What a weird ol’ transfer deadline day that was yesterday, eh?

I am with a couple of friends and The Management in Portugal for our last day today and yesterday my mate Paul – who isn’t in to football at all, was asking me about Transfer Deadline Day and why clubs leave it to the last minute. He was baffled that these big organisations worth billions of pounds and moving money around for players like it’s flicking pennies in to a fountain and as I explained the weird phenomena that TDD is, even I started to think that in any other walk of life this way of doing business is just a bit mental.

Arsenal love a deadline day signing though. We can go back almost every year to see that we do something in the window. Whether it was Thomas Partey, Jorginho, Takehiro Tomiyasu, Mesut Ozil, or even Mikel Arteta himself, our club is infatuated with leaving it until the last seconds and yesterday was no different. TDD is also a day in which anything you think could happen, might happen, with the Sterling loan deal a classic example. This time yesterday I was on here tapping away saying I just didn’t see it as a ‘thing’. Yet here we are 24 hours later and Sterling will most likely be on the pitch before the Brighton game waving to the fans as he’s presented as one of our latest loan deals. He joins on what we have to say is a pretty good deal for the club; no fee, experience, with Arsenal contributing anything up to half his wages or less, if you read the noises from journos.

And what with Neto joining, Eddie and Reiss leaving and Ramsdale also gone, the squad is looking pretty decently balanced I think. Eddie wasn’t really playing, neither was Fabio or Smith Rowe, so Sterling comes in and can operate across the front three. It’s the cover we need and with Gabriel Jesus also out, we have a little more depth from an experienced player.

On a little less positive note, and as we turn our attention to today, the team news isn’t as great. Mikel was in front of the press yesterday and he confirmed for today’s home game against Brighton that Mikel Merino had suffered an injury in his first training session and has a fracture to his shoulder. The club haven’t confirmed the length of the injury, but the talk is that it’s around six to eight weeks out and this means we are a little light already in some positions. Takehiro Tomiyasu is out with no return date given to us, Merino could be six to eight weeks, we have no Gabriel Jesus and Sterling wasn’t signed in time to be added to the match day squad. We’ve lost Eddie and also Reiss Nelson and although they haven’t really played any real minutes to date this season, they were still options that Mikel can’t call on now.

So how does the match day squad look like today then? Let’s start with a probable line up:

Raya

White   –   Saliba   –   Gabriel   –   Timber

Partey

Odegaard   –   Rice

Saka   –   Havertz   –   Trossard

I’ve gone with one change from Villa because I think Timber did well enough to keep his place ahead of Zinchenko, but Trossard made a big difference so I think Arteta picks him this lunchtime. That means our bench is made up of:

  • Neto (we signed earlier in the deadline yesterday so he’s available to start)
  • Zinchenko
  • Kiwior
  • Calafiori
  • Jorginho
  • Nwaneri
  • Martinelli

That’s a pretty decent bench and then the next time we play after the international break against The Scum, Sterling will be in there to give you eight first team options. But you can still have up to nine on the bench and make five subs, so there will most likely be a youth team player on that bench to make up the numbers. Perhaps that’s a Lewis-Skelly? That seems the most likely introduction. Then I would imagine Arteta is looking for that North London Derby match in which Gabriel Jesus could be back, maybe the week after against City, but what it does show you is that any more injuries to first team players in certain positions and we are looking very light indeed. We’re relying on a few players to stay fit for an extended period of time and with even more Champions League games wedged in this side of Christmas, this is going to be quite the challenge if we start picking up any more knocks or suspensions.

But for now and for today, let’s have a quick look at a Brighton team that come to us with bags of confidence. They have two wins out of two, they bagged a late winner against United last weekend and they have a pretty good record in recent years at The Emirates. Under Fabian Hürzeler they are looking to continue the evolution of his predecessors De Zerbi and Graham Potter and already we know that he brings a similar possession-based, high press approach. Arsenal need to be ready for that and they also need to be ready for their key man Joao Pedro, who bagged the winner last weekend too. He got all of his 20 goals from inside the box last season, he will look to pop up in those spaces and with the likes of Mitoma back to fitness and having tormented Ben White two season’s ago, we have to be super wary of the threat their forward line will play with their counter attacking in turnovers and transition.

What we need to do is try to recreate what happened last season, where we completely smothered Brighton in the first half and I remember talking about it post game and the next day on here about how it felt like Arteta’s ‘perfect’ football match; we scored two goals in the first half, we dominated the ball, the territory, offered Brighton basically nothing and it ended up being a pretty routine win. I don’t see that happening today, as much as I’d like to. But we do have the players to control the match, we do have a team starting to find their grove and after last weekend’s win away at Villa, these Arsenal players will be laser-focused on getting three points. We need it, because the ‘death run’ continues after the international break with two of the hardest games of the season. We have to go in to that with maximum points, because I suspect we will drop some in at least one of those matches.

Today needs to be all eyes on Brighton though – go get the job done Arsenal.

Catch you all tomorrow for a blog and the Same Old Arsenal podcast at 9.30am.