Morning folks. Yesterday I put a tweet out about how I’d almost forgotten how rubbish Monday’s are after a disappointing performance from Arsenal. We’ve been that good all season that out of the 28 or 29 match weeks (I know we are on game 31 but there have been midweek Premier League matches so sometimes we’ve played twice in a week in the Premier League) that we’ve played this season we’ve had at least 20 or 21 of them in which Monday morning’s have felt pretty good. That’s quite some good going compared to previous years and, if we look at last season alone, we had 13 defeats, which probably means we’d have had either 10 or 11 Monday’s in the season in which we’d all felt pretty crap. So if I’m looking at it in that respect, certainly this has been a lot more fun watching The Arsenal.

It’s getting scary now though as we reach ‘end game’ and so when you get disappointing feels because of a poor Arsenal game, what you don’t need is more sad/bad news to really feel like the salt is being rubbed in to our collective wounds. Which is why when I saw this article from the Evening Standard talking about how the City game is expected to come too soon for William Saliba, it felt like even more of a blow, if I’m honest. That’s because he has been such a massive player for us this season and for him to potentially miss what will be a massive game in our season, feels like it could have significant consequences for our team and our ability to get anything on a ground in which currently reads played 10, won one (eight years ago), drawn one, lost eight in all competitions.

I know Arteta had said before this weekend gone that Saliba was ‘a few weeks away’ but my hopes were that he was keeping his cards close to his chest and that the club were earmarking that City game for a return. But that Standard article sounds like the club are looking at targeting the last few games of the season which says to me we’ll most likely miss him for Chelsea at home too, which will be another big blow despite how they are playing right now.

I know I shouldn’t be making the mistake of completely bypassing the fact that we play Southampton this week by the way. As a fan I have been guilty of bookmarking that City game as something that could be massive, then when we’ve tripped up at West Ham bemoaned the arrogance of the Arsenal team at the weekend. But I am as guilty of that as they are in my watching; I may not be able to affect things on the pitch, but I started to look ahead to Southampton and City matches after about 20 minutes of that game on Sunday. The players did the same and look where it landed for all of us. So although me spending this morning talking about the blow of missing Saliba for Man City seems a little wrong given they are not our next opponents, let me show my workings here a little bit.

And those workings do revolve around Saliba and Oleksandr Zinchenko. We missed both massively at the weekend and taking them both out of the side showed how we lack a little more control on the ball when we are in defence. KT wants to drive down the outside, he doesn’t offer Partey and the midfield the same passing options as Zinchenko does as a release valve for pressure. When Partey gets the ball that Rice steals off him on Sunday, I think if Zinchenko is playing he is probably closer to him than KT was and he probably looks for that pass instead of the silly flick that he tries. So that’s one part of the equation that affected us on Sunday. But hopefully the good news is that this was a short term absence and all the noises are that he will be back for Friday’s home game against Southampton, so that will give Gabriel more security on that left hand side and I think we will look more like the side that has been so dominant for many games this season. Good stuff.

But the reason I’ve got my mind on the City game after reading the update from the Standard article, is that by Saiba missing from the Man City game, we now have a very clear and present danger identified for what is arguably the biggest game of the season. At home to Southampton we will have plenty of the ball, we should dominate possession, hopefully we’ll spend most of the time in the Southampton half and be creating chances. You’d expect that Rob Holding on our own patch will be fine and much like Leeds and Crystal Palace at home, I am hoping that he looks decent enough as a deputy. But if Saliba is out for the game next Wednesday, then we have big problems. Liverpool targeted us with long balls in the second half of their comeback. West Ham got a physical presence in Antonio isolated on Holding in the second half at this weekend just gone by and he struggled. He wasn’t at fault for the goals, but the targeted him and we looked ropey at times as a result. That gave West Ham impetus to continue to try those long balls.

Now think about Man City. Ederson is a long ball distribution master. Haaland is a physical presence who is a predator and can roast the likes of Holding for pace. Then on our right hand side there is the pace and trickery of Grealish that both Holding and White will have to deal with. Heck, in the FA Cup game this season Holding was hooked at halftime because he was on a yellow card and had spent the entirety of the first half of that game in a wrestling match with Haaland. What do you think City will be thinking knowing that Arsenal can’t bring on Saliba at halftime at the Etihad if the same happens again?

This is why my thoughts have turned to the game in Manchester in just over a week’s time, because it feels like the story is already being laid out and the news breaking about Saliba yesterday is just adding fuel to that particular narrative. I’m not Bob Holding’s biggest fan, but he’s a good guy and a decent enough pro; but he isn’t a guy who is good enough to see a team over the line in the closing stages of a title race, unfortunately.

It is rotten luck to lose Saliba at this stage of the season. But Arteta won’t be downbeat about it. It is his job to try to continue to get a tune out of the players he has available and in the next couple of days when he has his pre match press conference I am expecting that he will do just that.

Back tomorrow with more nonsensical ramblings.