Mikel Arteta had his pre-match press conference, and the big news from yesterday of course, is that William Saliba is back training with the group. Apparently, he’s broken all records (Mikel didn’t say that; just what I read elsewhere) to get fit, so now it’s just a matter of when he gets integrated. And the luxury we have is that Konsa’s form means that Saliba is probably going to have to bide his time on the bench for the immediate future, I reckon. Arteta said that he played 45 minutes in a behind-closed-doors friendly last week, so whilst I don’t think he’ll play today, I wonder if there’s a chance they give him 20 minutes at the end of the Hull game?
It’s a weird one though, because you don’t really do that with central defenders. They’re normally just in or out. It’s not like with midfielders or attackers, where after a long injury, you might give them 10 minutes, then 20 – 30, then maybe a half, then 60, etc. With central defenders, they are just in or out. But because of Konsa’s amazing form, I can’t really see Saliba playing tonight or starting on Saturday. After that, however, Arteta has some decisions to make. And having spent the last week or two listening (and talking) on podcasts and watching videos, etc about how well Konsa is doing and what Arteta is going to do when Saliba is back, we now have that reality. I’ll be honest, I thought we’d be able to defer this conversation until the new year. But here we are. And what a lovely position to be in.
It’s the same for midfield too, as Arteta was asked about Zubimendi last night, and he talked about how important he is and how he’s been unlucky with injury. He picked up an ankle injury earlier in the season that kept him out of the Lille game, and he had his nose broken in the Everton game, so it feels like he can’t catch a (excuse the pun) break. Mikel did say that everybody will have the chance to play, but I just wonder if it is enough game time for a guy who is at peak age and a Spanish international midfielder. IN the long run, unless he can find his way into this team, I do wonder what his long-term future is with The Arsenal. And that would be a shame. I think he’s a fantastic footballer; I think he deserves a run of games, but with Myles and Bruno seemingly first choice, I’m not sure when that is going to happen.
Maybe tonight? He has himself a chance, I guess, because Slavia Prague are a perceived ‘weaker’ opponent than many in this competition, so I do wonder if Arteta has a go at a bit of rotation. It’s funny, because we can look a year to the day in which we played them, at their own stadium, on 4th November 2025, when we picked up a 3-0 win in the blue kit. Funny how things work like that, eh? And so we have a bit of an idea on what Arteta might do in terms of team news. On that day, it was a Bukayo Saka penalty and two Mikel Merino goals (obviously) that sealed all three points, but from a rotation point of view we also saw a fair bit of it. NOrgaard, Nwaneri and Merino up top all started, but the rest of the team was pretty much full strength, so I wonder if Arteta replicates the same approach today, i.e:
Raya
White – Konsa – Gabriel – Hincapie
Zubimendi
Eze – Merino
Madueke – Gyokeres – Tzolis
I think we’re probably more likely to see Odegaard in the middle and Eze on the left, giving Tzolis a bit of rest time given he’s only just back from injury, but if that team above did start, you’d hope we have enough about us to get three points on the ground in which we dominated pretty much all of the stats a year ago.
But no two games are the same, they will perhaps have learned a bit about us, we will need to be on it and I think the Fleetwood result showed us that we have to do our jobs and do it well, because if you rotate and you’re even the slightest bit off your game, you get punished by any opponent in this competition.
But having just beaten Liverpool at Anfield, the boys will be feeling confident, hopefully bullish, and I am expecting us to go and do the business tonight. We kind of have to, given that our next two games are really tough ones against Dortmund and Real Madrid. In fact, we’re about to go into a bit of a ‘Death Run’ when it comes to some of our upcoming fixtures, playing those teams wedged in between games against Newcastle away, City at home, Brentford away and then the Scum away too. So the next month is going to be quite the challenge – and you can see why Arteta is saying that we’re going to need everybody, because it feels like he’s going to have to undertake a bit of rotation to keep players fresh for these big games. So an opportunity to get minutes into the legs of the likes of Merino, Zubimendi and Gyokeres from the start feels like it’s something we should absolutely be doing. Whether Mikel undertakes a larger-scale rotation, however, remains to be seen.
The good news is that, Saka aside, we seem to be back to a practically fully fit squad, which is good timing ahead of the aforementioned _Death Run_. Let’s hope they can all stay fit and we can get through this next period with a bunch of wins that can set us up for the remainder of this season.
Back tomorrow with some post-Slavia thoughts.