It kind of feels like an international break right now, doesn’t it, eh? There’s a bit of radio silence save for the odd snap of the team in Dubai, the players will all be flying back today so we’ll not get much content of interest other than them boarding the plane to head home, then after that we have another three days before any more Arsenal news filters through.

In the meantime we have the Merseyside derby taking place tomorrow evening and if I’m completely honest with you, I don’t hold out much hope, because I think a rested Liverpool are going to beat Everton. I don’t think it’ll be a battering (even though t the weekend and last week I’m pretty much sure I said it would), I think it might be tight, but Liverpool have fallen the right side of results for most of the season, so I don’t anticipate there being much change tomorrow evening either.

And so my mind is drawn to the realities of what we face when I start to think about the next six weeks that take us to the end of April. That’s how I tend to think of football seasons i.e. in small chunks; milestones, if you will. It’s just how my brain works; for my working life I break everything down into smaller component parts and so when I have a big task like writing as massive report, or proof reading a whitepaper, I tend to do it in small stages.

Just do chapters one to four today, then worry about five to ten by the end of the week.

And that’s where I am at the moment with the current set of fixtures. The last ‘block’ for me was January, which got extended to the Dubai trip after we were knocked out of the FA Cup. So the new block starts with Leicester away at the weekend and runs until the beginning of April. During that time we play five domestic games and two Champions League Round of 16 games. That’s seven games in seven weeks. It’s unfortunate that they are not spread out, but the FA Cup exit will afford the players a week again where there can be an emphasis on rest and recuperation at the beginning of March. There’s also a frigging international break in there too unfortunately, but hopefully we can convince the various international managers that our players have all developed horrendous bouts of 24-hour projectile vomiting and can’t possibly report for international duty when that call comes.

As for those seven games, I start to think about targets in these blocks, so what’s going through my mind at the moment is “how many points do we need for it to still be a title race in at least name?” I think for Arsenal it is obvious; we have to have 15 points from 15 and hope that somewhere along the lines Liverpool at least drop three points to keep the gap somewhat achievable. This weekend might be psychologically tough for the players though; Arsenal travel to Leicester knowing that Liverpool are giving Wolves an absolute tonking at home on the Sunday. So anything other than three points sends us effectively out of the league title race and turns it in to a Liverpool procession, because they’ll be 12 points clear and there’s no chance any team makes up that margin – even peak City.

So whilst the maths might be obvious, the gravity of what this Arsenal team has to do with all of the injuries we have, is taking shape.

After Leicester away it is West Ham at home. I’d hope that we’d be out for some revenge after what happened over the Christmas period last season. In between that time Liverpool go to Villa in the midweek, then they go to Man City at the weekend. We have to hope City have picked up their game by then, because as much as we don’t like them (or Villa for that matter), I think that is the week in which we are going to have to see dropped points for Liverpool. If Villa and City both pick up something against the Scousers and we’ve done our job against Leicester and then West Ham on that weekend they play City, then we could be looking at things getting interesting. For us our next game after West Ham comes after Liverpool have played City and they play Newcastle at home. I’d expect nothing from Newcastle from that game; it only seems to be us that they seem to have the hoodoo over; Liverpool have long done over Newcastle going back to the 90s. So we will have to make par against Forest by beating them, whilst Liverpool beat Newcastle at home. For us Forest is going to be super tough. Forest have proven to be a tough opposition, an impressively organised opposition, who have taken points off Liverpool home and away this season. They also smashed Brighton for seven in their last league game. A draw or defeat there and it probably will be all over for us, if we haven’t already dropped any points to Leicester or West Ham. That game then gives us a week off before the Champions League first leg but because we don’t know the opposition, I don’t think there’s much point in focusing on that just yet.

But if the chips fall for us, if we do finally get some luck and if Liverpool’s does finally run out (injuries, suspensions, I mean – there’s no doubt from a football point of view they have been excellent), then if at the beginning of April we’ve won our three and they’ve dropped points in at least two games, then perhaps we can start looking at the end of the season as a bit more of a shoot out and a chance of getting close to them to take it to the final weeks.

It’s still unlikely, I still don’t believe we’ve given ourselves enough runway in the form of the remaining games, but this current ‘block’ of matches will define our domestic Premier League campaign.

Let’s cross everything.

Catch you all tomorrow.