Well, well, well, it’s all kicking off in the Premier League courtroom now, isn’t it?

Yesterday as I was about to start cooking dinner after work I did my usual switch on of the TV in the kitchen, to see that the first skirmish between the Premier League and 115 Charges FC has concluded, with Sky Sports reporting that ‘both sides are claiming victory’. Cue the barrage of clearly partisan fan opinions flying all over the place on social media, as City Fans rejoice in a perceived win, whilst other fans try to understand what to make of the ruling yesterday – of which you can read all the details here. It’s a beast of a document and I’m not going to bother reading through each bit line by line and make notes because a) I’m not a legal professional and so I probably would miss stuff, b) I have better things to do in my life, and finally c) I ultimately don’t believe that anything will come out of this and the wider process of charging City for their misdemeanours.

What was interesting to see was where City have been recruiting their foot soldiers, in the form of journalists, maybe even where some clubs and the Premier League have been doing theirs. As soon as the findings for this first salvo were released, there was, inevitably, a slew of journalists with their fingers on the ‘publish’ button to give their two penneth worth, which ranged from more balanced and attempted neutral views, to the farcical Martin Samuel’s click baity “Unlawful, unlawful, unlawful, unfair, unfair, unreasonable, unreasonable. The seven conclusions of the arbitration panel make for sobering reading” – which I’m not linking too because I don’t want to be an accessory to this kind of nonsense. Some of these articles came out within minutes of the ruling; it’s almost as if some of these journo’s have been briefed by one side or the other…

The reality of this situation is that the panel decided City were right in a couple of instances, whereas the Premier League were right in the majority of their assertions, for which they mention here. What will happen next is the Premier League will re-write the rules in some cases and then it’s back you go to the courtroom to sort out the 115 Charges. And yes, it is still all of those charges, because this relates to City’s counter argument against the Premier League; they haven’t knocked down a bunch of those charges, they’ve just had their counter-argument heard (Dan Roan explains that in his BBC article here).

So where we are, it’s hard to tell, but where we could be after the 115 charges have concluded will have an unparalleled implication on the way this league is structured. It could open the floodgates for the likes of Newcastle to pump crazy levels of cash in, likes of which no club has ever seen, which obviously feels like it will impact the competitive edge of the division. There will be those fans who will argue that this happened before the billionaires and nation states all had their grubby mits on football, but never to this extent. Manchester United accumulated wealth through their commercial revenue brought on their success, Arsenal to a lesser extent, but Chelsea got theirs artificially through the Ambramovich era, as well as City through their Oil cash. The race to the morally bankrupt bottom was set in motion a long time ago, this ruling could just see how quickly it accumulates.

And all of this happens whilst we go in to an international window, which only amplifies the conversation, because so many fans like me just aren’t interested in the latest pointless international distraction, so we end up talking about this kind of rubbish. I hate it. It isn’t what football is about; football is about competition, it’s about sporting integrity and it’s about what goes on, on the pitch. This is anything but that.

What will be going on the pitch is these internationals and our latest unwelcome news (maybe) is that Kai Havertz has withdrawn from the Germany squad with knee problems. Gulp. Now, we can perhaps all talk about the old Fergie era ‘ he’s injured’ nonsense that used to go on, but I’m sure I’ve read on a couple of occasions that players do have to report for international duty unless they can provide evidence of their injury. We’ve seen that with Saka in the recent past where he’s reported and then been sent home. Obviously when it’s a flight involved it might be a little different; there might be dialogue with the Arsenal medical team and they provide them with information about the player that the medical team for the respective national team have to review before coming to the same conclusion. I just hope that there’s a little bit of artistic licence in this case, because we can’t really afford another injury to another key player in this Arsenal team.

The good news is that the noises are that it isn’t too serious and the fact Havertz was able to play the full 90+ minutes on Saturday has to be cause for positivity. But it’s still enough for us all to get a little nervous. That, in itself, is testament to the 16-odd months in which we’ve had Havertz. The German arrived at Arsenal with people like me saying “why are we signing a striker who doesn’t score goals, make assists, or even know what his best position is?”, started off looking like a player with his confidence smashed in to a million pieces, missing chances like that fresh-air swing against United that I still shudder over. That penalty goal he was given against Bournemouth last season was the beginning of the rehabilitation of his confidence and form, which culminated in his excellent end to the season which he has now carried over to this.

What we now have is a guy who is feeling the love, is banging in the goals (six this season including that brilliant strike last Saturday), talking like a man who is at ease and confident and somebody who, I think, as long as he stays injury-free, will bag 20 goals this season. He has six goals in 10 games already. I doubt he’ll maintain that ratio, but even if he just matches his goals-per-game ratio of last season, in which he averaged a goal every three-and-a-half games, if he plays the same number of matches as last season (51), he’ll get another 11 goals at least. That will notch him to 17 in all competitions which won’t be too bad a tally, but I’m deliberately being cautious because that factors in the start of the season last year in which he got one goal in his first 13 games for us. He also played as an attacking midfielder in all but one of those games, whereas he is now firmly established as our main centre forward. At the weekend he played right eight in the absence of Odegaard again, but as soon as Jesus had gone off and he was pushed back in to the centre forward spot, he scored our equaliser. If we can keep him centrally and up top, he’s going to get more than 11 goals for the rest of this season.

And that is massively positive for us. At a time in which we’re all a little concerned about Gabriel Jesus’ form and potential crisis of confidence, Havertz is doing the business, so hopefully this knock is something that can see him recovered for the trip to Bournemouth in a couple of weekend’s time.

Back tomorrow with some more ramblings. Catch you then.