I could have done a post match blog yesterday but, if I’m completely honest, I couldn’t be arsed. It was a boring game, with a rotated squad and as much as Arteta said all the right things in his pre match presser before we played Brentford, the reality of what we had to endure was that all eyes have clearly been placed on getting over the line in that second leg against Real Madrid.

They beat Alaves at the weekend and Kylian Mbappe was clearly in a petulant mood, which manifested itself in one of the grimmest challenges you’ll see this season. Madrid are still fighting for things in their domestic title charge, with them four points behind Barcelona, so they had to put out a strong team against Alaves over the weekend. Even so, Vinicius Jr and Bellingham were on the bench and when you can rest players like that, go down to 10 men and still win the game, it shows you the strength of the opposition in the league. Barcelona are top on 70 points and Real on 66 after 31 games. We’ve played 32 and have 63 points, so it shows you just how much Liverpool have been running away with it because they’re on 76 and can win the league next weekend with five games to spare.

Meh. The title has long been there’s and Sky Sports have been trying their best to add some jeopardy, where none exists, because Arsenal and Arteta’s eyes have been on another prize for quite some time.

And there’s a job to be done today, tomorrow and then ultimately on Wednesday night, because even at 3-0 this tie against Real Madrid isn’t over. I was in the concourse on Saturday talking to a mate about it and his words were that if we get through the first 20 minutes we’ll be fine. You have to think those opening salvo’s won’t be fun for us. In the game last week Madrid were almost shadow boxing with us; there was a respect there as they held off, didn’t really engage and were seemingly happy to let us have the ball and they hit us in transition. They didn’t really press us at all and I wondered if this was their general approach as a team? Maybe they are a side that never really employs a high press because they have the ball most of the time, but whatever their approach is normally, it didn’t work last Tuesday and we have to hope that this Wednesday that is the same. But they will have to press us all over the park to beat us and I wonder if that’s going to be good for us. As Brentford showed on Saturday, what we don’t like is deeper blocks, but there’s no chance do that and it may mean that we have our creative players with plenty of opportunity to find space when the ball transitions over? Maybe we can play a bit of the ol’ rope-a-dope against the Spanish champions?

Arteta and his team will certainly be reviewing and exploring every possible tactical opportunity, I’m sure of that.

What he will need is as many players as fit as possible and with Partey coming off on Saturday, that’s out main worry I suspect from the weekend. The hope is that it was just a knock that he recovers from within 24 hours, because ideally both today and tomorrow need to be days in which the players are on that training ground and going through tactical drills on how Real Madrid will come at us.

I do often wonder how they prepare for a game like this in training. Does Arteta set up the first XI and then tell another select XI that they have to break them down? The first XI are clearly a fair bit better than the other players who would be at training and you only have to look at the difference in quality when a few players are rotated in, like the two draws against Everton and Brentford, to see what a difference it makes. So how do you prep for Madrid? Maybe they have a rule that the main XI can only have three touches of the ball max, or that as soon as they give it back they have to play out to the halfway line? I am, of course, thinking of the defensive side of it, but there’s the offensive side of the game that will also have to be practiced. You can’t just set up in a place like the Santiago Bernabeu and just tuck in. We’ve got the team that is good enough to do that – we’ve seen with our own eyes at times – but you have to bring a positive mindset and that balance is something Arteta will also know his team needs to work on.

The psychology of being 3-0 is fascinating. Tie is not done, this opponent makes sure of it, but how you set up and the mindset you have is critical and I for one am fascinated to see what Arteta does.

More on that, as well as any other stuff that pops in to my head, tomorrow. For now I’m going to toodle off to work and I will speak to you wonderful people tomorrow.