Morning.
I’ve written here before about how the first thing many people do every day is pick up their phone, and subject themselves to an early morning blast of ‘news’, which is often some of the worst stuff you’ve ever seen. Until tomorrow, when somehow it gets worse.
Many of you, and I appreciate this a great deal, use Arseblog to kick-start your day. Whether it’s via the website or the app, the blog each day is a starting point, so in the spirit of getting this Friday going in a positive way, I recommend reading Mikel Merino’s piece in The Player’s Tribune.
He outlines the period between the injury he picked up against Manchester United in January and the World Cup, and how touch and go it was for him to make it into the Spain squad. There was a lot going on at the time, his wife was pregnant, he was on crutches and barely mobile after surgery, and the idea of missing our season and as well as the World Cup could easily have seen him spiral in a negative way. Regardless of your stature in the game, whether it’s Premier League or Sunday League, not being able to play football because of injury is the worst.
I do think that sometimes the ‘power of positive thinking’ is a bit woo-y, but in this case it really worked for him. He refused to accept the verdict that it was impossible for him to recover in time, and was proven right.
I especially liked the detail about his frustration at not being able to walk his dog:
“One day I said, “Enough.” I had to do something. I bought a red mobility scooter. The next morning, I was cruising down the street with the dog on a leash. She had her tongue out, ears flapping, looking at me all the time, maybe to see if I would increase the speed.
“Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. I was so slow!! You could walk past me. It was actually hilarious. Sometimes I hid behind sunglasses and a cap, but other days I couldn’t be bothered, and my neighbours spotted me.
“I’m just happy they didn’t film it and put it online, hahahaha. I can’t even imagine the memes.”
In this day and age, how a Premier League footballer was spotted out and about on a mobility scooter, with his dog, and didn’t end up online is beyond me. But it’s also great that he didn’t. Every bit of our lives is subject to surveillance, and the way people default to getting their phone out and filming – even when what they should be doing is helping, for example – is a societal scourge. So, I love that he buzzed down the streets of London or Hertfordshire or wherever he lives and didn’t end up on some Footy Bantz page Photoshopped as Stephen Hawking. We’ve had so much of our privacy stolen by the ubiquity of technology, I think we sometimes forget it’s something we should have an absolute right to.
There’s also a really interesting bit about the reaction to the Wolves draw, and a team meeting the players had with Mikel Arteta absent.
The guy with the bottle on TV? We just laughed.
Between this, and the video the Arsenal website produced about his recuperation from the injury, you can easily see why Merino is such a valuable member of this squad. There’s an obvious intelligence coupled with his experience that feels reliable and important. Anyway, I won’t labour the point anymore, have a read of the article, and maybe watch the video too.
He also revealed in an interview with Cadena Ser in Spain that it was his challenge on Martin Zubimendi that caused the injury in the warm-down after the Leeds game, but sounded a positive note on his fellow Spaniard:
“He’s fine. He had a slightly sore ankle precisely because of a challenge with me, and if there’s anyone who doesn’t want to hurt ‘Zubi’, it’s me. But he’s fine, he’s a bull and he’ll be back in no time.”
We might get an update from the manager on Zubimendi when he meets the press a bit later ahead of our trip to Nottingham Forest on Sunday. His absence probably meant a 90 minutes for Declan Rice that we were trying to avoid, especially with a trip to Munich coming up next week, but let’s see what the state of the squad is ahead of this game.
I’m going to guess that he will be asked at his presser about the job cuts story, and while I understand why he was reticent to comment expansively on the Man City stuff, I hope we get more from him on this. Obviously, and it should go without saying, this isn’t really anything to do with him. The decision to bring in consultants whose modus operandi is always to recommend a cull happened above him, but he is still the manager of the club, a figurehead, and somebody who has taken on the responsibility of changing the culture on and off the pitch.
In that sense, he has done an incredible job, taking us from the vitriolic doldrums to Premier League champions again, and it has been a team effort. The footballing side has been supported by the countless people who work in other areas and who have made some small contribution to the success the club has had. In the Arsecast yesterday, we spoke about this, and how the announcement has left people who work at Arsenal worried, scared for their futures, and when you’re left wondering if you’re one of the 60 or so who could go, it’s clearly going to impact the mood and morale. So, I’m curious to see how he addresses this today – hopefully with a bit more than an injury update, for example.
Later on we’ll have a preview podcast for you on Patreon, for some extra reading today Tim’s column touches on our left hand side, and the Arsecast is below if you haven’t had a chance to listen yet.
Until then.