It’s still pretty quiet after the international matches that were played last night and then in the early hours of this morning. Thomas Partey got 64 minutes for Ghana against the USA as they lost, with a goal for Flo Balogun for the USA the only other semi-Arsenal-related footnote in that game. I can’t find anything on him coming off on 64 minutes but given than Chris Hughton admitted that he was already only due to play 45 against Mexico that had been pre-arranged with The Arsenal, I suspect that the natural next step of his recovery was for him to get an hour before coming off. Assuming all is well then I suspect he’ll be in the team for Saturday and given he’s played an hour then maybe there could be shouts for him to start.

I don’t think that’s a guarantee though, because Partey will have had a similar route back to London that Kai Havertz will be having today, after he was in the squad for the 2-2 draw against Mexico in the US in the early hours of the morning. I spoke about those challenges yesterday when talking about those long-haul flights in the middle of a season and with that in mind and given Partey’s injury record since he joined the club, I suspect Arteta might be a little more cautious with the Ghanaian. Havertz himself didn’t get off the bench so it’s not as if he had 90 minutes of football to add to the travelling, but I suspect the reasons he might not be in the side might be more tactical, than related to his fatigue through travelling.

I watched a bit of the England game last night. I couldn’t sit through the whole thing but it was a little eye-rolling to hear the fawning over “60-GOAL HARRY KANE”, then hearing the likes of Dion Dublin talking about how he’s deadly from 12 yards and just doesn’t miss. Kane has a lot of goals for England, his second of the night was a very good finish I’ll admit, but let’s not pretend his England career has been as prolific as some of the other greats in world football. Over a third of his England goals have come from the penalty spot, so there’s a little bit of stat padding going on in his career for the national side. But it was also the same against us. I just had a little Google and it looked as though he scored 14 goals against us in all competitions in his career. An impressive run, I think we will all concede. But let’s not sugar coat this as him being able to always smash past our defences; seven of his 14 goals – so HALF – were from the penalty spot. Robert Pires is – I believe – our leading scorer against the Scum. He got nine in total, but how many of those were from the penalty spot? Two. So we’re looking at 50% of Kane’s goals being from the spot, with Bobby delivering 22%. Let’s also not forget that Kane was at the Scum a lot longer than Pires was at Arsenal and played a few games more – an additional six to be precise. Do you think if he’d have played an extra six games and been given all of our penalties, that he wouldn’t have been able to match that? I do. His conversion rate of scoring was 69% so if he plays 19 games for us like Kane did for The Arsenal, then he’d have a ratio of 13 goals in 19 (to Kane’s 14 in 19) and of that four of his goals would have been penalties.

You give Harry Kane 13 matches and he’s bagging a little over Pires’ nine goals (around nine-and-a-half). You give Harry Kane a 22% penalty ratio like Bobby had, rather than a 50% ratio, then Kane is bagging less than nine goals, I can tell you that much.

So there you have it. Statistical proof that shows that Harry Kane is a master stat-padder for England, was a stat-padder in the North London Derby, plus we had a better player at his peak in Robert Pires who delivered a better goal return. And if I get to trigger a few of the Scummers out there, then all the better.

That killed a good 25 minutes of my train commute too. Lovely jubbly.

Catch you all tomorrow.