It’s Friday, we’ve barely had time to breathe post the NLD, yet Mikel Arteta goes in front of the press at some stage today (at the time of me penning this) to talk about tomorrow evening’s game against Villa – yet another ‘must win’.

Obviously looking ahead to that game is going to be the thing I focus on today, but before I do that, let’s just reflect on the ludicrous nature of some of the comments in the wake of the game on Wednesday and our first goal. We all know it came off Trossard and it was an error that led to us being given a corner. That’s not in dispute. But what is now suddenly a front-and-centre discussion about whether VAR should be able to intervene with these decisions. I’m sorry, but where was this energy when we’ve seen other such incidents? I have seen countless times where that has happened, yet we’re not given even a sniff of forensic analysis on it. At best there’s a cursory Match of the Day “shouldn’t have been a corner” (which they did to be fair) and that’s it. But when Arsenal are involved it’s a media story, so here we are. The reality is that the corner was taken a solid minute+ after the incident and the Scum should have dealt with Big Gabby better. End of story.

So then, right, let’s get on to Villa, who I see beat Everton in midweek to pick up their first win away from home since October. They’ve been pretty decent on their own patch but less so away, but to get a good feel for where they are at I did my usual snooping on some of their forums to see how they are feeling ahead of this one. As usual it’s a pretty partisan affair for a team that isn’t completely out of form and Villa certainly aren’t out of form, they’re just a bit patchy. When I looked earlier in the season they were very chirpy and last season both home and away they were too. They seem to be leaning in to the fact we played the NLD on Wednesday and that may have taken a lot out of us, which is fair enough, but I think personally that will give the team the kind of adrenaline boost we need.

In terms of what they think this game will go like – and I’m lumping it all together as a rough average based on multiple comments – they think it’ll be a pretty tough one and they’ll need to defend well and try to smash-and-grab us like they did last season. I think that’s fair enough. There’s not tons of smug and cocky Villa fans though like earlier in the season. They are a lot more mellow in their assessment. They apparently weren’t that great against Everton, created little in the second half other than the Watkins goal and Everton’s inability to finish cost them. Sounds a little familiar for us, even if you think about the game on Wednesday; we had a fair few missed chances to kill the Scum off and we didn’t. We’ll need to find more of that end product tomorrow if we want to stand a chance of putting real pressure on Liverpool come the end of the season.

That ability to kill off teams and get those goals will inevitably dominate today’s press conference and we’ll once again get the journo’s asking Arteta questions looking to tease out something more than he’s given them so far. I think to be fair to him on Wednesday night after the game he gave the biggest indication that the team are trying hard, so I suspect that will probably be the most we’ll get i.e. “we’re actively looking”. There were rumours yesterday Of Sesko, which died down almost as quickly as they arrived, then there has been a few murmurings on Vlahovic. I pondered on social media that I had a sneaky suspicion we might go for him given that Kolo Muani has now joined Juve as of yesterday, but when somebody gave me a heads up on the wages he is on (around £350k-per-week!), I think that deal becomes a non-starter. Not unless Juve get desperate in the latter stages of the window and nobody has offered any money for him. It’s a big ask to take on those wages for a player who hasn’t been banging in the goals this season and looks a little out of sorts by the sounds of it. There’s some rumours that he’s not the easiest character to deal with either, so unless we get some kind of last-minute Raheem Sterling-style offer from Arsenal to take him for the remainder of this season on £100k-per-week with no option to buy and Juve foot the bill for the rest of his salary, I just don’t see this becoming a thing. And if you think about the Sterling deal, Chelsea had booted him out of the squad and he was training alone, so we had a much stronger hand than we have in this instance. I suspect there might be some suitors willing to take a punt on Vlahovic, although how many that would pay that salary might narrow the field a bit, methinks.

Other than that there isn’t really loads to go on until Arteta has done his press conference. There were some rumours about Tomiyasu, White and Calafiori all in first team training this week, which is great. I suspect it’ll be a couple before they’re back and able to start for White and Tomi, but it’ll be interesting to see what Arteta says about Calafiori given MLS’ performances in recent days.

Do, I’ll leave it there and catch you both tomorrow. Have a good one folks.