I mentioned it yesterday, I’ve kind of bitched about it a couple of times since the draw was made, but for yet another year we kick off with what is a really tough home game to Man United, in amongst a really tough run of fixtures this January, all whilst missing a few of our gems in Saka and Nwaneri.

Arsenal are looking a little leggy right now, but I always remember Paul Mersin saying that he and his teammates never felt tired when they were winning. So today is Srteta’s approach to trot out his best team again, even though in the space of the next week we play three times against United, The Scum and Villa? Or does he rotate some of his team to balance the loading on players?

I don’t really personally know the answer on that one today. The Scum play bloody Tamworth today and so they will be like United are today – free to have a week off before they play us. We will have no such fortune and I suspect Arteta will go strong again, with perhaps one or two switches like Neto in for Raya. Neto hasn’t played a minute all season because of the fact he was cup tied again the League Cup, so I suspect Arteta might give him some minutes. I also think Arteta might play Calafiori instead of MLS. But other than that I think we get the same team wheeled out that played on Tuesday night. They’ve had five days between matches so hopefully that means we’re in a better shape from a fatigue perspective, plus those players who had illnesses are now hopefully recovered. So if this is a full strength side out there today (The above plus Saliba, Gabriel, Timber, Rice, Partey, Ødegaard, Havertz, Martinelli and probably Jesus) then there really can be no excuses.

Man United will come to us with little to lose, I suspect, their form this season has been shoddy, but that draw at Anfield will have given them a new lease of life. That’s because it wasn’t a scabby one born out of skanking goals with their only two attempts, but by creating chances and troubling Liverpool. What we have to do today is realise how good we are defensively and not look shaky at the back like we did against Newcastle. Isak is on monster form, but United’s main man Since Amorim arrived – Amad – will cause problems on our left hand side with his trickery. They’ll most likely also go for one of Hojland, Garnacho, Fernandes or Zirkzee in their front line up, with a back three which will include Yoro and Martinez, so they won’t look as makeshift as they did when they came to us in the league. The hope we need to have is that they remain open like in their previous four games before they played Liverpool, in which they lost all four, but I suspect Amorim will try to repeat the approach against us that he did when he’d just taken over. On that day it was for United to sit tight and compact, to try to flood the middle of the park and offer a bit of a mid-to-low block. He and the United analysts will have seen that we can be frustrated that way and so I think he’ll look at that as an opportunity to catch us out like Newcastle did.

With that in mind, we need to be quicker with our movement on the ball, because if the game pans out as I’m suspecting, I have a worry that we’re going to feel a little frustrated with United getting in their shape and wanting us to have the ball at walking pace in our half or the middle of the pitch. We have to be better in the final third and we have to take our big chances when they arise. We can’t afford 50p heads like we had in midweek from the likes of Timber and Havertz. They have to hit the target.

How ‘up for this’ are The Arsenal? I’m talking about everyone here, not just the players, because it feels like there might need to be times today that the home crowd make their fair share of noise. In the FA Cup, because of the away allocation, there will always be an element of a louder away crowd and United have 8,000 fans who have tickets today, so they’ll be boisterous from the off. That means we need to start quickly and quieten them down. If they get early encourage, be that through a goal, playing well, having more of the ball, etc, then the home fans need to respond by being louder. The League Cup game in midweek felt like a weird one and sometimes it is like that; many of the usual season ticket holders don’t go and it always feels a little more restrained. But in the Champions League and in the FA Cup in the past it has not felt like that, so I’m hoping there’s a bit more of a fervent atmosphere than there was in midweek. The players might just need that little bit extra.

It’s my last day in South Africa today having avoided work for three weeks, so I’ll be watching today in Johannesburg, before heading back and being in the ground for the visit of The Scum. My hope is that might flight back isn’t me feeling grumpy about back-to-back defeats. And there will be an answer to that at some point today, because as well as there being no VAR for this round, there is also no replays. The first of those facts is scary because the referees and their assistants are terrible enough as it is, but the second means that the possibility of extra time is the last thing we need ahead of going in to two really tough home games.

So win it in normal time, please, Arsenal.

Catch you all tomorrow for a debrief.