He comes to maybe one or two games a season, max, and so I could see where he was coming from. Heck, I even said beforehand that it would be an attritional game, and Mark – who helped me with the tickets – also said the same in the concourse before a ball was kicked. We all knew what Everton would bring; it was going to be a case of whether we could get over the line.

The line was well and truly ‘gotten over’ by the end, though, eh?

Effing football, eh? Effing Arsenal, eh? You will be the death of me, as much as you are the life of me.

I had mused on some way through the second half that the ball just doesn’t seem to be dropping to an Arsenal shirt when it comes to the loose ones. There seemed to be an Everton player there every time. That was, of course, until Big Vik Gyokeres was there inside the six-yard box to tap it home.

Pandemonium. Limbs. Hugging. Relief. Arsenal had done it. And all it took was a 16-year-old kid to send us wild. It was Arteta’s ‘Hail Mary’ and boy, did it work. I know we’ve been saying it for a while, but how has a 16-year-old got that much talent at that age? It’s extraordinary. He breathed fresh air into our attack; he unsettled Everton, so much so that I think Jordan Pickford’s flap for our first goal was a result of him being on the pitch. Maybe that’s a stretch, but it was a good ball; close enough to the keeper to entice him to come out, far enough away that he couldn’t get to it. Big Vik touches home on 89 minutes.

Football. In those moments, I love you.

There was still time for us to all be nervous as hell, though, and Everton – who had been pretty defensively resolute and not really an attacking threat in that second half – suddenly were here to spoil a party. But commeth the hour, commeth the…ma…erm…boy?

We now hold the record for having the youngest ever Premier League goal scorer to add to our record books for this season. It’s fair to say it wasn’t the hardest of goals at the end, but to get to that position, Dowman has to show composure, poise, and a fabulous header and touch to set himself off and us two points clear.

We had the joys at the end, and ultimately, the job has been done, but it wasn’t all sunshine and daisies overall, was it? We struggled to break down Everton; they created a few chances in the first half, and McNeil was unlucky not to score from his effort that hit the post. Raya also made a good save with his feet from Beto in the second half. I thought tactically Everton set up quite well; compact shape, difficult to break down, go long where you can, hit on transitional counter when you can. And we struggled in both halves. There was a period between the start of the second half and around the 60-minute mark where it felt like we were starting to exert pressure that might pay off, but after Everton rode that out, we started to look edgy. It wasn’t quite working, Arteta made the subs and, ultimately, I guess you have to say that it paid off.

We did create a few chances ourselves, but not loads and loads, with the Eze effort that just curled wide of the post being one that definitely sprung to mind. But our attack wasn’t clicking. Kai was ok, should have had a stonewall penalty and how VAR has given it I’m not really sure, but I guess it’s one of those that they probably looked at the ‘way’ in which Kai went down and thought he was over-egging it a little bit. We never got to see any replays in the stadium, and VAR seemed to say ‘no’ far too quickly for my liking, but I guess ultimately we got what we deserved, and that was the win. And I think it was a deserved win when you look at the stats. 25 shots, 65% possession, 2.59 xG toi Everton’s 1.07, 249 passes in Everton’s final third, compared to them having 85 in ours – this was a game that Arsenal should have won, and did, ultimately, win. 

We’re just in ‘win’ mode now. We’ve overcome the latest hurdle by hook or by crook. It wasn’t particularly convincing, but I think given all the context and given how deep we are into the season, I think we just have to accept ‘this is who we are’. We’ve probably got another seven of these types of performances to come in the Premier League. Bournemouth will be the same, as will Fulham, Newcastle, West Ham and Crystal Palace. 

The fabulous news kept coming, though, because City dropping points to West Ham was as awesome as it was surprising. That gives us a nine-point buffer, albeit with a game in hand, but that buffer gives us all a bit of relief as we head into a mini break away from the League with the Champions League and then the League Cup Final against Man City. Who knows, maybe the psychological blow from the Real Madrid first leg, then dropping points yesterday, then maybe an exit for them in midweek, can have an impact on how they play against us next weekend? Let’s hope so. 

James, Mark and I are doing the Same Old Arsenal pod this morning, so if you fancy it,  you can catch our thoughts here. Otherwise, I’ll be back tomorrow as the big games keep on coming – with Leverkusen in the Champions League to come on Tuesday. 

Mikel was asked yesterday what he felt about the fact that Arsenal had lost 50% of their home matches to West Ham in the last few years (four losses in 42 matches, I think, was the stat that was used, with West Ham winning two of those) and he of course acknowledged that it was something they were aware of. He also praised Nuno Espirito Santo (I always feel like that is a car manufacturer’s tagline) while giving some flowers to ‘excellent’ Graham Potter; somebody who has thwarted him at more than one club during his time in Premier League management. But Mikel will know the context of those games and he will also be aware of how we need to be better in the attacking third today if we’re going to get all three points because I can see this one being a less-than-open football match. I suspect we will see exactly the kind of game we have seen against West Ham in the last two seasons; low-block football with transitional counter and a West Ham side that will most likely look to bloody our noses once again. There is a world in which I see a three-times-in-a-row scenario happen. I am not naïve and arrogant enough to think we’re going to have it all our own way today.

So what we need to see is an Arsenal team that is well aware of that. We need to see quicker movement of the ball. What has characterised our football in these low-block games over the last 14 months or so has been a slow and methodical build-up. You will be able to picture this in your mind’s eye as much as me; Arsenal have the ball at the back, Gabriel is trotting forward with it, looking for a forward pass. He lays it to Rice. Rice takes one touch, two touches, three touches, four touches. The opposition is sat in a back five with two holding midfielders. They aren’t budging. Still we edge forward. We’re in the opposition final third now. Ball goes wide left. No space. Ball recycled back to the middle. Then out wide to Saka. We’re looking for an individual bit of brilliance from him but he’s doubled up on. So he comes back inside to the centre. Ball gets recycled again.

We can’t have that. We can’t have one of those frustrating first halves where it looks like we’ve just given up a half of football for nothing (think Man City at home a couple of weekends back). We need Arsenal to start with rapid ball movement and progression from the first minute. Nuno is a manager well-known for his defensive stability. Like Mikel when he first joined The Arsenal, he will start with the back and work his way forward if he is given enough time to mould this West Ham side in his image. Whether he is there as early as today, given he’s only been in the job a week, remains to be seen. But Potter didn’t really last long enough to truly mould West Ham in his image, so the ball-playing side that he was trying to get them into wasn’t really fully there; the muscle memory of Moyes must still be there in the background of this West Ham side, even if it was over a year ago that he was manager.

I am expecting West Ham to look to use the likes of Summerville and Bowen as their rapid pace merchants to hit us on the transition, with Paquetá the deep-lying distributor to cause us issues. From set pieces they might call on Füllkrug, but we’ve also had problems with Callum Wilson over the years when he was at Newcastle, so I think there’s plenty there to occupy our centre-halves should they get the opportunity from set pieces. Indeed, it was two years ago that we suffered at the head of former Arsenal player Dinos Mavropanos from a corner, so you can’t exactly say we don’t have recent history to act as a warning sign.

Arteta will be contemplating that as he picks his starting XI today- well, not the stuff about Mavropanos, but more about how recent history has been against us in this fixture. So he needs to pick a side that can counter how West Ham will set up. I think there will also be an element of leaning in to rotation too. I fully expect our back line to revert back to the one that played against Newcastle and I expect Zubimendi, Rice and Ødegaard to be our midfield three. Rice was rested, Ødegaard played excellently, so it stands to reason those players will be given the nod. But what of the front three? Big Vik is now a regular in the absence of Kai, so that’s a given, I suspect. Then it becomes about the wide forwards and I think we all know that Saka is getting back in after only playing 20-odd minutes in midweek. So it’ll really come down to that wide left position and I have to say I’d be surprised if it is anybody but Eze. Leo played against Newcastle, he played against Olympiacos, so I think he’ll come on from the bench today if he plays. Likewise, I don’t think this is the sort of game that Martinelli thrives in, because it’ll be one in which there’s little space to run in behind, so I can just imagine that he’ll end up doing that thing where he hugs the left touchline, gets little space and is a little frustrating if it were he to start. So for me it’s Eze as the lock picker for that left-hand side. Give him the minutes, let him drift in and connect with Gyokeres and let’s see if he and the Swede can replicate what they did against Forest.

It’s a game that we have to win if we want to show that we’re serious title contenders. The big games are one thing, but you have to take care of everything else at home and if we’re going to have genuine title aspirations, these are the kind of games you just have to find a way to win against what will inevitably be a stubborn opponent.

I’ll be back tomorrow with some more thoughts, as well as with James and Amanda first thing, for the Same Old Arsenal podcast. See you then.

It’s been a feeling of Deja Vu in the last two season’s against West Ham. Two season’s ago they came to our place over he Christmas 2023 and scored two goals from three shots on target with some uncharacteristically poor defending from our lads for the first, followed by a one-nil defeat last season after they’d had two shots on target. Over that period we have had 50 attempts at their goal (30 in 2023 and 20 earlier on this season) and have yet to score. It’s a bizarre quirk but as we prepare to face another New Manager Bounce team given Potter’s sacking and Nuno’s arrival, I’m already preparing myself for another low block game and so the idea that West Ham could make it three-in-a-row by scoring with basically their only chances, isn’t outside of the realms of possibility.

I don’t know whether it’s a good or a bad thing that Potter has gone. On the one hand, they were a shambles and both Chelsea and The Scum basically had walks in the Stratford park against the, but on the other hand they’ve got a guy who loves a low-possession, low block, defensively solid set up that is designed to frustrate and hit on the transition. That’s essentially been the game plan for the last two season’s against us so they already have the blueprint, they have the manager, they now just need the skanky execution to do it.

As usual ahead of the press conferences today, I decided to have a look at what the West Ham fans themselves are thinking, given they’ve won at ours for the last two seasons. Firstly, I started with my brother, as he’s a Hammer much like half my family on my Dad’s side. His response via WhatsApp was that he just wanted the scoreline to be respectable, because he doesn’t give West Ham a chance, but I ain’t falling for that one I can tell ya. I reminded him of the last two games at the Emirates between these two teams – it didn’t move him to change his mind.

West Ham fans do seem to have a weird and irrational hatred of Arteta. I’m not really sure why, because he’s never said or did anything to cheese them off I don’t think, but that’s just generally the way of football when manager’s are in a job long enough I think. Arteta has done six year’s in charge at The Arsenal and when any manager sticks around that long, there’s enough time that elapses that has any football fan of other teams basically hating them. Happened with Klopp, it will happen to Slot if he sticks around long enough, so I should expect nothing less.

What I didn’t expect is the optimism from West Ham fans. I’m reading through one forum thread at the moment and I’m 20 messages in and I see my first result that see’s us pick up any points (1-1- draw with the person saying they despise us as much as Spurs these days – which is quite some statement given how much I know they hate the Scum). There are a few in there that are predicting like my brother has yesterday, but they seem to have a bit of optimism for a smash and grab and I can see why: They have a ‘smash and grab’ manager set up for it. So Arsenal need to be ready and Arsenal need to not do anything silly defensively like we have for the last two season’s.

So that’s what their fans are saying, but what about the pundits? Well, Sports Mole has us as a 2-0 victor, saying that if we create the same volume of chances as we did against Olympiacos, we’ll surely tuck one away. You’d expect us to get plenty of chances for sure I suspect. Over at Opta, they’re saying it’s a 76.6% probability that we win and I am hopeful that given those probabilities were probably the same for the last two season’s, lightning can’t strike thrice – can it? I mean, just think about that. The analysis and supercomuter is saying that if this match is played 100 times, we win in basically 77 of them. Yet for two season’s in a row it’s gone against the probabilities. Yes, I know football is played on the pitch and not in the algorithm, but still – are we really going to see West Ham score their fourth goal in three season’s against us with their sixth shot on target? That would feel like we’re being shafted by the footballing gods. We need to do the business, we need to show up and be the best versions of ourselves, we need to finish our chances (and I’ve just re-watched some of the chances from the last two season’s – bloody hell), but I want to see Arteta sending them out tomorrow sniffing revenge.

Over at BBC Sport (did some words for them yesterday after the Olympiacos win if you’re interested – here) Chris Sutton has said we’ll canter to a 3-0 win, although Merse thinks it’ll be a tighter 1-0. I don’t like the sound of that and whilst defensively we have a fantastic outfit (usually), you can’t help but think that a 1-0 goal margin leaves us dangerously close to a later skanky equaliser if we are are the ones that are ahead.

We’ll know more about where Arteta’s head is at over the next 12 hours or so as he does his press conference, as well as how Nuno will set up when he does his, so I’ll leave it there for now and be back tomorrow with a bit more of a ‘how am I feeling?’ match preview. Catch you then.

It’s why I started this blog – I enjoy jotting down my thoughts and having them committed to (online) print; a bit of a diary, if you will. I love that people interact with it and read my ramblings – even when sentence structure isn’t always coherent, or there are spelling errors. I don’t care about that – like I say, it’s a bit of a diary about my biggest passion in life – The Arsenal.

But some days I just don’t ‘feel it’ – this is one of those days.

I think it’s probably because the realisation has set in properly now – it’s not going to be our season. I have been saying it for weeks on the Same Old Arsenal Podcast I do with James and Amanda; I thought that we weren’t winning the league, that the Brighton and Villa results pretty much did us in given Liverpool’s form, that the shafting of injuries, PGMOL and red cards had all led us down this probability that it wasn’t to be our season. But here’s the thing: I still kinda had some hope buried deep down within my psyche. I projected externally that it wasn’t going to happen, that we had too much to do, that we didn’t take advantage of situations when Liverpool slipped up, but that was a bit of a self-preservation defence mechanism. It was me trying to appease the footballing gods.

Look at this Arsenal mortal – he is being loud about his belief – let us appease him by doing the opposite of what he is saying.

I know it’s silly. In every walk of my life I see superstition as a load of old nonsense. Stepping on three drains, lucky rabbits foot, walking under ladders – all a load of old tosh. But in footballing terms I’d wear lucky pants, socks, I’d make the same journey to the ground and trad on exactly the same footsteps I made last week, if I thought it would impact us.

And so to today, in which I usually sit down and write a post mortem after we’ve lost a game that we really shouldn’t have lost. Well, I say that, but we did deserve to lose it yesterday. I could tell within 15 minutes when Odegaard Nwaneri and Saliba had all misplaced relatively simple passes. Sometimes you can just tell, you know? I don’t know if you get the same feeling as me, but sometimes I just feel it inside my bones, that “we’re gonna have problems today” kind of feeling. And that’s exactly what transpired. Nearly all the players were off it. Raya with overhit passes, Calafiori not closing down Wan Bissaka, Gabriel, Saliba and Rice all not really noticing Bowen ghosting in in the middle of the six yard box, Nwaneri quiet, the slow, lethargic, boring horseshoe of death and too many touches of every player to slow the game down. It was all there on display to see against A West Ham who applied the Newcastle blueprint: Just go a goal ahead against this Arsenal team and then sit back – they won’t challenge you with that front line.

And that’s exactly what happened.

And as the realisation crept in that even that tiny bit of hope and belief that I have deep within me was ebbing away, I started thinking about having to write this blog this morning and then jumping on the pod with James at 9.30am. And I was a bit ‘meh’ about it all. Because that last little bit of hope had gone. I will even admit to thinking on more than one occasion yesterday “I can’t be f*cking arsed with this poxy season any more – everything seems to have gone wrong”. That’s really bad, I know, because football is not just about trophies. It’s about the experience, it’s about going to the game and meeting your mates beforehand. It’s about celebrating two North London Derby wins, a smashing of Man City, of going on long unbeaten runs, as many have already said before me – the Journey. But right now, how I feel this morning, I’m pretty low and I am not thinking about those things. I will do in 24 hours time. We’ll have Forest to worry about on Wednesday and at the end of the season I’ll still reflect on some of the good stuff that has happened this season (as well as the bad), but right now I just want to put down my phone, stay off social media, focus on the other good things I have in my life (and I have a lot), then enjoy a football-free remainder of my weekend. I did it straight after the game yesterday – fired off a couple of WhatsApp’s to friends to say I didn’t want to engage in any football chat, switched off any of the notifications on my social media feeds, then spent the rest of the evening with the wife watching a movie and cooking a nice steak and chips for us both.

LIfe is short, football is sh/t sometimes, so you just have to accept it and do other things that make you happy.

So that’s my recommendation to you today if you’re reading this blog – go do something else. I’m going to start another Lego set that I got for Christmas – bit of mindfulness on a Sunday.

Well, after James and I have sat each other through 30 – 40 minutes of the Same Old Arsenal podcast, that is – going live this morning at 9.30am here. Join us if you fancy it. If I was in your shoes I probably wouldn’t bother (LOL – not great at marketing given it’s my job, eh? ) for all of the aforementioned reasons. But if you do decide to then I’ll still welcome you with open arms my friend.

Back tomorrow.

There’s also the familiarity of PSV. It feels like we’re always within a season or two of playing them and last season he had them in the group stages. It’s a bit boring playing a side like that who you’ve played a few times before. But it is what it is, we have to get through that first leg and hope to do the business in the second, because by the time the quarter finals come around we might have a few more attackers to draw on.

Not this weekend though, as Arteta confirmed what we all already knew, which was that no players are back for us for the visit of West Ham. Ben White is fit and ready to go, but I suspect Timber keeps his place and so too will Lewis-Skelly at left back I’d imagine. I wouldn’t be completely against seeing Calafiori there though. As good as MLS has been and as much as he warrants his place, you wonder about that dynamism and driving into the opposition half that Calafiori has. He tee’d up Trossard to put in the assist/cross for Merino for our second goal last weekend against Leicester. He’s a guy who has already bagged a couple in the League this season and was unlucky to be marginally offside with his goal against Girona. MLS has a great goal against City, but Calafiori is that little bit more experienced and has a little bit more presence in the final third and at a time in which we’re needing of contribution for goals all over the pitch, I kind of feel like having him in might be a good idea.

The rest of the team will have a similar feeling to it this afternoon, I suspect, with the rest of the back four picking itself in the shape of Raya, Gabriel and Saliba. Odegaard will play right eight, Nwaneri right wing, then Rice will play, but exactly where is where it starts to get interesting. I listened to the Arsenal Vision podcast and Tim made an interesting point; we could see Merino AND Sterling today. Everyone is making the assumption that it is a binary choice between the two, but it wouldn’t surprise me to see Arteta give Sterling ‘one last chance’ today. He had an absolute stinker against Leicester and in the immediate aftermath I was certainly saying that’s him ‘washed’ but where we are right now, with very few attacking options, it seems annoyingly churlish to just burn a senior pro. He doesn’t deserve a start, his performances this season have certainly shown that, but Arteta can’t really afford to leave him completely out in the cold and so he will surely get minutes today. The question is whether it is from the start or not. Do you recognise that Merino playing from the start might not be the panacea many of us Arsenal fans thought after his brilliant impact from the bench a week ago? I wrote about the fact I think we need to be careful of crowning Merino our new ‘Big Target Man’ earlier in the week and whilst I am kind of hoping that we see him from the start today because the Sterling option hurt my eyes last week, I’m not completely convinced that a) Arteta will go for it from the start, and b) that he won’t look to try to rehabilitate Sterling from the off.

It’s a tough one. Neither option is optimal for us if we’re honest. But West Ham will look to come to us and frustrate today, so we need to be different to Leicester City last weekend. They sat in deeper in the second half, let’ us have the ball, asked the question of us to break them down and it wasn’t until the last ten minutes of normal time that we did it. West Ham lost to Brentford last weekend but the timing of that goal set the narrative and probably doesn’t tell you a lot about today. Brentford scored on four minutes and so the remainder of the game would be West Ham having to chase and Brentford being to hit in transition and knowing West Ham would open up. Today West Ham will be looking to frustrate us in front of goal. If we score early, you’d fancy our chances, but with Potter adopted a three at the back system, I can see this being a deep West Ham looking to spring traps with long switches to the likes of Bowen and Kudus. We need to be ready for it.

And we need our big players stepping up. The likes of Odegaard need to be getting on the ball and threading the eye of a needle. Having Merino as a target option is fine, but West Ham will probably happily cede the wings in defence if it means we’re crossing balls in to him with an army of West Ham bodies around him. We might need to find other solutions. What those are beats me, but that’s why I’m in the stands, not in the dugout.

I’ll be heading along there to take my usual seat in Block Five, but until then, have yourselves a good day and let’s hope for all three points. Any lingering hope of the title need it.

I said it before and after the Merino appearance on Saturday, but it feels like we won’t have a lot of time for us to be a bit of an ‘unknown quantity’ in terms of opposition and analysts. The Merino ace-in-the-hole by playing him up top worked well in the end, but West Ham will be mindful of that for this Saturday. Sometimes it takes a few games for analysts of opposition to suss out what you are doing and that’s certainly my hope between now and the international break; we’ve got four games between now and then (West Ham at home, Forest away, United away and Chelsea home) and we just need to stutter our way through these by hook or by crook to pick up wins, so if we can use this Merino experiment in the short term and it achieves those objectives, then happy days.

The first hurdle is this weekend of course and I did my usual ‘have a look at what opposition fans are saying. The West Ham match forums don’t have their fans showing much confidence, it has to be said, but there are a few in there suggesting that it could be one of those games in which they dig out a heroic victory. It doesn’t even have to be a sparkling West Ham performance, as we know from last season, so my hope is that we don’t get a repeat of that huff and puff game. Given how difficult we made it for ourselves against Leicester until those closing stages, I do wonder if it’s going to be a bit of a slog tomorrow. West Ham will have seen how Leicester set up and be thinking “we could do that” i.e. be difficult to break down, look to hit Arsenal in transition and bloody our noses like they did last year. Having watched the two goals we conceded last year though, it was calamitous defending for the first and nobody marking Mavropanos on a corner, so you’d hope we’ll cut out that nonsense tomorrow.

If Arsenal are hoping for a bit of the ‘unknown’ in how the team lines up, West Ham are a little bit similar in terms of their approach under Potter. He has been there since the ninth of January and so there’s a good five games to have a look at them, but it hasn’t been the best start for him. They beat Fulham in a bloody weird game (West Ham scored three goals from four attempts, with Fulham amassing 21 – shades of us last season against them), they lost to a Palace side who outshot them at home, drew away to Villa (a good point), lost to Chelsea and then the Brentford game last weekend (which I’ll talk about below), so they’ve had a bit of a mixed bag. You can hardly call that a new manager bounce. But they have changed under him. They’ve supposedly changed their approach under Potter, plus I’m pretty sure that during his Brighton days he always seemed to do well against us. Just looked it up – four wins from nine games, so we need to be very wary of how he sets up. I feel like there are certain managers who always seem to get the better of Arteta (annoyingly Eddie Howe seems to be one of them) so let’s hope that’s not the case this weekend. Apparently they’ve increased their passing ratios and apparently their final third presses are up too. So if we get a West Ham side will to press further up the field, that will hopefully – fingers crossed – lead to more space across the pitch for us to exploit. He’s also been playing a back three on occasions too I think and I’m pretty sure we’ve more-often-than-not played well against a back three. That means they also go with wing backs and given West Ham look to deliver the most switches in the league, it wouldn’t surprise me to see those two wing backs – think it’ll be Wan-Bissaka and Emerson – getting forward as West Ham try the long diags.

In their last game they lost to Brentford in what – statistically at least – looked like a pretty even game. Before that they went to Chelsea and Chelsea bagged the second half goals before Bowen had put West Ham up in front. He’s their main threat I think, as we know, but West Ham struggle with getting their shots on target. They’re bottom of the league in terms of goals per shots and have the lowest percentage of any team – 27% of their shots lead to a goal – behind Villa (30%), Southampton (32%) and Leicester (32%). So we have to hope that they are profligate tomorrow as well.

They are disappointed about Paqueta – understandably so given his importance to this West Ham side – and I think that will rock the team a bit. At least I hope it will. He’s their third highest goalscorer this season with four goals in the Premier League and is third on xG for West Ham – which you’d expect given he’s bagged some goals and a couple of penalties. Along with Wan-Bissaka he’s their most progressive passer in the team and is the guy that tends to split teams – leading their side on through balls with 10 (the next person to do that is Bowen with seven). So they will miss him, but they will still have enough from other players like Bowen and Kudus to cause us problems.

I’ll be back with more tomorrow looking at what Arteta said and how we might line up to counter West Ham’s threat, whilst unpicking them at the back, so until then you have a good one.

I mean yes, there was a moment in the first half when it went to 4-2 that I had PTSD from my trip up to Newcastle all those year’s ago to watch the 4-4 draw, but as I said on the Same Old Arsenal podcast this morning, this Arsenal team is built differently and now that the 5-2 result is done with and we can talk with hindsight in mind, this Arsenal side is built to withstand wobbles like that.

They are also built with strengths that – even when the opponent knows what is coming – they can do little about. So when Bukayo Saka sauntered over to take the corner on ten minutes, you knew we had a chance to nab ourselves the lead and of course it was going to be Gabriel that delivered the blow to West Ham. The Sky Sports commentary even picked up on the fact that Gabriel had a word with his teammates about what he wanted the play to look like and it was executed to perfection.

We had dominated the nine minutes before that and we also then proceeded to dominate the entire half. West Ham were reduced to long ball clearances that Arsenal just recycled, reset and went again in attack. It didn’t matter that we were missing Partey and Merino through injury, because Jorginho stepped in and kept us ticking over throughout, his metronomic passing exactly what this type of game needed. And within half an hour we were two up with a superbly worked goal that we thoroughly deserved. Trossard gets his name on the score sheet and the glory of the goal to his tally, but it was Odegaard and Saka who did all the heavy lifting. Odegaard’s flick over the defence was sublime and Saka’s ball across the goal meant that all Trossard had to do was tap it in to an empty net.

Arsenal were purring and it was a delight to see. I had worried the adage ‘one swallow doesn’t make a summer’ could be true if we didn’t put in a performance yesterday, but this team showed once again that it is not a flash in the pan. We’ve challenged for the league in the last two season’s and this time around we’re up there again, but the media have been telling us otherwise at times, without realising the challenges we’ve had that have stopped us from being closer to league leaders Liverpool right now. But yesterday was an Arsenal team laying down a marker; this was a performance that said “we will not be silenced” and at 3-0 and 4-0 in quick succession by 36 minutes, that voice was loud enough to be heard in Liverpool and Manchester. The third goal was clever from Saka to get the penalty, the fourth goal was a superbly weighted ball from Trossard and a superb finish by Kai to basically seal the game. I don’t think West Ham had mustered a shot on our goal by then.

The two West Ham goals were something out of nothing, annoyingly, because it was a superb assist from Soler and then a perfectly precise free kick from Emerson. Of course that got the crowd up and excited, but that second penalty right on halftime was absolutely perfect in terms of quietening the stadium. It was a penalty. At first I wasn’t sure and I think Anthony Taylor was a little hesitant too, but you can punch a player in the head and not expect it to be a penalty, so I’m glad it didn’t even have to go to VAR. We all saw it last season with Onana at Old Trafford and we all agreed that it was one missed by the VAR and the refs on the pitch, so it was good to see that they got this one right yesterday. Saka dispatching the penalty basically meant all we had to focus on in the second half was shutting the game down and that’s exactly what we did.

It was also pleasing to see that we took no chances with some of the players and the subs. Big Gabi had done his job in the first half and so bringing on Kiwior was the right move. Likewise with Calafiori for Zinchenko, who Arteta admitted that we have to manage his minutes because of his knee injury. So it sounds like they’re both fine and that’s good news ahead of a big game on Wednesday at home to Man United. The cushion of a three goal lead has ensured Arteta has felt comfortable enough to rotate and hopefully that bodes well for the next few matches.

The stand out players from yesterday were, however, the attacking players and once again Bukayo Saka proved he is worth his weight in gold with yet more end product and influence on another one of our games. Him and Odegaard simply ran the show; it was great to watch them link up and West Ham had absolutely no answers to what they were both offering. Saka is strong, he’s powerful, he makes the right decision again and again. Yesterday for our second goal he was put in and he could have easily have tried to take on the shot himself, but he knew exactly what to do with his perfectly weighted pass and Trossard was the beneficiary. Likewise with the penalty he won; he gave it to Odegaard because he hasn’t scored this season and so when the second penalty was awarded, he was also the beneficiary of having a chance to further add to his goal tally. That’s five goals and ten assists this season. He’s on course to hit 40 goals and assists at this run rate and I wouldn’t bet against him.

The pressure was on us yesterday to keep pace with those above and with City and Liverpool duking it out later today we had to make ground on at least one of them. We did just that, added to the goal difference tally and put on a display that has all of us Gooners purring right now.

Bring on United on Wednesday.

But before that, the West Ham team news, which Lopetegui talked about alongside handing our a rather large metaphorical bouquet of flowers for Arteta and his Arsenal side. They’ll be without Kudus, which is a bit bonus for us, but they do have Edson Alvarez back, who will most likely anchor their midfield and provide defensive cover for their back line today. My brother and a big chunk of family on my Dad’s side are all West Ham fans (as I’ve mentioned before on this blog) and I was messaging him on Monday night to get the low down on the performance. He was – like me – impressed that West Ham found a better balance by playing Soler and Paqueta in more deeper-lying roles, with Soucek a little further forward which meant ball-playing midfielders in front of the back line enabling them to get out a little better and retain possession on transition, but whether the arrival of Alvarez will change that will be interesting. He may opt to keep that team that played on Monday night because, like Newcastle on their own ground, I suspect Lopetegui will expect us to have more of the ball and dominate more of the territory.

So Arteta needs to be prepared for that and we need to be prepared for West Ham to look to use those deeper playmakers to spring traps with the likes of Bowen and Summerville feeding Antonio. The former England striker will use his physicality to try to occupy Saliba and Gabriel, but providing our same back four is playing that played on Tuesday night in Lisbon, you’d hope that we have enough quality to handle a West Ham team buoyed by a good recent away victory.

For us I think Arteta will want us forcing high turnovers and mistakes high up the pitch to keep the Hammers under pressure. That means we need to put pressure on their midfielders if they are sitting deep and screening the back line, so I’m expecting a standard Arsenal out-of-possession higher press today to see if we can force West Ham in to mistakes high up the pitch. Arteta referenced the physicality of the West Ham side, but as we all know, we aren’t a team of shrinking violets; I think there’s a battle to be won here tonight and I wonder if that impacts team selection.

Which is why I am wondering if Arteta goes for the duel monster Merino from the start here today. We all know he’s a higher-up-the-pitch ball-winner and if Arteta wants to do that he might see this as an ideal game for Merino. The problem he has, however, is who to drop. Odegaard is a non-negotiable, Partey is in some of his best form in an Arsenal shirt and Rice will be extra up for it given he’ll get a smattering of boo’s from his old club today. His form has been up and down, but Arteta always plays Rice when he can and so I wonder if it is because of Partey’s form that Merino might miss out. If that happens though, it’s good to have options from the bench.

And given the return of a few players of late, it’s great to see that we’ll have a strong bench, should Arteta wish to change it up. In his press conference yesterday he was at pains to talk up Raheem Sterling, but he also has Trossard (I’m assuming he’s benched given Martinelli has scored in two of his last three games in all competitions), Gabriel Jesus, Merino as I already mentioned, Jorginho who played well at home to Forest, Nwaneri who is getting more game time, as well as defensive options in Kiwior and Zinchenko. There’s players there that could all feasibly play their part.

So there are reason’s to be positive, but the team has to react tonight, they HACE to get the three points. Arteta was asked about who he wants to win out of City and Liverpool and of course he refused to answer, but he’ll know that defeat tonight makes it a moot point; either team winning or even a draw pulls both further away from us if the Hammers overcome us tonight. We can all feel like we’re getting a bit of momentum after two wins last week, but as Arteta said in the presser, it matters what you do now, rather than in the last few days.

It feels like we have to start well tonight. These evening games always have the home fans in good voice when you’re away from home; they all been able to have a bit of extra time to have a drink, they’re keen for a scalp and they’ll be up for this given their win on Monday. But if we start well, if we keep them quiet and limit chances in the opening salvo’s of the game, then West Ham fans have been known to turn on their team and grumble in the past. That’s what we have to hope for tonight.

My gut feel is that he probably doesn’t change the starting XI and if that’s the case then that’s a-ok with me. On Monday having watched West Ham I saw an intensity about them that concerned me, but the perfect tonic for that was the intensity of our players, as well as the way we were popping the ball around in the half spaces. More of that tonight please, Arsenal. I don’t think this will be an easy game by any stretch of the imagination, but if you have title aspirations you have to win these kind of tough away games in hostile environments.

As usual Amanda and I will be doing a de-brief tomorrow on the Same Old Arsenal podcast, as well as me on here just before that, so if you fancy having a listen then we’d love to have you.

Catch you all tomorrow and fingers crossed for another Arsenal three points.

West Ham fans clearly haven’t been impressed with Lopetegui so far this season, some of their performances have underwhelmed and they were voicing it this week, despite the fact that they won up at Newcastle on Monday night.

I watched pockets of that game and I was impressed. There was an intensity at St James’ Park that I didn’t think West Ham had in them. They covered ground, they worked as a collective, compact unit and then sprung traps on the Geordies. They also time wasted and undertook in some ‘dark arts’ football that only we get hauled over the cards on, which was then amusing to see Newcastle fans so annoyed about, I have to say. The words ‘pot’ and ‘kettle’ absolutely come to mind.

But you would think that the performance, as well as the result, would be enough to get most of them excited at the prospect of scalping us this weekend. Not from what I’ve read. From the comments I saw there was about a 90% ratio of fans saying we’d win it. I can understand it when I look at the historical head-to-head at West Ham; their last win in the league was a 1-0 win in January 2019 in which a certain Declan Rice scored for them on 48 minutes. Before that you have to go back to 2006 to get the next win in the league, in which Marlon Harewood bagged an 89th minute winner as Arsene Wenger tasted one of his few defeats there.

Sure, we’ve had good times there and that’s a pretty good record, but recent memory – last season’s 6-0 hammering aside (EVERY pun intended) – has me thinking that these games have always been tight and always been tough. We will all be familiar with what happened in 2021 when we were 3-0 up and promptly contrived to draw the game 3-3. That was an example of a glass-jawed Arsenal team that I for one never want to see again (even though I know we are prone to those kinds of results occasionally in our history). In 2023 we also had the 2-2 draw after we’d scored two early goals too, so we have recent memories that will show that this game has plenty of difficulties about it for Arteta to be concerned enough with getting the right set up tomorrow, so I’m hoping we have ourselves fully prepared for this one.

We can ill afford another St James’ Park performance.

From a statistical perspective West Ham’s home form hasn’t been great for the first six games of the season. Two wins (United, in which they got a dodgy penalty, as well as Ipswich, who they battered to be fair), one draw (Everton, 0-0, in which their first shot on target wasn’t until they hit halftime), then three defeats (City, Villa and Chelsea – three good teams) have hardly been scintillating form but they’ve played some decent teams at home so maybe that explains their current position of 14th in the league.

From a playing style perspective they’re still ‘working things out’ under Lopetegui. They’ve got one of the oldest squad’s in the league behind Everton, they are a side who likes to take on players – explained when you look at the likes of Bowen and Kudus (not playing tomorrow because of suspension) – plus they tend to go a little longer. They’ve got the third highest number of clearances in the league behind Leicester and Brentford and behind Wolves they’ve made the second lowest live ball passes in the league. That tells me this is a West Ham side happy to lump the ball longer when they are defending a little deeper. They do like a big switch though; they’ve delivered the longest number in the league behind Liverpool, who are known for their diags to the like of Salah from deep, or Trent playing quarter back. Their passing type suggests this as well – They’re in the top five for long passes completed in the league behind Everton, Fulham, Brentford and Brighton. They’ve also got the fourth highest number of launched balls from the ‘keeper too, so expect there to be a game of duels needed to be won tomorrow evening from our defenders.

From a goalscoring perspective they’re about right for their league position and have an xG of 15.9 against an actual number of goals scored of 14, so they’ve averaged a goal a game so far, which tells me we will probably concede one against them. It’s just a case of whether we’ll manage to score more than that (or them) to win the game.

So we know the type of team we’re up against, it will just be a question on how we will set up to beat West Ham, which we won’t get any indication from Arteta on today, but we might come 4.30pm.

My main hope is that Gabriel is ok, because providing he’s fine, him and Saliba will relish the duel with Antonio. Then it becomes about how we break down a West Ham side who I think will set up similarly to Newcastle. In that game they tucked in and hit Newcastle with some sucker punches and I suspect the home fans won’t like it, but that’s what they’ll be looking to do. Draw Arsenal on to them, get space, then go longer to see if you can isolate Arsenal defenders on one-v-ones. We need to be ready for that.

The good news will be that we have a back line who would be ready for that, with Timber and Calafiori being full backs who will love a bit of a duel battle. Then as long as Big Gabi is good I’d be feeling more confident. No big Gabi and it’s probably Kiwior and with the way Gyokeres out-muscled him in the dying embers of the game on Tuesday night, you could see Antonio wanting to have a go at the Pole too if Big Gabi ain’t there.

We’ll see what Arteta says later and I’ll be back tomorrow for a look at how I think we’ll line up and where the big match ups will be.

Catch you all then.

We’ve had wins already this season, we’ve all been pleased to pick up points, but the manner of these last two wins are the reason for the extra swing in Arsenal fans’ steps right now I’d wager. The prevailing narrative since the start of the season has been a little bit ‘woe is us’ I have to concede; with myself being just as guilty of adding to this particular melancholy bonfire. It’s not been unwarranted; dodgy refereeing decisions, injuries to key players, a couple of shoddy performances and an underlying feeling that the team wasn’t gelling with the new instructions Arteta had given them, all contributed towards the fan sentiment. But in a peverse way, the international break feels like it has offered somewhat of a reboot and my hope now is that we see the Arsenal from the end of last season and for most of the season before.

Sometimes the signs are there. For example, Arteta spoke before the Forest game about how what he’d seen in the previous 48 hours was (I can’t remember the exact words and I can’t be arsed to Google it as I’m on the train tapping away before I lose signal) something like “phenomenal” when he described the atmosphere around the camp. Of course at the time you think it’s lip service; managers have – for so long from time immemorial – always said things like that publicly to put on a brave face. But Arteta has used this kind of ‘ultra positivity’ only in certain circumstances that I can remember. After we were on a losing streak for his first three games of the season the season that we finished fifth three years ago I feel like he said that, plus I’m sure he said something like that post Dubai last season. So he picks and chooses when to bust out the extreme levels of externally-facing positivity, but only after the fact and after we’ve gone on a run of winning games can you see that it is warranted with hindsight.

What we need now, however, is for that positivity and the same energy that we saw in Lisbon, transferred back to London. We don’t get on our travels outside of London until the new year now, so there isn’t the worry about travel, just the need to focus on wins. Liverpool won again last night and whilst it’s in the Champions League and so doesn’t impact us right now, we do need them to start showing some fragility in their results. They’ve got away with a few games and the chips have very much been falling in their favour so far this season (think about how we were leading against them before injuries meant we ended up having a makeshift back four of MLS, Kiwior, White and Partey when they equalised), but unless they start dropping points soon it is very much going to feel like they’re going to be so far ahead that even a slip up won’t matter much.

All Arsenal and Arteta can do, of course, is focus on our own outputs. That starts with West Ham and a West Ham that will be buoyant after a good win against Newcastle at St James’ Park. I watched the game in patches and in it I thought they were quite impressive, but the good news is that in Lisbon I thought we were fantastic, arguably our best performance of the season. Yes, of course there were the goals, but it was in possession that I was so impressed. The way the team were finding space in between the lines, the ’round the corner’ passing of the likes of Partey and Odegaard, the movement off the ball – the performance in Portuagl had everything.

Can we take that form in to the game on Saturday in East London? I hope so. That game on Tuesday felt like the blueprint of how we want to play and I suspect Arteta will be doing a re-watch of that game and asking his players how they can do the same against a very different opponent in West Ham on Saturday. I’ll do a bit of a check-in on how their fans are feeling ahead of that game tomorrow, before we get Arteta’s press conference views at some stage tomorrow ahead of the game.

In terms of other news that is going on, well as you’d expect, there isn’t really too much at all. That tends to happen when you have two important confidence-boosting wins; it all goes quiet and the focus is on the next one and there’s less talking and introspection that goes on. But yesterday’s glory will quickly become tomorrow’s concern as we look at the Hammers on Saturday so I think I’ll park any further thoughts for now and just ‘live in the now’ and keep focusing on the positivity that Tuesday night’s game brought us.

Catch you all tomorrow.

It all comes down to this. As Arsenal fans we’ve all talked about ‘cup finals’ in the lead up to the culmination of this season, but as much as you talk about it like that, the reality is that you never truly think of it like that. But that’s not the case today, because a victory and things elsewhere going our way, would literally mean that we have a cup at the end. So today really could feel like a cup final.

The only down side is that it isn’t, in reality, because we could be superb, get the win and then still end up without a shiny silver trinket.

I’ve already done some pre match thoughts on the game and our opponents, as well as some post press conference thoughts as well, so I’m not really sure what more there is to say. Just go out there and win today, Arsenal, and let’s bring this season to a conclusion that we can all celebrate.

As a football fan you always have hope, which I will of course be taking in to the game ahead of kick off, but I’d be lying if I was to say that I have enough hope to believe that we will be celebrating a Premier League trophy lift today. The odds are just a little too stacked against our favour; West Ham have no jeopardy and Man City don’t lose at home. Arteta spoke about miracles on Friday at his presser but this feels like a miracle too far, if we’re all honest with ourselves.

That doesn’t mean that today needs to be a day of suffering, misery and sadness though, far from it in fact. Today is a celebration of this collective of Arsenal players who have played so well this season, given us so many highs, have picked up wins that in recent years just didn’t happen and today have the opportunity to give us our second highest points tally since the Premier League was introduced back in 1992.

That’s something to be pleased and proud of. Football often feels like silverware is the be-all-and-end-all, but in reality we’ve had nine months of matches and in the vast majority of them, we’ve found ourselves happy because this Arsenal team has delivered wins. And in some instances some really big wins. I still find it a bit mad that this Arsenal team – who everyone said needs to score more goals and need attacking options in abundance – could have the highest goal difference in the league if we win today. We’re up against a free scoring Man City. This is a robotic machine that just wins again and again and always has the best goal difference year-after-year, yet we’ve racked up such great results that anything other than a City win (as long as we can beat Everton) will mean that we are champions. That’s quite some feat.

Everton won’t roll over though. We can all dream of ‘what might be’, but Arteta will be at pains to stress that Everton aren’t just here to make up the numbers and they’ll be more than happy to deliver a Dyche-shaped spoiler if they’re given the chance. They will come to maintain their shape, sit deep, then look to take advantage of set pieces and corners. They will go route one with Pickford and in Calvert-Lewin we know they have a strong and physical presence that will cause Saliba and Gabriel problems if they [don’t have their game faces on. Talk about title dreams all you want, but defensively and offensively we still have to do our jobs.

Team-wise I suspect we’ll see little changing from the game at Old Trafford. Perhaps there is a question over whether you go for Partey over Jorginho, but I’d be surprised if Arteta tinkers with his starting XI. I think we’ve played the last four games with that XI and that’s what I’d expect today. We need to control the ball, control the territory and keep Everton penned in, whilst not succumbing to silly fouls that give them opportunities to lump balls in to the box.

Where we also need to be good is out wide too, because they’ll have two elder statesmen at full back and that’s where you feel like we need to find space. So I’m hoping to see some Saka and White overlaps, as well as the trickery of Trossard on the left finding space against Seamus Coleman.

I’ve said it before this season, i’ll say it again one more time for this season, but we’re up against another low block and we’ll need to be patient. I also suspect that given how pants West Ham are defensively that we’ll probably get news filtering through pretty quickly that City are ahead, so for me personally my challenge will be to carry on singing and cheering even when that inevitability permeates through the ground. Nothing should diminish the achievements of this Arsenal team and we should savour every last moment of this wonderful season.

We’ll be back on Tuesday with a post match pod on the Same Old Arsenal podcast which you can join us for here. I’ll be back tomorrow with some thoughts when all of the football has been played. For now though, it’s a bit of a run, a few beverages in the Bedford Tavern on the Seven Sisters Road, before a cheeky Greek and then the game. If you’re around and you see me, say ‘hello’.

Have yourselves a good one and I’ll catch thee all in the morrow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Catch you wonderful people tomorrow. Have a good Saturday.

It’s funny because it shows you how a week in football can ,change your mood so much. But in this instance it is thankfully not going from a high of Liverpool to a low of defeat to West Ham. No, this week my overriding feeling is of excitement. Last week it was unbridled joy at just being back in the conversation at the top of the league, but today it is me projecting forward and wondering:

Are we clicking now?

If we continue to put on performances like the one two days ago then you’d be hard pressed to find somebody who thinks that we’re not. Post the Dubai trip we’ve had a reset, we’ve scored 16 goals and suddenly we’re looking like a rejuvenated team. Our attacking players are finding their range; Trossard’s finish on Sunday feels like one that in December probably would have skimmed over the bar. Saka is suddenly finding space against opponents and that is enabling him to deliver in the final third like he wasn’t doing six weeks ago. And I think that’s quite interesting, because teams haven’t suddenly decided not to put two men on him. Premier League clubs have armies of data analysts who will be looking at Arsenal and making plans to stifle our best players, much like we will do with our opponents, but suddenly Saka appears to be finding room. Why?

I’m no expert analyst, I can only tell you what my eyes see, but to me it feels like Arsenal have found a way to move opposition players around a little more so that space is created. If you get Saka hugging the right hand touchline in a game where the ball is on the left hand side and Arsenal are building up play far away from the England international, teams just aren’t going to have two men stationed on him permanently, because that would free up space for other parts of the pitch to be dictated by Arsenal players like Saka, Jesus, Trossard, Odegaard, etc. So perhaps what we are seeing with this glut of goals is not that teams haven’t figured out what to do with Saka, but more that we have adapted our style of play to enable him to get more space.

I do think we were moving the ball more quickly on Sunday. Against Forest we found it tough, but that was because they were by far the lowest block we’ve ever seen and had absolutely no intention of coming out. I’d wager, however, that had we managed to convert a set piece in the first 30 minutes against Forest at the City ground, that we might have seen a similar game play out like we did at the weekend, because it would have forced Forest out. But we didn’t get it and had to show patience in order to unlock a stubborn and extremely defensive unit.

It may have been the same on Sunday. Had West Ham stood firm until halftime, we may have had another difficult afternoon, but the first goal, then the second one via the penalty, effectively threw their gameplan out of the window. There was suddenly no point in sitting compact on the edge of their own box because we were already two goals up. The second goal we scored came from a longer ball from Trossard to Saka and I suspect had it’d been 0-0 at the time the West Ham back line would not have been near the halfway line trying to push for an equaliser by squeezing further up the pitch. That is the kind of ball you see when space opens up and when you’re in form it is also the kind of ball a player takes on, as opposed to if you’re slightly out of form like we were over Christmas. Maybe if this game is played in December Trossard snatches at the pass, or SDaka doesn’t try to take the ‘keeper on but takes it first time as a shot?

All ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ I know, but I just find football so fascinating when you think about those small margins, confidence, the way that matches can turn on such fine details. Take set pieces, for example, which we’re now by far the most effective team in the league at. It was a set piece corner delivered expertly by Rice that enabled us to take the lead against West Ham. It was the same for our first goal against Crystal Palace. It’s been the case 16 times this season and although they don’t feel as ‘pure’ as a goal from open play, what you can say about set pieces is that if you’re that good at them, you’ve got a team of coaches who are absolutely doing their job.

And they are also clearly essential in unlocking low block teams. A low block side can perch inside their box, flood bodies in there and say “come on then, break us down”. A set piece is about concentration, it’s about organisation, it’s about winning duels from static positions. If you are struggling to break down a team who is organised when the ball is live and in play, a set piece becomes a leveller and an opportunity to cause confusion and this season we’ve utilised this part of the game to maximum advantage at times.

We don’t have an elite 30-goal-a-season striker and that’s why having that ability to draw on different types of approaches and goals might just be a big difference maker for us this season. You’d certainly hope so anyway. If we can continue to leverage that dominance from corners, free kicks, etc, then who knows what the next few months may bring, eh?

That’s it from me today. Off to the Big Smoke for some work. You guys have a good one.

But it might not have been that simple. Yesterday I wrote about how concerned we might be with West Ham playing a low block and stifling us. I pondered about the value of an early goal and when the team news came out an hour before kick off, I’ll admit to having some slight concerns with a few unknown injuries. Tomiyasu was not available, Zinny was out which we already knew, but ESR had twisted his ankle in training and Gabriel Jesus was still not ready to play. Jorginho too had been carrying a knock and so he would be making up the numbers on a bench that looked very light. If this was to be a tight encounter in which the bench was needed to do something different, there wasn’t a lot of options, which worried me.

I needn’t have had that worry though. Arsenal delivered in spades and although the first 30 minutes was cagey and we didn’t get our first goal until Saliba nodded in on 32 at the back post, after that goal was scored Arsenal went on a rampant 35 minute spell in which everything they touched seemed to turn to gold. After Saliba’s goal came the Saka penalty to double the lead and although there was a few seconds to check if he was offside or not, as soon as it was given I was transported back to Saka missing the penalty last season. “Are we going to get Deja Vu?” I thought.

Nope. Saka tucked it away well and you have to say it is a mark of the kid’s cajones because he could have easily have handed it to the skipper Odegaard to take it. But he wanted it, he dispatched it, then it was about whether we would continue to dominate the game or whether West Ham would peg us back like they did last season.

They could not.

This is an Arsenal team made of sterner stuff; it is built with a defensive stability in mind and the introduction of Declan Rice is a big part of what makes us so strong this season. His return to the London Stadium in the League Cup was not a happy one and over Christmas at The Emirates he didn’t have the best of games and also conceded a late penalty. But this time around there was to be no repeat of Rice not having a good game and not only was he controlling in midfield, his set piece distribution led to two assists (with a very good free kick for the header from Gabriel for our third) and the pick of the bunch by leathering the ball in for our sixth of the day too. He didn’t celebrate out of respect for West Ham, but inside he would have been delighted with the goal and the finish.

That goal was number six, but by half time it was all over really, as Trossard had made it four with a brilliant finish after some good confined space footwork inside the box. I thought Trossard too had a great game. He got himself an assist of sorts with the ball to Saka for the penalty, he was generally a nuisance for West Ham all day and his goal wrapped up the points before a ball had been kicked in the second half. There was reference made to the 4-4 against Newcastle all those years ago, but this is a very different Arsenal team to that one that surrendered a lead like it did, because as I’ve already mentioned this team is built on a solid defensive foundation and whilst we know we can be pegged back we also know that this defence has shown it knows how to shut out a team. That clean sheet meant we are now the team with the least goals conceded this season and we have two clean sheets in our last four games.

The fifth was scored by Saka and at that point it felt like West Ham had effectively given up. For Bukayo’s second the West Ham ‘keeper Areola didn’t even dive. West Ham looked despondent, out of ideas and if there was such a thing as being able to throw in the towel at football matches, Moyes would have done that. But there isn’t and we are glad, because we’d have been robbed of the best goal of the day from Rice and an absolute screamer that is sure to get on the February Goal of the Month competition for Match of the Day and other outlets that ask audiences to vote. I was thinking the other day that I couldn’t remember the last time we scored a screamer from outside of the box, but now we have our answer. That’s nine goal contributions (four goals and five assists) for Rice this season, which equals his tally he got for West Ham in all competitions last season, where he scored five and assisted four in all competitions. Based on the number of games left to go, you’d hope he’d smash that tally this season and if he brings his shooting boots like that to more games, we’ll get a few more screamers too.

The fact we were so rapid in bagging the goals also meant we could see the likes of Nwaneri get on the pitch. He’s a 16-year-old kid and he’s stroking the ball around like a 29-year-old pro. He looks a real talent and Arteta even said that the players themselves were whispering whether he’d be able to get Ethan on the pitch. A lovely moment for him to get his second appearance, even if he did have to share the pitch with Cedric. You know Arteta is bantering everyone off when the Portuguese right back is getting minutes under his belt. But I guess it’s all good because it meant we could bring off the likes of White and rest some of those players up in prep for Burnley and then Porto next weekend and midweek.

We keep marching, we keep scoring, we keep winning. Let’s hope Arsenal bring those same vibes to Turf Moor next weekend.

Catch you all tomorrow.

Liverpool and Man City both had easy home bankers against relegation-threatened teams, but as Anthony Gale and Alan Alger said on the Same Old Arsenal podcast preview earlier this week, West Ham’s form is that of a side that would also be struggling at the bottom if they’d have played like they have since the turn of the year. Their last win was the 2-0 victory for them at the Emirates, they haven’t been playing amazing football and Anthony himself as a West Ham fan thought that we’d win it 4-1.

I’m not so sure. West Ham may be in a poor run of form, but at home, against a big team, they usually get up for it so I’m not expecting a game in which we can run riot. West Ham will play in a defensive low block and do exactly what they did in the other two games against us: they will sit in and look for the out balls to their rapid forward men. Mohammed Kudus is back from the AFCON and he has one heck of a sprint on him. Jarrod Bowen is also rapid and he has a very good record against us. Much like how last weekend I was worried about Jota and his record, this weekend it is Bowen who whilst his record isn’t as crazy-good as Jota against us, it’s still pretty impressive. He has played against us nine times and he has four goals and two assists. In his last four matches against us he has a goal or an assist in each of the games and West Ham and Bowen will no doubt want to get him in to goalscoring positions today when the ball turns over. So I’m expecting a compact West Ham team who will look to break quickly on us, probably by going longer and looking for balls in to the channels in behind our full backs.

That’s why I’d be going with Tomiyasu today because as much as Kiwior was good, I think Tomi is one of the best one-on-one duel merchants in our team, so if we’re going to find ourselves in foot races with West Ham players, it’s him and White who i’d want out wide. Then in the middle to also mop up it’d be the usual duo of Gabriel and Saliba.

We’re going to see a lot of the ball today, but West Ham will want it played in front of them, so returning former Hammer Declan Rice will need to be able to get that ball moving quicker, but who will play in those two eight positions is interesting. Does Arteta repeat what he did with Jorginho and play him and Rice in alternating six and left eight roles? Or does he recognise that we aren’t going to have the space and therefore we should look at players who can beat a man to create space?

That’s where my head is leaning if I’m honest and that’s why I have a hankering for Emile Smith Rowe and maybe even Trossard today. Both players are tricky dribblers who can work in tight spaces and if the game is going to be similar to the one we played against them at the Emirates, or the game we played away to Forest, then I want players who can wriggle out of congested places. Last weekend Martinelli was the hero and we all love him, but he’s a guy who needs space to exploit. If he’s having to face up against two or three static West Ham defenders I just feel like his powers are going to be neutralised somewhat. That’s why the team I’d pick today would be:

Raya

White   –   Saliba   –   Gabriel   –   Tomiyasu

Rice

Odegaard   –  ESR

Saka   –   Havertz   –   Trossard

Gabriel Jesus may well be back and he may well be fit enough to start, but there’s a combination of Havertz occupying and busying the two West Ham centre halves, as well as his good performance last weekend, which makes me think that we should be giving him the nod from the start. Gabriel Jesus should absolutely have a role to play in this game if fit, but maybe that is from the bench in the second half.

West Ham have Paqueta out which I hope is a big blow for them today. He is their quarter back and pass master and a quick look at FBref tells me that they attempt the joint most big switches in their pass pattern. They prefer to go long and today they’ll be looking for those big switches like Liverpool do when they set the likes of Salah, Nunez, Jota or Diaz off from a Trent long diagonal. Today it will be Ward Prowse or probably their full backs looking for those diagonals to set Kudus or Bowen in, so our players need to be ready. West Ham also make the second fewest number of touches in the attacking third, which tells me they want to be a big counter-attacking threat and so switching on and staying switched on is massive for our defenders.

This will be a tough watch today, so we all need to be ready for it, because if West Ham score first it’ll be tough and then get even tougher. If we score first and early enough then it might make for a more open and enjoyable game, but if they score then it’ll be just like the Emirates in December; they’ll camp inside their box and frustrate us. So my hope for today is a first half goal for us to open up the match in the second. But we might have to be patient so just prepare yourself mentally for some frustration. I know I am.

Catch you all straight after the game if you fancy listening in to the Same Old Arsenal pod straight after the game, or tomorrow for some written thoughts from me on here.

I’ll start with the blue cards, because I think it’s the quickest one to tick off the list of talking subjects. It’s an utterly farcical idea and I’ll be shocked if it gets off the ground. In politics they have a thing where they test an idea on a policy out by feeding some details to the press to see what the general consensus will be amongst the public if they rolled it out. If it is met with derision then they don’t face the ignominy of getting pilloried when they release it as an actual policy, so they can scrap an idea before it even comes to fruition. That’s what this feels like because yesterday as I was cooking I had Sky Sports on and all I could hear was managers essentially rubbishing the idea. It wouldn’t work, we’d end up with too much subjectivity on what constitutes things like dissent, it would be a disaster. Then during the same show I heard that a decision on an announcement had been delayed a week and I suspect that by this time last year everyone will have forgotten about this crazy idea. Or at least I hope so.

As for the celebration police, well, I thought Arteta handled it brilliantly. He simply said he hadn’t heard or bothered to read about any of the furore, he loved the passion, whilst also getting in a very subtle dig about how there have been plenty of opposition managers at the Emirates who have shown just as much – and sometimes more – of the passion and celebration that he showed on Sunday. In the bin with your opinions, Carragher and Sutton.

And so we move to the team news for this weekend, which as you’d expect wasn’t set in stone, but he was a bit clearer on a few players. For example Saka who limped off on Sunday, is apparently ok, which is a relief. He also sounded a little more bullish on a few of the other question marks like Jesus, Tomiyasu and Zinchenko. It’s interesting because on the preview pod on the Same Old Arsenal show  Alan Alger had said that he had been to a conference and Zinchenko had been saying at that conference that he was injured and so wouldn’t play this weekend. I’m not saying Alan or Arteta are misplaced with their words, but if Zinchenko is in contention, it’s a bit weird that he’s been telling people at a conference that he’s injured, no? I wonder if he’ll not be risked this weekend and I suspect there will be a bit of a sharing of duties between Kiwior and Tomiyasu tomorrow, which is what Arteta is talking about when he talks about getting a few people back. If he welcomes back Tomiyasu and Jesus then technically his press conference words are true; that’s two out of three that are coming back, having also confirmed that Saka is ok.

He also didn’t put a timeline on Partey, just saying that he’s ‘progressing well’ but that it was ‘too soon’ to put a time on his return. I think if Partey is a week away from training then Arteta would probably be saying that, so I have a feeling that we aren’t seeing him until at least March at the earliest at that stage. Whatever about when he’s available, however, I’ve essentially ruled him out of my mind as an option. If we get him back at any stage as cover then great, but this team is going to have to do it between now and the end of the season without him, in my opinion. To be fair to them we’re in the hunt for a title race and we’ve barely seen him all season, so they’ve done a pretty good job so far as it is.

He was also asked about a few individuals – Martinelli, Jorginho and his contract, as well as Odegaard’s form. ON Martinelli, I love hearing that he’s never satisfied, always willing to strive for more and always hassling the boss for a starting place! That’s what you want from all of our players. If you go back five or six year’s ago, it did feel like we had a fair few players who just ran through the motions. There were some pro’s in our team who you just felt that they were happy collecting their mega wages, but what Mikel has done in his time at the club is completely eradicate that and it’s now reflected in the style of football, the hunger, the pressing and the will to win of these players he’s assembled together. It has taken a fair bit of time, but we’re now in a position where as an Arsenal fan I genuinely feel like these players will run and run until they’re ready to throw up for this club. They all have the hunger. Just look at Odegaard; that kid leads our press, is constantly closing down a keeper or defenders and it feels like the amount of ground he covers sometimes is more than anyone else on the pitch. That kind of desire is fantastic. But it’s not just desire and hunger that makes a team successful. You have to match that with co-ordination and a plan and I think that is also where Arteta needs to take some flowers. Remember when we used to see Alexis Sanchez lead a press and do just what Odegaard did, but then he’d turn around and nobody else had done the same? That at times demonstrated a lack of a singular team approach; players doing their own thing and it often just meant it would knacker the Chilean out. Now we have a manager who is setting his team up to act as though each player has a symbitotic relationship with each other and when it works and we turn the ball over high up the pitch because of our pressing, it is brilliant to see.

I’ll quickly touch on Jorginho before I stop for today, because Arteta didn’t really answer the question over a new deal, but for me I think we have to activate it. I will admit to being a massive sceptic when he joined; a 31-year-old joining from a failing Chelsea team who Chelsea fans seemed happy to get rid of and happy to have got £10million for a player who had just six months left on his deal. But he’s come in to The Arsenal and offered a great option as a rotational midfielder. He was superb against Liverpool and I’ve heard a few podcasts this week suggesting he might be worthwhile to start against West Ham. For me to have that level of experience in the midfield, having lost Xhaka and essentially Partey from last season, his experience will have been invaluable and I’ll be surprised if Arsenal don’t activate the extra year when we get to the summer. I hope they do and that’s quite a turnaround to how I was feeling about the player just a year ago. Good on him.

And on that positive note, I’m off to go for a run, so I’ll catch you lovely people tomorrow and hope you have a splendid Saturday.

We did an interesting pod last night with Alan Alger and Anthony Gale (son of Tony Gale, ex-West Ham player), which was a match preview, a bit of discussion over xG and its uses, as well as the over celebration discussion that has been rumbling on this week. You can have a watch here if you fancy it.

We’ve got a couple of days until we face off against West Ham and Arteta will take to the press conference room at 1.30pm today, but what surprised me about what Anthony (West Ham fan) said about his club, was how uninspired he was right now. He said he’d been seeing a trajectory that was downward at West Ham for some time now and it really caught me out if I’m honest. His general thought was that for some time the performances have been not that great but they’ve been picking up the odd result here and there. He cited the Burnley game back in November as one, he didn’t really talk about the game at The Emirates specifically but he referenced matches in which the fans have not exactly been happy with the football, but because they’ve been picking up points the West Ham fans have been begrudgingly accepting of what is happening there. He also predicted that we’d beat them 4-1 on Sunday.

I don’t think I can see that. I’ll do more detailed musings about the game over the next couple of days, but this really surprised me, because I thought Moyes would essentially get this season as a free pass given that he won them a trophy last time out. But I guess it goes to show you how long fan favour lasts when results aren’t coming your way.

In a way we can see similarities in the end of Wenger’s reign. In 2016/17 we managed to pick up a memorable FA Cup win after the Mertesacker Cup Final. Things had been declining for a while and we’d finished fifth for the first time in his stewardship. The following season it was sixth, the stadium was half empty at times and the club announced his departure with a month or two to go before the end of the season. It feels like that with Moyes right now; last season he was the trophy hero, but if their form continues to slide then he’ll not be getting that new contract that I’m sure he’d love.

Of course Arsenal coming to tow offers a ray of hope; we love to give hope where sometimes there is none. Just look at Fulham’s form when we played them: In the three matches prior they’d lost all three, not scored a single goal and conceded eight in the Premier League. Since they’ve played us they haven’t won a game in the Premier League and they’ve also been knocked out of both domestic cups!!

So the fact that West Ham go in to this match on Sunday having lost to Man United, drawn to Bournemouth, drawn to Sheffield United, lost in the cup to Bristol City and drawn to Brighton, doesn’t really give me too much comfort if i’m honest. In fact, you can probably guess when their last win was: Away to us at the Emirates over Christmas. At that time they were up to sixth, just three points off the Scum and things were looking good. Perhaps after the run they’ve had it’s a bit of a surprise that they’ve only dropped one place down to seventh since then, but I guess that shows how teams across the league drop points so regularly.

The main point I’m trying to make here is that even though a West Ham fan isn’t confident, their form isn’t great and apparently the football is painful to watch at times, Arsenal need to still be absolutely on their A-game on Sunday. We know what we will be up against: Low Block FC. West Ham will look to replicate what they did against us at the Emirates and probably the closest recent example we have to look at to see how the game will pan out was the Brighton game they played at the London Stadium on 2nd January. West Ham essentially ceded possession to Brighton who had 69% of the ball. Brighton had 22 shots and eight on target and I’ve read a couple of match reports. They all say that Brighton struggled to break West Ham down, that West Ham seemed happy with the point and that it was hardly a classic by any means.

I think we all know what we’re in for on Sunday and it’ll mean a lot of patience from everyone at The Arsenal. In the home game it was 75% Arsenal, 30 attempts on goal, eight on target (sound familiar to that Brighton game, eh?) and it was a tough night. Against Forest we had another tough watch in the end and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the narrative that plays out follows one of those approaches. So Arteta will hopefully be asked in his press conference today how he intends to break down West Ham and whether he has any specific plans. He won’t share them, as we all know, but if he even just says “yep, we know what we’re up against and we’ve been working on some things” that will give me a great deal of comfort ahead of the game for sure.

The other thing that Alan said, which was interesting, was that he was at a football conference and Zinchenko was there telling people he was injured and wouldn’t play at the weekend. If that’s true then it’ll be a big blow, but it also means that we have to hope that Tomiyasu is ready to come straight in to the team. Kiwior did well against Liverpool in that second half, but Tomi would be a better and more experienced option there. He played for Japan last Saturday when they went out to Iran. If he had the next day off, maybe travelled back to Japan to do some interviews on the Monday, before getting on a plane on Tuesday, then we might be alright. He’ll have had Wednesday and Thursday to recover from any jet lag, which means today he will be in training and the club will be able to take a look at him. If Arsenal have today and tomorrow in training and he’s back and has no knocks, then I’d be tempted to get him in. But I doubt we’ll get any confirmation of that today and it will be down to the back channels and ‘inside scoops’ to show whether Tomiyasu got some minutes in at London Colney this week. Let’s keep our fingers crossed with that one.

And with that I’ll pause for today and say my goodbyes to you lovely people until tomorrow. Catch you then.

Do you know? I don’t think I’ve basked enough since Sunday. I mentioned it yesterday in the blog but in reality I watched the game, I got home, quickly wolfed down some food, went on the Same Old Arsenal pod to talk about it, then watched Match of the Day, then I’ve not really watched many of the goals back, or spent that much time actually thinking about the win.

Because it was a big win. It was – if you believed the media pre-amble – a ‘make or break’ for us and I wrote about that in the lead up to it. We were told that our season hinged on that result; win and we’re back in amongst Liverpool and City, but a draw or defeat and it’s almost certainly gotten away from us. So naturally as fans if you’re like me you immediately put a binary perspective on it and it really felt like this match meant a lot more than in reality it did. Don’t get me wrong, it was massive because of who the opponent was, because of where it left us in the table, because of the psychological boost it gives players, coaching staff, fans and everyone associated with the club. But as I saw somebody say on Twitter yesterday evening, if we don’t go on to beat West Ham this coming weekend, then all of that joy will be short lived.

It’s the relentless nature of the Premier League and the relentless nature of who we’re up against; Man City are a juggernaut who eventually made light work of Brentford. They play Everton at home in the Saturday lunchtime kick off and that’s as bigger home banker as you’re going to get in the Premier League it feels like. Liverpool also have a run of games that they just don’t look like they’ll drop points in. So whilst we can – and should – be all still dining out on that victory last weekend, it will ultimately be short lived because by the time we kick off against West Ham on Sunday at 2pm UK time, we’ll already be three behind City and once more five behind Liverpool.

That’s also why I feel like I’ve lost a couple of days of true ‘basking’ and I need to remind myself to do more re-watching. Of the goals, of the incidents, but also re-listening and re-living through podcasts, reading more of the content, etc. Because – again – the relentless nature of the Premier League and the proliferation of content makers that are churning our stuff (me included) means that by tomorrow afternoon we’ll already start to be thinking and worrying about whether West Ham are going to spoil our party for the fourth time in a row. They came back to draw against us and continue the trend of us dropping points to hand City the title last season, they knocked us out of the league cup, then skanked us over Christmas. So by the time tomorrow and Friday rolls around there will be many Gooners wondering what might be this coming Sunday if Arsenal don’t win.

But right now I’m still in the post-Liverpool, slightly fading glow, which I want to hold on to for a little while longer yet.

I will say I think the club’s social media feed do a good job of trying to keep that feeling going. I saw three or four different perspectives yesterday like bench cam, or extended highlights of fan reactions, etc, and I have to say I am absolutely here for it. Hook it to my veins and inject it straight in to my adrenaline system. More please.

And ‘more please’ when it comes to returning players too because, Thomas Partey aside, the realisation dawned on me that we’re starting to get our squad back together in more fuller numbers too. This weekend we will have Tomiyasu available and that could be very timely indeed given that Zinchenko went off at halftime at the weekend. We have Timber supposedly starting to train with the first team too, which is fantastic news. Then we have FaBio Vieira who must be nearing a return to a place on the bench as well. I haven’t even mentioned that ESR has started his first game against Forest and so feels like a more realistic option than he’s been for a very long time.

Suddenly, it feels like things are coming together. My hope for this week is that the lads feel energised. We have a whole week of preparation for West Ham, then we have another week until Burnley. So there is an opportunity to get players back, in to a cadence of games and ready to show their best against some tough opponents. Suddenly things are looking rosy.

But we need the players to continue to show that they are rosy by getting their game faces on. I’m still going to back in the glory of last weekend, but those Arsenal players need to take the positives vibes only and put the game behind them, because we need to follow it up by going on a run now. We’ve won three in a row but you just get the feeling that we have to be talking about six, seven or eight in a row before we can really start to say “yep, we’re right in the mixer for the Premier League right now” you’d think. It’s the sort of thing that you can see Liverpool and City doing given the games they have in the next month, so we need to be stepping up and proving that we can match them by going on the kind of run that will have not just Arsenal fans talking up our chances, but the rest of the media as well.

That’s all from me today. You have a good one and I’ll catch you all in the morning.

West Ham at home represents an opportunity to put us back on top spot ahead of the New Year’s Eve set of fixtures in just a few days time and it’s a match up that we need to be very mindful of, because this West Ham side are in a bit of form. They played United at home on 23rd December a few hours before we picked up our draw at Anfield and I watched a team cede possession but deliver some hammer counter-attacking blows against a United side that dominated the passing stats, the accuracy stats and the territory stats, but who failed on the shot creation and conversion metrics, i.e. the most important numbers you need to rack up in a football match.

And I suspect the West Ham game plan will be very similar for David Moyes tonight against us; give Arsenal the possession and let them try to play everything in front of us, then when we can turn the ball over, use the quality and pace of the likes of Kudus and Bowen to see if we can spring some rapid counters to catch them off guard. So tonight we need to be mindful of that and make sure we don’t fall in to the trap. West Ham don’t break in such waves as Liverpool do (think the five on one chance they had when Odegaard and Zinchenko bumped into each other at Anfield), but they will find pockets of space if we play with a high line to try to compress the pitch and let the game play exclusively in the West Ham half. So our back line need to be very mindful of that and not do anything silly.

We’ve had five days since our last game (the Christmas fixture schedule has been kind to us) and as a result we should have players a little more rested, so I am not expecting much rotation from the side that played on Saturday, save for Kai Havertz coming out because of his suspension. That means that Arteta has some thinking to do about who fills the space. I believe Jorginho has been back in training (although I’m not 100% on that) but putting him in the anchor of midfield and then having Rice in the left eight position feels like we’re losing a bit more attacking flair in our line up, so I’m not sure that’s the move I’d do.

He could opt for Smith Rowe in that position and many fans – me included – have wondered if Arteta will chuck him in there, but he hasn’t been getting many sub minutes so I am wondering if he will want to risk getting him in from the start. His other option could be Trossard in the left eight positions and if West Ham are going to sit deep and congest their defensive third of the pitch, then it’s another creative attacking player who works well in tight spaces, so that could work well. He might even decide to split minutes between the two; Trossard for 60 then maybe Smith Rowe for 30 depending on the game state. But it does feel as though it needs to be one of those three in that position and if I’m going from what I think Arteta is most likely to do I would suspect he’d put Jorginho in there; he loves the Italian for the control he gives in possession and if he is truly fully recovered from his knock then that feels like the most likely outcome.

The other question mark from Liverpool was some of the issues Zinchenko had in that left back slot, but I think this will be a very different game tonight. For one thing Zinchenko was up against the in-form player in the country in Mo Salah, but also a Liverpool side who at home are always going to be more of a threat than most sides, but tonight you’d expect us to have more of the ball, play in more parts of the pitch where having him is important, therefore it very much feels like a ‘Zinchenko game’ up against the Hammers.

What we do need to see tonight is a better performance from our front three. It feels like we’ve been a wee bit wasteful in the last few matches and even if you look at a game like the Brighton one at home, we still had 26 attempts created with only nine on target. We need to up our ratios and we need to be testing Areola more and making him work for his money tonight.

West Ham themselves are a funny ol’ team. They’ve scored as many as they’ve conceded and they’ve had some big wins as well as some pretty interesting humbling’s. They beat United as I’ve mentioned, they’ve smashed Wolves 3-0 and they got a very good win against the Scum away from home, but in the last five games they’ve also been hammered at Craven Cottage 5-0, been smashed at Villa Park 4-1, as well as results like a 3-2 loss away from home to Brentford. So they’ve had a weird season and when you look at some of the metrics on West Ham and where they come in the league, it’s a real mixed bag:

• Won four and lost four away from home
• Fifth from bottom on away goals conceded
• Fourth from bottom on progressive carries – so they don’t really travel with the ball much
• Seventh from bottom on the shots on target against – so they will give teams chances and attempts at goal
• Top five for number of times the ‘keeper launches the ball – so it looks like they try to go long – which would make sense if you think about their desire to hit teams on the counter
• Fourth from bottom on total number of shots, but seventh from top on shots on target – suggesting that they don’t have a lot of shots, but they convert a decent number and if you look at the distances, they only take shots from shorter distances than a lot of teams, so it looks as though they focus on higher quality than volume.

It feels to me we’re going to get a game where West Ham defend deep, then launch the ball to find their tricky forwards, so we’re going to need to be wary of that defensively and have Saliba and Gabriel winning plenty of duels today. Do that and we could and should snuff out their threat. Then it comes down to what we can do with finishing our chances.

It’s not a game we should take lightly, it’s an opponent who have already picked up plenty of decent wins this season both at home and on the road, but if you have aspirations of the title then it’s the kind of game that you need to looking at as one you absolutely need to win. Let’s hope Arteta has the lads prepped for it tonight.

Annoyingly I can’t be there as I’m still up north for the family Christmas festivities, but I’ll be roaring on from the sofa’s and I hope to see an Arsenal performance that can continue the good vibes we’ve got right now.

Cookie and I are doing a post match debrief tomorrow evening after I get back down south so if you want to listen in you can do so here from 6pm.

Have a good one peeps!

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 did the same thing when they were one up within about five minutes against Chelsea. But the difference on that occasion was that I did check before the game was finished and saw how that mental football match played out. I’m glad I did. This time I didn’t bother though, but I’m still glad about the outcome in the end. My brother – a West Ham fan – sent me a Hammers emoji and a ‘get in there’ on WhatsApp and I was like “no way!”. Great stuff. It means that they’ve lost four out of the last five and all this talk of titles and blitzing the league with ‘Angeball’ is a fairly distant memory. They’ve been riding the crest of a wave that was built on fairly shaky foundations and now it is coming home to roost just how naive some of their tactics were. They’ll be naturally lamenting their injury list, but most people have said how thin their squad was, so forgive me if I don’t shed a tear.

And that’s because everyone has had their injury problems so far this season. It feels like every team has gone through some sort of a crisis. Across all Premier League games this season we’ve had a total of 66 days missed to various injuries (I’m only counting players who would realistically play for us). I just checked and the Scum have had 86 days so far. So yes, they’ve had a few more than us and yes they’ve suffered, but included in their 86 days is Perisic who hasn’t started a game all season even when fit, Soloman who has started just two, Bryan Gil who has started two, Sessegnon who is perpetually injured and Lo Celso who has only started the last three because of injuries. From our list we do have Cedric who has been injured and he’s an outsider to start, but Timber would have been a regular and hasn’t got an injury history before his cruciate injury, but you look at our other players injured and it’s mostly players who have been starters for us, or at least have played half a dozen games. Zinchenko, Tomiyasu, Partey, Odegaard, Smith Rowe, Vieira, Trossard, Martinelli, Saka, Jesus – all have missed a few games because of injury and suspension. So the injury crisis list is fair, but not the sole reason for their downfall and hopefully the media will now start to call it out.

Focusing on us though and we’ve got to say that it’s been a pretty good midweek so far, eh? I mean it’s not the most perfect midweek because Liverpool still won, but that aside we’ve seen City, the Scum and Newcastle all drop points, as they lost heavily to Everton last night too. Villa are of course the dark horses and I think they’re gonna give us one heck of a game at the weekend, but when you put in to context our pretty awesome and morale-boosting last-second winner against Luton, as Arsenal fans we go in to this weekend feeling pretty decent.

Time to halt the schadenfreude and put the game faces on tomorrow though and Mikel Arteta will no doubt echo that sentiment when we arrive there tomorrow, but today he’ll talk to the assembled journo’s at Colney and I suspect it might be an earlier one today as they’ll probably travel later on today I would have thought. There’s been a couple of times and a couple of matches when his words post disappointing performances have been “I warned them” like the West Ham defeat in the League Cup, so I suspect that he will be very much emphasizing that both publicly and to his players too.

The Newcastle game was our last defeat, but that one could have been a siege mentality builder, whereas I think that West Ham defeat may have been – oddly – a blessing in disguise too, you know. Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather we’d have won it and progressed to the next round, but Arteta came out after that game and said that he warned his players and now he has the proverbial headline to pin up on the dressing room door to say “See? This is what happens when you drop even one percent in elite football”. He can remind them of the sting of that defeat and hopefully they are keeping that fresh in their minds because as long as they do, then we will get a team willing to fight until the death like they did against Luton. And then the rewards will come.

They won’t always come; we’ll have games in which late drama just doesn’t happen, but if we minimise the probability of that by keeping focused earlier in games, then the team can mitigate having to rely on late drama.

To be fair to the players this year – and the manager particularly – this rendition of The Arsenal is about control, as we’ve all heard a million times before and we’ve all spoken about as fans, which is why games like Luton have been a bit of a rarity. But I wonder what the vibe has been at the club yesterday and today now that the euphoria and adrenaline of the club has died down after Tuesday? I suspect Mikel had them all in the TV room saying “great character guys, I love it and I love you all, but, seriously….Don’t do that again, yeah?” He will have wanted a much more simpler second half and I suspect the focus in training in the last couple of days has been just that – focus, concentration, realise that any opponent can hurt you so keep your wits about you.

And as fans that’s what we want. Many of us – me included – have been slightly edgy about our lack of fluidity at the start of the season, the lack of goals and we’ve been worried about how sustainable it is to win a title. But if you control 90% of football matches and you are as tight defensively as we have been on many occasions this season, then you really do give yourself every chance. It might feel to us like fine margins, but to the players it is probably not that. Take the Wolves game for example, because there was nerves when Wolves got their goal, but Arsenal just shut the game down and remained in control to see out the match. That’s the mentality that we need and that is where you start to find very successful teams. I didn’t like it at the time, but the more this team demonstrates that it can control football matches like it has at times this season, the better our chances of the shiny silver trinkets at the end.

Catch you all tomorrow.

And look, I get it, this trophy is the least of our worries. But if you get to the end of the season and you’ve finished fourth and you don’t get a nice day out at Wembley and a little silver trinket to celebrate, then ultimately you look at the season and say you’ve come out of it empty-handed. And that’s disappointed. I am talking purely on a selfish basis here too because I am lucky enough to be able to afford to go to Arsenal games at home, I get to go to the occasional away game last night and whenever we’ve been in Cup finals in this country in the last ten years or so, I’ve been able to be there. So I love a Wembley day out and after seeing performances like yesterday, it is just disappointing to know that’s one less that I – and we – will get.

I think what also is leading to some concern for me this morning, is that it is not as if this match was completely thrown by Arteta. He named a pretty strong line up of players who you’d all hope can come in just in case we get injuries. We’ve all talked about how Arteta this season must feel like he’s got a stronger squad that he trusts, but on the basis of last night’s showing from some of those rotated players, he might start to have second thoughts.

So let’s go from back to front on individual performances, shall we?

Ramsdale. I said to both Steve and Mark who I was with last night that I want him to step up. I want Arteta to mean what he said about having two number ones and I want both to get 25 games this season each, minimum. Because it spreads the risk in case one is injured and it also means that we’re trying something different that is helping the overall squad. But I thought on the first goal last night Ramsdale neither came for the corner, nor stood on his line. Granted, it was a Ben White flicked header that was poor and granted, he was tugged by a West Ham player that in the Premier League is probably (although with VAR you never really know) getting pulled back for a foul. But I didn’t think he looked as assured or as good as he did in the last round and this will have done him no favours for getting his starting spot back based on yesterday evening, unfortunately. You can see Raya coming straight back in and you can see that Ramsdale probably isn’t going to be seen until Brentford away and then the new year, now, I suspect.

In defence we went strong too, but we gave away some cheap goals as well, particularly the second goal in the second half, where Zinchenko lost Kudus and although the finish was great he will know he could have tracked him better I think. Then on the third goal I know it was a deflection, but Gabriel will know he could have done more to close down and I think Ramsdale will still expect to get a better paw on it than he got with it peppered at him.

In midfield Jorginho was ok, average at best you’d probably say, but in front of him the two eights were anonymous. I barely noticed Fabio Vieira all game and Kai Havertz was just woeful. We’re now 15 games in to the season adn we’ve seen little to suggest that my summer worries of this as a signing is going to work out. He’s at the club, he’s an Arsenal player, of course I want him to succeed, but I am really struggling with this now. It felt expensive at the time for a player who we assumed could thrive in a midfield position, but at this stage I’m starting to struggle what he delivers. And if I wanted somebody in that advanced and creative eight role to be a hard worker and somebody who comes back and wins duels, I’d rather we’d have gone out and got another combative six and played with a double pivot. Because what we thought we were going to get with Havertz, at this moment in time, we’re just not getting. Unless something switches in the next month or so, this is going to all start to feel a little bit Williany I’m afraid. Only this time that scummy club Chelsea shafted us out of £65million.

Then in attack we got little to be happy about either. I was disappointed in Trossard, who barely featured in that first half and although Reiss Nelson had a couple of nice runs in the opening 45, he faded away pretty badly in the second. And then to Eddie, who I am now realising is a guy who is useful for home matches against mid table teams or lower, but away from home is near to redundant and I heard something this morning that he hasn’t scored in something like his last 18 away games. I’m sorry, but for a central striker at The Arsenal that is just not good enough, and it’s another area for concern.

We got a consolation goal in injury time, but I can’t really be bothered to go into the detail of that. It was pretty irrelevant.

I think for me it is the manner of the way we went out, rather than the actual exit itself. Last season we went out in the FA Cup to City I was like “ok, no probs, let’s focus on the league now and get a win against Everton” and we followed up that exit with a really shoddy display at Goodison. That’s what I worry about now for the weekend, that we follow up one shoddy display from another. And those two back-to-back defeats last season were in similar circumstances in terms of the number of players we rotated; we did half the team, but there was still enough first teamers out there to still be reeling from that defeat. I won’t go in to my expected line up for Saturday just yet, but if I was to pick my team for Saturday there would probably be three players who would need to be picked. That means eight to come in which is a fair amount of changes, but a fair few of those eight coming in also stepped on to the pitch as substitutes, so they’ll bear some scarring too from this defeat.

Let’s just hope it doesn’t manifest itself as a weekend hangover in two days time.

Catch you all tomorrow or, if you fancy a lunchtime check in and debrief, James and I will be on the Same Old Arsenal podcast at 1pm today.

Laters peeps.

Nobody. Really. So one of the most prestigious tournaments on the planet, that generates millions for countries, adds great value, is a sporting pinnacle that is watched by a big chunk of the planet, had not ONE. SINGLE. OTHER. BIDDER.

Interesting.

I wonder if that could possibly have been because FIFA itself used its back channels to tell other nations not to bother voting, because the decision had already been made? FIFA, an organisation that has already been proven to be corrupt and untrustworthy, that claimed it would clean itself up, is now doing deals like this with a country who have clearly decided that sports washing is a successful way of covering over any issues over human rights, amongst other things, and we’re all just supposed to accept that everything is hunky dory?

Do me a favour. If only somebody else could set up a rival version of FIFA that did actually have some kind of football integrity, I’m sure that there would be plenty of real football fans out there that would support it.

Anyway, I’ll need to park that and maybe revisit in another day, because we have West Ham this evening in the League Cup and I’m sure you’re hear to read more about that than the bent footballing governing body we have.

This one is a tough one for me to work out tonight, because I keep flip-flopping on what Arteta should do with his team. When you look at the sides left in the competition and that if we beat West Ham tonight there’s one of Man United/Newcastle to worry about, as well as Liverpool, then it does feel like this could within a round or two become quite a winnable game. As a match going fan myself as well, I love me a Wembley Cup final. The whole day is special and I love the build up to it, so the idea of us potentially getting a February one next year is very palatable indeed.

But this thinking is quickly counter-balanced by the fact that this is the fourth priority in a list of four for Arsenal this season and with Newcastle away looming on the horizon, we need to have our fittest and best players available for what will invariably be one of the toughest games of the season at St James’ Park. I think the Premier League HAS to be Mikel’s priority and for that reason I think the team I pick tonight has to be predicated on availability and fitness for the weekend. Newcastle play Man United this evening as well and if Eddie Howe goes strong this evening, then it also causes him an issue for the weekend too, so I suspect he might heavily rotate given the injuries and suspensions they have in their squad right now.

So for me I think we have to rotate, but not a massive amount. So my line up for tonight would be:

Ramsdale

White   –   Gabriel   –   Kiwior   –   Zinchenko

Jorginho

Havertz   –   Smith Rowe

Vieira   –   Trossard   –   Nelson

Let me show some of my workings here. I think Ramsdale deserves to start and hasn’t played enough football. That one’s easy. I think White is one of the most robust players in our team and I am not convinced playing Tomiyasu tonight is the right move, because I think I want us to save him for left back on Saturday evening, which is why I’m picking Zinchenko at left back, because I’d have him on the bench against Newcastle at the weekend. Gabriel missed the game against Sheffield United, so I think it is Saliba’s time to sit this one out and I think Kiwior hasn’t played enough football so this is an opportunity to give him back-to-back matches.

Jorginho in midfield in place of Rice makes sense to me, because it gives the England international a week of prepping himself for Newcastle and in front of them I’ve gone Havertz and Smith Rowe because I think Arteta should be telling them both to go out and prove themselves tonight and the one who comes off best can take the left eight spot against Newcastle. Odegaard is sure to come in for that game at the weekend and it makes sure he has a few more days rest after having picked up a knock and sitting out the Sheffield United game last weekend.

Then up top I’m giving Nelson and Vieira a chance to shine, with Trossard in the middle as I think he deserves more minutes. Unless Gabriel Jesus is back for the weekend, which it doesn’t really sound like it from what Arteta said in his presser yesterday, then I’d save Eddie for Newcastle.

We can always have some of those first teamers on the bench and if that first XI isn’t doing the business then we can always bring them on in the second half for 30 minutes or so.

In terms of West Ham, they’re missing Paqueta and Alvarez at the weekend through suspension I think, so Moyes has admitted he might play them tonight, but I wonder just how strong he goes this evening. He’ll have seen just how much of a boost to his job a cup win is and much like I said at the top of today’s blog for us, he’ll be looking at that draw and thinking that if West Ham can get beyond Arsenal, that opens up this tie because one of Newcastle and United will be gone and then the only other side you’d think it’d be tough to go up against would be away to a Liverpool. So I do wonder if he has a go for it this evening. They’ve got Brentford away on Saturday so this could be a real opportunity to get a scalp after some disappointing results. If I’m in his position, I might be going for it this evening, but we’ll have to see.

I’ll be making my way there this evening – probably in the rain – so it’ll be great to see us progress, but what I’m more conscious of is that we don’t suffer any knocks or bruises ahead of the upcoming Premier League game this weekend.

Fingers crossed.

Catch you all tomorrow.

But the reason I watched the game – to see how they might play against us – felt a little pointless in the end (a bit like West Ham come full time!). Pointless because there’s no way the game state on Wednesday night will be anything like what it was for both teams yesterday. Everton were – pre kick off – towards the bottom of the table, with West Ham looking to climb at least one place to eighth after Man United eventually capitulated against City (which they did). The game state and the fact West Ham were at home against a team towards the bottom of the division meant that this was always going to pan out one way if/when Everton took the lead; backs to the wall, dogged defending, Sean Dyche on the side moaning about absolutely everything, then Everton hitting West Ham on transition.

As I watched the game pan out I started to wonder about what happens if Arsenal get the first goal on Wednesday night. If that happens – and I’m sure that’s of course what we all want – then the game state doesn’t really feel like it will change like it did for Everton. Unless Arsenal score the first goal of the game in the last ten minutes or so, in which case you’d expect West Ham to throw everything at us because it’s a cup game, the game itself doesn’t really change because the expectation is for Arsenal to keep going for a second or a third. We’re not built to just tuck in and hit teams on the counter in transition with a game plan like Everton’s. Sure, we’ve shown we can do that, but it isn’t really something that you’d expect from us if we’re going ahead after 20 or 30 minutes, is it?

Which then led me to thinking about how Arteta prepares for this game, because it’s not as if he can look at the match against Everton and take much from it. Perhaps you can look at how individuals are playing and then look to try to highlight weaknesses in the West Ham team, but the expectation is that there will be plenty of rotation for both teams on Wednesday, so if you’ve isolated a certain way to play against a player and they don’t play, then it feels kind of redundant when the teams are announced.

It just goes to show you how difficult it is to prepare for these types of games. I’m sure Arteta will love to get another win and progress to the next round of the League Cup, but let’s be honest here, it is number four on the list of priorities and so I wonder if he can really prepare for it like he would a Premier League game against the same side. Because if we were playing them in the league on Wednesday, you’d know that the likely line up Moyes picks will be similar to the one that played yesterday for them.

We’ll probably get a press conference tomorrow so won’t really get an update on player availability, although having posed the question about Gabby Jesus and Partey to somebody in the ground on Saturday, they seemed to think it’d be a month for Jesus and two months for Partey. I really hope not on both counts. Arteta suggested a couple of weeks and there’s no reason not to believe that, but if that timeframe does come though (and the guy couldn’t remember where he’d heard that timeframe for them to come back to be fair) as that, then it’ll be a huge blow for us. Jesus in particular and in particular when you look at that Newcastle game looming on the horizon. That is a tough place to go, they have a very good team and you’ll expect it to be a really difficult match, so having your best players available is something that is kin d of a must in these fixtures. But right now it almost feels as though we’re doomed not to see our best team play this season. We’re 10 Premier League matches in (a quarter of a season) and we still haven’t had our best line up play. Yet we’re still in with a shout and at least trying to keep pace with those teams at the top of the league, we’re doing alright in the Champions League and as of now we’re still in the League Cup. We all acknowledge that we can play better and the Sheffield United game was hopefully a good start, but it does feel like we’re going to need to get a run together of all of our best players fit before we really ‘click’ in my opinion. As great as the game was on Saturday against Sheffield United, we can’t “play you every week” as the song goes, so we need to get some of these players back so we can start to field the team that we all hope and want.

Right, I’ll leave it there for today I think. You enjoy the rest of your Monday and I’ll catch you tomorrow.

Arsenal are – at the time of me writing this – still yet to officially confirm his arrival, but I suspect that will happen at some stage today. Probably as soon as I hit ‘publish’ knowing my luck. But that’s ok, because I have tomorrow to spend some time with some thoughts on the signing and finally wrap up this saga.

On the West Ham statement, I can kind of understand that they and Rice want to carefully stage manage the exit, which is why I understand that they wanted to ‘go first’ on the announcement. They want to be able to get the nice messages out from the fans and Arsenal and the PR team probably agreed; they want to be able to probably get a little bit of time between this announcement and Arsenal doing all of the video stuff, the behind the scenes, etc.

So I think I will leave the Rice chatter now too, because yesterday the club confirmed Jurrien Timber and if you want to talk about how to properly manage an exit with a lot of class, look no further than what they did yesterday. It was well managed, it tugged on the heartstrings, there was a clear communication between Arsenal and Ajax and the way in which it was handled made me think that we’ve got a really great kid in Timber:

And that speaks a lot to the type of player that I think Arteta wants in his team. No mega superstar that is going to swan in with a solid gold Rolls Royce feeling like he’s made it; we want players who are going to work hard to prove themselves, who are going to drive the team forward and have the motivation and hunger to improve, as well as the technical ability.

The signing is a welcome one. It isn’t in a position of the pitch that I thought we’d needed it if I’m honest, but when you look at his versatility, coupled with the fact that last season we lost both Saliba and Tomiyasu at crucial stages, then Timber coming in gives us an uplift in quality and that depth that Arteta must have been craving since we lost out on the league last season. He’ll give a different dynamic, a progressive, ball carrying, good passing, defender and I suspect he can probably expect to get plenty of matches this season.

I also think that this is the kind of move that shows that Arteta is willing – and will – be rotating a little more. You don’t spend £34million on a player and then tell them to sit down until White or Saliba are injured. I think Timber will be getting weekend and midweek minutes and I think we will need to be prepared for that ourselves. Picking a team in the morning before a game is going to be a lot more difficult than last season and the season before that and I am absolutely here for it.

I watched just about as much Timber videos and stories as possible and although this transfer is flying under the radar a bit because of the Rice rumours, the more I read about this lad the more I think this could be a very astute move by Arsenal. When you’ve got players like Van Dijk saying that Timber is further ahead in his development than he was at that age, you know that potentially you’ve got an absolute star on your hands. It won’t be easy for Timber to break in though; this is a team that fought all the way to the end for the Premier League and has been very impressive defensively. I think it would probably be a stretch to expect him to walk in at right back or centre half, but certainly he’ll be earmarking some minutes when the Champions League kicks in in the latter parts of September. Until then it is obviously all about integrating him in to the team, getting him some pre season minutes, then getting him some minutes – maybe as a sub – in those opening weeks. But I think when he does get on, there will be plenty of us who will start to realise just how good he is.

The team travel to the States tomorrow I think, so I expect the squad to all be together and ready to fly off with two more newbies in the team. There will be plenty of press I suspect at some stage today because of Rice for that reason I suspect; it’d be a bit weird if they released images of Rice getting on the tour plane before the club have event announced it. So until we see some of those confirmations, I’ll leave it for today and catch you tomorrow.

Have a good one peeps.

Why is he joining Arsenal? I hate them now so much. Why didn’t he go to Man City? That would have been better.

This kind of thought process confuses me. When did West Ham fans develop such a hatred of The Arsenal? This isn’t something I’ve ever seen before, it is purely arising – from what I can see – as a result of the impending transfer of Declan Rice to us.

I tried to break down in my head where West Ham fans might be frustrated, annoyed, cheesed off, with Arsenal and the way they have behaved and, to my mind, this is how the Rice situation has played out:

He stated late last year whilst away with England that he wanted to play in the Champions League, intimating that ideally it would be next season (Arsenal were top of the league at that stage and West Ham were in 16th).

At that stage if Arsenal were looking at their central midfield options they would have been sounding out a few players. As we know they must have also have sounded out Caicedo’s people, because we made a bid for him in January.

At some stage during that January period…

News broke out that Arsenal were interested in Rice and that he was impressed by Arteta and had been open to the idea of a move (Arsenal were still top of the league in January when this news broke)

In an ideal world nobody talks to anybody unless the club gives permission but if any Arsenal or West Ham fan thinks that any player currently at their club hasn’t even spoken to other clubs via agencies and intermediaries, then they are living on Cloud Cuckoo Land. If you think that I would recommend Sky’s “Deadline Day: Football’s Transfer Window” programme. In it you LITERALLY see agents talking to players about how “this club, this club and this club are interested in you, I have spoken to them” from the agent. It happens, it is football. We do it with players, we get it done to us (van Persie anyone? Cesc? Nasri? They will have all have had sweet nectar of promises poured in to their ears).

So with that in mind at that stage all Arsenal have done is work out if there’s any point in bidding and how interested the player is. And for it to come out publicly that he was very interested and impressed with Arteta, then there must have been quite positive feedback from the Rice camp.

So now we have a player saying he wants to play Champions League, a player with whom it was widely reported that he wouldn’t sign a new deal, interested in a club at the top of the league. Strip out the names if you want, just think of the circumstance. So, what next?

Rice has a brilliant end to the season, wins the club their first trophy in decades with them and West Ham – including David Moyes – talk about how he might leave the club, but he has to be on their terms and around £100million.

Then David Sullivan goes on national radio and admits they have to grant him a move, he’s done so much for the club, he’s a great kid, he has turned down an offer for them that would have got him an extra £10million in wages, to stay at West Ham.

Why did he turn down that deal? He wants to play Champions League football.

Does he have Champions League football next season at Arsenal? Yes.

Is there a guarantee he will play Champions League football the season after? Of course not, but from the end of next season we have five teams in the revised format. That increases his chances. In the last seven seasons Arsenal have finished at least fifth four times. And this has – we as Arsenal fans all admit – been some of the worst of times until the upturn we saw in the last two season’s under Arteta. If you go back 20 year’s, Arsenal have finished fifth or above in 16 of the last 20 seasons. So with that in mind, if he’s looking at the numbers, he’s probably thinking we have a pretty good chance of playing Champions League football in more than just next season. It is not a guarantee, but it is a pretty good shot.

So that’s another thing ‘ticked off’ that has been factually spoken about by Rice and that West Ham and their fans have known about for eight months at least.

What about the fee then? Should West Ham fans be annoyed about the fee?

If anything, I’d argue myself that they should be pretty happy about that situation. I think Rice is a superb player, will be great for us, but I think he’s probably more like an £80million player. So Arsenal could have potentially overpaid. If you are going to lose a player, for the reason’s I’ve stated above, at least console yourself in the fact you get good money to reinvest. But I have still seen West Ham fans ignore that. That was one of my biggest annoyances when we lost Cesc; his market value at the time was probably closer to around £40million. We got around £29million for him I think. So we lost out captain for around a quarter of his value. West Ham are losing their captain for £20million over his value (for context, Transfermarkt has Rice at €90million / £76.9million. I know that isn’t an exact science, but as a rough benchmark I think it is usually around 10% within the fair market value myself). So why are they still annoyed? If they are sensible they could probably buy two or three really good players and build bigger and better for next season with that money. They could be in an ever better position than they were WITH Rice in the side.

But how about how Arsenal behaved? Has that annoyed the Hammers faithful? Or how Rice has behaved?

Again, I’m struggling to see how, here. The player himself has said nothing. No interviews in the press, no leaks to the media about how he has ‘begged’ West Ham to let him go, nothing. He has played this out as West Ham have wanted and one of the results of that is that they have managed to inflate the price to their asking price, despite the noises coming out now that Rice only wanted to go to The Arsenal, with just a year left on his deal (and yes, I know there was an additional year to extend but that hadn’t been triggered as of when this all started).

But what about Arsenal? Have they behaved poorly? Again, I don’t think so. What we’ve heard is that they waited until after the Europa Conference League final before making our first bid, we bid higher than our club record bid first time, before going back twice more to eventually give West Ham their asking price. This deal has dragged on because Arsenal and West Ham couldn’t agree payment terms, but we’re talking about ONE HUNDRED MILLION POUNDS here. That’s a NINE figure sum from a club that aren’t backed by a nation state or oil oligarch. That’s a HUGE sum of money and Arsenal just don’t have that kind of Scrooge McDuck vaults of cash to drop on West Ham’s lap.

Paying in stages is the norm these days too. Todd Boehly has made that and amortisation a common word in the football lexicon these days.

So here we are. I still remain confused with some of the anger of West Ham fans. But maybe it is just a small minority of them online that are raging at their timelines. Perhaps the majority of them are quite ok with what has happened. I have seen some suggest going to City would have been better for them, which I find bizarre, but maybe that is a London thing. But that is another factor as to why Rice wanted to stay; be close to his family and friends.

What are your thoughts on this? And if there’s the odd West Ham fan reading this too, do you have a hatred of Arsenal that is now bigger than CHelsea or the Scum? If you do I’d love to know why.

Catch you all tomorrow.

Quick P.S – last night I did the Same Old Arsenal pod for our summer series of ‘one in, one out, one bangs’. I had Mark and Kevin on and it was great talking to them. Have a watch / listen here if you fancy it.

So I think today I’ll keep that chatter short. I’ve given my thoughts, I’ve talked about City and what their plans might be and if they bid again today you’d expect West Ham to probably accept it because the payment terms will no doubt be better.

Whatever.

We either get him or we don’t, but I just want to talk about other things now, as Havertz is due to be announced today and there was even a leaked video of him doing his first interview in an Arsenal shirt. I suspect the club will announce that today at some stage. Then we’ll dive back in to some Havertz chat and what he said on the official site tomorrow.

Speaking of the official site, I saw that the club are offering up the opportunity to pay up front for match day programmes for the upcoming season. You can pay £119 for the lot if you’re based in the UK and if you count 19 Premier League games, three Champions League games and then maybe a few cups to make 25 matches, it works out at £4.76.

That’s not too bad given the price is now £4 per programme when you’re at the game, but I don’t think I’ll be partaking in the bulk purchase of the programmes. I’m a sporadic purchaser of programmes when I go to the games; I used to buy them all of the time up until I got my season ticket, but in the last few years I’ve scaled back a bit because I wasn’t properly reading them all. But I also used to buy them as a memento of me being at the game, a hard copy memory of a football match, but I am fortunate enough to go to the vast bulk of the football matches at The Arsenal these days, so I don’t feel like I need a memento of a game.

For the games that I do miss, I don’t think I want a programme to remind me of the match, so whilst it’s a good move from the club I think I’ll give it a pass.

There we go, managed to fill some online space NOT talking that much about transfers and specifically that lad from the East London team! But I’ll pause for today and be back tomorrow with more musings on anything that might get announced today.

Arsenal transfer signings are going to start happening. Don’t ask me how, don’t ask me why, it just is a ‘thing’, going back to when we signed Per Mertesacker and Mikel Arteta in 2011. This is my ‘transfer home’ and I expect there to be some movement this week.

Alright, I admit it, there’s already one that everyone is already expecting to happen any day now with the arrival of Havertz, but my hope is that my holiday escapades will also have an effect and rub off on the Declan Rice situation, because you just feel the longer it drags on, the longer it probably plays in to Man City’s hands. Fabrizio Romano tweeted in the early hours of the morning:

https://twitter.com/FabrizioRomano/status/1672405854530699264

So I suspect within the next few days it will all become clear. I think if this one is rejected – which it very well could be if City come in and chuck a couple of mil on top to seal the deal – then I think Arsenal will do what they did in January and look for an alternative. The problem is, when you’ve gone hot on somebody for so long, what options are out there that could be just as good? We haven’t really been linked with many other options and although we bid for Caicedo in January, that is exceedingly quiet and all the noises are that Chelsea are progressing well with getting the player. Now, of course that can change in the blink of an eye and as we saw with Mudryk in January, a team can have multiple bids, they can seem to have the playing only wanting them and everything is going in one direction, then another club just comes in at the last minute and does the deal. Could that be Arsenal in a reversal of the Mudryk situation if Rice doesn’t come off?

Maybe. But we don’t tend to be on the right end of those deals, do we? Think back. Search your memory banks. When did we swoop in and nab a player from another team at the last minute? The only one I can think of off the top of my head is Park Chu Young when he was in the process of having his medical at Lille, but then left his hotel room and headed to England to sign for us when Wenger got the call. That hardly worked out to be the best transfer of all time, did it? But if that’s the last time we did any ‘swooping for a player to take them from another club about to buy him, then you’re talking about going back 13-and-a-half years ago!

I haven’t given up on Rice by the way. I’m not throwing the towel in that we could get him, but I guess I’m just preparing myself mentally for the disappointment if it happens. And knowing that we can move quickly with other options that are already being looked at, usually by the fact the press talk about those other options, would give me a little more ease. However, I guess we were able to quickly pivot with Jorginho and Trossard in January and they both turned out to be decent buys for us.

The only thing about this, however, is that we aren’t looking for squad depth players. We’re looking for first team game changers. How many of those exist? Sure, I bet there are lots of very talented players across the globe who would come in and do an amazing job. They could be in South America, mainland Europe, etc. But any player without any experience in the Premier League is a bigger gamble than one in it and if you think about Premier League options, what else is there other than Rice or Caicedo? I had a little look on FBREF as to which players it classed as similar to Rice and this is what came up:

• Nemanja Matić
• Moisés Caicedo
• Pierre Højbjerg
• Rominigue Kouamé
• Thomas Partey
• Nabil Bentaleb
• Valentin Rongiere
• Exequiel Palacios
• Stijn Spierings
• Thiago Alcántara

I don’t have to tell you that there are at least two on that list with a Scum connection that we wouldn’t want to touch. There are two players who have those United and Liverpool connections and I can’t see those being anywhere on the radar. One is Caicedo who we already know about, then one already plays for us! I get that this is just a top ten, that there will be plenty of other options out there, that this is also based on data and therefore you can’t exactly compare apples with apples when you have players in the French or English leagues, but I guess for me it just hit home that we’re going to need a bit of a rabbit out of the hat if the Rice deal drags on and Caicedo truly is off the table. This is a move to eventually replace Thomas Partey and bringing in Lavia is a good idea for a succession plan, but does it work to move the needle enough to have us compete for the league again next season? Because all of the teams around us are going to strengthen and strengthen well.

Yesterday I brought you a ‘reasons to be optimistic about Rice‘ piece and I haven’t flip-flopped in the space of just 24 hours, but I guess in the back of my mind there is a bit of mental self preservation happening today, so let’s see what play’s out and hopefully in the coming days it is in our favour.

That’s me done for today. I’m going to go and get some barbeque food for later. You be safe.

Laters.

Obviously if you’re a social media obsessive like me then you’ll have seen the noises last night from Di Marzio that Rice is getting closer to agreeing to sign to Man City. I believe he’s pretty reliable and if these noises are true then it means that there is a possibility of us potentially losing out on the player. However, whilst in the moment I too was getting anxious and a little crazy last night when I read the messages, I find that overnight I have been able to become a little more sanguine about the situation.

After all if City come in, if he decides he wants to join them, if they have outbid us because of their status as a financially-doped nation state, then what can we do? And should I as an Arsenal fan really lose much sleep over it?

Probably not. But I also don’t think we should be admitting defeat just yet. These big transfers always do have twists and turns in them and whilst Mudryk turned against us towards the end in January, Gabriel Jesus always wanted us, admitted there had been some interest from other clubs, but Arsenal had done their groundwork and had convinced the player to join.

Of course the same can be true of Rice and the player himself could be sold. But we all have to admit that the lure of joining a team that has just won the treble isn’t exactly going to be something you completely dismiss. This isn’t like last summer with Jesus and the likes of Tottenham and Chelsea were sniffing around. I would say were it any other team other than Man City and most of us probably wouldn’t even be batting an eyelid. But it is City, they are the best team in the league and if you are going to join a ‘project’ in the Premier League I personally think there are two that are truly exciting right now: Arsenal and Man City.

Arsenal because of the young team and what looks like a meteoric trajectory in the last two seasons.

Man City who are ‘already there’ and reached its peak last season.

But, like I said, I am still hopeful. I’m hopeful because of a few things.

1. Noises are that Rice’s wife specifically is very keen to stay down south. Don’t underestimate that as an important influencing factor. After all we’re all talking about how Xhaka’s wife has been part of the player’s desire to move back to Germany. We can’t on one hand look at a factor like that for one of our players and see that as a shame, then on the other hand think it may not be a benefiting factor for us when it comes to Rice.
2. The lure of Arteta. Some might dismiss this but there is no doubt that he has shown how impressive he is as a coach. And the noises as early as January were that Rice was impressed by Arteta. Do we not think the player will have spoken to him? Yes, I get it, Pep is a legend, but there are questions about how long he will be manager for and we can’t deny that Man City are about to go through some change in the next couple of seasons. Which project is at the start and could go super nova and which project may just have peaked?
3. The age demographic of our squad. We’ve all talked about it. People in the game have talked about it. There are a bunch of Arsenal players all in their early 20s and we’re getting them all signed up for the next four to five years. Rice would join a group of players with whom he could realistically have four or five years with. All together, all building, growing, imrpoving and hopefully winning trophies. That counts for something too I think.
4. The Saka factor. We see it with their social media messages to each other. We see it when they are on England duty. Rice is loved by all of the England players and no doubt all the Man City players will get on with Rice, but is Saka really his ‘bestie’ and does that have an – albeit small – factor in his decision making?

Of course what we’re assuming here is that we have all offered the same money, the same package, that this is a straight shoot out. Maybe Man City decide that they want to nplay their trump card, which is to just throw a crazy figure of like £150million at West Ham just because they can. If that happens then Arsenal rightly walk away I think, but if both bids on the table are equal and it is down to the player to decide, I think we certainly have a fighting chance of getting him.

I don’t think I want to labour on this too much today, to be honest with you. There’ll be rumour and counter-rumour all this morning and afternoon re: Rice I suspect, so even if you get around to reading this in the afternoon, what I’m saying might all be irrelevant if we see an Ornbomb, for example. So I’ll call it quits today and let’s see what comes out in the wash for the rest of Friday.

Have a good one folks.