Ok so it looks like Rice is safe from injury, following playing (and scoring) last night in the England game against Finland. I didn’t bother watching it, I wasn’t interested in it, I’ve just checked in to see the score and see some of the goals and Rice’s one was a classic lung-buster from our midfield engine maestro. It happened in the 84th minute too, so that suggests that he’s getting up to speed and building his confidence, which is always good.

Last season we were all blown away by Rice and how much he impacted our team; his engine, his ability to win the ball whilst still on his feet, his strength and positional awareness, as well as his ability to chip in with goals and some assists too (his best ever tally in his career as well with 15 goals and assists in all competitions – by some distance actually). He quickly became an integral player and was up for one of our players of the season. This season I’ve noted that a few of us fans have wondered when he’ll be recapturing some of his form, because he’s not been as scintillating as he was when he arrived last season. But I do also think that Arteta is the kind of manager who is always adapting and evolving his team to stay one step ahead of opponents. I read an interesting piece from Billy Carpenter yesterday talking about the evolution of Arteta’s full backs during his time. The piece itself is brilliant and Billy often writes some really fascinating in-depth pieces on specific tactical part of Arsenal’s play, but what I think this piece shows is how the players themselves are constantly having to change their approach to matches.

In today’s game there is so much data, analysts observing every square inch of the pitch, people looking at every minute detail and marginal gain, that at the elite level of the sport there isn’t a lot that other teams don’t know about each other. They all have their own team of analysts at every Premier League club, they will all be looking at tactical differences in their games and how to neutralise each opponent each week, that if you don’t constantly evolve and iterate your team, you’ll end up quickly falling behind. We saw how Zinchenko rocked our world with the inverted full back role and it caught teams out for about four or five months. But by the time the end of that first season with Zinchenko was drawing to a conclusion, teams had worked out what we were doing and there was some adaptation they were able to deliver to force us to have to try different things too.

We still invert our full backs, but as Billy’s article more eloquently puts it than I ever could, there are even more nuances to the way we build up these days compared to a few season’s ago. I think from a simpleton fans view like myself, I’m just pleased we have Arteta willing to keep evolving so that we can remain competitive and towards the top of the league. I also wonder if it is because of this that we maybe haven’t seen the absolute peak of Rice just yet; he’s having to adapt his game and change things as Arsenal evolve and Arteta asks him to do slightly different things.

There is probably also something in there about the fact we’ve had so many injuries and suspensions, that the team is having to evolve and learn this stuff on the job, whilst also having to do it with different playing partners each time, which of course impacts those famous automisms that Big Per used to talk about all those years ago.

So Rice will be heading back today and that means he’ll be back and training at Colney by tomorrow/Wednesday at the latest, which is good. It is also good that Carsley confirmed that the injury sustained to Saka isn’t a big one and that he might have even been ‘close’ to play yesterday, but he went back to Arsenal for treatment, which hopefully means he can rest up for a few days and be ready for Bournemouth next Saturday evening. That was one that we’ve all been sweating on a bit and with our luck so far this season on the injury front, I think there’s a fair few of us who might have thought the worst.

So hopefully Saka is back, which means that tonight we have eyes on Trossard and Saliba for this evening, as they face off in Belgium, as well as Calafiori playing for Italy at home to Israel. Timber will line up for a (thankfully) Havertz-less Germany as well, so from tomorrow we’ll hopefully know a bit more about the extent of any damage done during this international break. Raya will most likely start tomorrow at home for Serbia but (hoping I don’t jinx this as I say it) there’s always a little less risk on ‘keeper injury than outfield players, so fingers crossed we get some good news. The only other bits we’ll be sweating on with be the Gabby’s in Brazil, who play 1.45am UK time on Wednesday morning. That means – like the last round of these games – that they won’t be getting on a plane until Thursday UK time and probably even when Arteta takes to the mic on Friday morning for his usual pre game press conference, he won’t have much of an update on them because he won’t have seen much of them.

So we continue to remain a little bit in limbo at the moment, which is frustrating, but I guess it is what it is right now. I’d love to say we have these games then we can forget about them for a while, but there’s another one of these effing international breaks one month from today, so we won’t be able to put some distance in between them and the next ones until after that break in mid-November.

And so we wait. That’s what we do.

Until tomorrow peeps. Have yourselves a good one.