Decided to put the United v the Scum game on last night as I was cooking a roast dinner. Kind of wish I hadn’t bothered, because it was ruined by a red card that effectively stopped it being too much of a ding dong game. At first I thought Fernandez was a bit reckless with his lunge, but after watching him slip, you could argue that he was unfortunate. I’m not minded to give United any sympathy though; under Ten Haag it’s unsure what sort of side they are and hopefully he can bungle his way through this season with them in mid table, which would be funny.

As for them, well, it’s kind of hard to judge after a game like that. Hopefully they can drop a few more points in the coming weeks so we avoid having to talk too much about them this season and they can fight for a sop six to four spot.

As for us, the news that emerged yesterday was rumours of a Calafiori injury that he sustained when Trossard scored his late goal on Saturday. The video I’m sure you’ve seen by now is when the players were celebrating he appeared to go down in pain and there are some suggestions it was his hamstring, but then I’ve seen some people this morning talking about jarring his knee in a headed challenge with Eduoard, in which he apparently then came off crying. That’s a worry. This is a guy who suffered a horrible knee injury in 2018 and in the lead up to us signing him in the summer, there was much talk about the fact he’s had a few injury worries in his time. He seemed to have recovered last season and only missed a couple of games for Bologna, but the fact that he’s already missed 11 days this season with a calf injury (sustained on international duty and to be fair, it was a bit of a freak one), should have us asking a few questions.

I had another look at his injury history, particularly in the knee, but there isn’t too much info on TransferMarkt. There’s a lot of ‘unknown injury’ stuff in 2022/23 and well as 2021/22, in which he missed 16 games for FC Basel and then eight games for Genoa and Roma respectively. He also missed 33 games in 2020/21 for Roma over the COVID season and when you start to see that all laid out before you, you start to worry for the 22-year-old. We all might have thought it at the time of signing, but that injury record is a real worry and if he’s picked up another one already, it will be frustrating for him, for us and for the Arsenal team.

He’s already looking like such a Rolls Royce of a player too. He covers ground, he has a goal to his name, he’s athletic and he is a decent defender. He’s got aerial prowess too and if he’s going to be one of those guys in which we’re going to suffer because he can’t stay fit, that will be a shame. Perhaps it’s early days, perhaps it’s just a knock he can shake off, but the rumours of him coming off with a tear in his eyes don’t sound promising.

Arteta is still without Zinchenko, plus Tomiyasu has only just started back training, so for PSG tomorrow we might end up reverting back to Timber and White as our full backs. That’s a pretty decent fall back option given that in theory we could have three players who can play left back not available for us (four if you count Tierney). And yet we still have those options in Timber or even Lewis-Skelly, who looked impressive against Bolton and did a pretty good cameo the weekend before coming on in the dying minutes against City. At times I do wonder why we’ve got such depth in the full back positions, but then when I realise about some of the injury prone players we have, I kind of realise why. But not only that, because it’s also the importance of the modern-day fullback that the likes of Pep and Arteta place on their full backs, because I suspect Arteta views that position as arguably the most important in his team.

If you think about the way we play, how we like to make the pitch as wide as possible with our wide forwards, then the importance of removing the opportunity of opposition players from doubling up on the likes of Saka, Martinelli, Trossard et al, the role of the full backs is integral. Saka gets more space when White overlaps. Zinchenko has shown us that full backs can create more bodies and control space in the middle of the park by overloading, Timber and Tomiyasu have shown us that being a duel monster and winning individual battles is important when you’re set in your defensive shape and being attack on, plus at the weekend the Dutchman also showed how they play a vital role in goals too, as he bagged an assist for the cut back which Martinelli swept home to make it 1-0. The modern day fullback is a swiss-army knife position that needs to be versatile, can operate in multiple sections of the pitch, is covering a lot of ground and has to be everywhere. Calafiori has looked like he can do all of the above things and do it as a big lad as well, so he wins aerial duels too, so if he’s out injured for any length of time it’ll be another blow for us.

It’ll also be another player that we’ve had missing this season and I think arguably we’ve been hit with more injuries than any of our rivals by a mile so far. I’ve just had a look at TransferMarkt and if you count first team players (i.e. likely to play some part – either as a sub or a starter if they were fit) this season alone, we’ve had a total of 23 ‘absences’ (one player, missing for one game, is one ‘absence’) in just six matches. Man City have had 18, Liverpool have had 11, The Scum have had 17, Villa have had 18. So that’s City and Villa who have had the closest to volume as us, but theirs is still five worse than we’ve had already – just six matches in to the Premier League season.

What that does say to me, however, is just how strong our squad is, because despite more injuries and absences than anyone else of the big clubs, we’re still able to compete and we’ve been able to do it with the toughest fixture list as well. That’s impressive and shows our depth. Let’s just hope any potential injury to Calafiori isn’t serious though, because he’s just started to look like a player who will make his mark on the team, so it would be a shame to have him missing for any prolonged period of time.

Anyway, I’ll leave it there for today, because we’ve got PSG on the horizon and Arteta will no doubt be talking to the press today ahead of a home game that we really need to be getting three points in against the French Champions tomorrow evening.

Back tomorrow with some pre match thoughts.