Morning.
I didn’t watch the Liverpool win over Man City yesterday afternoon, but caught the Match of the Day highlights. I know people were a bit undecided about what might be the best result from an Arsenal perspective, but I was all on for a draw so both sides dropped points. Liverpool’s momentum is quite something right now, and they were by far the better side yesterday – leaving them 9 points clear of us in second place.
I’m still of the opinion that they’ll have a blip in form at some point. That feels inevitable, but they’ve given themselves quite the cushion. Even if they draw a couple it won’t eat too much into their lead, and it also means we’ve got to be nigh on perfect ourselves having had our own difficulties in the opening part of the season.
That said, we’ve only played 13 games so far this season, there are 25 to go and a lot can happen in that time. Man City might even recover, but for now I’m enjoying their trials and tribulations. Seven games without a win, six defeats, I guess they are just staying as humble as they possibly can … by being humbled every week. I hope Mr E Haaland receives a big pie delivery, you can guess the flavour.
Elsewhere, it’s interesting to see things not going well for Aston Villa and Unai Emery. They’ve gone eight games without a win, I had a quick look at the comments on their Reddit thingy, and it’s fair to say their fans are a mix of concerned and quite vexed with what’s going on. Fingers are starting to be pointed at our former head coach, and while there’s no question he did a very good job to get them to fourth last season, I do think there were some danger signs.
They won just one of their last eight games in all competitions last season, and they’re on a similar run again, despite having some high points along the way (beating Bayern Munich in the Champions League). I’m curious to see how it goes, because Emery has this track record of starting well with his various clubs, before the goodwill fades and then the inevitable happens. I don’t think he’s close to the sack or anything right now, but there’s something of a pattern to his career so it’s maybe one to keep an eye on.
Anyway, for more on the Premier League in general, you can join us for our weekly round-up podcast ‘The 30’ over on Patreon later today.
And as we look forward to our game against Man Utd this week, there will be some injury issues to worry about. Midfield was light on Saturday in the absence of both Thomas Partey and Mikel Merino, so we’ll have to wait and see if they have recovered in time for that one. Gabriel came off at half-time, replaced by Jakub Kiwior who did fine, but at both ends you’d much prefer the Brazilian for a game as big as this one.
The manager spoke a bit about some of the ‘fringe’ players afterwards, and said:
We had an issue with Gabi, we have an issue with Ricky as well, yesterday we lost Thomas and Mikel and Myles which was very bad news but what I’m really happy about is Jakub has to come in, he does really well.
Alex the same, Jorginho, I thought he was exceptional today as well. That’s the level, every three days we’re going to need everybody at their best and it’s a good sign that the team can do that.
Your mileage may vary on how well you think they did, but there’s no other message Arteta can send publicly when discussing these guys. To be fair, I thought Jorginho was excellent and personally I prefer the way we play with him in the team compared to other set-ups. Age is obviously not on his side though, and I suspect serious consideration is already going into how we shape up our midfield for the longer-term future with both the Italian international and Partey out of contract next summer.
I did have some thoughts on Gabriel Jesus and Raheem Sterling, but they made me a bit sad so I’m not going to expand on them. So, I’ll leave it there for this morning. We will have an Arsecast Extra for you in a little while too. We’ve put out the call for questions on BlueSky @gunnerblog.bsky.social and @arseblog.com with the hashtag #arsecastextra – or if you’re an Arseblog Member on Patreon, leave your question in the #arsecast-extra-questions channel on our Discord server.
Pod should be out around noon. For now, have a good one.