Another Monday swings around for us post Interlull and what a surprise we have that most ‘lully’ of things: an injury to worry about.

Shkodran Mustafi looks to have been the latest in a long line of Arsenal players to be packed up, shipped out on international duty and then smashed into little pieces before being dustpanned back into a bag and sent back to Arsenal with a ‘sorry! Whaddya gone do though (shrug shoulders emoji)’ note pinned to him. 

Of course it does help that Nacho Monreal has turned in to Paolo Maldini reincarnate and so our central defence should have enough bodies to cover if the German is out for a number of weeks or months. Rob Holding will surely be first choice for Arsène but even after that he’d probably use Big Per and even after that he’d probably go to Calum Chambers and remind him that he’d pick him if given the chance. So we have options. 

It’s still galling to see though and the hope has to be that all of the other players returning back from injury aren’t also in pieces and held together with a bit of sellotape. 

But at least this latest dreaded international break is done. At least we can all start looking at how Arsenal are going to overcome a different beast in the shape of Watford and at least we get to start working out which players we can sack off from our fantasy football league for the upcoming week. 

One player who ain’t going anywhere in my team is Kolasinac. Boy that guy loves to get forward and with our team also learning that clean sheets can be a good thing, I’ve managed to chalk up some clean sheet points too, all thanks to the Tank. 

He’s somebody that instills confidence in all of us and it’s not just because he’s an upgrade on Gibbs defensively, but he’s also much more effective in the final third. He gets in to the same positions as Gibbs but always seems to pick the right ball and last Sunday against Brighton he also should have had an assist after giving Ramsey a point blank shot to finish off. 

Confidence is so important to so many of these players in this current Arsenal team. Just look at Iwobi. Goal last weekend in the Premier League and then another one for Nigeria this weekend just gone to send them through to the finals too. He’ll be absolutely brimming with confidence at the moment and even though you’d put him down as maybe third choice behind some of the other attacking squad players, when you have a player who thinks he’s standing a foot higher than he is, that needs to be harnessed right now, so I expect we’ll see him play some part on Saturday evening at Vicarage Road.

There are still some games to be played and France play on Tuesday, with Lacazette having started instead of Ollie Giroud, which I’m sure has our handsome Frenchman starting to ponder his decision to stay. I’m pretty sure he thought that his place in the French national team was pretty secure but having now lost his Arsenal and French place to Lacazette, I wonder if we’ll start to see a slightly more concerned Ollie G as January rolls around. Still, plenty more football to worry about before then, and you never know what might happen with injuries, etc. Let’s all be honest we’re not expecting players like Lacazette not to get injured at some stage, are we?

Thought not.

Right, there’s owt else really going on so I’m going to love you and leave you. Catch you tomorrow.