All eyes will be on London Colney this morning as we all collectively pray for some happy news from Mikel’s press conference. We won’t of course get anything concrete, but that doesn’t stop us getting all hopeful and slightly frustrated when he goes all cryptic, as he always does. It’s not like when players are out he is a little reserved in what he says; even when players are 100% out he doesn’t rule them out, so we won’t know for sure about Saka until Sunday, like I said yesterday. Odegaard I suspect we’ll just get more wishy-washy ‘soon’ type responses, but given he hasn’t been in any match day squads and given there isn’t any pictures of him back in first team training. If we’re lucky we might get him travelling up to Newcastle with us to be in the squad, but I think that’s the best we could hope for.

The Norwegian boss has come out this week and said that he expects him to be back for the next international break, which is partially good news, but there is part of me that wishes we had the power to say “you broke him last time, you don’t get to have him this time” but I know it doesn’t work like that. I hadn’t paid attention to the quotes from Arteta from a week ago though, which you can see here and which would suggest that this week he might have been training with the ball and on the pitches. He’s been out for about seven weeks, since 9th September, so his fitness will need to be built up and I therefore suspect even a place on the bench for this weekend is probably too much of an ask, but assuming Arteta is correct in what he said last Friday, I think that Newcastle game and the matchday squad will be his target.

And as we await the news from both managers, I’ve started to have a snoop around other fan platforms to see what the vibe is from their fans ahead of this game, because from the outside looking in you’d see 11 wins out of 12 in all competitions and the expectation to be that they will be exceedingly bullish about their chances against us on Sunday. When you couple their form with our injuries and absentees, they’ve every right to be getting ‘all the feels’ for this weekend. It’s not as unequivocal as I would have thought though. They are all obviously optimistic, as you’d probably expect if you were a Liverpool fan going on to Arsenal forums looking at us, but by-and-large they know we are a good side, they are away from home, plus whilst they have a lot of good attacking options and certainly more than us given injuries, etc, they know that it won’t be a walk in the park.

The ‘pundits are pretty split too. Neville going for us, Keane going for a draw, Scholes going for a Liverpool win, Merse is saying a 1-1 draw, Sky Sports’ ‘Jones knows’ is saying a 1-1 and Sutton on the BBC has gone for 1-0 Liverpool. So it’s a slightly weighted in Liverpool’s favour game, which you’d expect given the current situation of both teams.

What I’m taking solace in is that Mikel Arteta knows how to set a team up with a game plan when in adversity and despite the problems we have, we’re at home, plus his bullish response of “we will be flying” after the Shaktar game gives me hope that this will be an Arsenal team massively up for this. The start to this season has felt very ‘bitty’ and as a result I’m thinking that we do need some kind of jump start. Who knows, this might just be it; certainly that’s what we’re all thinking ahead of this game.

From a numbers point of view Liverpool have been looking a lot more solid defensively, only conceding three all season, but a lot of that has to do with the games. They’ve played a lot of teams you’d expect mid-to-lower end of the table and have had I think the second easiest run of all teams in the league, I read yesterday. So that colours the analysis a little bit, kind of like ours and the fact we’ve played 40% of our matches whilst a man down for large parts. Liverpool do give up chances though; if you look at the number of saves their ‘keeper has made, they’ve made the seventh fewest. We are in mid table because we’ve played tough away games and game state has meant we’ve been under the kosh because of a man less disadvantage, so I’m choosing to take comfort in the fact that Liverpool give up chances. They also have a midfield that you wouldn’t exactly say is dominant; Arteta will be wanting his team to control the middle of the pitch for sure.

Liverpool are a bit of a hybrid evolution under Slot compared to Klopp; they still attempt those long switches, so we will need to be mindful of that, but they also have a slightly less rapid build up like in previous seasons – they do hit you in transition but they’re a little more methodical in their build up than in previous seasons.

It’s going to be a fascinating match and I’m looking forward to the build up. Even if come Sunday I’ll be a bag of nerves and my usual pessimism will be kicking in no doubt.

Catch you all tomorrow for a post-press conference debrief. Have a good one, peeps.