Happy Friday folks – hope you’re all good.

I don’t know why I still get triggered by lazy journalism, but I do, falling victim to shoddy ‘takes from so-called professionals not once, but twice in the last 12 hours. First it was Charlie Wyatt on Sky Sports last night, who described Mikel Merino as a ‘defensive midfielder’ who apparently plays in the six and will sit alongside Declan Rice, which as you and I both know is just all kinds of wrong. Merino played 45 times last season for Sociedad, his heatmap showed a guy plying more in the attacking third and as a left eight. Yes, he wins his duels, but he ain’t no six, Charlie-Boy. Neither has Rice been playing there either for a while; you probably have to go back to March(ish) to see Rice operating there, as he finished our season as a left eight.

Then it was Louis Saha that I read about this morning, talking about how we have no chance of winning the league because we don’t have a 20-goal-a-season striker like City do. Yawn. We scored 91 goals last season without a supposed ‘number nine’ and on top of that Gabriel Jesus was injured for a big chunk of it, so to dismiss our title chances because of comments like that just feel ham-fisted, if you ask me.

I should probably just ignore the opinions of idiots, but there you go, sometimes I get suckered in.

The good news is that there is football on the horizon and today we’ll get Mikel Arteta’s thoughts ahead of the game against Villa tomorrow. The team will most likely be travelling tomorrow in the morning to get up there for the 5.30pm kick off, but regardless of when they go, I suspect Mikel will want to get his press conference sorted sooner rather than later, so he can make his final preparations before what invariably feels like a tough game for his side in the Midlands. He’ll be asked about Merino, who it is widely reported will be an Arsenal player after agreement between the clubs for a fee around £32.6million, but he’ll bat away any comments until an official announcement is made I suspect. Merino will have to do a medical, there will be pictures taken, etc, so I suspect this will be a Sunday or Monday announcement that we’ll get, meaning he’ll be around for the Brighton game in a week’s time. But the conversation will focus on a fellow Spaniard in Unai Emery and I hope we get another press conference masterclass from Mikel that has us excited for tomorrow.

The key for me is team news though, in which I wonder whether he’ll give any thoughts on Calafiori and Timber in the left back spot. I doubt it, because he never gives that much detail away, but for me I’m more looking at what the situation is with regards to availability. Even on Saturday last weekend after the game Arteta said that they needed to change it in the second half when Wolves started to come at us a little more and I wonder if Timber’s cameo has given Arteta enough to change it against what will be a fast and tricky wide player in Leon Bailey. More on the team news tomorrow I think, but ahead of the game itself I did a little saunter in behind enemy lines this morning as I like to do to get the vibe from Villa fans as to how they are feeling ahead of this clash. It’s fair to say on the basis of what I’ve read there is a bit of a mixture on this one. A few of them are talking about a title challenge, but there’s an equal proportion who recognise we’re a good team and it will be a tough game. There’s a few who are doing the usual ‘banter’ and of course there are some  saying “we were the better team home and away” which is the usual blinkers, but I do think we will recognise the threat they pose. But as I’ve said already this week and will say again tomorrow: we have to take our chances. We were better than them home and away last season – the numbers show that – but we have to be able to finish our dinner. I’m sure they’d love a repeat of last season at Villa Park and their rapid start, so hopefully Arteta will be reminding his team of that today and tomorrow pre-game.

Pundit and predictions-wise most of the mainstream sites are going with either a draw or an Arsenal win, which you’d expect given the expectation of us competing for the title, but as I’ll talk a little more about tomorrow, I am not as optimistic given the Emery hoodoo and the fact that Villa have shafted us a few times over the last few seasons. But we’re in good shape, we appear to have a relatively clean bill of health and hopefully after Arteta’s press conference this morning there will be a little more excitement about us potentially avenging what happened up there last season.

If you want some bonus reading, here’s an article on the official site with Ben White talking about last weekend and the ambitions for the team this season. I like his understated confidence when he talks of the capability of his teammates on obtaining perfection. Of course we all know it is unlikely, but the focus of these Arsenal players is something that you can hear in their words; White talked about how pre-season was a different vibe and it really feels as though these group of players have their game faces on for this season. They have to do it on the pitch, obviously, but it really does feel as though they are all very aligned in how they need to perform, behave, work together, to achieve the goals they set this season. It’s very exciting.

Right, that’s me done for the day, as I have a half day before heading off to Portugal to sit in the sun for a week. Have yourselves a lovely Friday and I’ll be back tomorrow for my usual ramblings.

Laters peeps.