Morning Gooners, hope we’re all pumped for the start of our Champions League campaign, eh? Tonight should be an interesting one because we’ve had one English team nab three points in Italy in the shape of Liverpool at Milan on Tuesday, one Italian team nab a point at the Emptihad against 115 Charges FC last night (and De Bruyne was apparently subbed off at half time with a knock – don’t get your hopes up though, he’ll be fine on Sunday), so it’ll be interesting to see what happens in leg three of Serie A versus the Premier League with us against Atalanta in Bergamo.

The team news was positive in that Saka and Calafiori trained and I have a sneaky suspicion that both will start tonight) and are available, whilst Arteta gave a further, less positive, update on Odegaard. He didn’t put a specific timeframe on it – which you’d expect him not to – but he did say it was a ‘significant injury and that the Norwegian will be out for ‘a while’ which in itself is a worrying level of vagueness from the manager. I’ve seen some suggest that it might be three months, but I’m choosing to err on the side of caution, as well as physio’s who know a lot more about this stuff from me, with most of the people who have read words from the Norwegians and the Arsenal manager suggesting it might be around four to six weeks. Four week’s from today puts it at 17th October and on 10th and 13th October there are another batch of bloody pointless internationals, so that is at least a two-week period in which we won’t play any football. But I suspect the club will be looking at having him back and fully fit for November, which means he could miss anything between seven and nine matches in all competitions (including the League Cup). That’s a massive blow, but personally when I was reading a ‘minimum of three weeks’ from the Norwegian medical team, I’d kind of written him off until after the next international break anyway. So if we can get him back at any stage at the end of October, it feels like that’d be the best we can hope for.

In the meantime – including tonight – Arteta will need to find alternative solutions to what he admitted was a ‘massive’ blow for us. Martin is our Captain and leader and the creative spark in the team, who also forces the high and intensive press on many occasions, so we’ll have to find an alternative way of playing for the foreseeable future. And I don’t see it replicating the NLD approach each week either. That worked for that specific opponent and so even for tonight I don’t see us trying to do the same thing; in fact, I think even Arteta didn’t want us doing what we did against The Scum the whole time and I think he even referenced it post-game on Sunday too.

So, how might we line up tonight then?

I think we’ll see a few changes from Sunday as I suspect Arteta will be mindful that he won’t be able to play the same XI for all three games, so I am thinking he might go:

Raya

White   –   Saliba   –   Gabriel   –   Calafiori

Partey

Havertz   –   Rice

Saka   –   Jesus   –   Trossard

Here’s my thinking on that line up:

  1. Calafiori has trained, he looks fit, he’s back in Italy and he knows Atalanta well enough. He will also be bang up for this game to impress and I also suspect that Arteta will want to use Timber as our left back on Sunday and given he is still coming back from that ACL, it might be a risk to play him tonight and then have him at 100% on Sunday against 115 Charges FC.
  2. Jorginho and Partey was a tough call here, but I just have a feeling that these two are time-sharing their games in the next couple. Playing both given they are in their 30s is a risk because I think Arteta will be mindful that he will want both available for each match, so I have a gut feeling we might get a 60/30 or 70/20 from one tonight, then the reverse on Sunday. Arteta does like to play Jorginho in those big Premier League matches, but he will also be thinking about Jorginho back in Italy and wanting to impress. In the end, I think Arteta will probably go for Partey because he’ll see City as the bigger game of the two.
  3. I know there has been some talk about Nwaneri starting, he looked very composed on Sunday when coming on for Saka, but Havertz is such an ever-present that I just can’t help but feel that he will opt for him instead. Of course he could go Nwaneri in Odegaard’s position and then Havertz up top, but I feel like getting Jesus on Sunday just gone was the first step to giving him minutes, plus we know about Gabriel Jesus’s Champions League record – he loves it. Hence why I think Havertz will drop in and Jesus will come in up top.
  4. I’ve opted for Trossard ahead of Martinelli because I think Arteta will want Martinelli and his pace to hit City on the counter on Sunday. I also think that Havertz and Trossard rotating tonight could be a good blueprint to disrupt an Atalanta team who like to leave space and rely on 1v1 defending. That too could be a reason to use Martinelli isolated and in a foot race with an Atalanta defender or two, but I just have a feeling it might be Trossard.

I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on Atalanta, so if you want a little more intel you can read the piece on the official site here which goes in to a little more detail. What we do know is that Ademola Lookman is their rapid wide man who they will look to feed, although it looks like this season he has been playing centrally, so it will be interesting to see where they deploy him, because this lad Mateo Retegui has four goals in four games and so he’ll be feeling pretty confident tonight I reckon. They’ll play in the 3-4-2-1 and they will look to press us high, so being able to move the ball quickly around the press could be the difference maker today. Let’s hope we can do it.

I’ll be watching from the sofa tonight with hope and expectation. Let’s hope we can continue our winning ways because the confidence of three points tonight could be massive – especially when you think what is in store at the weekend.

Have a good one folks. If you fancy it I’ll be chatting with James on the Same Old Arsenal pod straight after the game here.

Otherwise, I’ll be back tomorrow for a debrief. Catch you then.