ARSENAL TRY TO EQUAL HISTORY
The new pre-Champions League night has not been great by any standards. Arteta says further tests are needed on Viktor and he won’t be available. Zubimendi is suspended and also injured, and finally, the League Cup quarter-final game against Palace has been moved to December 23rd.
So… Arsenal either go into the quarter-finals with a two-day break, or they have to move the Everton game. Which would really be annoying for our AOP live session.
This sort of nonsense being pulled on the fixture front is the type of thing that gives rise to the ‘should clubs in Europe be given a way out of domestic cups’ conversations. It’s mad that the League Cup dumped the game on that date in the hope that the league would disrupt their scheduling and re-do the Everton game for the third time.
It’s also dehumanising for the players, who will be in the middle of a crazy month, being asked to drop another high-level performance. Alternatively, it’s shit for fans who might have to watch a depleted Arsenal play in a game they’ve paid good money for. It does reek of ‘too much football’ to me. We just keep piling on the games, even if they devalue the quality of the football and break the players.
Arsenal now have seven players out in November, and there are no real patterns outside bad luck. That’s both annoying but also really positive in the sense that we’re managing the load. We just badly need to get out of the rut, especially because the rut is hyper-focused on one position. Gyokeres is injured because he didn’t have a good pre-season, then he was forced to play all the minutes. Now he’s broken on the cusp of Kai’s return. Deeply annoying, especially as one of his superpowers is not getting injured.
So what will Arteta do tomorrow? Andre the teenager? Ethan doing the Romario role? Or BIG MIKEL MERINO?
Probably the Spaniard. He’s not as dynamic or fast, but he offers more connective tissue as a striker, and he has been a very good final-action player in 2025 more broadly. Just kind of crazy to me that we’re three months into the season and we’re already totally out of strikers.
The shape of the team is going to be quite different in Prague. One would imagine Norgaard will get the nod as the 6 so Declan can retain his role as the 8. Trossard will start left, Saka right, Merino as the 9. Then the defence might see the return of Ben White and MLS if previous CL fixtures are barometers. Gotta keep Timber and Calafiori fit for the Sunderland game.
Prague are top of their local league, conceding just eight so far. The Champions League is a different story, where they’ve yet to register a win, sitting 28th in the competition. This really is a massive away day for Arsenal. If we can rack up our fourth win on the bounce, we’re in outrageous shape at the halfway point of the comp, and it takes the pressure off the Bayern game, which will be a barnstormer after the break.
These games rarely throw up losses, but they are well capable of being upsetting draws. Not a disaster in the Champions League, but I really want to see us continue the momentum of the season into the weekend so we can close out Block 4 of the season in total style.
There’s also a record on the line - eight consecutive clean sheets was accomplished in 1903. We can equal it tomorrow night. Quite incredible that we’re getting anywhere near that record considering the era and how good the levels are in CL and EPL. It’s a record that really gives you insight into what Arteta has built at Arsenal… but it’s also one of those that kind of means very little if we don’t whip a big cherry on top of it with a major trophy this season. Ok, maybe that’s nonsense. I was told by a coach once that in professional sport, you should always take time to celebrate the wins, because you never know when your next one will come… so we should celebrate. But I’m starving out here, I need to feast on something grander, something physical, that I can carry on an open-top bus.
Ok, massive night for The Arsenal. Podcast later. Not sure if it’s definitely on the whistle, but it’ll be with you tomorrow if it’s not! x
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