Little Saturday morning rant from a UK based Arsenal supporter. I find it utterly ludicrous that in this day and age, with the TV companies dictating so much, trying to eek every possible penny from the Premier League, that tomorrow’s game against Leeds is not on television. Where is the logic there? In fact there are four games on tomorrow at 2pm, with only Aston Villa against Chelsea as a game that you can watch as a football fan living in England. The country in which the games are playing are not showing these games, but if I nip across to France or Spain, I’ll probably be able to get access to the matches with little problem whatsoever.

Where is the logic in that?

You’ve also got the 3pm kick offs on Saturday which have never been televised and whilst I love a 3pm kick off on a Saturday when we’re at home, when it’s away, I have to find other ways to get access to watching The Arsenal and that usually involves a dodgy stream. It is bizarre that we as football fans can’t watch our team because of some weird and archaic rule that certain games aren’t shown at certain times.

I actually welcome the Football League trialling the 3pm kick offs being able to be televised from when their next TV deal kicks in. The reason we have the 3pm kick off ‘blackout’ is because a Burnley Chairman in the 60s lobbied that if it was on TV then nobody would go to see their local club because they’d watch the big games instead of smaller teams. But in today’s society, with the access to different hobbies, past times, technology, etc, just by showing a 3pm kick off is not going to impact football-going fans in my opinion. I go to The Arsenal to watch the game and cheer on my team, but I also go for the community, the camaraderie, the joy of the match day experience. It would be the same for football fans everywhere and this archaic rule dating back to the 60s needs to be binned as soon as possible.

Worried about attendances in the lower leagues and the impact it has on revenues? Well, why not have an agreement that for all of the money made through broadcasting the 3pm kick offs, a portion of that is given to the football league clubs as some kind of solidarity payment?

The example the Burnley Chairman gave in the 60s was that if Man United versus Liverpool was being shown then nobody would come to watch their local team because they’d want to watch the big match. Firstly, I doubt many Burnley fans would give up watching their team to watch another team, but secondly, the ‘big matches’ are never on at 3pm anyway. Big Premier League games – like our one last weekend against Liverpool – are moved to the prime time Sunday kick off, or for early evening Saturday kick off times. So that argument falls flat on its face for me.

The very fact that I’m talking about getting a stream to watch The Arsenal tomorrow shows why this rule is stupid and needs to be changed; I can assure you I have no intention of going to watch Hayes and Yeading, Slough Town or QPR. I’ll watch Arsenal or do something else. But ‘doing something else’ isn’t an option for me.

This needs to be looked at and soon. Whether it will or not remains to be seen.

So what else is going on in the world of The Arsenal? Well, Mikel did his pre match press conference straight away after the game in Norway on Thursday night and I thought it was interesting when he was asked about the Thursday-Sunday schedule already playing catch up with us, to which he did admit it will be a challenge given the team flew back to London yesterday, then will probably be travelling up to Leeds tomorrow morning. He talked about an ‘activation’ which I’ve never heard the term before, but I’m guessing it is just a light training session of jogging, etc, rather than any kind of proper training session. The good news is that some of the key plyers should be good from a fatigue point of view. Zinchenko and Gabriel Jesus will be the two players many of us will be looking at and for the latter I think we all have to hope that he’s ok and he is ready to play tomorrow. He has fundamentally changed so much of us this season and a lot of the identity we’ve started to build this season has been because of him. The thought of him missing on Sunday would be a big blow. Eddie is coming along nicely and I think he’s an able deputy, but there’s no doubt that the drop down in quality between the two players exists. At the end of last season Eddie showed he could step in, but I’d be concerned if it was for any prolonged period of time. I don’t think Jesus’ injury will be too serious though, by the sounds of it, so if he’s missing on Sunday I would hope that by the time we play our next game in the league away to Southampton, hopefully we’ll have him back then as a worst case scenario.

I’ll talk about it a little more tomorrow, but I think it will be a really tough game because, as Mikel pointed out in his press conference, Leeds will play a high-intensity game and with a week to prepare and us having just played on Sunday night, we’re going to be in for a really tough one tomorrow. Hopefully we can come through it ok though. I know we rested a few players and players like Partey got just five minutes, or Xhaka with 20 minutes, but it isn’t so much the minutes as much of the travel. If we had all of the first teamers at home with their feet up on Thursday then you’d think that we’ll probably be ok with regards to matching Leeds’ intensity, but travelling takes it out of any human, so I think we’re in for a rough ride tomorrow.

Anyhoo, I think I’ll leave it there for today – bit more of a match preview to follow tomorrow.

Have a good’un.