Morning campers, how we all doing?

Weird one, this one today, innit?

I mean, we have ourselves a match day, we have ourselves an Arsenal home game and we have ourselves a pressing need to probably at least win four of our last seven to be assured of the second spot in the Premier League. Each spot gives you just under £3million each in revenue and whilst that in itself is pretty small change for Arsenal, it’s probably something we want to do. Back in the old days it also meant you go straight into automatic qualification of the Champions League, but with this ghastly new format even the pain in the arse of finishing fourth is taken away. So I suppose all that really matters is that we finish in the top four. However, I have this weird desire to prove that we are in fact quite a bit of daylight between us and all of the other teams in the league aside from Liverpool. And we’ve done that against the backdrop of being the team with by far the total number of injuries in the squad this season, as evidenced here.

Finishing second against these odds would represent something of a success for Arteta and his beleaguered squad and if they manage to get past Real Madrid next week, it’ll also mean a semi final of the Champions League.

But as Arteta said yesterday, that all has to wait for now, because all of the focus has to be on getting over the line in the Premier League and winning those home games like Brentford today. Arteta said it’s going to require the best of us and certainly it’s going to require concentration, as Brentford will indeed look to hit us with long balls from deep, probably catch us in transition with their pacey wide-forwards Wissa and Mbueno, so we’ll need to have our full backs up for the challenge and scrap that it’ll be against two very good attackers.

I suspect Arteta sticks with Myles at left back, but in at right back I wonder if he’ll opt for Ben White. Ben didn’t play in midweek, he’ll be fresh, it means Jurrien can rotate and that is probably a good thing given where Madrid’s strengths are. In the centre of defence the Saliba and Kiwior need to keep their partnership together as it builds for the remainder of this season, but I think Jorginho has to come in for Partey at six. Jorgi did fine against Everton and I’m sure today, with the way Brentford play, he should be ok. Arteta noted that they maintain a high press, so that is something he’ll need to be mindful of and I’m remembering the draw against the Scum last season when he was caught dwelling on the ball as they pressed us, which led to a goal. He can’t be doing that today because Brentford will punish us.

What Arteta does with the two eight’s will be interesting. Does he go with Odegaard and Rice again? Or does he look at bringing Merino back in to that left eight position, maybe try Ethan in Odegaard’s role, then give Saka another 60 minutes on the right? By the sounds of it he’s ready to go and having played a good 60-70 minutes against Madrid, I guess the challenge the club has is finding the balance between managing the load and getting him back into the cadence of regular football. I personally would be tempted to at least give him a half today, but whether that is first or second I’m not sure. Then, in attack, I’m sure Leo will come in, but it’s whether he wants to go with Sterling again, or play Martinelli. I have a suspicion he’ll give Martinelli a run out; Raheem is basically just a body at this stage and Martinelli’s form has been good. If he decided against starting the Brazilian I think most of us would be fine though; both he and Saka will probably be tasked with a fair bit of defensive tucking in on Wednesday so they might need as much puff as possible. That could mean rotation and a side similar to that of Everton.

And Brentford do pose a similar threat when in possession, as I mentioned yesterday, although Everton are a ‘sit in and low block’ team, whereas Brentford will at least commit bodies forward that hopefully could give us space. You do feel like we need that against teams at the moment and the hope has to be that we get that from a Brentford team looking for a scalp having never won at The Emirates. We were shafted a couple of season’s back by a dodgy VAR forgetting to draw lines, but that aside we’ve tended to be alright against Brentford ay home.

That means nothing for today though. This game is one of those that is ripe for an upset given how it’s sandwiched in between the two Real games, so Arteta needs to make sure the players are on it from the off. What I really hope we don’t see is the slow, methodical, build up football that these types of games have become a regular occurrence of this season. The types of games in which it feels like we’re going through the motions in the first half, before then trying to up it in the second. Football is – cliche alert – a game of two halves and I want to see Arsenal demonstrating that this evening by creating chances early in this game.

I will be there and I suspect it won’t be a game in which the atmosphere will be anywhere near what it was on Tuesday, but as fans we still have a job to do to roar on the team in this game, as much as we did in midweek. Let’s hope the Arsenal players can do their job too.

Catch you all tomorrow.