likely to be able to cause an upset over City compared to us; Pep will have a very unique gameplan to play against Arteta’s Arsenal ahead of the match tomorrow, as opposed to playing away at a Forest, Wolves or West Ham, for example. So we need to be mindful of that, Arteta needs to be mindful of that, and be prepared to change it in-game as well. Let the 3D chess commenceth tomorrow at 4.30pm.

And from me for today I shall call a halt to my tapping away. Back tomorrow with more of a match preview, some thoughts on my preferred line up, as well as trying to work out how the hell we beat this City side.

Catch you all tomorrow.

Bukayo Saka is deemed fit enough to play and Arteta said he’s fine after hobbling off against Bournemouth. I’m sure he’ll start tonight given that admission from the manager, but I think there’s probably plenty of us wondering how many times we can see him hobble off before he eventually succumbs to injury. It is a fairly redundant statement to make (but I’m going to make it anyway), but Saka’s importance to this team cannot be underestimated enough. He has nine goal contributions in all competitions this season for us and he’s scored or assisted just over a third of ALL the goals we’ve got so far this season. And he’s missed the Brentford League Cup game too. He is our Starboy, he is a guy who makes things happen, he’s even supposedly not fully got going in to his stride yet and still we’re getting end product. So having him fit is vital and if he truly has no ill-effects from the last couple of weekends where we’ve seen him pick up injuries, then cool. But if he is carrying any kind of problem in to this game, don’t inject him, patch him up and send him out there; this game is important and we want to win it, but that Man City game on Sunday is basically going to need every single one of our best players fit and available if we want to stand any chance of getting anything against them.

And speaking of having your best players back fit, we’ve also welcomed back Thomas Partey to training this week, with Arteta admitting he’s been in training for a couple of days and should play some part tonight. My hope is that he can get a solid 20 – 30 minutes and providing all is good with him there, then we should be also looking at how much involvement he can have for the City game at the weekend. Another massive boost for us.

And my, how things can change around quickly within a week, eh? This time last week we were going in to the Brentford game with Partey, Rice, Saka, Trossard all as doubts, but now it looks like all might be fit for this evening and that is huge for us. Huge because it affords Arteta a bit of rotation with some of the ‘big’ players who he wants to find spaces for. You never know, but we could see Tomiyasu come in this evening, for example, instead of Zinchenko or one of the other defenders. We could have Rice start the game, but Partey finish the game, giving both much needed rest and minutes ahead of the weekend. Trossard will fancy a start and in the absence of Martinelli I suspect Arteta will grant that wish; maybe we see Trossard wide left and Gabriel Jesus through the middle, like we did against PSV?

I do think Arteta will do a bit of rotation, but I doubt it’ll be in goal. Raya appears to have secured that number one spot so I suspect he starts again tonight, with Saliba, gabriel, Odegaard, Saka, probably Havertz all getting the nod too. Maybe he could give Fabio Vieira the left eight spot as reward for his decent performances this season, but I could just as easily see him keep Havertz in there in the hope to kick-start his Arsenal career after his goal at the weekend. And I wouldn’t necessarily be averse to that. He’ll be riding high off the back of that goal and the overwhelming groundswell of away fan support he got on Saturday and he’ll know that all any of us want is for him to be a success at the Arsenal because if they’re all successful then we all get to celebrate that glory.

As for Lens, their league form is pretty patchy, but I’ve seen a few stats floating about that it is belying their actual qualities. The noises are that they are a good defensive outlet and that perhaps their goal concessions have been a little unlucky. They are certainly missing Fofana in midfield and Openda in attack is a big blow; last season he bagged 21 goals in 38 games and that is a big chunk of goals missing from their team that they need to fill. It doesn’t look like they’ve been doing it so far this season but that can all change under the lights and with the impetus of Cha,pions league football getting their team excited. They got a credible draw away at Sevilla in their last game and looked like they made a decent fist of the game, so I’m not expecting this to be easy, but it is a game that we should be looking at as one that we should be getting a result of some kind in.

Mindset has to be right though, application has to be right and we need to be taking our chances. Fingers crossed we do.

Catch you all tomorrow for a debrief.

We got to do a bit of re-living on the Same Old Arsenal pod last night and it was fun chatting through some of the highlights with the team. But there are two that we talked about that I wanted to touch on again this morning, if you’ll endulge me, which was the Thomas Partey discussion and then the way Man United set up against us.

For the Partey discussion, it is more about whether we can cope without him for the next couple of months. I haven’t seen an official timeframe released yet but I’ve heard a few rumours of the October internationals. That would be mid October and so we’re effectively looking at around six week’s out for him if that timeframe turns out to be accurate. During that time we have Everton, the Scum, Bournemouth and City in the league, as well as Brentford in the Carabao and PSV and Lens in the Champions League. That’s seven games and what we debated on last night is how much that might cost us. James was of the opinion that this could be a hammer blow and is going to potentially derail us, but me personally, I’m not so sure. I’m sure Rice is more than capable of falling victim to the dreaded Arsenal injury curse (Thomas Partey was never injured for Atletico before he joined us), but at this point in time and based on the fact he has played so much football for West Ham already and managed to stay fit, you’d hope he’s robust enough to play in most of those games. But I think in Jorginho we also have a guy who can come in and give some respite if needed. If we’re ahead in games liek Everton or Bournemouth away, for example, then you’d hope a player like Jorginho can come in and see out games for us. Those City and Scum games are two that you’d probably say we’ll need Ruce the whole time, but other than that I feel like minutes will be able to be shared until we have Partey back.

Of course the problem will come if two of our more injury prone players in Tomiyasu and Zinchenko, also fall down with injuries during this period. As a like-for-like move to bring Rice in at six for Partey I think we have to say I’m sure we are ok with it. But if Arteta loses one or both of those full backs…well…then we really ARE looking quite short. Partey was inverting as the right back when Zinchenko wasn’t playing and although many of us weren’t the biggest fans, you could see what Arteta was trying to do. And ultimately we picked up two wins and should have had a third were it not for us being so profligate with chances against Fulham. As a makeshift option in the absence of Zinchenko and Timber it looks as though it was at least an option but with Partey now out for the foreseeable future, we are quite heavily reliant on two unreliable (fitness wise) players. Which is a worry and especially so given we’re going to ask them to be playing midweek games too.

So whilst I am not too worried at this moment in time, I would be lying if I said that if we lose one more full back I won’t be feeling a fair bit of concern.

Hopefully that is not the case and hopefully we get a consistent XI going until Partey returns. Fingers crossed.

The other part of the game that I wanted to touch on was the way United set up on Sunday. At every opportunity they tried to slow the game down to walking pace and as I said on the pod last night, I think we weren’t being fooled in to trying to go too intense and press them too high. This Arsenal team has learned some lessons and I think when we needed to we had an intense press, but we were also ready to be probing when it was required. And ultimately it worked because we didn’t get caught too often in transition. But it does make you think about how we’re going to have to get used to this style of play; I would suggest that I think we’re going to see at least 10 – 12 games in the Premier League like that this season; a team comes to the Emirates, doesn’t really want to play football and wants to sucker punch us. Nottingham Forest tried it, Fulham tried it, then United tired it. I suspect we’re going to get a fair bit of it at home so we’re going to need to keep getting better at breaking down these stubborn defences. It was a bit weird for United to come to our gaff and be so insular, but perhaps it speaks to where they are at right now. For us, there were still some concerns – particularly how some teams seem to be able to score with pretty much their only attempt on goal in that first half – but it doesn’t feel like right now is the time to be picking holes after we are still riding high on the emotion from Sunday. So I’ll put a pin in it for now, but be mindful of the fact that we do need Arteta and the lads to be looking at why we’ve been giving up so many chances on such little xG.

Right, I think I’m gonna leave it there for today. Back tomorrow with probably more excitement and ramblings in the aftermath of the weekend’s fun and festivities.

Laters peeps.

Firstly, some form of prediction. I think we’ll get a draw today. We shouldn’t – we are a better team than United, we’re on home soil, these Arsenal players have shown dominance in all of the games this season, but this is the sort of game where United turn up, have little of the ball, hit us on the counter and smash and grab something.

This fixture is usually full of goals and last season both home and away it was the same so I’m expecting more of it today. We aren’t great defensively at home and we’ve given cheap goals away already so far this season, as well as last season, and Man United are the sort of side who can conjure something out of nothing.

So I suspect we might be heading for a 2-2 today, because I think we’ll score, but I can’t see us shutting them out today. They’ve got some injuries – Shaw and Varane the most notable – and they’ll have to play either a makeshift left back in Dalot or Reguilion from the Scum, but that doesn’t necessarily mean Saka is going to get his own way on that right hand side. He was poor against Fulham so I’m hoping that he’s up for it and can make amends from 4.30pm. We all know he’ll start, as will Martinelli, but there are plenty of other questions that need to be answered in terms of who else plays. I suspect the news of Partey’s injury – confirmed by the Ghanaian FA – will mean a shuffle is needed and for me that only means one thing: Ben White needs to come back in at right back. We need to revert back to the approach from last season and that means Zinchenko on the left, Gabriel in the middle alongside Saliba, then White making up the four man defence.

Partey’s injury will mean Rice has to play in at six and when you consider what a Partey injury would have meant last season, it’s not too shabby to have a player like Rice who can slot in and deliver what is hopefully another good performance at the base of our midfield.

Either side of him I would personally have a think about ESR, Vieira or Trossard as the left eight, but I suspect he’ll stick with Havertz and with a game like today there would be no better time to announce yourself as a key player than a proper performance today. On the right we know it’ll be Ødegaard, but I do wonder what Arteta will do through the middle. Eddie Nketiah will be buzzing after his first international call up and his form is such that it wouldn’t surprise me to see him start today. Regardless of who plays through the middle though, I’m comfortable with Eddie and Gabriel Jesus so that’s all good. What we need to see from whoever plays, however, is the ability to properly test the United back line. I was chatting to a United fan yesterday and he was saying how poorly they’ve been playing and how Casemiro hasn’t been great, but you can bet your bottom dollar that he’ll be on it today. So we have to be equally ready for the battle.

Ideally we want to start this fast and get ourselves up and running quickly. No brain farts early on, please, Arsenal. Concentration, control of the football and look to move this United team around a bit. They will want to tuck in and push us out wide I suspect, which is why we need to see something special from our wide forwards. With Wan Bissaka and potentially Reguilion as their full backs, there will be space and we have an opportunity to exploit with our set up in wide areas, but we need to not be as wasteful as we were against Fulham last weekend.

This is one of those fixtures I just do not like. I’ve seen too many games against United over the years in which we’ve battered them and still come away with nothing. I hope today that is not the case. They want us to come at them. They want us to commit bodies forward and they want to catch us out; we need to be ready to deal with it.

That’s yer lot from me today. I need to have myself some food now before heading over to the ground. You have yourselves a good one and I’ll catch you all tomorrow.

Of course I’m being a bit flippant and, unlike Richarlison, you could see when Martin Odegaard lifted the trophy last night by the way he looked so sheepish that this is hardly the ‘big prize’ that we were after, but I suppose a win is a win. Even if it did come about by penalties.

At least the players are getting plenty of that practice in this summer…

Because of the timing of the game starting at 6pm I couldn’t get myself out of work on time to watch the match and instead had to contend with finding out about how the game was playing out on my phone yesterday evening, but as I’ve said all season, this is more about the way we played rather than anything else. Unfortunately it doesn’t sound as if we were in particularly sparkling form, although there might be some mitigation for that, as Arteta admitted we were leggy and the team had been put through a few days of tough training and perhaps there was a little hangover from the USA tour and some possible jetlag. If you’re going to stress test the players then in that sense I kind of get it; make them work hard, feel knackered, then go and try to put on a display against Monaco at home in a friendly. The players are going to have to get used to a lot more games with more intensity this season because of the Champions League, so Arteta is obviously prepping them for that early on by cramming this midweek fixture in ahead of the trip to Wembley on Sunday.

So perhaps there are some caveats that need to be drawn with the performance, which by the sounds of it looked a little shaky defensively and not completely cohesive in attack. There was no Saka – who had an illness so wasn’t risked, there was no Odegaard, who was reserved for the bench, plus as we now know there was no Gabriel Jesus who has had some surgery to his knee which Arteta has said will keep him out for a few weeks. That is a real shame because we could do with him firing from the off at the start of this season, but I suppose Eddie did come in and bag a goal so that’s good. He’s fine for a few games, as I think most of us will admit, but if we’re talking anything longer than a month to six weeks, then I think that is where we will struggle.

There was no Balogun at all in the squad though and I think that pretty much confirms to me that his Arsenal career is probably finished before it ever really got started. Inter have pivoted to Scamacca now which is fine by me given they weren’t prepared to pay an acceptable price, whereas there has been one or two noises of Premier League clubs being interested. If West Ham is one, they better be ready to give back half of what we paid them for Rice, that’s for sure.

But back to the game, in which we went behind on the half hour mark and I think if he’s honest, Martinelli will know that he got beaten way too easily by Camara for the Monaco goal. Then the header in from Fofana was another one in which a few Arsenal players will be disappointed there. Kiwior was a little bit all over the place, Partey didn’t pick up his man and it all felt a little too easy.

We were only behind for 11 minutes though as Rice’s deflected shot spewed out for a corner, only for Martinelli to whip in a decent ball from the subsequent corner for Eddie to slot home. Again, like ours, I think Monaco will be asking some questions about who picked up Nketiah because it looked rather easy to me.

Monaco should have been 2-1 up on 48 minutes though and the way in which they cut through us on that right hand side, then Ben Yedder getting to the ball first in the middle of the pitch is a real concern for me, I have to say. I know that this was a heavily rotated side that played the bulk of this game, but we are going to get more injuries this season because of the intensity of games, so we are going to need to be better at the back than what we were last night. Again, I thought Kiwior probably could have done a bit better and looked a little flat-footed for that chance.

In terms of individual performances it is difficult for me to pinpoint anyone in particular given that I didn’t watch the game in its entirety, but by the sounds of it there was a pretty even contest, Trossard is looking sharp and although Eddie scored, I do wonder if Mikel will think about Leo in the false nine position ahead of Eddie for the weekend and the first game against Forest. Eddie played 83 minutes before coming off for Marquinhos, whereas most players tended to only get an hour, or at least 30 minutes coming on. That’d be one I’d keep an eye on I think because I suspect that this Sunday’s Community Shield match up will be one that will look very similar – perhaps identical – to the one that lines up at home against Forest.

It will be interesting to see what Arteta does with Partey and Rice. Again, having not watched the game, I’m not sure of the positions that Rice took up, but it sounded like Rice played as a left eight rather than him and Partey being a deeper double-pivot. Partey has been impressive so far and so I don’t think he should be losing his place any time soon, so I did say I thought we might try Rice and Partey together potentially in deeper roles. I wonder if Arteta thinks the same, only playing Rice as an eight on Sunday, so I think that might be an interesting one to look out for.

Other than that there probably isn’t too much we can say other than it’s more minutes in the tank and I look forward to seeing what we can do against the treble winners on Sunday. Should be a fascinating watch.

Catch you wonderful people tomorrow.

Have a good’un.

But is anyone else just a tad concerned that we’re doing this opportunistic deal, whilst not really looking at the central striking position? I doubt that Kai Havertz is going to convince me he can do that job, I love Gabriel Jesus but he spends some period every season injured, which means that we’re reliant on Eddie Nketiah who I put down as a decent stop gap for three or four games, but no more than that.

We need to be making some decisions in striker and for me maybe the best decision is to offload Eddie, offload Flo if he wants to go, then go all in for an alternate Gabriel Jesus option. THAT is where the cash needs to be spent this summer.

But I don’t really want ton be that guy who speculates over transfers when we have an actual game of football on this evening. I’m not sure why it has been decided that a 6pm kick off on a school night is a good idea, but it is what it is and tonight we line up against Monaco in the Emirates Cup. So what am I expecting?

I think Arteta will be looking to field a pretty strong line up from the off, with an eye on Sunday and therefore bringing off players on around 60 minutes. If you can get an hour in the tank for some of those players who will play against Forest in 10 days time, then you can have them on track fitness wise, perhaps giving them an hour to 70 minutes on Sunday, which should be enough against City to make sure a few of them aren’t blowing out of their arses come the lunchtime kick off on 12th August.

The big questions are on whether Rice is going to start and I think that, as well as who comes in at left back, will give us our best intention on what is going to happen when the season kicks off properly. If I was to hazard a guess I would say that I think Thomas Partey will get the nod, with Rice coming on in the second half. He was good against Barca, he showed that he probably does deserve to keep the shirt and it also means that we maintain a little bit more continuity from last season too. I am almost sure that Odegaard and Havertz will occupy the two number eight positions and that is why I’d be more than happy to see Partey start at the base of the midfield today.

Of course what Arteta could do is to play Rice tonight for 60 minutes, then give 30 to Partey, with a view to giving Partey more time on Sunday ahead of the first Premier League game. Get a few minutes in the tank for Rice who missed out on the Barca game as a precaution, but have it clear in your mind that Partey is starting for now. Alternatively, we could see Arteta have a practice at Rice and Partey together with Odegaard in front of them. That too would be an interesting move; it would give us a little more solidity in our defensive set up and would be a decent dry run ahead of playing Man City, where we’d probably have less of the ball than when we play most of the teams this season. City ran through our midfield at times in both games last season and Arteta will know that they have the capacity to do it again on Sunday, so finding an alternative that gives us a little more cover could be the way to go.

But depending on who he picks and where he decides to play them, I think will impact other parts of the pitch too. I’m assuming that we might not see Zinchenko, although if he is fit maybe he gets some minutes from the bench this evening, but the way that we set up last season was to ‘box’ our passing options. You’d have Zinchenko drifting in to the midfield on the left hand side, Partey on the right, then depending on where the ball was, the ‘box’ was either Gabriel and Saliba left and right and Zinchenko/Partey in front, or it was Zinchenko and Partey in the base and Xhaka and Odegaard in front forming a more advanced ‘box’. That gives more passing lanes to players across the middle of the pitch and allows us vertical or horizontal, or diagonal passing. If Zinchenko isn’t playing, then could you have Rice in that left space, Partey alongside him? Then the advanced box is Rice/Partey with Odegaard and Havertz as the advanced players? The problem with that is it assumes we’ve got four midfielders on the pitch and would mean we’d need to probably operate three centre halves and Gabriel covering more space on that left hand side, but I don’t completely hate it when we are in possession.

There’s a lot to unpick there, but there is a lot to unpick with this Arsenal squad at the moment, as Arteta has got his wish – we are extremely unpredictable right now! The fact that I watch, read, listen to Arsenal content every single day and yet I – like you I’m sure – am STILL unsure as to what Mikel has in his plans, tells us quite a lot about this idea of unpredictability that we have for next season.

Let’s just hope it works though, eh?

Right, I’m done for today. I’ll see you wonderful people in the morrow and hopefully we’re all talking about another impressive start to pre season.

Catch you all then.