With Mikel Arteta not doing his press conference until tomorrow lunchtime, it’s up to us to start doing ALL THE SPECULATIONS on the game we have on Sunday, which was of course ably delivered on the Same Old Arsenal Podcast with the two James’ last night. James J went for a 1-0 scraper and I suspect that he’ll be close to the money than Cookie who went for a 3-2 and I think those two predictions in isolation show just how much of the unknown many of us feel like we’re going to get in to this weekend.

  • Will Arteta go full strength? Does he have any choice?
  • Will Klopp rotate given he also has a League Cup Semi final to contend with?
  • How many players can pick themselves up after back-to-back poor defeats?
  • Where is the morale right now?
  • How do our attacking players get themselves back in to goalscoring form?

On that last point, I listened to an interesting podcast with my old mate Harry Symeou yesterday as I was running. Harry talked about a few tactical bits but the stuff that stuck out to me was about how Thomas Partey’s absence has had a bigger impact than anyone originally thought. You can listen to that podcast here. I have been absolutely smitten with Declan Rice holding our midfield together in Partey’s absence and his performances, marauding runs, as well as a few important goals, have at times led me to think that we haven’t really needed Partey. Up until this point Rice has been almost always available and as a result Partey being out when you look at a teamsheet and players fitting neatly in to positions, it’s almost felt as if we haven’t missed him.

But the reality is that Partey gives us something that other midfielders does not and as Harry pointed out and I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, he is a man who is a line breaker more than anyone else in the team. I’ve seen people suggest that Jorginho can do that job well enough and yes, we’ve seen some evidence of that, but it feels to me as though that is not enough of a regular occurrence each game and, in fact, I’d say that he does it no more than Declan Rice. So having Jorginho in there and pushing Rice further forward doesn’t, I don’t think, solve some of the problems we’ve been having. I’m not sure that if we move Rice in to the left eight position it suddenly unleashes us to be playing more progressive passes in to the final third and that will create more space for our attacking players to run in to.

What I do think we need is Partey back fit and the news that he isn’t going to the AFCON was certainly taken by me as positive. The last words on Partey were from the Ghana manager and all we have had in press conferences from Mikel Arteta is that he is progressing well. I have heard some suggest that him missing the AFCON is a bad thing and a sign that he could be out for longer, but I don’t see that as the case. Ghana are seen as something like eighth or ninth favourite to win the competition depending on which betting site you want to go with, so that suggests to me that the expectation is that they aren’t getting too far in the competition. Let’s say that the bookies are right and it’s a quarter final exit. That means their competition could be done by 3rd February. If you take AFCON completely out of the picture and just look at the fact that Partey hasn’t supposedly started training yet, then that would suggest that even if he started training with the first team today, he wouldn’t be in the matchday squad this weekend. With a week of training under his belt after an injury that required surgery, you’d probably say he might be part of the match day squad next weekend at the earliest (which is when have a break, but I’m doing hypotheticals here) but he’s unlikely to get any minutes other than a few token ones at the end. More likely Arteta doesn’t risk him until the following weekend, which would be 20th January. Maybe he gets on the pitch for 15 – 20 minutes in that game, with a view to potentially giving him a half the week after, which would be 27th January. The first time he’ll even be a potential to start a game wouldn’t be until 3rd February, which is the quarter final stage of the AFCON. So if we’re looking at timelines like that, then it completely makes sense that Hughton wouldn’t take him. At best he’d have a Partey who could play around 60 minutes by the time the quarter final comes around and what does that say about his team and the player that Partey replaces if they get that far?

I’m not even counting the fact that Ghana would have to be super cautious with his minutes and an international tournament is not one that you look to build a player back up. By staying at Arsenal they could get him training this week, or at least next week when they go for warm weather training, he can be slowly integrated in to the first team, then they can earmark a matchday squad place on the bench for Palace at home on 20th January. For once, it appears as though common sense has prevailed.

And from an Arsenal perspective, those timelines might just work out for us. We play Palace at home and Forest away, both games in which I have my fingers crossed that Partey can get some minutes, no matter how small, with that game at home to Liverpool the one that we have to cross our fingers that he can be ready. Because if he is, then it could be a very timely arrival back in to our first team. Of course him not breaking down between now and May is another question entirely, but if we start to get noises from Arteta that Partey is training, then there is another reason for us to be cheerful. Because if we want to see a better second half to the season than the first, Partey is going to need to be fit and available for us.

Catch you all tomorrow.