Really tough one today, this. Tough because the margin for error basically feels zero. Tough because it’s away from home. Tough because of memories of injustice that linger from last season. Tough because Newcastle are a good team and, as I said yesterday, better than their league table position suggests. And tough because Jarred Gillett is once again on official duty for us as the VAR today (a reminder that there are 21 Select Group 1 referees {those able to officiate in the Premier League}, 30 Select Group 1 assistant referees, 20 Select Group 2 referees, and 33 Select Group 2 assistant referees – so quite why he’s now on his fourth game for us out of ten really does make you wonder…).

Arsenal players; don’t give him any excuse – even the most marginal of calls – to make a crap call. Because if he’s given the chance, he will.

But parking any potential conspiracies aside, let’s have a look at this game and what the manager’s said ahead of it, eh? Let’s start with The Arsenal, in which Arteta said Ben White was a question mark for today, but Gabriel should be fine if he trains. That is massive. The sight of him limping off last Sunday – coupled with the fact we’ve had injury after injury this season – made me think that we wouldn’t be seeing him on a pitch for quite some time. So the fact it wasn’t serious, the fact he has been cleared to train and the fact that a lot of the more respected journo’s out there are saying he’s likely to start, is huge. Timber too is back and fine after another 45 minutes in midweek.

So if Ben White made it through training yesterday that will mean we have a very strong back four to kick off the game. Which is good because we will need it. It looks like there’s a good chance Ben will make it too; there’s a video on the official site with the squad coming together for a minute silence and he is in it in his training gear. Odegaard is there too, so maybe we can’t read too much in to it, but I have my hopes.

If that’s the back four sorted (we hope), then the next question Mikel needs to consider is what he’s going to do with his midfield, because it is starting to feel like we’ve got some real options now at last. By my reckoning we have Partey, Rice, Merino, Nwaneri, Jorginho, Havertz/Trossard all as options for that midfield. I suspect it’s unlikely he’ll go with Nwaneri – even if he did play so well in midweek – and I think it’s fairly obvious Jorginho is further down the pecking order, so for me the decision is whether the Trossard/Havertz axis outweighs the possible desire to go Merino left eight, Rice right eight and Partey sitting deep. I think given the midfield we’re likely to be up against – Joelinton, Tonali and Bruno – physicality is the aim of the game today. That and winning duels. So I personally would go with Partey, Rice and Merino. Big players, physical players, duel winners. Then you stick Havertz up top and have him flanked by Saka and Martinelli to have a run at Hall and Livramento respectively. The hope is that we get space and joy with those guys, because if we do, then that’s why we might hurt them.

Two season’s ago we drew 0-0 at home to Newcastle in that game in which they dived, time wasted and generally employed more ‘dark arts’ than Arsenal have over the course of this whole season (nobody spoke about that from the media after the game though, eh?), their success was predicated on doubling and sometimes tripling up on Saka specifically, but on our left wing too. You have to assume they will do the same today when we have the ball, so the emphasis needs to be on moving it quicker and if Saka is going to have that kind of attention, then other players need to be ready and near him so he isn’t isolated. Three players marking your right winger means you’ve got three players not somewhere else on the pitch, which creates space. Arsenal need to know and exploit that.

Newcastle will threaten us through Isak and Gordon, both of whom I think are quality players and can take chances if afforded them, so Ben White and Saliba will have their work cut out with Gordon and Gabriel/Saliba need to win the battle with Isak. Of course they have other players like Barnes and if he plays wide left then Gordon will move right and it’ll be Timber who needs to have his number. Barnes is a quality player too so it feels like it’s shaping up to be a midfield battle, with Newcastle’s answers coming from that front three. In response, our front three have to show their quality and deliver some end product. That wasn’t something we were able to do last season and it was a really poor game from The Arsenal overall. My hope is that we give a better account of ourselves because last season they just shut us down by stopping us in build up from the back and if I remember rightly we only had one or two shots on goal in the whole game. We have slightly different personnel this time around and hopefully that physicality (Partey instead of Jorginho, Havertz playing up top to put a duel winner in Merino in to the midfield, for example) can serve us better than last season.

As usual it’s a mixed bag with the pundits; Sutton’s going for a 1-1, Sports Mole is saying 2-1 us, Merse is backing us for a 2-1, Goal has gone for Arsenal to win but not predicted the score and Jones Knows on Sky has gone 1-0 to The Arsenal too. So the general consensus is us, with a few outliers. I can understand that; Newcastle haven’t won in their last five, they have a few key defensive players out, they haven’t been scoring too much but also haven’t been conceding, so this has all the hallmarks of a low scoring affair I suspect. Let’s just hope that we get that first goal, because it may open up Newcastle a bit.

This will be tough, it will be a bruising lunchtime encounter, but i’m crossing everything that we get the job done. We probably need to, because a defeat and we’re probably staring down the barrel of outsiders looking in on the title race. But let’s not end my musings today on negativity, because a win for The Arsenal, and suddenly things are looking very rosy indeed.

Catch you all tomorrow.