Morning folks, how we all doing?

First things first, congrats to the Arsenal Women who yesterday overcame their first-leg 1-0 defeat to Hacken to win 4-0 and secure Champions League football this season. No more painful memories of last season and Eidevall also referenced that the squad has been built for Champions League football, so unlike last season where it meant some senior players didn’t get the minutes, this season there will be that opportunity for rotation and I’m sure he’ll use that this coming season.

On to the men’s side of things and today we’ll get an injury update from Arteta on a few players for tomorrow. The big question will be over David Raya and although Arteta won’t completely rule him out I don’t think (think about what he said about Odegaard ahead of the NLD when clearly he wasn’t going to make it), I suspect they are sweating on his fitness it seems. If they weren’t, I wonder if Arteta would really have taken that gamble on 16-year-old Jack Porter. It was lovely to see us play him, to get a good result and ultimately it was a happy day for all concerned with The Arsenal, but that’s a very unusual gamble that Mikel wouldn’t normally take, I don’t think. This is a guy who left it until Rob Holding’s position in central defence became untenable before he started playing newly signed Jakub Kiwior against Newcastle away a couple of season’s ago, rather than move Ben White out of position and find a solution at right back. He values consistency of position in certain instances and I suspect it would have been Raya in between the sticks if there was any chance that he could have – just to mitigate any risk.

And the fact we did that (play Porter) really does stick two fingers up to this notion that David Raya was feigning injury in the City game, that he was one of a number of players who employed these fabled ‘dark arts’ that we’ve heard so much about in the last week. And I have to tell you, my friend, that I feel like I’ve not seen such media coverage like this over the course of this working week. Perhaps I am just falling victim to the fact that I watch so much more Arsenal than any other team, that I absorb so much more content on Arsenal rather than football in general, but it really does feel like it has been ratcheted up a few notches this week – and this season – for that matter. Perhaps this is just modern day journalism; no news sells better than triggering news and perhaps if I was immersed in United’s stories and coverage there would a similar feeling of ire around the way United are treated. Perhaps if I was one of those horrendous Chelsea fans I’d be feeling like we get the rough end of the stick. Or, god forbid, I happened to be born in to an all-Scum flavoured family, I’d be bemoaning the referees, the way we are talked about in the media, the noises when a contentious decision doesn’t go our way?

I don’t know, but what I do know is that I do foray in to general football media chat and I don’t see the regular levels of campaigning that we seem to get at The Arsenal. Since Sunday, when just about every Man City player bemoaned us not playing them at their own game, on their territory, with a man less, a referee who has a little bit of a homer (not a ton, but he was), I have read that:

  • City feel that Arsenal employ the Dark arts
  • Many Premier League clubs have written about Arsenal employing the dark arts
  • Arsenal players feign injury
  • Arsenal players are naïve in their discipline
  • The referees are absolutely right in most of the decisions that we feel have gone against us
  • Haaland throwing the ball at the back of his head after the goal “is just a bit funny”
  • that ridiculous Scholes and Keane dinosaur chat about not liking the way that we play and it not being what champions do
  • Arteta being compared to Pulis, Allardyce et al.

Honestly, it really is quite staggering the levels in which everyone seems to be doubling down on Evil Ol’ Arsenal at the moment. We’ve had five Premier League games in which three of them have had some really contentious decisions (Mosquera choke slam, Rice red card/Joao Pedro ball kick away, Trossard red card/Doku ball kick away/Bernardo Silva holding on to the ball and dropping it further away from where the foul was committed, then City complaining it wasn’t taken in the right place – that’s literally the definition of preventing an opponent if they wanted that letter of the law applied, by the way). And yet, it feels like the knives are out for us.

It’s all very strange.

Perhaps we are just victims of the time and circumstance that we live in, because I repeatedly remember talking about the rotational fouling of City over a number of years that we were all aware of, yet it was described as ‘clever’. I have recalled countless times of journalists lauding a deep block performance as a ‘brilliant defensive display’ at The Emirates against us, despite scoring with their only chance. I have seen ‘Dark Arts’ with Bernardo Silva falling to the floor in the box with Granit Xhaka.

But what I haven’t seen is the level of media coverage we’ve had this week. Like I’ve already said, it’s just a bit strange, but perhaps it has more to do with the media trying to build up a ‘hatred rivalry’ between the two teams. I suspect the expectation is that it will be Arsenal challenging City for the title this season – despite Liverpool’s good start under Slot that I think makes them a third contender – and as a result, they need to spin up some narratives in an attempt to heighten the ‘entertainment’ levels. I will be interested to see the next time City employ certain tactics, whether the same accusations will be levelled. They won’t be. Not because the media love City  – I think everyone is still ambivalent towards them other than the fact they have 115 Charges hanging over them – but because I suspect their ‘Dark Arts’ will be in a game of lesser profile. If City players are timewasting, going down, rotational fouling, etc, etc, against a Forest, or a Newcastle, or a Leicester, for example, I suspect it doesn’t generate as much media coverage as what we’ve seen over the last week. Because that game last weekend would have easily have been the world’s most watched football match last weekend. So all eyeballs are on it and there is an opportunity to make narratives out of an occasion in which everyone will have seen.

This weekend we get back to the bread and butter though; a 3pmkick off at home to Leicester that will probably see Leicester use up as much time as possible on goal kicks, corners, throw ins, etc. Unless we score early. Then it won’t happen. So the challenge that Arteta and his team will face will be completely different and require a completely different game state. We have to be ready for it.

I’ll do more of a preview tomorrow, but for now, have yourselves a great Friday and I catch you on match day.

Later’s kids.