As we approach the first of four away games in a row, Arteta will have his thinking cap on today on who and how to deploy his resources for the next two weeks because, without sounding overly dramatic, I think this next couple of week’s will shape our season.

Tomorrow night maybe less so, although I did have an interesting conversation with Kevin who I went to the football with at the weekend; he was making a case for winning the League cup as a way of spearheading a season to glory. The case in favour was predicated on the fact that when Pep won a bunch of them a few season’s back, City used that as a platform to go on and win things in that same season. It’s an early cup final in February and what that means is that by winning it you get the boost of having a trophy and momentum of the players feeling rather good about themselves.

I kind of get it and sure, City have used that to further add to their haul, but they’ve also had deeper squads that could have £100million players on the bench, plus I think on many occasions you have to have a little bit of luck at the right moment in terms of your opponents. Take tomorrow for example, in which we play a Preston side in 16th, not exactly ripping up trees, but are still a Championship side. I’m not sure whether they’ll play a fully fit squad but if they don’t, then you’d really fancy our chances and a good draw in the next round if we were to get through, then suddenly you’re starting to think like Kevin suggested. But given what lies in wait in terms of Newcastle away and Chelsea away, I think Arteta would be mad to do anything other than just completely rotate the shizzle out of this side tomorrow night. There would be absolutely no merit whatsoever in playing any player who will feature more regularly over the next couple of weeks.

The only case I can make would be David Raya – as he’s the ‘keeper and so fatigue is less of an issue – or maybe somebody like Kiwior, who hasn’t played very much and so giving him game time if Big Gabi isn’t back for this coming weekend, could be good for him getting his ‘feels’ back for first team football.

Arteta will have his press conference today and give us his thoughts and tomorrow I’ll try my darnedest to pick an almost completely rotated XI so we have a fully fresh squad for Saturday.

What is interesting is that Newcastle are at home to Chelsea, so if Eddie Howe plays a more full strength side in the competition because he fancies getting to the deeper rounds of it, then that might be beneficial to us. Hopefully he really goes for it tomorrow and we have players at home with their feet up who will play, so maybe there could be a bit more fatigue in those Geordie legs than ours.

One player we will all be sweating on is Big Gabi and by the looks of his Instagram post (something we briefly talked about on the Same Old Arsenal pod yesterday evening when digesting the Liverpool game) he is a little more optimistic about the diagnosis. Being no medical expert I’m not going to conclude anything with any real certainty, but if this is just a knock he can shake off within a week so that he is ready for Saturday, then that will be a huge boost. We may or may not get any hints from Arteta today, but regardless if there’s even a slight chance that he has any kind of knock, it just wouldn’t be worth it. I said yesterday on the pod that I thought Kiwior did well and I stand by that. Of course he and Lewis-Skelly got caught out for the Liverpool goal at the weekend, but this is one of the best attacks in the league who have been flying and that moment aside, I thought both players did well on the night. I also seem to recall that it was two or three season’s ago that Kiwior came in at St James’ Park and had an excellent game in central defence and I think some of the hand-ringing that we’ve seen on him from Arsenal fans is a little harsh, personally. Let’s not forget that he’s barely played as a centre half, he’s not been able to build any kind of rhythm – which is massive for elite footballers – and when he did get a run of games last season, he came in and was very good at left back for a number of games. If there is any doubt about Gabriel being not 100% on Saturday I think Arteta should have no problems in giving him minutes from the start as our left centre half.

Elsewhere there was the Ballon D’Or awards last night and honestly, I really couldn’t give two sh*ts about something like that. Individual awards in a team sport are pointless and having a top 30 or top 50 count down as they have makes even more ‘meh’. The fact that Real Madrid threw their toys out of the pram because one of their players didn’t win is kind of funny and the sort of weird thing you get from clubs like that. The reality is that it doesn’t mean anything and in a week’s time nobody is going to talk about the Ballon D’Or award.

There’s one other piece that I’ve seen with Merino saying that we will never give up on the title after the 2-2 draw. I get it, I love the mentality, of course you have to keep on fighting, but if we lose the next two league games, that game will most likely be more than 10 points and that in the era of Man City and Liverpool probably winning their next two games, feels like a step too far. I kinda don’t want to delve too deep into this just yet though, because it feels like it might be something for the build up to the weekend, or even in the fallout if it all goes horribly wrong for us. Stay positive though now, chris, stay positive.

back tomorrow for a match preview.