Mikel Arteta will take to the stage today at London Colney for his pre match presser at some stage this Friday and ahead of that I thought I’d take a look at who we’re up against tomorrow, in the shape of a newly promoted Southampton side, with a very familiar face about them in between the sticks.

Yep, we’ll be welcoming Aaron Ramsdale back to The Emirates, not long after he was already here warming our bench. He left the club just over a month ago and so it’ll be a little weird for him to be in Southampton colours tomorrow, but he’ll get a good reception from us, of that I have no doubt whatsoever. He won our hearts with his performances, this was bolstered by the All or Nothing documentary, plus some superb performances like Leicester away a couple of season’s back, but Raya’s ability with the ball at his feet was Ramsdale’s downfall and the result is that he’s not in different colours in North London tomorrow.

I know it’s for the best for him, that Raya is proving this season it is the best for us, but I’m still a little sad that it didn’t work out. I’ve seen a lot of people question his time at Arsenal towards the end and how he was a little shaky, but I’ll have to be honest and say I still didn’t see too much between the two ‘keepers last season. I’m also a little surprised that it was Southampton that picked him up; especially as I reckon I could name about 10 goalkeepers in the Premier League right now who aren’t better than Ramsdale. But perhaps that was his best option from a team willing to fork out the cash and the outcome is that, at this rate, he might be facing another relegation unless Russell Martin manages to turn things around sooner rather than later.

The odds aren’t exactly with him and Southampton though. They are second favourites to go down behind Leicester, they currently sit second from bottom having drawn one and lost five of their opening six, having also conceded 12 goals and scored three. They are the lowest scorers in the league at this early stage and I watched most of their game against United a few week’s ago, thinking that I could see why that was. They actually started really brightly in that game, created a few chances, but couldn’t put them away, even missing a penalty before United eventually took the lead.

They’ve had defeats away to Newcastle (who had ten men), at home to Forest, away to Brentford, the United game I mentioned and also away to Bournemouth on Monday this week, in which they were pretty soundly beaten and conceded some good goals, but some that Ramsdale himself wouldn’t have been happy about the defending in front of him. Their solitary point has been at home to Ipswich in injury time, so things aren’t exactly looking peachy on the south coast.

Their numbers aren’t the worst in the world though and you will have probably have heard – like me – of their playing style and desire under Martin to be a possession-based side. Their xG puts them in 12th in the table, so they are creating decent scoring chances, whilst their xG allowed has them 16th. At this early stage of the season these kinds of numbers can be a little misleading, for example Arsenal’s xG puts us sixth but we’ve had a hard start to the season and red cards, whereas our xG allowed puts us seventh because of the City and Brighton games (again, because we were down to ten men for a large chunk of both matches). So you do have to probably take some of these surface-level stats with a pinch of salt, but when you look at some of the other stats where the big volumes can start to stack up already – like passing or carrying the ball – Southampton are in the top half of the table.

This gives us an idea – as well as the eye test if you’ve watched any of their games this season – on what we’re going to come up against. We’re going to play a team who wants to play short passes (they attempt and complete the second most between 5 – 15 yards in the whole league), will avoid the long ball (they play the lowest in the league – we’re just behind them), plus they won’t go in to wide positions and look to cross the ball in ‘to the big man’ (They have the third lowest in the whole league behind Forest and Chelsea). Looking at the numbers it looks like they try to win the ball in the middle third of the pitch, rather than pressing really high, and they’re certainly not a low-block side. Whether Martin changes that tomorrow will be interesting to see, because this will be the first away game in which they’ve faced one of the supposed ‘bigger’ sides in the league; not just physically, but also in terms of expectations. They played Newcastle away, but they played 60+ minutes against 10 men, so that isn’t really a good comparator. They played United, but that was at home and you’d expect them to be more aggressive, so again I don’t think that’s a comparator either. So this will be a game in which I’d love to be a fly-on-the-wall of the Southampton coaching staff debrief on their game plan they’ll do today on how to address our strengths tomorrow.

Are they going to try ton dominate possession at The Emirates? Are they going to play further up the pitch and give us space? Last season Martin had a Southampton side that was aggressive and pressed hard. They covered a lot of ball and their off-the-ball press won them a lot of games and got them promoted. But they are up against another team who presses – arguably if you believe the words of coaches like Luis Enrique – the best in Europe. So expect this one to be a match in which the ball is moving quickly and both teams are chasing down everything. Could that lead to errors in Southampton’s game? Let’s hope so.

For us it will be about how we move the ball and the Southampton team around. A team that works hard off the ball might also be able to be moved around a bit, but the Arsenal players will have to be quick; I’m thinking one-touch football here. Get that right, get it accurate, and we’ll get spaces.

Now all we need to know – which as we know we won’t get from Arteta – is who is fit to play and whether there will be any hints of rotation tomorrow. It’s an international break (again FFS) afterwards so does Arteta rotate players from Tuesday? Or does he keep it as it is from midweek, given we’ve got another home game, less travel, as well as had an extra day to rest up ahead of this one?

We’ll find out tomorrow.

Catch you all then.