I’m reluctant to kick off today’s musings with a commentary that starts to make it’s way down the winding conspiracy theory road, but given I’ve seen a bit of chatter online about Michael Oliver’s decision to disallow a goal against City Group-owned Girona FC on Tuesday, then it has emerged he’s refereeing us again on Sunday, it’s obviously come to the attention of a few Arsenal fans. I suspect it was just his and his officials’ ineptitude that caused the controversy, rather than any kind of Machiavellian plot to award decisions to any team owned by the City Group, just because they paid him to go out and referee in Abu Dhabi.

But it does make me think about the pantomime of sports at times. Everyone needs a villain in a story, right, so Michael Oliver has been earmarked at that at the moment because of his decision last season not to send Kovacic off because “he doesn’t want to have a negative impact on the game by overreacting”, whilst this season having no problem with it for Trossard and that ridiculous red card he gave. Arsenal fans have suddenly become hyper sensitive to Michael Oliver in particular and it doesn’t help that he’ll have now refereed five of Arsenal’s last 15 games. I get that the game is on Sky TV, it’s the big one of the weekend, it’s the Sunday 4.30pm top billing, but the optics don’t exactly look great. When you add to it that Jarred Gillett has done two games of that 15, plus a bunch on VAR, it does feel a little odd that we seem to be getting the same people almost every week.

Again, I am not suggesting there is in fact an inherent bias or conspiracy here, although in the heat of the moment and a game of course the emotions run high and I’m sure you wouldn’t have to go far on my social media profiles to see me suggesting it at times. But that goes back to the whole ‘pantomime villain’ piece. Yesterday the Management and I went to a friends house in Richmond. When we left in the cab to go home, we got five minutes up the road before I realised I’d left my phone there. I was really annoyed. But I was even more annoyed because I had nobody to blame but myself. That is the most kind of annoyed because there is to mitigating factor. That’s kind of where we’ve been at this season with referees and injuries. It’s been a frustrating start to the season but we’ve had those mitigating factors and so it almost serves as a bit of an anaesthetic to the fact that we’re probably outsiders to challenge for the league this season. But the Newcastle game was just like me forgetting my phone; we had nobody to blame but ourselves.

But we’ve had enough of pantomime villains now. I think most of the Arsenal fans I speak to just want to see referees not be the centre of attention. Give fouls when there are fouls. Call dives when there are dives. Don’t re-referee games when they don’t need it and for god’s sake, stop booking/sending off players for pathetic and finnicky infringements. I don’t care if it is in our favour or not – just stop doing it. Let’s have a game where we only have ourselves to blame if we lose, or we can celebrate wildly when we win. I don’t want to see any more pantomime villains. We’ve done enough of that for a whole season already. Let’s get back to seeing how good this Arsenal team is.

Mikel Arteta is up in front of the cameras today for his press conference ahead of what could very well be a season-defining game for us. So what I’m hoping to see a man who sounds bullish ahead of this game. He’ll be asked about arresting some of the problems that the team has faced, about the clear dip in form at the moment and how they are going to overcome a Chelsea side who are in a decent run of form at the moment. Last night they battered a team named after a man who made a big boat. There are plenty of players who got on the scoresheet and so they will be buzzing in that dressing room ahead of this one. The mood after our defeat in Italy might have been different. But it is up to Arteta to lift is players and prepare themselves for what will be a really tough match on Sunday. We’ll need to know what the Rice situation is and I suspect we’ll get input on Odegaard. There’s no way he’s fit enough to start and I suspect the best we can hope for is 20 minutes at the end, but Arteta won’t be drawn on that too much I don’t think.

I wonder if he’ll also be asked about how he expects Chelsea to line up. I’ll do a bit of a ‘vibes check’ blog tomorrow, whilst also looking at Chelsea and how they might play, but early readings look like they will try to win the midfield battle and overload through central areas. They love to invert their fullbacks, which helps that overload, so we might see a congested part of the field on Sunday. Maybe that’ll be good for the likes of Saka and Martinelli, but it would be foolish of us to think that Maresca isn’t planning for their threat. They’ll have the freshness that we don’t as well, because their line up will almost exclusively be different from the team they fielded last night. Palmer, Jackson, Neto, Madueke, Caicedo, James, Colwill, Fofana Gusto, Cucurella, Sanchez – all of them have had a week off whilst we were out in Milan. So this feels like it’s already shaping up to be a tough game.

Arteta will need to find a solution.

But more thoughts on that tomorrow. For now I’ll say my farewells to you for another day and be back in the more for more ramblings.