Yesterday I drove up to see the Management’s family for our ‘part two’ of Christmas and as we travelled up I decided to flick on the radio to have a listen to the Newcastle v Forest game. I do love the Christmas period because aside from Christmas Day, there is football on basically all the time. Plus this year we have a few days off because we don’t play until the 28th, so it kind of feels like I’ve been given a rest from stressing about The Arsenal for the Christmas period, but I still get to watch football in the shape of other teams, so I have something to root for, which includes any team playing that are near us in the table.

And all-in-all it wasn’t a bad day. Liverpool were always going to beat Burnley, so I didn’t pay too much attention to that, but Villa losing to United was good, especially in the way they did because it felt like a really Unai Emery-at-The-Arsenal kind of collapse in the second half. Plus United are so far down the league that I didn’t look at the fact it was them coming from behind and just saw it as some mid table team beating a side around us at the top. It’s sort of the same with Newcastle and if Everton can somehow miraculously beat City tonight, that’ll feel like it’s been a decent enough set of results for us so far this Christmas and as long as we do our business and hopefully Brighton can against The Scum, you’d have to say we’ve got to be happy with that.

Our incentive for tomorrow is clear, because we’ve already been knocked off of top spot by Liverpool winning; victory at home to West Ham therefore becomes and imperative, although we’ll have to do it without Havertz, who has picked up his fifth booking this season. This is the time of year when you start to see this stuff; there will be players all over the league who are walking the tightrope and for us it’s Kai that will sit it out. People used to joke that footballers in the old days used to try to time it perfectly so they get to have their Christmas off by being suspended on Boxing Day, which of course is just a bit of a Christmas chuckle, but even if it was true the first team have this period off anyway because we don’t play until tomorrow, so they’ll be back in training today and prepping ahead of the game.

There have been further noises that Partey is back in training and if that is true then we might be able to see him from the bench, but I doubt he’ll be anywhere near ale to play for more than a few token minutes at the end, so we’ll need to find another solution for our three man midfield tomorrow. Could that be Emile Smith Rowe? Maybe. He’s a guy who is now back in training, people have suggested that he works better as a central number eight rather than on the flanks (and we have Saka and Martinelli anyway so his path is blocked as it is), plus the enforced absence of Kai means that the spot needs to be filled. But I suspect that Emile – like Partey – might not be quite fit enough to start in a game like tomorrow evening’s encounter with the Hammers. He’s only had about 10 days of training I think, so throwing him in to start given how much he’s broken down in the last couple of years when not fully fit, suggests to me that he’ll be eased in. Arteta has spoken more highly of him, which is interesting to note and I suspect he’ll want to get him more involved- than he was pre-injury, but this still feels a little too soon. I’ll speculate who would come in for Kai on tomorrow’s preview blog I think, but suffice to say I think we have plenty of options (Trossard, Jorginho if fit, etc). There was a time in which a suspension or injury to a first XI player would mean a lot of concern ahead of any game, but we’ve got a squad of players who are trusted by Arteta and whoever comes in I’d be pleased enough with. It goes to show how likeable this squad is; there are players with whom you used to be like “oh god no” when they were starting, but those players are now thankfully few and far between.

We’re just a few days away from the transfer window re-opening and so Arsenal will be looking to add to that ‘likeable list’, but I look at our squad and injuries at the moment and wonder how you get players in without over-packing the changing room – Chelsea style – because in the next six weeks we could have a number of players back and fit. Tomiyasu, Partey, Jorginho are all technically out, although the first two will be off with their respective national teams for the AFCON and Asia Cup. This means that it won’t be until mid February until we see a potentially fully fit and available team and the problem with that is that whilst you can’t win the league in the early months of a new year, you can take yourself out of any running during that time. So do Arsenal stick or twist with some loan signings or short term deals? Maybe, but that’ll be even harder to do than giving a team cash for a player; the type of player we’d be after to support our squad won’t be a cast off that isn’t playing for a club, it’ll most likely be one of the better players in the team, so why that team would sanction a short term loan deal is a bit of a weird one. But the club have done it before so if they can pull an Odegaard-esque loan rabbit out of the hat, then that’d be quite something. Less have more Odegaard and less Denis Suarez-style incomings.

I’ll leave it there for today. You enjoy your Festive Christmas Wednesday and I’ll catch thee all in the morrow.