With Mikel Arteta not due to have his presser ahead of the Forest game until 1.30pm today, I thought I’d go hunting around to find out a little bit about how our opponents have got on his season so far, as well as how their fans are feeling ahead of Nottingham Forest’s trip to The Emirates tomorrow afternoon.

On Forest, well, you only have to look at the stats to see how they are going to set up; this is a team built to ‘rope-a-dope’ on the counter. Think how Leicester City won the league way back when – That’s what Nuno Espirito Santo has been serving up in the first 11 Premier League matches of this season.

And it’s worked. They currently sit level on points with us, they’ve conceded two less goals than us, they have an in form striker in Chris Wood on eight goals and he is their target man who has been in surprisingly predatory form. He’s a big unit, we all know that and I’ve just watched his goals, which are a mixture of rebounded second shot, headed goals, penalties, but there are some smart finishes in there. Forest have certainly benefitted from his form and they’ve played five away games so far this season without tasting defeat, so if we’re going to win tomorrow, it’s going to need to be by doing something nobody else has so far. Their away games have been at Leicester, Chelsea, Brighton, Liverpool and Southampton and each has been a close affair, with the win at Leicester and draw at Brighton seeing more than one goal scored by either team. So Nuno clearly has his team set up to play deep, to sit in, then spring the traps.

And as I mentioned, the numbers support this. Forest have the second best defence in the league, most of their tackles they make are in their defensive third (they make the third least attempted tackles in the attacking third, so they aren’t a side that turns the ball over high up the pitch like we try to), they have the third least amount of touches of the ball in the league behind Ipswich and Everton and they launch the ball from their ‘keeper a lot. Behinf Brentford and Everton, Forest launch it from goalkeeper the most in the league.

They are also offside a lot, which says to me they have pacey players out wide (because it’s clearly not Chris Wood) who stay high and react to Forest’s ‘keepers launches. The blueprint for their game is there and we have to be ready for it tomorrow.

And to be fair it is clearly working. They beat Liverpool. They got a draw at Brighton. They’ve drawn away at Chelsea. This is a team that knows their roles, knows their strengths and is leaning in to them for sure. And their fans appear to be a bit split on this too. Lots of them going for a draw and a few predicting either side winning, but it isn’t an overwhelming majority expecting victory like when I travelled to the Villa or Scum forums. I think they know the threats we possess and they know exactly how they will set up, which will rely on us giving them few chances but them needing to take them. I’ve watched one video in which a guy talked about them needing to change because they are becoming predictable in the way they play. The guy I watched talked them up as a mid-block side, which is the type of sides we’ve struggled against this season and last, so that’s something to be mindful of. They have been relying on the likes of Hudson-Odoi, Gibbs-White and Elanga. Apparently he’s out of form at the moment but he’s got the most pace in their team so I don’t know whether they’d do that. What I think they will try to do is to replicate what they did with Liverpool at Anfield.

That’s perfectly feasible to be fair, because we only have to look at last season to show us that they are a threat on the counter. It was the most comfortable of 2-0 leads, which we looked to be cruising towards, before a corner we had broke down and immediately led to a swift counter which ended up with Awoniyi bagging a goal with eight minutes to go and leaving us going a little backs to the wall for the final minutes. Game state obviously dictated that one when the rest of the game we’d dominated in every single stat on the day, but that’s the beauty of the Premier League; it’s a league that feeds from emotion and that results in the kinds of swings and ebbs and flows that we saw after Forest halved the deficit.

I’ll talk tomorrow when we know the team sheet a little more and who might be available. Arteta won’t tell us, obviously, but you normally get an idea or a little hint in his facial expressions, or sometimes the odd little words he says, that gives you a bit of a hint as to how might be available.

I’m starting to get the nerves on this one, which I guess is healthy, because nobody wants to be overly complacent, but as I said on the socials yesterday, this HAS to be the start of a winning run. Another slip up tomorrow and it will 100% be curtains for any title challenge. City don’t slip up five times in a row and Liverpool are in the kind of form that they won’t be slipping up away to Southampton – not a chance in hell.

Time to step up, Arsenal.

Catch you all tomorrow for a pre match musing ahead of the game.