And inevitably, things will now start to turn to “how do we go one better?” with regards to Europe, but also how we keep our rivals at arm’s length. It does feel like there is a massive opportunity for us next season, given the transitional state of so many clubs in the Premier League. I was asked to give my views for BBC Sport on what risks Arteta might need to take to ensure we remain at the summit next season. As I said in the piece, this doesn’t have to be a revolution. There will need to be some churn; we will need to lose some players that we all love, but we also need to have faith that those who come in could be even better.

What are the risks our rivals might be fearing, though?

Let’s go down the league by placement and have a look at where each team are, shall we?

Man City

New manager and uncertainty over whether or not key players will remain. Maresca is a guy who, I think, will do a good job at City, but will he be able to drive them as much as Guardiola? Will he instigate the same period of dominance that they had before? And will the players react to him the way they did with Pep? How does following arguably the greatest ever manager in the history of English football play out for Maresca? There’s no doubt he’s in the right mould; he was in Pep’s team for a few years and so clearly knows the infrastructure well enough, but IS that enough?

He’s also got players like Rodri – a key pillar in this team – talking about “Anything related to my future will wait until after the World Cup.” – that’s hardly a ringing endorsement that everything is tip-top, is it?

I haven’t even mentioned the 115…

Man United

A lot is being made about the resurgence of United under Carrick, but it is well documented that they played the least number of games a team could play in a season. They were knocked out in the third round of the FA Cup at the first attempt for them, and the same in the EFL Cup, meaning they effectively played on average one game per season for the whole season. That will surely not happen next season. Michael Carrick will have a whole season to deliver, not just the new manager bounce approach, and I know that there are some fans who are wondering whether this is a bit of Solskjaer going on. To be fair to him, I think he’s a little more tactically astute than the Norwegian, but let’s just wait to see what happens when the first couple of defeats pop up for United, after they’ve played in the Champions League and the Premier League and haven’t had any rest time. Luke Shaw played the most amount of games for them – can he stay fit? Will Bruno Fernandez have another stat-padding season at 31-years-old? Casemiro played 35 times, and he’s off. They have a fair few questions that need to be answered, methinks.

Aston Villa

Villa are a weird one, because they’re just as likely to have another storming season as they are to absolutely crash under Emery. Do they kick on from a Europa League win? Well, they’re in the Champions League now, and so the rotation of their squad will not be as easy as it is in Europe’s second competition. When they were in the Champions League last season, they finished sixth, although it was a final-day defeat to Man United away that stopped them from getting into the Champions League, as Newcastle took the top spot. But if the news of us sniffing around Morgan Rogers is true, then if they lose him, that is a big threat disappearing from their team. In all competitions this season, he got 14 goals and 12 assists from midfield. Replacing that could be hard, unless Villa can resist any team overtures (it won’t just be us interested). They reported healthy profits off the back of the Champions League last season, but the Europa League run won’t have given them as much (as this article points out). I don’t know enough about Villa’s financial position to know whether they will be able to resist one or two big names being picked up.

Liverpool

With Slot gone, they’ll pick up Iraola, who could turn out to be a really good move. I like him; I think he is a clever guy who has done wonders at Bournemouth, but does that translate to Liverpool? I actually think it is a better move than if they’d have gone for Alonso, because Iraola knows the league. But there is no Salah. Virgil van Dijk turns 35 in July and has played in every Premier League game. Time catches up with us all. Tony Adams retired at age 35. At 34-years old and in the 2000/01 season, he played 38 games in all competitions. In the 2001/02 season, he made 13 appearances in all competitions, as age and injuries caught him up. That might not happen to van Dijk, but I’m sure if I looked hard enough, I’d find plenty of examples to show that around that age, the pace, the injuries and other aspects catch up with players. Konate still has an uncertain future, Robertson is gone, Leoni had a long-term injury, Joe Gomez is injury-prone, as is Bradley, and Frimpong seems to be a guy the Liverpool fans don’t trust as much. Ekitike was a good buy. Isak may suddenly find himself not injured, but there are so many questions about Liverpool that Iraola is going to have to deal with.

I’m not going to go through the whole league, so I’ll leave it there for today, but Bournemouth have a new manager, Sunderland and Brighton have to contend with European football, Chelsea finished 10th for Christ’s sake! So when you look at where we are right now, you have to say it feels like we’re in a good place.

Let’s just hope the club makes the right moves this summer to put us in an even more commanding position.

Catch you all tomorrow.

With Unai Emery going ‘Full Unai’ with his team ahead of their home game against Forest on Thursday, Villa put in the kind of performance you expect from an end-of-season team that really are mentally on the beach. That was frustrating from an Arsenal fan perspective because:

1. The Scum won and will probably now stay clear of relegation
2. West Ham will now be doubly motivated next Sunday when we play them.

That second point will be one to worry about. Over the years, West Ham have given us tough games on their patch, and with the threat of relegation now very real with just three games to go, they will be more fired up for this one than we could imagine.

West Ham got battered by an improved Brentford side on Saturday, which had mixed blessings for us overall, because:

1. It means that Brentford are closing down a European spot and next weekend they will go to City, knowing a win could be huge for them
2. West Ham are probably going to need to beat Arsenal next weekend – their heavy defeat doesn’t help the goal difference either.

Before that match yesterday, we also saw Bournemouth pick up a big win at home to Palace, which was certainly a better scoreline for us, because:

1. Bournemouth will be buoyed, and to qualify for Europe, will probably need to beat City in a week and a half at home on their own patch
2. Palace losing heavily shows us that there’s a team that has all eyes on a possible European final, which will happen just after they play us on the final day, when hopefully we are fighting to win the title.

The complexities and permutations of this season are not lost on a single Arsenal fan, I don’t think, and in pubs and homes all over the Arsenal-supporting world, we’re all doing the mental gymnastics to see chinks of light or opportunities to build out a little more hope, through the actions of others.

But it will be Arsenal’s actions that define this season. If we beat West Ham, then we hopefully have two games in which you’d hope Arsenal can rack up plenty of goals. If we do that, then the goal difference thing would swing from City’s favour to ours. I can’t see City hammering all of the teams they are playing by fours and fives. So there is a chink of light and hope that we might have a bit of an advantage.

Tonight, all eyes will be on Merseyside. Can Everton do something against City? I’m not so sure. They’ve lost their last two games to Liverpool at home and West Ham away. Before that, they picked up a 2-2 draw away at Brentford, but before that, they won at home 3-0 against a shockingly bad Chelsea side. Their record at home this season is mixed; I just had a look, and there are defeats to United, Brentford, Tottenham, and Newcastle, whilst also draws against Leeds, West Ham and Villa. They are a patchy side. But the good thing about tonight, one would hope, is that today’s game means that if they lose it, their outside chance of Europe is basically gone. That’s what most Arsenal fans will be hoping for this evening – that this ‘last chance saloon’ inspires them to do something special in front of their own fans.

Mind you, the same could have been said about Fulham at the weekend, and yet we absolutely rinsed them in that first half on Saturday. To be fair, that was at home for us, whereas this is away for Man City, so perhaps that swings the balance back a little, but I still think that Everton probably won’t have too much for a City side who are in form at the moment. Despite their bitching through the back channels about their impending fixture congestion, they’ve also just had over a week off, so they will be fresh now, too.

As for us, we have our eyes trained on that Champions League semi-final, and Arteta will be making his way to The Emirates this evening to deliver his pre-match press conference ahead of the game. The noises we’re hearing are that Kai is pushing to be fit to play a part, which would be massive not just for tomorrow, but also in the context of the remainder of the domestic season. Having him as an option when we’re facing a low block in the league might be very important, although tomorrow night I think you do still have to go with Big Vik, given his two goals and confidence will be up after one of the best performances for him this season.

The big question I have is around Timber. Like, are we actually going to see him this season, or nah? I really would love to have him back, or even news of him back, but what we’ve had over the last couple of weeks is Arteta saying “a few more days” and yet not even a sniff of a return. Odegaard too, we need to get a good update on, but I suspect his absence from the weekend was precautionary and there to manage the knocks he’s had that have kept him out of that difficult period of April that we’ve just overcome. If he’s back, if Timber can even just be seen in full training this week at some stage (even if it is not possible to be in the squad for tomorrow), then I will take that as a big positive. Having him available at right back for a game like West Ham feels like it would be a huge boost, although at this stage, given how long he’s been out, I’m not sure even then how viable it would be.

Let’s wait and see what Arteta says later. As for me, I’m going to take the opportunity to enjoy the rest of my bank holiday weekend in Portugal, before I fly back tomorrow morning. I hope whatever you are doing you have a great day too. Catch you all tomorrow.

James and I spoke about that on the Same Old Arsenal podcast yesterday. We were both a little down, a little frustrated, both feeling that we were seeing worrying signs from an attacking perspective. And I think we’re right to have concerns, as many of us Arsenal fans have already voiced, across multiple different platforms – both online and offline. We’ve had three seasons of finishing second. We’ve been one of the best teams for a while now, but the reasoning has always been that we’re still a young team, we’re still a little too emotional, and the squad may not be as deep, which means we can’t handle an injury crisis. Yet this season, most of those…well, let’s call them for what they are…’excuses’ have been wiped away. This isn’t a ‘young’ team anymore. It’sa ‘prime’ one. Trossard, Norgaard, Kepa are all 31. Raya is 30. Merino is 29. Big Gabi and Gabby Jesus are 28. Bik Vik, Eze, Odegaard and Rice are all 27. Zubimendi and Havertz are 26. This is a group of players who are all in the place where they have played enough football, they are experienced enough, they need to be winning – just ask William Saliba after his post-match Chelsea comments.

The emotional aspects have been wiped away, and this season has been some of the most emotionally free from a game perspective. Just look at how we win games. We usually go ahead. We usually ‘shut down’ games by not allowing teams any goal attempts. We’re all emotional in the stands, for sure, but the actual games that Arsenal play have the extreme moments taken out in the large part. You can’t do that all the time, but the margins are very much managed by Arteta and his team, so as an ‘excuse’ on the pitch, the emotional side of it has been taken out. Compare that to somebody like Chelsea, who have a young team that picks up red cards like they are going out of fashion.

The injuries have been countered by making this squad deep. Very deep. We had no room for talented players like Nwaneri or Norgaard. These guys were left at home on Saturday.

So imagine my surprise to watch the second half of the Villa game and see Everton overcome a Villa side with their own few injuries, followed by a visibly perturbed Unai Emery absolutely lose his sh*t in the post-match interview by declaring Villa aren’t even top-five contenders. Maybe that got lost in translation a bit (although he’s been in this country long enough, I think, for that to be less the case these days), but that assertion from the Spaniard seems mad to me when they’re third and level on points with City. But what that result did do, madly, is mean that our disappointing draw away at Forest, was suddenly a point gained. Heck, even Liverpool in fourth only picked up a point, which means we’re still 14 points clear of them!

I think it’s situations like this that, as an Arsenal fanbase, are why we are all getting very antsy. Because if you’re looking at this Premier League title race and you’re not an Arsenal fan, you’re seeing things open up like we saw things open up for Liverpool last season. I remember blogging about it on multiple occasions; Liverpool were having all the luck with injuries, they were seeing rivals fall down with injuries, then poor form, just at the moments in which they would slip up. In December 2024 they had back-to-back draws against Newcastle and then Fulham. At the same time, Arsenal had back-to-back draws with Fulham and Everton. In January Liverpool drew to Man United and Forest for matchweeks 20 and 21. We beat the Scum in one of those matches, but the other? A 1-1 draw with Brighton. We made up ground, but only by two points, whilst losing at other points in which Liverpool won.

I remember reading the odd Liverpool fan forum at the time and seeing the odd fan show – they were the same last season. “Still a long way to go” was also followed by “we’ve seen us slip up before”. They were feeling the same as we were this season, but from afar, I think all of us Arsenal fans knew it was their season from January/February time. But when you’re in the position we’re in, you are not allowed to utter those words, for fear of some kind of Footballing Gods-style lightning bolt hitting us. We saw an Arsenal team in 2007/8 fall apart after the Eduardo leg break. We saw Arsena; beat Leicester at home on 14th January 2016 to go a couple of points clear to them, only to lose our next two and also draw to the Scum to open it up for Leicester to leapfrog us. We were all there in 2022/3 where we led up until we ran out of gas in March. We’re all feeling those pains right now and it is intensifying this fear in us all. What we all want is for Arsenal beat Liverpool at home and lay down a marker, then go to a struggling Forest side and do the same again, which we’re all now sat here on a Monday morning thinking about how we could have an 11-point lead and really start to feel like we can start to ice the champagne. But the quality of all of the teams in this league – evidenced by the fact that Wolves, West Ham, Forest, Burnley and Leeds all picked up points – shows that you just aren’t going to get that. Very rarely does a Premier League season become a procession for any team. I think maybe in the 33 years that the Premier League has existed, there’s probably been five or six times – max – that it has happened like that. And when that has happened, it has been from about February/March time, not in January.

All of this spiel probably sounds as though I’m giving you some sage counsel, to ‘chill out’ a bit, that I’m ‘calma’ and am thinking that ‘we got this’. But in truth, this is a letter to myself, to remind myself that we’re in a battle for a title. Nothing is won. Everything can be lost. But what you want at times like this is to be in our position.

We’re seven points clear. There’s more work to do. Let’s go do it.

Back tomorrow as we look at the game away at Inter in the Champions League. Catch you then.

• The Great Arsenal underperforming data machine
• The Great Aston Villa overperforming data engine

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, Villa have been a weird team from a data point of view, kind of defying the statistical models. Given they’d just gone through an 11-game winning streak, they rocked up at The Emirates in very good form and perhaps an expectation from their fans that they could very well cause an upset on our turf.

I felt it too, to be fair, because Villa had picked up a draw last season, and the season before that, they’d done us with a smash-and-grab, scoring two late goals. This could very well derail our season and I was very apprehensive ahead of it.

To add to that, the fact that the news emerged a few hours before kick-off that Rice wouldn’t be fit to play in this game, compounded the nerves. Arsenal would need to do this without our most in-form player of the season. But there was some positives that could be taken, with Big Gabi restored to the line-up, as well as Jurrien Timber and given that Hincapie was now getting into the team more regularly and had acquitted himself very well at both centre-half and left back this season, this was a back line that should be able to sure up any potential issues that Villa might pose.

But the absence of Rice was certainly felt in that first half and Villa caused us some challenges in midfield with one particularly impressive Tielemans ball through the middle of our team that Rogers nearly got the run on through on goal. Thankfully the back line spared our blushes, because in that first half Villa had the more presentable chances and, sadly, once again those half-decent chances fell to Big Viktor Gyokeres who didn’t take them. I’m not here to bag on him though; perhaps he could have done better with one of his headers, but he isn’t know as a striker who has a great scoring record with his head, so unlike the early chance against Brighton, I think those were a little tougher. But he’s still not getting into those positions and that continues to be a concern.

So was the gamesmanship from Villa players who, I thought, were playing from time and slowing the game down from the early parts of this game. I don’t blame them; they were content to frustrate a home team and crowd and given our record on our own patch, if they could slow everything down by taking time on the ball, going down a lot, then they’re entitled to do so. And let’s not forget that a fair bit has been made of Unai’s tactical subs in the second half and they certainly looked more impressive in the second half against Chelsea, so they obviously thought they had a blueprint they could adopt.

So Arsenal would have to change something in that second half and boy, did they, because we were out of the traps quickly and were ahead within three minutes of the restart. I’d read a Villa blog in the run-up to this game in which the author talked about how Martinez has some fantastic games, but he does get a little too preoccupied with opposition players and that sometimes causes him trouble. That happened against Chelsea and it happened last night too. His complaints about Big Gabi having fouled him were half-hearted at best and although it was hardly vintage stuff from the Brazilian, his mere presence unsettles all defenders and goalkeepers and he showed it last night. If you ask me, he’s the best central defender in the world not just because of his threat in the attacking box, but his presence at the heart of our defence too. You could tell the relief from the crowd when he came on as a sub against Brighton and today he showed his value at the attacking end too.

One goal hasn’t felt enough for Arsenal for a while now though, so the most important thing those Arsenal players needed to do was to get themselves a second and when you do that within a few minutes of the first, there’s always a big sense of relief and belief that this could go on to be a great game. What I liked about this goal was that it had everything the first half did not. I mentioned the Tielemans pass in the first half that split our midfield – well, this was an example of what happens if you press higher and win the ball back higher up the pitch to stop that kind of pass and move being made. Odegaard won the ball high – something that we know we are good at – his pass to Zubi was inch-perfect, the Spaniard’s flick over Martinez was done as if he was our centre-forward, it was 2-0 to The Arsenal and suddenly it felt like there could be more for us here. Villa, who had been getting away with it from a stats perspective for a few games now (if you listen to the data nerds), looked like the regression to the norm was upon us.

We were all over them from the beginning of the second half, but unlike in recent weeks, it was time to offer a beat-down to a team, and although we had to wait until the 69th minute for Leo to bag another goal and really seal this match up, we still created a ton of chances and I thought we were 100% value for that third goal. I have to confess I thought it would be ruled out for offside, but the good thing about offside is that it’s a little less subjective than things like a foul or a handball call, so once the technology had been checked and the goal was given, the relief could really set in.

And that relief just turned to joy with the goal from Gabby Jesus, who you could see was over the moon with his slot home to turn this in to a proper statement win. And it really was. The Watkins goal took a bit of the gloss off, but Arsenal played an in-form team (albeit missing a couple of key players) and took them apart. The narrative of recent weeks have been that Arsenal are wobbling, but this didn’t feel like it. This felt like an adrenaline shot for a team that is ready to go to the next level.

There’s no time to rest though. Bournemouth away was a place that we suffered last season, and so Arteta and his charges will be well-aware of the threat they pose, having lost last season. More on that in the coming days as we prep for that game on Saturday. For now, happy New Year’s Eve, with me off for a Cotswolds walk ahead of a boozy afternoon and evening.

Catch you tomorrow – hangover permitting.

Well, I say “happy” match day, but we all know that is predicated on whether Arsenal can collect all three points tonight against a red-hot Aston Villa on fine form at the moment, and going into this game feeling like they can beat anybody. And they have proven they can so far with 11 wins in a row, including against us, as well as having beaten City at home too. Arsenal must be super mindful of that, and as I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, Villa also have a pretty good record at our gaff, so they’ll be feeling it a bit tonight, I suspect.

I had a look back at that game and Villa’s star men on the day – according to SofaScore – were Emi Martinez, Matt Cash and Boubacar Kamara. Two of those three are not in the team this evening due to suspension, so that hopefully has to be good news for us. Cash is key to how Villa attack and was the goalscorer in the first half as Eze switched off at the back post, whilst Kamara is one of Villa’s key passing triggers; he ranks in the 80+ percentile of all footballers on Fbref for his passes attempted, pass completion and progressive passes from his deeper-lying position. He’s also in the 90th percentile for clearances and aerial duels won, so there’s no doubt they’re missing a key cog this evening against us. Their replacements – Bogarde and Onana offer me mixed insight. Onana has always felt like an impressive ball-winning midfielder, so it doesn’t feel like a massive drop down in quality, but Bogarde has only started three games in the Premier League and got himself just 331 minutes with two yellow cards. He’s a young defender and so that is an area tonight that I am hoping we can exploit.

And with Saka on the other flank, as an Arsenal fan, you have to be looking at our wings being the key to getting joy from what I think will be a mid-to-low block from Villa. I think they’ll view us and Chelsea in a similar light, and I’ve read a few comments from Villa fans stating that they weren’t great in the first half, as Chelsea put on the pressure. So I am expecting them to be cautious, to try to limit us in the first half, slow the game down and then look to replicate the approach by switching system and playing staff in the second half.

Which is why I think he’ll go with Trossard again, even though Martinelli might be a tempting option. But if somebody like Martinelli would be good in small patches, you think that having him come on to run at that full back with 20 minutes to go might be something that occupies Villa’s thoughts.

So my expected team line-up for tonight is:

Raya

Timber   –   Saliba   –   Gabriel   –   Calafiori

Zubimendi

Odegaard   –   Rice

Saka   –   Gyokeres   –   Trossard

There have been some questions about Gyokeres and in the Same Old Arsenal pod we did on Sunday James advocated bringing in Jesus, but I don’t think Arteta will do that just yet. I’m not 100% certain of that, but I think he might see if Gyokeres can give a little more against this Villa side. I think he was better against Brighton and got a couple of decent shots off, as well as a tame one in the opening minutes, but I think Arteta will be hoping that he can fashion a little more space and even if he doesn’t, his running and preoccupation of centre halves, could well be beneficial if the flanks are due to be a big part of this game.

The other question mark will be at the back, for which we haven’t been any news on Timber and Calafiori. My hope is that it has just been minor precautionary knocks and the players, with an extra couple of days, have recovered from them. Arteta spoke about them both after the Brighton game and it didn’t sound like he was overly worried, just a bit bemused, so I hope the coaching team just had some overly cautious thoughts given the volume of injuries we’ve had this season. If neither of those two are available, it does present somewhat of a challenge, mainly at right back, because on the left he could put either MLS or Hincapie in. But on the right, do you really want to drop in Rice again? He was great n’all against Brighton, but in a game like this against an opponent like Villa, you want as manby players playing in their natural positions as possible.

I said I had a look at this game last time out at Villa Park and I looked at both line ups and the stats. We fielded Timber and Hincapie as our centre halves and were in the process of running Ben White in to the ground. Eze started on the left and was caught napping for their first goal, whilst Merino up top offered basically close to nothing. Tonight’s team – if it resembles the one I have picked above – would be, you would hope, a lot more formidable for Villa and given we gave them such an even game away from home and the numbers suggest we were unlucky to lose in the dying seconds (it was pretty much even on most of the stats you look at), my hope for tonight is that we see an Arsenal side with their swagger back. We haven’t seen it for a while but it did feel like we had started to recover that feeling of being able to dominiate and suffocate teams against Brighton until they scored their goal against the run of play.

That’s what we have to get to tonight. Fingers crossed we can.

Right, I’ll call it a day there and will be back tomorrow with some more thoughts. Have yourselves a good one kids.

Firstly, a lot has been made of their overperformance of their xG. And for sure, they absolutely have when you look at games like the one this weekend that they just played against Chelsea. The Blues had 2.1xG according to Fbref, whereas Villa scored two goals from their 1.2 xG. But if you look at the actual shots on target, it points to a wasteful Chelsea who only got three of their 14 shots on target, versus Villa’s eight on target from 11 shots.

Villa are clearly a prolific team.

So I started to have a little look at how they perform, numbers-wise, and blimey they are not one for the data nerds.

In terms of xG in the league this season, they are 15th. For xG allowed, they are 14th. For goals scored, they are sixth. For goals against, they are fourth. For progressive carrying of the ball they are 14th and for progressive passing of the ball they are 10th.

They are just a weird side to try and work out.

They have the second-highest save percentage of shots they face, which points to their annoying but obviously quality keeper, they have in Martinez, and are roughly mid-table when it comes to the total number of shots they have faced.

In terms of attacking threat, they have taken the 12th most shots in the Premier League, but they’re sixth in the league for total number of shots on target. But I think herein lies the secret to their success this season: Villa have the highest shots on target percentage of any team in the league.

This is an Aston Villa side that takes quality shots. They are not a high-volume shooting machine; they simply take shots and take them from decent distances too, which explains their low xG compared to their position, I think. If you’re taking pot shots and getting them on target from 30 yards, there ain’t a lot of xG you’re hoovering up.

They also sit in the lower half of the table for total number of passes completed, which tells me they want to get the ball from back to front as quickly as is humanly possible to create chances. That’s what we’re going to have to contend with tomorrow night:

• Quick transitional counters from back to front
• Shots from distance
• Probable sh*thousery and time-wasting from Martinez

Perhaps that shouldn’t really surprise us though. Last season at home we were two-up on 60 minutes having got one in the second and one on 55 minutes one what was a game we were in total control of, before Villa hit back with two relatively quick goals from a counter on 60 and 68 minutes. The season before that we lost 2-0 at home in one of the games that cost us the title; again that was with two counter-attacking goals in the last 10 minutes of the game. Villa have played rope-a-dope on us for two season’s now; it is time we learned from it and dealt with what they will be coming to us with.

A lot of that will depend on the team news too, which we’ll get from Arteta and the defensively solidity with the return of Big Gabi will be massive for us. Who plays at full back will also be important and I’ve got everything crossed that Calafiori and Timber are back. Who knows, maybe even a cheeky “Ben White is training too” wouldn’t go amiss.

Other than that there isn’t really a lot going on at the moment. I was toying with the idea on what some of the Villa forums might be saying, but I suspect it will be full of some of their fans doing a fair bit of crowing and expectation of victory after their really good run they’re on at the moment, so I’m not sure I can be arsed with looking at a few pages of comments.

Instead, I’ll simply take my leave for today and be back to you tomorrow when we’re got a bit more team news and an idea of how we might line up.

See you then.

Who’s our ‘red hot’ form player right now?

I’m not sure we have one. You could argue that Declan Rice has been amazing and yes, he certainly has delivered some imperious performances in the heart of our midfield, but I’m not sure I would describe it as being in ‘red hot’ form – would you?

Perhaps there’s a positive angle to spin on this, because it’s just that Rice has been so brilliant, so consistently, all season, that you don’t think of his form being that amazing – he’s just always amazing and on Saturday evening I think there’s a big argument to be made that he was our best player and the best one on the pitch. He just oozes class and the way I watch him glide through games is phenomenal. I love seeing him pick the ball up, turn one way, then the other, then just stride out away from players as we move up the pitch. Seeing him gallop away is just brilliant and I think Gary Neville is probably right to say “if they lose Rice they might have some problems”.

However, why isn’t anyone saying that about Haaland or Rogers? Is it because Haaland basically never seems to get injured? He plays pretty much all of the time and is pretty much always available. But then so is (and I can assure you I am touching wood as I type this) Declan Rice, most of the time. He has missed some pweriods but up until this point he hasn’t been out of the Arsenal team for any prolonged period. I just had a look at Morgan Rogers’ injury record and guess what? He’s also hardly ever injured, having missed 27 days and three matches for Villa two season’s back in 2023/24. It appears these current ‘streak’ players also have that ability to stay fit in their locker too.

I think what it also points to, which is probably symptomatic of our season, is that our ‘red hot streak’ player isn’t one who is bagging goals at the top end of the pitch. Rice has two goals and six assists so far, which is a decent return, but I think we probably need to see one of our forwards hit some kind of ‘streak’ form in the coming weeks. I think if you were to ask any Arsenal fan who that is most likely to be, we’d all point to Bukayo Saka, who so far this season has seven goals and four assists in all competitions. He has missed 26 days and six games for us which, given his consistent form throughout his Arsenal career so far, feels like he would have a better G+A tally if he were fit for those games, but as we reach the halfway point in the season, I’d be lying if I were to say to you that I thought he would be on those numbers and not many more. He’s our Starboy, he’s the one we often look to for end product and he is the one who last season still got 12 goals and 14 assists whilst also missing 25 games in all competitions for Arsenal and England. If you do the ratios on it and extrapolate up what those extra 25 games would have given us in a season if he were to have stayed fit, the numbers suggest he’d have been on course for 20 goals and 24 assists last season. This season he’s trending at just under 20 goals and 11 assists if he gets around the 60-game mark. We’re at the halfway stage and he’s played 22 so far, so that suggests he probably won’t get there, but if we go deep in multiple competitions, he might get close to 50.

What do all of these numbers tell me? I think it suggests that even Saka, for all of his end product and what he’s done so far, is probably a little bit behind what we’d hope for from this season. And that probably rings true when you think about how we haven’t been swatting teams aside much. We’ve become a low-scoring side in a low-scoring sport and Saturday night was another example of that. We had the chances to double our lead, but we didn’t quite take them.

Is it a cause for concern? Maybe. I don’t think our attack has looked amazing this season and some of that could be down to the shiny new forward who doesn’t play like any previous forward we’ve had. But I also think we do need more from our wide forwards too. We haven’t quite seen enough that unlocks teams and the only one that has been continuing his good form throughout this season is Trossard. But we need others now. It’s that time of the season where I need to see more from Martinelli, more from Madueke, more from Eze and more from Saka too as I’ve mentioned.

There’s no need for a panic up, because we’re top of the league, but it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t all be voicing any issues if we feel them. We have time, we have the quality of players, we have the manager who has shown the ability to solve these puzzles. And that work needs to start as soon as possible.

I think I’ll leave it there for today. Arteta will have his press conference today ahead of Palace tomorrow night, so I’ll have a run through and preview that this time tomorrow. Catch you then.

I went for a walk before the ref had even blown the whistle. It worked to be fair. I took a deep breath, the family all agreed we’d talk about anything and everything else, I avoided the media and social media for around 36 hours.

And I realised that’s the challenge with football and that’s the world we live in these days; the need for everything to be ‘hot takes’ and ‘banter’. The weaponisation of other people’s misery is something that has become a mainstay of football these days and so by completely cutting off all of the oxygen to it for me personally, I was able to just get on and have a great weekend with my parents, brother, niece and nephew. I heartily recommend it.

I suspect what also had an impact in minimising my overall feeling of frustration was the context in which everything has unfolded. As I’m sure you’ve know doubt been exposed to if you’ve been reading all the social media stuff over the last couple of days after the defeat to Villa, Arsenal have gone to some of the hardest away grounds in the country now and yet still we are two points clear. We’ve also done it against the backdrop of an injury crisis that has bordered on farcical. When we get to the Christmas period I’ll have another look at how many days we have missed players due to injury as a collective; I can imagine that we’re up there at the top of the league for that, yet still we find ourselves top of the league on points too.

The biggest thing I think most of us are hoping to see from this result is a positive reaction from the team. They need to use that feel as a fuel for the fire within their bellies. The hurt they experienced – visibly shown after Buendia’s goal – needs to be kept within them and used to ensure they try their hardest to never let that experience come to fruition again. That means going out and winning football matches again. It means trying to get on another 18-year unbeaten streak. It means getting back on the wagon and although I want to see big-style rotation on Wednesday night against Club Brugge, those that are on the pitch still need to using that defeat as a tonic to drive them to win this football match. You go out there and beat Brugge on Wednesday to essentially guarantee Champions League top eight spot, then you’re already back on the wagon and ready to go again at home to Wolves for the Saturday night kick off.

I’m not really sure I want to say much more than that today. I think I want to let the dust settle after the defeat on Saturday and then use tomorrow to focus on Brugge rather than reflect back on what has happened. If you fancy a bit of a post match review then you can check out Amanda and James’ post match pod here. Other than that I’ll put a pin in today’s musings and be back tomorrow as we look at to Brugge.

See you then.

Of course they are.

Isn’t that just typical of this season, one in which I read somewhere we’ve had 13 injuries in 21 games.

That’s insane.

The jokes about stockpiling players in the summer are now well and truly being rowed back on, because we are getting to the stage where this injury crisis that Arsenal have had will far surpass anything I think any of us have known as Arsenal supporters.

The difference this season is that we have such a deep squad, that even if Saliba isn’t fit enough for today (Arteta was a bit vague on hism coming back, saying it was ‘days’ until he and Leo are back – which was yesterday when he said it so the plural nature would suggest not), we still have quality players who can step up. On Wednesday night for the last part of the game it was Timber at centre half and as one of the lads next to me in Block Five reminded me, he plays centre half for The Netherlands, so he isn’t exactly completely new to this.

That would mean Ben White reprising his role at right back and given he had a man-of-the-match performance against Brentford in midweek, you’d hope he’d be back and ready to contribute well again if asked upon. I suspect Arteta would prefer he didn’t though; not because he isn’t quality or capable, but having not played a lot of football this season, throwing him in to what will be another high intensity game away at in-form Villa isn’t exactly ideal for a gradual re-itegration to first team football.

But I guess we forced Odegaard into a 90 in midweek and he might start again today, so perhaps the same can be said for Benny Blanco.

So, how might we line up today given the injuries, Rice of which was also a question mark, if you believe Arteta. In the immediate aftermath of the game in midweek he said he was ‘fine’ and so I don’t know if Arteta was using the possibility of him being injured as a smokescreen to keep the Villa coaching team guessing on what might come up today, or if Arteta really is going to have him benched or completely out of the squad. I read somewhere that he’s travelled, but as we know, that doesn’t really mean anything these days. He could just be there cheering on his teammates.

I hope he is there, like we all do, but I also think if you’ve got a game to think about resting him in, it’s Club Brugge next week. We already have our 15 points, we probably just need one more win from the next three to secure automatic qualification, so if he’s fit enough to play and not carrying anything today, you play him today, you sit him at home in midweek for rest, then you get him on the pitch next weekend against Wolves.

So with that context in mind, I would think/hope we get:

Raya

Timber   –   Saliba   –   Hincapie   –   Calafiori

Zubimendi   –   Rice

Eze

Saka   –   Merino   –   Madueke

My thinking on the attacking end of the pitch is that Odegaard came back and did the full 90 in midweek and you probably want to manage his load coming back from injury, whilst Eze was on the bench, so you can rotate the two and get them to do a job-share for the next week or so. Then I’m thinking that Martinelli wasn’t exactly immense on the left, so Noni needs to be given a go on that side, having provided cover support to rest Saka in midweek. Then, up top, you surely have to just look at Merino given his form. Again, perhaps he can job-share with Gyokeres for this one, maybe giving the Swede 30 minutes, before giving him 60 – 70 minutes against Brugge on Wednesday. Merino has forced his way into the manager’s thinking and that is great and if he can do the business again today, then we’ll go a long way to winning this football match.

But to win this match we’re going to have to do something a lot of teams haven’t and nobody has since Palace did towards the beginning of the season by winning at Villa Park. We’re an in-form team, but we are second in the form table to Aston Villa, who have won all of their last six games going back to the defeat to Liverpool at the beginning of November. So there will be a swagger of confidence about them today. The hope from an Arsenal perspective is that it will mean they play a more open and expansive game, because that means we will get chances and if we do, we have to take them.

What’s weird about Villa from a numbers point of view is that their home xG is actually pretty bad, given how well they are doing in the league, with them 13th out of 20 in the league for xG produced at home at 6.9. But I guess you could say they are producing the goods because from nearly seven goals they’ve got 11 at home. Their opponents both home and away have created 18.5xG this season and that puts them 11th in the table. So pretty average for a team flying high at the top. Where they do perform like a team towards the top of the table is:

• Shots conceded – they’re fifth behind us, City, Palace and Chelsea
• Post shot expected goals – they’re third behind us and Chelsea

That’s pretty much it. They have the most passes in their own penalty area of anyone in the league, which doesn’t really tell me much other than classic Unai Emery playing the ball out from the back, with a lot of their underlying metrics looking pretty average overall. Which is why I don’t think you can underestimate the value of confidence and momentum and it feels like Villa will once again ride the way of it against us for this early kick off.

Arsenal need to quieten the crowd down pretty quickly, in that sense and although I personally hate those 12.30pm kick offs, if we can start well then maybe it takes the home crowd a little while to get going and by the time it is we have done our work.

That’s the hope, although if they start quickly and give us something to worry about early it could feel like a long afternoon.

This is a tough game, we all know that, but a win here would be massive for the season. It would mean we remain five clear at least by the end of the weekend, having already struck first as City play Sunderland at home this weekend, whilst we would then also have Wolves at home next weekend so another great opportunity to try to rack up some more points.

Come on Arsenal – do the business.

Catch you all tomorrow for some post match thoughts.

We’ve all been talking it up for a few weeks now. The ol’ “They’ve got some tough games coming up in February” narrative was what was keeping many of us warm during those cold January nights. As our players succumbed to injury, as our attack looked like it was stuttering, it all started to see a little forlorn and the Villa 2-2 at The Emirates did – I’ll admit – have me openly saying that it’s probably ‘done’ for us.

I still think it is 80 – 90% Liverpool’s title and if you look at any of the probability and statistical reporting on the likelihood of Arsenal overcoming what is now an eight-point lead, you’d probably see similar figures based on data modelling. But as the old trope goes, football is a funny old game and at least last night’s draw has Arsenal fans clinging on to that little bit of hope that remains. Abacuses are out, permutations are being analysed, “what if’s” will be pondered in the pubs in the Highbury area come Saturday’s kick off against West Ham.

But the facts remain: three points at home to the Hammers (by far not a forgone conclusion given the scars of last season) brings us to within five of Liverpool. A helping hand from a – frankly – average City side (in comparison to previous iterations we’ve been up against) at the weekend and we could see ourselves within touching difference.

IF WE DO OUR JOB.

That’s been our struggle at crunch points so far this season. When  Liverpool have slipped up we have also done the same. But we are running out of road so if there is going to be some kind of miraculous close down (miraculous because of how decimated we are with injuries, with poor ol’ Tomiyasu the latest who’ll be on the treatment table until the end of the year, which the club confirmed this week), then we are going to have to move now and move with the players we have available.

One of which I think none of us saw coming in Ethan Nwaneri. I mean, we saw it coming in the sense he was our youngest ever Premier League debutant, he was good in pre season and he’s started to really look impressive when called upon so far in 2025. But I don’t think there’s an Arsenal fan out there who could have told you that he would be the shining light and hope from our attack come February, if you’d have asked them in August last year.

It’s already been talked about on social media and also in the big podcasts (particularly Arseblog and James), but that kid has absolute ice in his veins. If Bergkamp was our Ice Man, what is Nwaneri?

Ice Kid?

Whatever he is, we can be very thankful that he looks like a 28-year-old in a 17-year-old’s body, because he’s followed up his Giron Man of the Match performance with the same against Leicester at the weekend and all eyes are on whether he can follow that up on Saturday when we play West Ham. There will be more of a look at them and how they’re doing tomorrow, but for now let’s focus on this kid Ethan. He’s been a revelation. I don’t think it’s hyperbole to state that he’s been one of the reason’s we’re still even slightly dreaming about challenging for the title. His goal against Brighton, his performance against Leicester (in which he got an assist), is phenomenal. He’s 17-year’s old, for crying out loud. SEVENTEEN. That is astounding that he’s schooling professional’s who have a solid decade of experience and knowhow in elite football. He has no fear. But more than that, he is cool too. He comes across as so unimposing. He just gets on the pitch, does his stuff, get’s himself on the bus. Goals are greeted with finger wags. I imagine he gets home after playing for one of the biggest clubs in the country, gets his mum and dad asking him how was his day, he shrugs, puts on his slippers, flicks on the TV and says “yeah, alright. Got an assist”.

“Oh that’s nice love. Do you want a sandwich?”

The key for him will be to plot a trajectory which takes him to the stratosphere. That’s difficult. Footballing history is littered with teenagers who arrive on the scene, peak early, then never reach their potential. ESR was – I thought – going to be one of the greats at the club. But injury and an inability to find a position to make his own curtailed it. Then there are other examples like Iwobi, who I remember absolutely bossing a game against Everton as a teenager. He’s gone on to have a great career and fair play to him, but these two were two that I imagines being mainstays of their international teams and Arsenal for the best part of a decade.

But football isn’t linear. There are lots of variables and Nwaneri will need to have a bit of luck with injuries, the right people around him, as well as the right coaching to set him up to be a future great. The Ice Kid has all of the raw materials to be a superstar. It just needs to be managed and cultivated in the right way to set him on that path.

And with that I’m going to call time on today’s musings. I’ll be back tomorrow with my usual obsessive look at what West Ham fans are thinking ahead of the 3pm on Saturday. Catch you then.

I don’t know why I bothered to check out the farcical pantomime that was “Match officials mic’d up” whilst browsing through Sky Sports’ website last night on the way back from work, but I did. And it was the review of the MLS red card at Wolves that had Howard Webb and Michael Oliver trot out their usual PR spin and drivel.

They did acknowledge it was the wrong call and that most people accept that a yellow was the right decision (which could have cost us any lingering title hopes, by the way. This is being glossed over because we won…), but as is wont for PGMOL and their narcissistic head Webb, they couldn’t just firmly hold their hands up and say “yep, got it wrong, apologies, we need to review this and see how we can improve”. Nope, instead we got a “yeah but” in the form of Howard Webb with Michael Owen nodding on next to him in a classically irrelevant stooge-like manner, that “the VAR didn’t want to re-referee the game”.

It’s funny how that line gets trotted out when it is convenient for PGMOL, eh? Where was that logic with the disallowed Martinelli goal at Old Trafford a couple of season’s back? Where was that thinking when they sent William Saliba off at Bournemouth? As usual, we get the rules delivered sporadically and the narrative set based on what makes PGMOL seem like they are being painted in the best possible light. These shows are nothing more than an attempt to re-litigate poor decisions instead of learning and improving. And as I have said – like a broken record at this point – there is no way we get a better refereeing body until it is ripped up, those in charge are kicked to the curb and we start again with something new. Disband the old Boys Network of North West referees, get more diversity of geography, background, etc, then let’s have some referees without their inherent biases who have their tracks covered by their mates in higher positions.

Now, I need to turn my focus away from the bad taste that Webb, Owen and PGMOL leave in my mouth and look towards that game at Villa Park happening this evening. It’s one of four games that will most likely decide whether this season is going to go to the latter stages as a Premier League title fight, or whether it will fizzle out with Liverpool leading a procession march to their second Premier League trophy.

Villa at Villa Park is no easy game, Liverpool weren’t wholly convincing on Sunday, but Aston Villa have been a bit all over the place with their form of late. We put some faith in Everton because it was the last Merseyside Derby, but whether or not we can do the same for the Villains remains to be seen. They do have Marcus Rashford who looked pretty decent in the game at the weekend, plus I think Ollie Watkins is back fit for them. But they drew with a struggling Ipswich side and whilst a night of the Barclays under the lights might get the home crowd up for it, I do worry that this might be another Liverpool smash and grab.

If it is, then we’re looking at a ten point deficit and whilst we would have a game in hand, that kind of distance between them and us will inevitably hit a psychological blow to any title chances we are desperately clinging on to for dear life. Ten points is a mountain to climb and with us not able to respond until Saturday, it feels like it might be too much.

Conversely, any kind of dropped points for them tonight and suddenly Arsenal’s tails are up. If Villa were to somehow get a win this evening – something only one team has been able to do all season, let’s not forget – then Arsenal have the opportunity with that game in hand to drop that lead down to four points. It’s still a position I would swap with Liverpool in a heartbeat and you’d have to still have them as clear favourites for the title, but at least it would make things a little more interesting going in to the final three months of the season.

Arsenal fans, players and coaching staff can only look on thiws evening though, hoping that Villa can take points off Liverpool like they have done off us this season and last season. Let’s hope Villa are the heroes rather than the pariahs that we’ve seen them as. Let’s hope Emi Martinez is getting his flowers from Arsenal fans for time wasting Villa to a win under their own fans.

There’s not really a lot else going on, to be honest with you, with some rumours I see that Paqueta might be injured for the weekend. Apparently he came off early from midweek training and looked “devastated” but, as we know with players like Martinelli when he waves his hand in the air having been hit before, then is up five minutes later (I appreciate the irony of me mentioning this whilst he IS actually injured this time!), until we get some kind of confirmation from Graham Potter on Friday, I am going to assume that he’s fine and we’ll see him at the Emirates on Saturday.

Right, that’s me done for today methinks. Back tomorrow with some thoughts on whether all is lost (Liverpool have won) or “it’s back on lads” (Villa have won).

Catch you wonderful humans then.

Although having said that I do think the Villa situation is interesting. I listened to the Arsenal Vision podcast yesterday whilst out on a walk and I heard Elliott talking to Paul about the potential Watkins deal. Yesterday I said I give that Watkins deal a 1% chance of happening, but that was before I’d realised that Villa’s wages to revenue ratio is 96%. Most Premier League Clubs operate at around 55 – 70% I think. Arsenal’s is at 53%, City’s is at 57%, United’s is at 56% and Liverpool’s is at 63%. That enables more wiggle room when it comes to the deals you can do, but also PSR. Villa next year will get the bump of Champions League money, so their number will will fall, but not significantly in terms of that wage ratio I don’t think, which explains why there have been noises about them needing to sell. To be fair to them they have sold Duran for a cool £64million, but they’ve signed Malen for just over £20million (was he a type of replacement for Duran? I know he’s a right winger mainly but he can operate across the front three and has done for Dortmund this season), they have made a loan enquiry for Rashford and there’s some tenuous links to Marco Asensio (value on TransferMarkt of €20million) before the end of the window. Sky Sports were reporting the Rashford loan had gone in last night. They also are looking to sign a centre half too apparently, which will cost them around £20million.

So that’s:

• Malen = £20million
• Asensio = £17million
• Rashford = big wages loan
• centre half = £20million

That’s a lot of your Duran money gone. Now, that in itself you’d say is fair enough, but if they do have to sell to avoid PSR problems in the summer – especially if they don’t get Champions League football (They’re currently in eighth) – then you do think that there might be a reason that they won’t fully close the door on a Watkins deal, for all the reasons I talked about yesterday (age profile, going to have to give him a big deal in the summer to ward off other clubs, etc).

It does make you wonder.

I do think it still is highly unlikely now though. The Villa fans would go crazy if they sold their two strikers this window and no amount of new signing adrenaline shot with the likes of the above mentioned players is going to get them to not point some fingers at the Villa board. Never underestimate the value of good fan PR and Duran and Watkins gone in the same window doesn’t feel like it to me. Let’s see what shakes out this weekend and on Monday, but I still think it’s highly unlikely, so I am hoping that Arsenal are exploring options.

Arteta was once again asked about this – and specifically Watkins – at his press conference yesterday and of course he remained tight-lipped. He reaffirmed that the club are doing everything to find a striker before Monday night’s deadline and that he’s very confident with the work that the club is doing. It’s a bit of a ‘catch all’ statement because it doesn’t suggest that he’s confident we’ll sign somebody, but that we’ve got lots of people working very hard to try to do something. We’ll save the discussion for after the window closes, but there will be big questions asked about why we didn’t move sooner – for Watkins or anyone – in January if we don’t get something over the line.

On City he obviously dolled out his usual platitudes so that he doesn’t give them any motivation and even when the press tried to have a nibble at him regarding the game earlier in the year (talking about ‘unfinished business’, or a ‘point to prove’, or his comments about how he ‘knows City’ when he was asked about Arsenal doing ‘dark arts’ earlier in the season), he didn’t really budge and was able to do some classic cricket-style ‘blocking’ to protect his wicket, so to speak. You’d expect nothing else from him at this stage, with a game of this magnitude, with the potential of Arsenal’s season hanging on victory at home against the Champions.

He was leaning in to the crowd a little bit when asked, which you’d expect and I think we’ll be playing our part tomorrow, but for me personally I am really starting to get nervous about this. Yes, City haven’t been the same City as in previous years and yes, we had Pep yesterday declaring his team to be ‘old’. But this is a wily outfit and not as old as he would have you believe. De Bruyne doesn’t need pace to set Haaland in behind, Marmoush is 25, Foden is 24, Savinho is 20, Gvardiol is 23 and even Bernardo Silva who has been around ages, is 30. So they have plenty of legs in them and they will cause us plenty of problems tomorrow, for sure.

I’ve had a little look on a few of the fan forums to get where the City fans’ heads are at and they all agree that City should win this – which I kinda get given their pedigree – but that defensively they are all over the place. If Guardiola is right and there’s no Dias in their back line that’s a boost for us, but we all know Pep has a trick up his sleeve for these types of games so I’m expecting something unusual tomorrow. More on that in the morrow I think. They seem to want to see a Savinho, Haaland and Marmoush front three and that’s probably the line up that I would be most worried about. Plenty of pace, trickery and in Haaland’s case power and finishing in there, so it will be interesting to see how we line up defensively. Let’s just pray Raya is fit and with Timber playing 45 minutes against Girona in a job share with Partey at right back on Wednesday night, you’d hope he’s fit and good to go against City. Feels like we’ll need him.

A final piece that is interesting though, is that some City fans are saying that De Bruyne is ‘done’. I can’t believe that, surely? But we’ll have to wait and see what Guardiola goes with. Apparently they’re all looking at the likes of Kovacic and Bernardo Silva as their deeper midfielders and a few have suggested that new lad Khusanov playing at right back. After his couple of shaky moments against Chelsea last weekend you’d hope that whoever plays left wing for us will test the youngster if that is indeed the line up.

Tomorrow I’ll look a little more at what we have to do and the team I’d like to see us play, but for now, let’s just enjoy Saturday and hope Bournemouth can do us some kind of favour.

Catch you all tomorrow.

The first sign yesterday was the rumours that Saliba was missing. Arteta confirmed afterwards that he was ‘worried’ about Saliba and that would be just our luck if he’s now missing for a few weeks. The response was to put Partey in at right back and I think all of us at this stage know that it was the wrong call by Arteta. It just doesn’t work. A few season’s back Arteta didn’t want to shift Ben White from right back to centre back when we had injuries, instead opting to play Holding there instead. I’m sure I read at the time that he thought it disrupted too many other positions. Yet that’s exactly what he’s doing when he plays the Ghanaian there, because he moves him out of midfield, he moves Timber out of right back and so instead of having to change up one position (centre half), we change three (centre half, right back, number six). And that mistake was laid bare with the second goal we conceded to make it 2-2, because Partey let Watkins ghost in behind him at the back post. You cannot do that to one of the best strikers in the league, it just isn’t acceptable. And I tell you what, I suspect if we’d have had Kiwior in the central defensive position and Timber at right back, it wouldn’t have happened. Arteta’s decision to make the shuffle he did has cost us this game, I think.

But what has also cost us has been injuries and the lack of summer action. It’s becoming a bit of a broken record now, but we had one forward option on the bench and it is a pretty pitiful option, because Raheem Sterling is no longer good enough to be at a club challenging towards the top of the table. He came on, he had a couple of runs, but I never felt like he would add anything new to the game, it didn’t look like there was any spark. We just didn’t look like we would find that winner (even though I think we did and it was unfairly chalked off – will come to that in a bit). We had a bunch of kids or players who are probably out the door within the next six months (Tierney, Kiwior, Zinchenko, Jorginho, Neto) and when you need to shift things up you can’t be relying on a washed up Raheem Sterling to be a game changer. The injuries have smashed our season, but we need to act and act now, because the season is fading away.

It probably already has, as I mentioned above, but when Martinelli put us ahead after a lacklustre first half, I wondered if we might have enough to just get over the line. That’s what we’ve needed to do in January as we wait for re-enforcements to arrive from the transfer market (fingers crossed) and players to return in the next few weeks. Martinelli gets his goal and at halftime it’s a case of ‘we’ll take that’. Villa had a couple of slightly interesting moments when they broke in transition, but that was it.

Then in the second half we started with much of the same; we had most of the ball in their half, we were creating chances and when Kai put us two up on 55 minutes you’re thinking that we should be able to shut this game out now. But Villa’s fightback through Tielemens was a result of Partey’s ambling over to prevent Digne from the cross and Merino letting the Belgian get in front of him at the near post. It was poor defending. But the second goal was even poorer from Partey – I won’t go over it again as I’ve already mentioned above.

The response from Arsenal was of course to search for the winner and when it went in off Havertz for the deflected goal, I thought we’d found it. The replays showed it probably did hit Havertz’s arm, but here’s where I am frustrated on this:

1. If that hits a defender in the box and the ball goes wide when it is going in and is by the defenders side like it was for Havertz, does VAR intervene and call a penalty?
2. If that is at Anfield and it’s Liverpool finding a winner, is that goal chalked off.

On both counts the answer is ‘no’. I have absolutely no problem if we’re going to say that the goal is a handball, but Lewis Dunk had a ball to hand in the game at the Emirates in the box earlier in the season and nothing was given. The VAR ruled it out within 30 seconds. Once again we’re looking at the marginal calls going against us and when Ollie Watkins is saying “we got away with one there” after the game, you know you’ve basically once again been robbed by refereeing. We’ll get gas lit next week from Howard Webb, Dermot Gallagher and the rest of the media telling us that it was clear and obvious, but there’s nothing clear and obvious in that for me.

And that’s why I’m getting close to the point of saying “let’s just chuck this season in the bin and move on”. It feels like everything that could possibly go wrong has gone wrong for us this season. Merino injury, Odegaard injury, Gabriel injury, Saka injury, Rice coming in to the season not fully fit, VAR calls you’ll never see again…the list goes on and on and it wouldn’t surprise me to learn we’ll be missing Saliba for a couple of weeks now too. Heck, even when we find somebody to spark the season in Nwaneri who has looked brilliant, we lose him at a critical point in the season.

It’s a tough one to take, but it just feels like this season is a ‘take your medicine’ season. We need to go big on attacking options in the summer and see if, in fact, it is next season where we need to go to the next level. Because the football gods are telling me that it ain’t this season.

We’ll be doing a Same Old Arsenal podcast this lunchtime at 2pm UK time – join here if you fancy it.

But it is certainly not a given. Villa are, as we know, a good side who will trouble us today. I saw a stat from Orbinho yesterday that said that in the last 10 games they’ve kept five clean sheets against us. Last season it was they who essentially de-railed our title confirmation, because if we’d have won that game we’d be the reigning champions right now given how the rest of the games played out. It feels a little bit like deja vu in that regard, because if Villa win today and Liverpool win, I suspect the title is done for us. Chasing down a side who will most likely be 10 points clear of you with 16 games to go is supremely unlikely. In short, we’re running out of games so we can’t afford to drop any points for the foreseeable future.

The good news is that the team will still be pumped after midweek. That will have made London Colney a hive of excitement on Thursday and yesterday, so the hope has to be that the excitement carries through to today. And I have to hope that it does for the fans too. We need to start strong, start well, keep Villa on the back foot.

Villa will be missing Pau Torres, Barkley and John McGinn for today’s game and personally the latter being out is a blessing for us. He’s scored goals against us, given good performances in the past and in the game at their ground he was the one getting involved in a bit of sh*thousery by booting the ball at Saliba whilst he was on the floor. He didn’t bank on Ben White being in the vicinity and that led to an amusing bit of karma as White caught him with a follow up. Neither player will be available today but the news that White is back in training will be beneficial. Diego Carlos may also be out, although whether he is available I’m not sure as I don’t think Emery has been too specific.

On our side Mikel Arteta confirmed that we will be checking on the availability of one or two players, but the longer-term absentees will not return. I suspect he is talking about Calafiori there, but given the brilliant performance of MLS in the NLD, I suspect he’ll keep his place and you have to say that is deserved. With that in mind, I doubt there will be too many changes from Wednesday. Arteta might have a hankering for a switch up between Trossard, Martinelli and Sterling, with Martinelli starting, but it depends on which flavour of Martinelli he might fancy. I do think he might start him against Villa, perhaps for Sterling. Sterling did ok, he pressed and he had a few good runs, but that chance Lewis-Skelly fashioned for him in the opening minutes in midweek keep replaying in my mind. If that’s Martinelli running in I think he gets on to the ball quicker, drives past the ‘keeper and slots us one-nil up. So perhaps that is something that Arteta should consider?

Looking at a few stats and Villa’s away form is quite surprising, I have to say, because they’ve lost half of the games they’ve played. They’ve also conceded the fourth most goals in the league away from home (19) so you’d hope we’d be getting chances today. If I think back to how Emery sets his team up, they tend to press a little higher and if they do that today, we’ll have space to run in behind, which is why I think we should absolutely be looking at Martinelli to start. I don’t think Emery is set up to be a Low Block FC manager, which means we might get a similar game to The Scum on Wednesday, although we had them pinned back for the first half so they didn’t have too much opportunity to leave too much space. But we did find some in that first half (Trossard’s goal as an example) and I am hoping we get that this evening.

The big challenge will be in transition because Villa have good players, clever players, rapid players do do us dirty. That’s how they scored their two goals to beat us last season and in Watkins they have a striker who we know can bag against us. I have also been repeatedly impressed with Rogers too; he looked good in the game at Villa Park and I suspect he’ll have a role to play for them today. So for Villa the gameplan will be simple: get the ballfrom back to front quickly when it turns over and look to feed Bailey’s pace and Watkins’ clinical finishing. Bailey plays wide right and so it will be interesting to see how MLS does against him. The good thing about Myles is that he is rapid too, so hopefully he can keep pace with Bailey if he gets in behind. But he’ll need some help; he’s still an 18-year-old kid and he’s operating against a seasoned pro in Bailey (if he starts).

We also have Donyell Malen returning to play against us and we know how ex-Arsenal players always play well. If he gets on the pitch, we have to keep him quiet.

In terms of what bookies are saying, you can tell that our profligacy in front of goal has them cautious, because I’ve seen a fair few draws called from them and the odds are tight. But there are a few predicting a win for us. Whilst SportsMole is saying 1-1, Mark Lawrenson is going 2-1 Villa, we have Merson, Sutton and that Jones knows fella from Sky Sports all going 2-1. Sutton’s comments were interesting because he talked about how they allow Villa plenty of chances in midweek and if they do the same for us, it’ll be interesting to see if we continue to miss good chances. I keep thinking about that late Odegaard miss on Wednesday and thinking “surely our luck has to turn with things like that eventually, right?”. In reality it’s not luck, but we do need to be having a pop a bit more. Less walkie-into-the-net and more have a pop, lads.

I’m nervous, but I’ve got the Management with me today, so hopefully she is our good luck charm. She usually see’s s win. Not always, but usually. Last game she went to was Leicester at home this season. 2-2 going into injury time, she turned to me on 88 minutes and said “don’t worry. They’re going to win”. I said “it’s not our day”.

Ndidi own goal on 94 minutes.

After the celebrations had ended and just before we kicked off to finish the game, she turned to me again and said “I think they’ll score another one”.

Havertz on 99 minutes. Finished four two.

Make of that what you will.

Catch you tomorrow. We’ll be doing a lunchtime Same Old Arsenal pod – myself and James – so join us around 2pm.

Obviously looking ahead to that game is going to be the thing I focus on today, but before I do that, let’s just reflect on the ludicrous nature of some of the comments in the wake of the game on Wednesday and our first goal. We all know it came off Trossard and it was an error that led to us being given a corner. That’s not in dispute. But what is now suddenly a front-and-centre discussion about whether VAR should be able to intervene with these decisions. I’m sorry, but where was this energy when we’ve seen other such incidents? I have seen countless times where that has happened, yet we’re not given even a sniff of forensic analysis on it. At best there’s a cursory Match of the Day “shouldn’t have been a corner” (which they did to be fair) and that’s it. But when Arsenal are involved it’s a media story, so here we are. The reality is that the corner was taken a solid minute+ after the incident and the Scum should have dealt with Big Gabby better. End of story.

So then, right, let’s get on to Villa, who I see beat Everton in midweek to pick up their first win away from home since October. They’ve been pretty decent on their own patch but less so away, but to get a good feel for where they are at I did my usual snooping on some of their forums to see how they are feeling ahead of this one. As usual it’s a pretty partisan affair for a team that isn’t completely out of form and Villa certainly aren’t out of form, they’re just a bit patchy. When I looked earlier in the season they were very chirpy and last season both home and away they were too. They seem to be leaning in to the fact we played the NLD on Wednesday and that may have taken a lot out of us, which is fair enough, but I think personally that will give the team the kind of adrenaline boost we need.

In terms of what they think this game will go like – and I’m lumping it all together as a rough average based on multiple comments – they think it’ll be a pretty tough one and they’ll need to defend well and try to smash-and-grab us like they did last season. I think that’s fair enough. There’s not tons of smug and cocky Villa fans though like earlier in the season. They are a lot more mellow in their assessment. They apparently weren’t that great against Everton, created little in the second half other than the Watkins goal and Everton’s inability to finish cost them. Sounds a little familiar for us, even if you think about the game on Wednesday; we had a fair few missed chances to kill the Scum off and we didn’t. We’ll need to find more of that end product tomorrow if we want to stand a chance of putting real pressure on Liverpool come the end of the season.

That ability to kill off teams and get those goals will inevitably dominate today’s press conference and we’ll once again get the journo’s asking Arteta questions looking to tease out something more than he’s given them so far. I think to be fair to him on Wednesday night after the game he gave the biggest indication that the team are trying hard, so I suspect that will probably be the most we’ll get i.e. “we’re actively looking”. There were rumours yesterday Of Sesko, which died down almost as quickly as they arrived, then there has been a few murmurings on Vlahovic. I pondered on social media that I had a sneaky suspicion we might go for him given that Kolo Muani has now joined Juve as of yesterday, but when somebody gave me a heads up on the wages he is on (around £350k-per-week!), I think that deal becomes a non-starter. Not unless Juve get desperate in the latter stages of the window and nobody has offered any money for him. It’s a big ask to take on those wages for a player who hasn’t been banging in the goals this season and looks a little out of sorts by the sounds of it. There’s some rumours that he’s not the easiest character to deal with either, so unless we get some kind of last-minute Raheem Sterling-style offer from Arsenal to take him for the remainder of this season on £100k-per-week with no option to buy and Juve foot the bill for the rest of his salary, I just don’t see this becoming a thing. And if you think about the Sterling deal, Chelsea had booted him out of the squad and he was training alone, so we had a much stronger hand than we have in this instance. I suspect there might be some suitors willing to take a punt on Vlahovic, although how many that would pay that salary might narrow the field a bit, methinks.

Other than that there isn’t really loads to go on until Arteta has done his press conference. There were some rumours about Tomiyasu, White and Calafiori all in first team training this week, which is great. I suspect it’ll be a couple before they’re back and able to start for White and Tomi, but it’ll be interesting to see what Arteta says about Calafiori given MLS’ performances in recent days.

Do, I’ll leave it there and catch you both tomorrow. Have a good one folks.

Mitigating circumstances, I suppose.

But Villa looked pretty good after they scored and Liverpool were asleep for the first few minutes before they looked like a decent team again. It’s funny because for the first 10 minutes of that game in Italy it looked as though Milan were a decent outfit and were causing Liverpool some problems, before the Scousers eventually realised who they were and how good they actually are and just turned up the heat on AC. There was a lot of noise in that stadium and I was reminded of our first away game last season when we played Lens. Their fans were bang up for it, they made a lot of noise, we scored first and then they got a couple of goals in which nine times out of ten they wouldn’t get. It was a frustrating night but as we know we got through the group and all was ok from a group stage perspective. We were able to extract some revenge by beating them 6-0 in the home leg.

Annoyingly this competition doesn’t allow for it, which does make me wonder about it, you know. You could feasibly get a really hard selection of games in which you don’t get the benefit of a revenge leg. We play Atalanta away, but won’t see them again after tomorrow night until it’s the knockout stages if they progress and we progress. I do understand the whole seeding thing, so in theory it isn’t randomised and you end up with loads of tough games against the best opponents, but there’s just something I can’t quite put my finger on with this format that I’m just not completely sold on.

There’s probably also the element of UEFA effectively building a version of their own Super League after the failed attempts of a few years back. I said it back then, that we would get a ‘Super League by stealth’ and this feels like the first iteration of it, so that UEFA can rake in more money. When you’ve got the likes of Rodri complaining about players potentially going on strike because of the volume of games, followed by De Bruyne also having previously said similar during the international break, you know that the players are starting to wonder when it’ll all end too.

Not as long as money talks. Ironic it’s City players who are being the voices for players, given their club are the very definition of ‘money talks’ as they try to lawyer their way out of 115 charges, but I’ll park that particular gripe for now.

Instead, let’s focus back on The Arsenal and I know we’re all getting worried about Odegaard and the random ball that appeared in front of his foot in the pictures of the team photo yesterday, but I can’t honestly say I am  not going to get too bent out of shape on this one. Even if Odegaard can’t get his boot on, there’s been no talk of ankle breakages and by all accounts everyone seems to be pretty accepting it is a sprain. Odegaard will be out for tomorrow, plus City at the weekend, then we’ll probably miss him for Bolton in the Cup and Leicester at home. I don’t think there’s many of us that truly held up hope he’d be available for City, did we? I certainly didn’t. He’s got a sprained ankle, the club needed to take the team photo and given that photo will be in the halls at the ground and the training centre for years to come, you have to find a creative solution that makes sure that in nine months time we’re not looking at Odegaard with a boot off. It would just look a little weird. So we move one, hopefully we can see him in a couple of weeks.

At least Merino has his sling off and is wandering around. Maybe he’s doing some light work now and we can see him in October some time, perhaps?

The focus for Mikel will be on his press conference later and all eyes will be on his thoughts around the opponent and how we will line up. He’ll give them the usual platitudes, not wanting to invoke any kind of extra motivation, but given how Milan were bested by Liverpool yesterday, I have hope that even with our injury problems, we’ll be ok. They will be bang up for it, as the last time they played in the competition was a couple of years ago in 2022 when they went out in the Group stage, but their domestic form has started in a similar format as Milan’s has. They’ve won two against Lecce (13th) and Fiorentina (14th) and they’ve been beaten heavily by Inter and then also lost to Torino, so they have started ok, but not like a house on fire. Hopefully that is a good omen for us. I’ll have a little look at them tomorrow, as well as us, but what I am wondering right now is whether Arteta is going to give us a hint of any rotation today. I hope so. As much as I want our Champions League campaign to kick off with a win, having a full set of players fit and raring to go against City on Sunday is imperative. We play on the Thursday and City play at home to Inter tonight, so they definitely have the marginal gain on two home games whilst we have to travel, but it will be interesting to see what Pep does with his rotation tonight with us visiting them at the weekend. I might watch the game; well, at least until City get the first goal and then I’ll most likely switch it off.

And I think I’ll also close today’s proceedings down too. I did think about having a word about the PR spin that is that stupid Howard Webb show, but given they’ve taken two weeks to craft their pathetic narrative about how they were right, I think I’ll give that a swerve.

Catch you all tomorrow for some thoughts ahead of the game and our opponents.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Laters peeps.

There’s obviously some transfer stuff going on with Fabio Vieira back to Porto on loan, as well as Mikel Merino spotted on his way to London, but on match day there really is only ever one focus and that’s how we’re going to come back from the Midlands with three points following our challenging game against Villa this evening.

Last weekend was Wolves and I think I was 90% excitement and about 10% nerves. We were at home, Wolves are an okayish team, but one that I think nearly all of us were pretty confident that we should beat, plus the sun was out and it all felt like a bit of a party atmosphere pre game as I reconnected with mates and we sank a few beers.

Today is a very different vibe for me. I’m fortunate enough to be in Portugal in the Algarve again, so I’ll be watching it from the comfort of the parents’ lounge, but even the lovely weather, fabulous surroundings and great food/beer won’t be able to dull the sense of nervousness I have about this game.

Villa are a good team. They did us twice last season and on both occasions we got sucker-punched. This fixture last season was Villa flying out of the traps, scoring within the first few goals and then sitting back and defending. The game at our gaff was us dominating ball, possession, chances, then them using their wide forwards and rapid counter-attack to catch us cold. It was a bit of a ‘rope-a-dope’ and we fell for it. Today we can’t let that be the same.

I suspect Villa and their fans will want the same as last season and see them fly at us early and unsettle us, so the opening exchanges of this game might well be about containment for us. But we have to be better with our decision making. My brother is a West Ham fan and last week I watched their game against the Hammers with him – West Ham created chances and at the death Villa really rode their luck. We can’t let that happen again to us this season and perhaps if you’re going to talk about a slight hangover worry from last weekend, it’s that we probably should have been out of sight against Wolves earlier than the 74th minute when Saka scored the second.

Villa will target us in wide positions and most of the online discourse I’ve read has been around how worried Arsenal fans are about bailey versus Zinchenko. I get it, Zinny has a mistake in hi, we all know that. But he also has other players around him who could – and should – be supporting and covering him should we need it. So that’s why I’m thinking Arteta is going with Kai in left eight, Rice in at six and Partey dropped to the bench. He may well go with the same team as last week and give Rice instructions to be a bit more of a screen than he was against Wolves, but I just have this weird feeling that he’s going to move his chess pieces around – just a little bit.

The rest of the team will pretty much stay as it is and I think we should definitely keep Martinelli in there for his pace. Remember two seasons ago when we won 4-2 late on? Martinelli bagging a goal really late by being there on the counter hit Villa as we got back on to winning ways. That is what we need to have today because I think we can get in behind them and create chances. We may not have scored against them last season, but that wasn’t because of their miserly defence.

Emery didn’t really give any soundbites to latch on to that are worth noting, but we do know that he plays with a high line, a high press and will instruct his team to do so. They will want to transition quickly and so they will look at the likes of Tielemans to do that for them, perhaps also targeting balls out to Basiley to see how he gets on with the space vacated by Zinchenko. This is where we need Gabriel to have a good game in cover I think, but we’ll also need to have Saliba on it up against Watkins for the one-on-one duels. The good news is we know Saliba loves a duel and so does Gabriel, so I have hope that they can do the required match up jobs to keep them both quiet.

This game will be about battles all over the pitch. Saka against Digne and probably McGinn doubling up, Onana versus Rice, Watkins versus Saliba, then Bailey versus Zinchenko / Gabriel. We have to win those battles across the pitch to control possession and territory, but we need to be good at running back towards our goal when the ball does turn over.

This is a big game early on and we will find ourselves under the kosh more than at home to Wolves, but if we’re going to look at some areas of hope, I wonder how the Villa fans and players will feel about playing the counter-attacking approach? If they score early then they won’t care, but if we stifle them, keep them penned in and make sure we don’t open up too much space for transition, they might get on the Villa players’ backs early. We have to be able to impose our game and not make the silly mistake early like we did last season.

At this stage it’s tough to know whether a draw is a good result or not. It doesn’t feel like it when you’re up against 115 Charges FC, but we have to make sure the game faces are on and these Arsenal players manifest what we’ve been reading and hearing about from them in terms of their focus and drive this season.

Fingers crossed for three points, because if we do, it could be massive.

Catch you all tomorrow for a debrief.

I don’t know why I still get triggered by lazy journalism, but I do, falling victim to shoddy ‘takes from so-called professionals not once, but twice in the last 12 hours. First it was Charlie Wyatt on Sky Sports last night, who described Mikel Merino as a ‘defensive midfielder’ who apparently plays in the six and will sit alongside Declan Rice, which as you and I both know is just all kinds of wrong. Merino played 45 times last season for Sociedad, his heatmap showed a guy plying more in the attacking third and as a left eight. Yes, he wins his duels, but he ain’t no six, Charlie-Boy. Neither has Rice been playing there either for a while; you probably have to go back to March(ish) to see Rice operating there, as he finished our season as a left eight.

Then it was Louis Saha that I read about this morning, talking about how we have no chance of winning the league because we don’t have a 20-goal-a-season striker like City do. Yawn. We scored 91 goals last season without a supposed ‘number nine’ and on top of that Gabriel Jesus was injured for a big chunk of it, so to dismiss our title chances because of comments like that just feel ham-fisted, if you ask me.

I should probably just ignore the opinions of idiots, but there you go, sometimes I get suckered in.

The good news is that there is football on the horizon and today we’ll get Mikel Arteta’s thoughts ahead of the game against Villa tomorrow. The team will most likely be travelling tomorrow in the morning to get up there for the 5.30pm kick off, but regardless of when they go, I suspect Mikel will want to get his press conference sorted sooner rather than later, so he can make his final preparations before what invariably feels like a tough game for his side in the Midlands. He’ll be asked about Merino, who it is widely reported will be an Arsenal player after agreement between the clubs for a fee around £32.6million, but he’ll bat away any comments until an official announcement is made I suspect. Merino will have to do a medical, there will be pictures taken, etc, so I suspect this will be a Sunday or Monday announcement that we’ll get, meaning he’ll be around for the Brighton game in a week’s time. But the conversation will focus on a fellow Spaniard in Unai Emery and I hope we get another press conference masterclass from Mikel that has us excited for tomorrow.

The key for me is team news though, in which I wonder whether he’ll give any thoughts on Calafiori and Timber in the left back spot. I doubt it, because he never gives that much detail away, but for me I’m more looking at what the situation is with regards to availability. Even on Saturday last weekend after the game Arteta said that they needed to change it in the second half when Wolves started to come at us a little more and I wonder if Timber’s cameo has given Arteta enough to change it against what will be a fast and tricky wide player in Leon Bailey. More on the team news tomorrow I think, but ahead of the game itself I did a little saunter in behind enemy lines this morning as I like to do to get the vibe from Villa fans as to how they are feeling ahead of this clash. It’s fair to say on the basis of what I’ve read there is a bit of a mixture on this one. A few of them are talking about a title challenge, but there’s an equal proportion who recognise we’re a good team and it will be a tough game. There’s a few who are doing the usual ‘banter’ and of course there are some  saying “we were the better team home and away” which is the usual blinkers, but I do think we will recognise the threat they pose. But as I’ve said already this week and will say again tomorrow: we have to take our chances. We were better than them home and away last season – the numbers show that – but we have to be able to finish our dinner. I’m sure they’d love a repeat of last season at Villa Park and their rapid start, so hopefully Arteta will be reminding his team of that today and tomorrow pre-game.

Pundit and predictions-wise most of the mainstream sites are going with either a draw or an Arsenal win, which you’d expect given the expectation of us competing for the title, but as I’ll talk a little more about tomorrow, I am not as optimistic given the Emery hoodoo and the fact that Villa have shafted us a few times over the last few seasons. But we’re in good shape, we appear to have a relatively clean bill of health and hopefully after Arteta’s press conference this morning there will be a little more excitement about us potentially avenging what happened up there last season.

If you want some bonus reading, here’s an article on the official site with Ben White talking about last weekend and the ambitions for the team this season. I like his understated confidence when he talks of the capability of his teammates on obtaining perfection. Of course we all know it is unlikely, but the focus of these Arsenal players is something that you can hear in their words; White talked about how pre-season was a different vibe and it really feels as though these group of players have their game faces on for this season. They have to do it on the pitch, obviously, but it really does feel as though they are all very aligned in how they need to perform, behave, work together, to achieve the goals they set this season. It’s very exciting.

Right, that’s me done for the day, as I have a half day before heading off to Portugal to sit in the sun for a week. Have yourselves a lovely Friday and I’ll be back tomorrow for my usual ramblings.

Laters peeps.

I’m sure Barca love the look of Big Bill – who wouldn’t given he’s just come off of another season in which he’s proven himself to be one of the best defenders in world football – and they think they can snaffle him from us for £86million.

£86million? Do me a favour. That’ll get you his left peg and maybe left arm, at best, because Arsenal aren’t going to be shipping off their best players for below market value. So even if Arsenal did feel like they had to offload Saliba, Barca would have to come up with a few more Euro’s than that paltry sum for a defender who has just shown Deschamps what he’s been missing. The French national team boss has finally relented and realised that he’s got to include our guy at the back and already he’s proving what an important player he is. Deschamps doesn’t come to watch him in England, he’s had a few weird words to say our Big Bill, but ultimately even he isn’t going to cut his nose off to spite his face and Saliba is starting to show that he can be the main man at the back.

Barca also have no cash whatsoever. This article here sums it up. So if Barca are going to try to take Saliba from us, they’ll basically have to spunk a whole load of that new Nike deal on it and then have nothing left for any other signings, so I can’t see it happening. And it’s not as if we have any massively positive relationship with them, is it? I hope the Arsenal administrative team don’t even pick up the phone if Barca come knocking. Remember Cesc? Remember how they spent the best part of a decade snaffling our players and trying to unsettle them? Well, tables have turned now, bitches. If you want a player like Saliba you better be dropping Coutijnho numbers and if you do that, hopefully it’ll plunge them in to even more of a financial crisis.

It wouldn’t surprise me to hear that Barca have tried to offload some of their players like Villa and Chelsea are doing with their dodgy player trading deals. It’s gaming the system, you just hope that it  all falls apart, but you’ve got two ‘Murican owners trying to apply US approaches to the Premier League and in the context of our competition, in my opinion, it stinks. You probably are already aware, but just in case you aren’t, they’re basically using the ‘book value’ and ‘amortisation’ rules to game the system:

• Home grown player A goes to Club C from Club A for £10million
• Club C split that cost over five years so on their books they’ve only payed £2million this summer
• Home grown player B goes from Club C to Club A for £10million
• Same as above but Club A account for £2million
• Club A and Club C both ‘bank’ the £10million they’ve just received
• Both Club A and Club C account for an £8million profit on their books.

Even though basically no money has exchanged.

It’s dodgy as hell and a way for clubs to get around PSR rules. My only hope is that these players who are being moved around and having their careers chucked around like ragdolls, don’t end up on the scrap heap in a few year’s time. But if they do it’ll be yet more money spunked by these clubs who, if you recall, had their fans talking about how the system is rigged and how they were hard done by. No, guys, you and your owners have been careless with the money that has been accumulated and the spending you’ve undertaken and now they’re trying another dodgy approach. Chelsea aren’t allowed to sell hotels to themselves any more, so they’re in cahoots with another club who have decided to outspend their means and hopefully it all ends badly for both.

So back to my original point, which is that it wouldn’t surprise me to see Barca trying that sort of sh*t; they did it a previously  with Juve, moving players around so they could find ways around not being punished for their reckless spending, so to see them linked with some of our players just makes me hope that should a bid or an offer come in, we just laugh them out of town.

We’ve got a good thing going on right now with Arteta and with the current set up, so my hope is that our journey with these players continues its upwards trajectory, because if it does, then we could be about to see good things happen for us as fans and hopefully we can ward off from the likes of Madrid and Barca.

Right, I’m going to leave it there for today. Got a day of sitting in the sun ahead but I think i’ll start it off with a walk.

Catch you wonderful people tomorrow.

I saw a City fan talk about the fact that everybody is talking about City’s bad record at The Scum, whilst also seeming to forget that we have an equally terrible record in Manchester and at Old Trafford specifically. And he was absolutely right: at Old Trafford we generally tend to screw up somehow. Last season they hit us on the counter whilst we dominated the game in it’s entirety (or that’s how it felt to me at the time) and I think we’ve only won their once in about 15 years or something crazy like that in the league. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a peak-Fergie era monster of a side, a spluttering and chuntering David Moyes Select XI, or a farcically inconsistent Louis van Gaal collective, they always seem to find a way. So next weekend I am expecting them to remember exactly what size of a club they are and potentially leave us wondering what we could have done before this game to make ourselves champions by now and therefore not have to worry about a late blip at a venue in which we more often than not tend to slip up at.

It’s too early for that kind of analysis because we have the two games remaining and then there’ll be talk of how the season unfolded, where it went well and where it potentially went wrong, but in the absence of any real news I’ll deliver a very quick preview of my thoughts that I’ll expand on in the summer:

• West Ham at home
• Aston Villa at home

Those two will stick out to me because a) they were winnable home games, and b) we certainly did enough in terms of chance creation to win them both. Yet we came away with two ‘Ls’ and that is definitely very frustrating.

But anyway, back to looking ahead, which will be that United game, and I am finding myself increasingly look at the table as a whole and working out which teams will be in full on ‘beach mode’ even as quickly as this weekend. The Scum losing to Liverpool means their Champions League hopes are hanging by a thread, but Aston Villa play Olympiakos on Thursday night, followed by Liverpool on Monday. It’s a Liverpool side who could potentially be ‘on the beach’ at that time if we can somehow beat Man United at Old Trafford, because it’ll mean that the best they can do is finish third on 84 points. If we beat United we’ll be on 86 points and Liverpool can’t be caught by Villa anyway, so that game will be interesting. If the Scum beat Burnley, then Villa lose to Liverpool, then it might actually mean that they have something to potentially play for, because it’ll mean that they are four points off Villa and know a win against Man City will give them a chance of snatching a Champions League spot on the final day. There will be plenty of Scum fans who won’t care about that, but their players will, because Champions League football brings the profile, the riches, the kudos, etc. So in a way we need Liverpool to be good and do enough to beat Villa, to dangle the carrot enough to those Spurs players.

Eugh, finding myself wanting things to go Totenham’s way is a horrible feeling, and not something I’d like to ever repeat, thanks. But Going back to my ‘on the beach’ comment re: the table, you only have to look at City’s other two games against Fulham and West Ham, to see two sides who just want the season to be over now. Fulham can go as high as ninth, which means nothing in terms of European spots, as well as falling as low as 14th in the league. They’re currently 13th. So I don’t see them playing as well as they did against us. I also don’t see City playing as poorly as we did. The situation with West Ham – given Moyes is leaving at the end of this season (confirmed yesterday) – is even more ‘meh’. He will get a round of applause this coming weekend for their final home game, then if it is all going down to the last game of the season he’ll be watching over a procession as City steamroll them to the title – assuming they’ve won their games against Fulham (they will) or against the Scum (they probably will).

We were hoping for a slip up from them for some time now, but it hasn’t really happened, which is a shame. But as I’ve previously spoken about on here I’m not going to look too negatively about the season as a whole. We’ve got better, we’ve looked better, we’re challenging until the final two games of the season and that in itself is progress. So let’s hold on to that as Arsenal fans.

Think that’ll be everything from me for today. Let’s see what shakes out in terms of news today and whether we have anything exciting and Arsenal-related to chew on tomorrow.

Catch you all then.

I didn’t want to say anything on here, because as a football fan I am predisposed – conditioned, if you will – to bouts of superstition and irrationality that means I believe my actions have an impact on a bunch of young men in their 20s and 30s on a football pitch, in some way. So I didn’t want ‘jinx’ the possibility of this Arsenal team going all of the way by saying out loud that after that Brighton game we could go on and win this league. Then on Sunday, after Liverpool’s loss was confirmed, I found myself once again thinking it, but not daring to say out loud. The best I could muster was “just go do your job lads”. And I said it again and again pre game and then to those around me in Block Five as we kicked off. But deep down, deep in the recesses of my mind where only I can hear myself, I believed we could get a win against Villa and this would spearhead our drive to the end of the season and the potential of becoming Premier League Champions. I dared to dream.

So perhaps it is inevitable that the result we got, the outcome in the end, was that we would get sucker-punched by a Villa team who just took their chances, where we did not. And as per usual, the hope post that game came crashing down around me. I was sad on Sunday evening. But I wondered if by the time we did the Same Old Arsenal pod last night (you can listen here if you like), I’d maybe feel a little less down, I’d be able to use it as a bit of catharsis and we’d be able to move on and look ahead to Bayern.

But I’m still a little frustrated and down this morning. Even the prospect of a win tomorrow against Bayern hasn’t been able to pick me up and I am not even feeling the pre game nerves. My overriding emotion is that we have lost momentum and that this is the beginning of the slide.

It’s my Arsenal PTSD. From last season, from season’s past, from many years of seeing us not quite be able to get over the line since I was in my early 20s and we were that phenomenal Invincibles team that looked so magnificent. I’m 41. We won the league when I was in my first year and third year at Uni. So half of my life has been dealing with those nearly misses. Don’t get me wrong, I’m lucky because so many fans go their lives without getting to experience anything like what I’ve been fortunate enough to experience and heck, I’ve been to Wembley and seen us win trophies loads of times. But those big ones, the ones you REALLY covet, they are the ones that have alluded us for the most of my adult Arsenal supporting life.

Which is why I have long since created the slightly ‘glass half empty’ mindset; it’s my way of dealing with the Arsenal PTSD. If you have prepared yourself mentally for there to be a falling down at some stage, maybe it doesn’t hurt so much when it happen, right?

Wrong. Well, sort of. Because it still smarts and I still feel morose like I do now, but I wonder if the reason I’m feeling a little more morose than usual is because I went in to that Villa game thinking we’d beat Unai Emery’s side. My expectation levels had risen and I had the quiet internal belief that it’d be a win today, a win at Wolves, we’d be able to do over a Chelsea team that is like a bag of Revels, then that would leave us on 34 games played and top of the league. I would still have not fancied our chances against the Scum (that game is rarely one we win at their horrible cesspit of a stadium), but at least we’d have gone in to it with ourselves in control and the driving seat. As it stands now, City have control and let’s all be honest here, if there was one team out of the three that you feel won’t be letting go of that grasp, it’s 115 Charges FC.

Which is probably compounding the issue even more, to be fair. We’ve seen Liverpool’s fallibility. Chasing them probably wouldn’t add to the concern that “it’s done”. But with this City team, we know that they don’t let up, regardless of the competitions they are in. They know what it takes to win a treble. They’re on course to do it again and if they do, then it just hits home exactly what we are up against. Regardless of how their ill-gotten gains have come about, if Man City win a historic fourth Premier League in a row, if they do a treble two year’s in a row, they’ll go down as the greatest side of all time. And it’d be hard to argue that accomplishment. And it would sting because this Arsenal team is really good. Good enough to be Champions in most other eras of the Premier League. But in this era, it’s a juggernaut that doesn’t stop and when you add all of that up, it makes it feel like we’ve just lost our last four games to blow the league, not our only one this calendar year in the Premier League.

If you’ve managed to stomach the whole of today’s collection of thoughts this far, I appreciate that and believe it or not I’m not as downbeat in all other aspects of my life other than football!! Life is too short to get too stressed about this stuff for too long, but in the moment and when I am thinking about football that’s just what happens.

Anyway, that’s enough for today. Back to worrying about an upcoming game tomorrow, with the small matter of Bayern Munich in Germany!

Catch you all then. Have yourselves a grand Tuesday – chin up.

The Eaglet was my choice of pub to have a drink in pre match and as the whole pub witnessed Liverpool face an upset at home to Crystal Palace in the earlier kick off, hopes were turned to us against a good Villa side, but one that had played two days later than us and had some players missing. “Just do your job now Arsenal” was the mantra. We had to show Liverpool that any slip ups are punished.

We did not.

Arteta rotated a little bit and in hindsight it didn’t work, but I’d be lying if I told you that I didn’t think that line up wasn’t perfectly fine. Trossard and Jesus in to the front three and Havertz dropping back in to the eight made sense; Trosard is in form, Jesus helped us turn the tide in midweek against Bayern, plus we knew that the pragmatic Emery would set up against us differently to how he sets up against other teams. And that’s exactly what he did. Without Douglas Luiz they played Tielemans and McGinn sitting in front of the back four and they used their pacey strikers on the counter. But in the first half it only really worked once, as Watkins hit the inside of the post to give us a scare. But other than that we should have put them away. Just like the game at Villa Park in December we had a hatful of chances, with Saka sweeping the ball wide, Havertz forcing a couple of saves from Martinez, then the most guilt-edge of the lot as Trossard should have scored from inside the six yard box. It looked like an amazing save at first, but Trossard really should have buried it and if we go one up there I think we probably on to win that game, because it forces Villa on to us and we don’t have to go chasing the game in the second half.

But as it was it felt like we froze in that second half anyway. It was the poorest we’ve been in a long time and I don’t really remember a ton of chances after the halftime whistle had been blown. Jesus, Saka, Trossard then Martinelli coming on, it all just looked disjointed and that allow Villa to capitalise. Their goal to open up the scoring was so poor defensive it was unrecognisable from Arsenal this season. What is Zinchenko – our left back – doing on the right hand side of our back line? We knew what he wasn’t doing, which was stopping the ball running to Bailey who had a tap in at the back post. Absolutely schoolboy stuff and it is now increasingly feeling like every time we play Zinchenko teams are recognising the gaping gaps that are left there. That goal was in the 84th minute and with the way that we had played in the second half we all knew the game was up. Ollie Watkins second three minutes later was just a symptom of a team flooding everything forward in desperation and losing all shape, so I’m not going to bother going in to too much detail on that one.

I thought Martin Odegaard looked good in the first half, but didn’t really do much in the second. Similarly I thought Havertz was good in the first half but faded in the second, but the rest of the players on that pitch looked a shadow of their former selves and the defensive solidity that has been such a bedrock of our form this season seems to have disappeared within a week. That’s four goals in two games conceded and they are all down to defensive mistakes. It’s not good enough.

It certainly isn’t good enough to win a league, but that has always felt like a long shot anyway when you’re up against 115 Charges FC. They are a machine and they will steamroll their way to the title now. Arteta got out-tactico’d by Unai Emery yesterday and he needs to have a think about how we set up, because in that second half it looked disjointed and disorganised and I think that’s on him. He will have known how Villa would set up yesterday but he did little to counter it. And now we go in to the game against Bayern on Wednesday looking like we’re creaking a bit. Ben White and Odegaard came off with Arteta saying Odegaard ‘felt something’ and from a week ago when an impressive away win at Brighton saw us victorious and imperious and looking every bit the title challenger, yesterday just left a bad taste in the mouth. Mathematically we are obviously well in it and the defeat by Liverpool to Palace means we’re not now behind two juggernauts and just one, but because it’s Man City that two points feels like it’s about five. Man City haven’t lost in something like 17 matches. Their next games are Brighton, Forest, Wolves, Fulham and the Scum before the end of the season. They will win them all, I am pretty sure of that. So we probably

We still need to hope, I will still be dreaming of some kind of miracle slip up, but let’s be honest here – it probably ain’t happening. Title talk needs to be shelved boys and girls.

Doing a pod on the Same Old Arsenal later at 7pm if you fancy joining us, although I don’t blame you if you don’t want to absorb any more football content right now! But I’ll be back tomorrow with some more musings.

But this match is far from a foregone conclusion. Aston Villa represent a very tough opponent and I have to say, whilst for the last couple of days I’vevbeen feeling good about this game, today I have a distinct feeling of nervousness against a former Arsenal manager who has a recent history of getting good results against us.

Villa were one of four teams who have beaten us this season and their win at Villa Park wasn’t the first time Emery has got the better of us. As Villareal manager he oversaw our knockout in the Europa League a few season’s back and he will be fancying another upset today when we line up against them I reckon.

Arteta beat him at Villa Park last season with that 4-2 win with those last minute goals to maintain our title hopes in February 2023, but that was a tight game that we had to rely on last-minute wonder-strike to Jorginho, so I’m not expecting us to be giving Villa a pasting today. Emery is a pragmatist, we know that, so I suspect he will be set up to not get beat and to hit us on the counter too.

He’s got the players to do that as well. Spearheading the attack we all know the form and potency of Ollie Watkins (18 goals and 10 assists in 31 matches for the England international is very impressive indeed), but either side of him they have rapid forwards who Emery will surely be looking to deploy in transition against an Arsenal team that will be expected to dominate ball and territory. I think Emery knows that and he knows that they can’t adopt their usual position of a high line like he did against us at Villa Park. on that day Villa got away with a couple of iffy decisions, but they also benefitted from a profligate Arsenal that spurned a number of good chances (I remember Odegaard having one in particular- just outside the six yard line which he would normally have tucked away). Villa are fifth and fighting for a top four spot, but their expected goals allowed and their actual goals conceded is the seventh best in the league, which tells me they do give teams chances and if we get a few today we need to be tucking them away.

Their away form is decent enough – seven wins, four draws a five defeats – but they do give teams chances, conceding an average of just over four on target every game this season. That’s eighth best in the league and they tend to build up from Martinez quite a lot. They have conceded a fair bit from corners though – ten this season which is fourth highest – so there might be an opportunity for us here as we know just how good we’ve been from corners and set pieces this season.

The midfield might be where we can take advantage though. Douglas Luiz is suspended and as such they don’t have his defensive midfield attributes, as well as his passing range, which might force Emery to drop McGinn a little deeper to support their defensive line. If that happens then hopefully it is an advantage to us; McGinn likes to get forward and find spaces and was the one that bagged the winner against us in the early stages of the game in December, so if he’s kept away from making those late arrival runs in to our box, hopefully that’s a positive. But I do think that Emery will look to Diaby and probably Bailey to hit us on the counter. He’ll probably have Tielemans as the deeper-lying playmaker and we’ll need to be mindful of him; I’ve seen him score a wonder goal screamer against us when he was at Leicester so we need to be wary of his passing range and distance shooting.

As for us, I think Arteta will mix it up today, but only in certain positions. I do wonder if Gabriel Jesus might start, because I’m not sure whether he’ll be on from the start against Bayern and after his excellent sub appearance against the German Champions, I think he might get rewarded. Whether that means he’ll be coming in for Havertz up top, or Martinelli wide left, I’m not sure. But I have a hankering for this line up today:

Raya

White   –   Saliba   –   Gabriel   –   Zinchenko

Rice

Odegaard   –   Havertz

Saka   –   Jesus   –   Martinelli

I think that Jorginho might be saved for Munich and I think we’re going to have more of the ball and more of the space in the Villa half, so in this formation I’m adding as many attacking and creative players that I can in the front five, which is why Havertz drops back in to left eight and Gabby J comes in. Havertz will essentially be playing the same position anyway if you think about his place on the field and the zones he’ll operate in, so this just gives us that extra man if Villa do sit a little deeper and try to frustrate us. Which I think they will. They’ll be compact, they’ll be tight, they’ll look to frustrate, then they’ll counter with the pace they have in the front three and we need to be ready for that.

The good news is that they have had two days less to prepare and they are in a middle of a European cmapaign like we are, so that will also be on Emery’s mind as much as Arteta’s, so what we need to do is to counter that by doing out bit and shutting their passing lanes from deep to spring the counter. Control the ball, controll the territory, wear Villa down and hopefully we can get the three points.

I’ll be there singing my heart out as usual, then tomorrow evening we’ll discuss it all on the Same Old Arsenal podcast if you fancy joining us.

Catch you tomorrow.

We had Arteta’s presser yesterday and he seemed pretty fine and his usual self when talking about the team and player availability for Sunday, which is good. Gabriel apparent missed training since the Bayern game but Arteta didn’t seem to worried about it because he just said his usual “we’ve got one more day to prepare so let’s see” approach. We’re all used to it by now, but by now you can usually pick up on the nuances of player availability from the manager; if he’s sounding quite relaxed about it then usually it means we’re all good so hopefully there are no surprises from his matchday squad tomorrow when it’s announced around 3.30pm.

What will be a surprise is if we see Jurrien Timber. Arteta was also asked about the Dutch international and although he’s in training and is looking stronger every day, as Arteta said when quizzed, he’s still got to go through a few more milestones before he makes the match day squad. Like playing in actual games and apparently there’s a behind-closed-doors friendly that is being arranged as well as an under-21s game he’s most likely have to play before the boss drops him in to his match day squad.

I’d imagine the behind-closed-doors game will be for those players who haven’t featured as much recently and Arteta spoke about how he has to manage the player situation, rather than the personality. That question was directed at him in response to Gabriel Jesus apparently looking ‘angry’ and like he ‘had a point to prove’ but Arteta just batted away any potential issue with the kind of consummate ease that we’re now very familiar with. He talked about how it is never personal, it is always for the benefit of the team and I would imagine the fact he’s been able to get such good responses from his players really hits home just how in sync they all are. It’s so difficult to manage a large set of 25 professional footballers who are all quality, could also be playing their football and playing regularly at so many other places, yet he only gets to put 11 of them on the pitch. In a way, although the behind-closed-doors friendly feels like it would be created for Timber to prove his fitness, there’s probably a side that Arteta could put out from the players who haven’t played very much, that could be valuable for them to get actual ‘on pitch’ minutes that they haven’t been getting this season. For example, we could probably see a behind-closed-doors side that looked like this:

Ramsdale

Cedric  –   Walters   –   Foran   –   Timber

Fabio Vieira   –   Elneny   –   Nwaneri

Nelson   –   Nketiah   –   Cozier-Duberry

Of course there is the odd name in there that I don’t really know – the centre half Foran I added to make a full XI – but in terms of giving players games who haven’t really played some minutes from the first team squad, this could certainly be of value.

I know it won’t have the intensity or the exact impact of a high-octane Premier League or Champions League match, but that’s a side who Timber could definitely slot in to that would have a decent level of game against an opponent.

Arteta was asked in his presser about Villa, about whether playing last out of the three title contenders has a psychological impact and also about his reflections from the Bayern game and I thought he absolutely nailed the responses:

1. Impact and respect of Unai Emery and the consistency of Villa, even touching on the fact they played last night too. It was a clever quip which nodded to the fact that he knows it’ll be a tough game, but it will be tough for Villa as well as they have less than 72 hours later got to come to The Emirates to line up against us. So there’s nothing to be stuck up on the dressing room wall for Villa, but there’s also a little nod to the fact that fatigue might have more of an impact on them than us – I certainly hope so.
2. Playing last of the three – He just talked up the focus on doing our own job and I bet he’s been at pains to get his players focused in that regard. I often wonder what I would do in Arteta’s position; tell the players not to look at it or forbid them from knowing the results? That’s basically impossible and it’s impossible not to put players under absolutely zero psychological impact when you know what your rivals have done given all of the media coverage these days, so then the focus has to be on getting those players in such a strong mental state, that it doesn’t impact them whatsoever. In my head City are already two points better than us. we’re no longer top (they play Luton at home today). And we are already back to third because Liverpool have already smashed Palace at home (they play tomorrow at 2pm). So I wonder if Arteta is instilling that in his players i.e. “you’re already behind – now respond against Villa this weekend lads – take that mindset in and go for the jugular”.
3. Reflections on Bayern being complete done, they’ve moved on, it’s time to be laser-visioned on Aston Villa, which is spot on.

From a mentality point of view Arteta is a monster and his team feels like it embodies that too this season. But the only way to have that truly confirmed is to go out there tomorrow and absolutely go for it against Villa at home and pick up the points. It won’t be easy, but it is something that we need to do and I am hopeful that this Arsenal team can do the business tomorrow afternoon.

We’ll be talking about it on Monday at 7pm regardless of what happens, so if you fancy joining us you can do so here.

Other than that, I’ll be offski for today and back tomorrow with a little look at our opponents and how they’ll probably line up against us. Have yourselves a lovely Saturday, peeps.

In the Premier League, for example, Villa and the Scum dropping points was good, because it puts more distance between us and them. I know it sounds crazy given that all the talk is how we can overcome City and Liverpool, but I still bear the battle scars of many years as an Arsenal fan and so I’m conditioned a little bit to look at those below us and make sure we’ve hit milestones. With both Liverpool and City in FA Cup action, the Premier League milestones I was looking for were gaining – or at least not losing – ground on the consolidation to ensure that we are a Champions League side next season. The Scum losing comprehensively to Fulham ticked the first box, then Villa being held by West Ham sort of did another. Villa have now played a game more than us and are eight points away from us. That’s a lead that could easily be eroded away if we going on a bit of a bad run of form, but if we win our game in hand, it’d mean that we’d be 11 clear of them with nine matches to play. That’d mean they’d need to win four and us lose four from our final nine matches. That’s also the situation we have with The Scum in fifth place; they have played the same number of games as us and we’re 11 points clear. Man United are 17 off us in sixth place on 47 points, which means there would need to be a six game swing for us to drop down in to sixth. If the European coefficients work in the favour of the Premier League then it’s top five for the Champions League next season and so if you’re talking about ‘mini objectives’ that are, as Arteta would say a ‘non-negotiable’, you’d think qualifying for the Champions League for the second consecutive season would be it. Based on looking at the table with 10 games to go you’d think that we might be close to achieving that already.

There’s a bunch of really hard games left though. Like, super hard, if I think about it, with the North London Derby, two away days in Manchester, a trip to Brighton (who will be tough despite their form – they are still a good side), games against Villa at home and an organised and well-drilled Wolves away. You’ve also got the bag of Revels that is Chelsea and you never know which side of that team will show its face on the day. So for us despite the fact I’m looking at where we are at and thinking another two or three wins should secure Champions League football for next season, there are a plethora of banana skins that are waiting for us.

That’s kind of also why I wanted City and Liverpool to progress in the FA Cup this weekend. That competition is one that a Liverpool v City final would have been fine by me; it would have meant extra games and would have seen their fixture list to continue to pile up. But given Coventry got through against Wolves this weekend, it also means that whoever won from Liverpool and United would have a relatively easy semi final leg that you could imagine would have been a fairly easy one to rotate. As we all know it wasn’t to be for Liverpool and Klopp and the only annoying thing about the fact that it went to extra time and 120 minutes, is that there aren’t any Premier League games for Liverpool to slip up in for a couple of weeks. I mean yeah, the players will go away with their respective national teams, but those national team managers will probably be very understanding of the amount of minutes in those Liverpool players legs, so they probably won’t all play tonnes of football whilst on an international friendly weekend.

So not an ideal for us, where we want City and Liverpool to have as many games as possible, but at least they will still have the Europa League to occupy them and in Atlanta they probably don’t have a team that they can do mass resting and rotation. At least I hope not. They’ll play a strong side much like we will have to against Bayern. And who knows, maybe them going out of the FA Cup in the way they did will also impact their confidence? We can but hope.

Apologies, there’s not really been a lot of Arsenal chatter today, but that’s just because we’ve played no football and I think Arteta has even given the players this weekend off. That will hopefully stand them in good stead ahead of going away on International duty, whilst Arteta and his coaching staff can start to work out how the devil we’re going to win all of our remaining games this season. There was one slightly Arsenal-related bit, which was Ten Haag referencing us in his press conference yesterday. He seemed to suggest that it was that game in which we won in stoppage time that had an impact on their season and that they were unlucky to lose, which is amusing, because if you re-watch that game as we all know we absolutely battered them. But hey, if he wants to make those kind of excuses for the fact that they’re 17 points off top at this stage of the season, then that’s his prerogative. If it means he keeps on doing what he’s doing and United keep on playing like they’ve played all season, that’s a-ok with me.

Right, I’ll leave it there for today. Enjoy your Monday and I’ll be back tomorrow with some more Arsenal musings of some kind.

We knew what we would get last night. Under the lights, on TV, Villa playing well at home and currently on a run of form that is history making for them. They were going to come at us like a runaway train and we would need to ride out the storm. And in those first ten minutes that’s exactly what happened. What we needed to do was stay firm, not do anything silly, then exert our dominance.

Unfortunately as we all know, the opposite happened. Villa scored early and took advantage of their moment of dominance whilst we looked like scared little schoolboys. Zinchenko was caught out of position and did poor and we paid the price through the decent move and tidy enough finish from McGinn.

And from the moment that went in it became about what Arsenal’s response would be and I have to say, the response was spot on, aside from the most important element of football: goals.

From about minute 10 to the last minute we created chances. Emery played a high line and Martinelli got in and flicked the ball away from Martinez, only to have the ball hooked off the line, whilst Ødegaard really should have scored from inside the box when the ball cut back to him. Football and fine margins: the difference on the night was that from a very similar position McGinn lifted his chance up and in to the net over Raya, whereas Ødegaard shot tamely low and into Martinez’s hands.

We controlled most of the possession, we moved the ball around well enough, we created enough chances to score but ultimately our profligacy in front of goal did cost us. Emery played a high line and we should have reacted to it more than we did. On the pod last night (link at the bottom) I said that I thought Mike Arteta being in the stands did make an impact and the reasoning I gave was that I thought if he was on the touchline I think he’d have seen it and made the tweak sooner, but he’d have told his attackers to maybe drop a little before making more runs in behind for the likes of Ødegaard and Saliba to put those balls in behind. We didn’t see enough of that yesterday and I thought Villa were there for the taking. We just didn’t do enough.

Having said all that though, there was still an opportunity for VAR to give us a bit of a rogering on two occasions, which feels like par for the course these days. At Luton it was Gabriel being hauled down inside the box. At home to Wolves last weekend it was Gabriel Jesus being tugged in the box. Last night it was Gabby J again being taken down through Douglas Luiz’s foul. I’m happy for there to be a higher threshold on penalties not given, but when you regularly see penalties given for a lot less contact than that, yet ours is ignored, you start to wonder if there is an actual agenda going on. Speak out against PGMOL at your peril; Arsenal did just that a few weeks ago and they have barely been given a decision ever since. Funny that.

But it didn’t stop at the penalty, of course, because there was enough time to rule out Havertz’s last minute equaliser for handball. Clearly the laws on handball are written in a specific way that I don’t properly understand, because when you look at the replays it hits Cash’s hand as much as it hits Havertz. So if you’re ruling out a goal for handball, why aren’t you then saying “oh, but using the same principles, it’s a penalty lads”. Of course not. It’s Arsenal. Rule it out and let’s give Villa their points.

It’s frustrating, I’m annoyed, you’re probably annoyed, but as bad as the officiating is and as much as we should have had at least one of the aforementioned chances given to us, I think we also shouldn’t have made this game close enough that we are complaining about those decisions this morning. We should have put away our other chances and much like we did against Luton, the poor officiating should just have been a footnote in this match.

We now have a Champions League dead rubber to deal with in midweek and my hope is that Arteta plays every single reserve possible so we prepare for Brighton next weekend. That is a traditionally tough game for us and it will be on Sunday too as they always play brilliantly against us at the Emirates. But Arteta needs to be working on a response with his players and that needs to start on the training ground tomorrow.

That’s all from me for today I think. If you fancy listening to our on the whistle pod last night on the Same Old Arsenal channel you can do so here.

Catch you wonderful people tomorrow.

Will that prove to be a marginal gain that gets us over the line? I’m not sure. When you have big matches between teams at the top of the division, the adrenaline kind of kicks in; we’ve seen it before and teams will raise their level and especially when it’s under the lights on an early evening kick off like tonight. We’ll be digesting all the transpires in the post game Same Old Arsenal pod at 8pm tonight if you fancy joining us.

Whether it’ll be a gay ol’ time with much merriment will depend entirely on the result. I’m not expecting Arsenal to be scintillating tonight; Villa are a good side, an ambitious side, an aggressive side who will look to press us and win the ball back higher up the pitch. I think under Emery they will adopt tactics that a re familiar to us – playing out from the back, etc – but they will also want to put our defence under the defensive kosh, so the name of the game today is to be ‘calma’ at the back. Arteta will inevitably go for Raya in that respect, but I think it’ll also be the same side that finished the game in midweek. He could go for Kiwior, but I think Arteta will value controll of the ball over physical prowess in the form of the Pole at left back, so Zinny will get the nod. And of course in front of him it’ll be Rice, with most likely Havertz and Odegaard in front as the eight’s. Havertz played well against Luton, got his goal and his hit a bit of a purple patch, so we need to lean in to that and give him the start. Then up front it’ll be tough to look at anyone other than the first choice front three and this is where we’ll need to do the damage. If Aston Villa play like they did against City with a high line, then there will be space to run in behind and that makes me wonder whether this is the type of game that Martinelli might thrive in. Think the Sevilla away game earlier in the season when he went racing away to bear down on goal; we need to see that kind of run and the right kind of pass if Villa want to adopt a very high press.

I really hope they do because one thing our defence is good at is breaking a press with their accurate passing. I keep thinking that Emery will surely not adopt the same approach as he did Wednesday night, but he is a man who sticks to his principles and after such a dominant display against the treble winners, he and his side will be bullish that they can repeat the trick. Their fans certainly think so. I’ve also read a few interesting takes, like “we have the better coach” talking about Emery, or “our midfield is better than theirs”, or “they aren’t that good – Luton scored three and we’re better than them”. As you and I know, football is not linear and A+B doesn’t always equal C. Luton was a bizarre game, our ‘keeper had a stinker, but all of the underlying metrics showed that on any other day we probably come away with a comfortable 2-0 away win, or something like that. We need to get back to being better defensively and that means Ben White being on it, Zinchenko not being ghosted past and certainly NONE of the silly lapses in concentration like Wolves at home. We’re in good goal scoring form, we need to keep that up, but keeping the back door shut tonight will be of paramount importance I suspect.

The stats tell me that Villa are a side that don’t launch the ball much, so I think we’ll try to catch them out at the back, but when I look at a number of other stats, like crosses made, short passing, medium passing, Villa sit squarely in mid table compared to other teams. Keeping Watkins quiet seems like the world’s most obvious statement, but last year when Bailey came on against us I thought he looked good and in Diaby they have a heck of a talent. It looks like they’ll go 4-4-2 style and the likes of Luiz covering ground will probably be something to look for. But in Declan Rice we have the best out of possession midfielder in the league and his screening of our back line gives me more comfort.

I’m not really sure how this one is going to go. Villa will start off aggressively, but even some of their fans are questioning whether they can maintain that for a full 90 minutes having done so well against City just a few days ago. I would still say a draw is a decent enough result for us given the fixture congestion, but that old adage keeps ringing in my head: you wanna be champions, you got to keep winning on tough away days like this. The next two away days could define whether or not we’re starting to believe – beat Villa and Liverpool away before Christmas and we might well start to think it could be our year. Two defeats – a perfectly plausible scenario – and I don’t know how bullish we’d all be.

Catch you all later if you fancy joining the pod, or tomorrow for a debrief on here.

Have a good one folks. Fingers crossed.

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.

I didn’t watch the game last night but checked in on the final scores. Liverpool got what seems like a pretty routine win at Sheffield United, but that Villa v City game was the one that I was interested in and blow me down like a feather, they’ve only gone and schooled City at home, haven’t they? The stats also show a dominant display, with City mustering just two shots in the entire game. I’ve had half an eye on their results because I’ve noticed they’ve picked up some noticeable wins like the Scum away, Brighton at home and Chelsea away (I know, I know, but we only managed a draw there, so…), but last night will have been the biggest one for them by some distance so to see that they’ve dispatched the reigning treble champions like that will really make a lot of teams sit up and take note.

I’m not going to turn this in to a Villa or even an Unai Emery love-in, because we all saw what Arsenal were under Emery in the end and it wasn’t pretty at all, but what it has started to crystallise in my mind having seen that result from last night is this:

This season is going to be even harder to finish top of the tree than ever before.

Last season we started off brilliantly and by the time everyone had played at least 15 games on match week 17 (looked it up on the official site here) we’d amassed 40 points. This season we’re a little short of that on 36 having drawn an extra two games, but we always knew that pace was not sustainable, as as we’d have ended up with a 101 point season finish with a squad that we all knew wasn’t deep enough to do that. But the rest of the table was City on 35, Newcastle on 33 having played 16 games, the Scum on 30 having played 16 and United on 29 having played 15. Where we stand right now we’ve got all of the top four having played 15 games and the points on the board are:

1. Arsenal = 36
2. Liverpool = 34
3. Villa = 32
4. Man City = 30
5. The Scum = 27 – although they’ve played 14 and when they beat West Ham tonight I expect that to be 30.

Even if you go down the table right now we’ve got every team in the top nine on 20+ points. Last season that was Chelsea in eighth on that amount. So we’ve got all of the top five (almost) on 30 points. I know we’re only talking about a small points differential here, but I can easily see how this could be maintained because as Villa showed last night, a lot more points are being taken off each other from the better teams in the top half of the table. Liverpool have lost to The Scum, Villa have lost to Liverpool and Newcastle, City have lost to us and Villa and the Scum have lost to Villa and Chelsea. The ability for two teams to break away like we were already seeing last season is, I think going to be much more difficult.

We’ve got a super hard run of games now too. Villa away as I’ve already mentioned above, Brighton at home (who have beaten us at The Emirates in four of the last six matches in all competitions at home, with us drawing one and losing one), as well as Liverpool at Anfield (where we haven’t won in the league since 2012 – 11 years!). It’s all great at the top of the table for us right now, but that could very easily swing if we end up the wrong side of those results.

And yes, I know we’re a good team now, that apart from on Tuesday night we’ve been pretty awesome at the back and have been looking imperious, but we’ve got injuries still hampering our ability to rotate, a bunch of games that need to be got through in December, plus some incredibly tough fixtures and a fair bit of travelling too (we go to Eindhoven as well in the middle of next week), so I think that this is going to be one of the toughest periods in the season for us in the next two weeks. It was only three days ago I wrote about Merson’s comments and the more and more I think about it, he might actually be spot on. Imagine if we win the next three Premier League games. I personally think there’s about a 10% chance of that happening, but if it did, woah-baby, then I think we can start to get really excited.

But, Chris, let’s take it the old cliché of ‘one game at a time’ and let’s try to figure out how we’re going to stop the likes of Ollie Watkins et al first, eh? That in itself will be a big milestone if we can win that one, and we’d have to do something that no other team has done so far this season: win at Villa Park.

Right, I think I’ll leave it there for today, because there’s not really a lot else going on right now from an Arsenal perspective. I don’t even want to contemplate the idea of Cedric coming back in to the team because of our absent defenders, so I’ll park it.

Catch you all tomorrow.