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All eyes on the Colney treatment room this week

Suburban Gooners Logo Suburban Gooners Logo I watched the City-Liverpool game unfold with intrigue yesterday. At the beginning of the day, in my head, this was very much a ‘we can’t lose either way’ kind of feeling. A draw means both teams drop points. A Liverpool win means we’re still five off them. A City win, whilst the least palatable, would have us four clear of them and Liverpool’s title race looking close to run.

City, conversely, are being touted as ‘on the march’ now and you can sort of understand why Sky Sports want to hype it up. They don’t want any team having a procession to the title, but Guardiola certainly has shown he can be a force to be reckoned with previously.

The humbling City handled to Liverpool has a lot of people proclaiming City are ‘back’ and I must confess I gave a few little nervous feelings in my tummy, but if you look at what is happening to Liverpool, you do wonder whether them being close to ‘done’ in the title race is no big problem either. Certainly some of their crowing online fans being a little salty this morning is amusing. Their manager and his ‘no excuses’ or ‘excuses on injuries are for teams who don’t win’ is now looking rather amusing I have to say. But we do have to use Liverpool as a cautionary tale as to how things can swing so differently in this competition. We are four clear at the top which is great, but after the international break there are some really tough games and it isn’t inconceivable to see that gap eroded away if we don’t get back on the winning wagon almost immediately after the players come back from international duty.

And it’s not as if they are absolute gimmie games either. I know that no game in the Premier League is, in reality, a ‘gimmie’, but The Scum are going to be tough to break down, tough to beat (they are much better away from home playing the under dog than at home under the watchful gaze of their own home fans) and as it’s an NLD all bets kind of go off. It only takes that game going the way of a draw, then Bayern getting a result against us, then the same at Chelsea and the season suddenly looks like it’s in trouble. When you’re at the top you’re only a couple of wrong results away from a crisis and Liverpool are finding that now.

It’s why I really hope there is some magic happening in the treatment room at London Colney over the next 10 days or so. We really do need those re-enforcements in attacking positions. those who have been on the pitch have coped admirably, they’ve done what is required to get us in this excellent position, but we need to see the return of at least two of the current injured players for that derby game because the bench did look decidedly light on Saturday evening.

I do think we will see at least couple make it. I saw a couple of people speculate that Arteta could be deliberately not playing players because he doesn’t want them to go away on international duty. I’m not sure that’s 100% true because he’s a guy who wants to win every game and I don’t think he’d be thinking long-term when he still had that difficult Sunderland match to overcome. But can I say that it is completely unlikely? No I can not.

The guy I stand next to at The football – Nick – occasionally gets tickets to be in one of the boxes at The Arsenal and at the last game he was in them – Atletico – he said Madueke was in the box next to him. Said he was a lovely fella, really humble, seemed to be genuinely chuffed to be there and when he made a joke to Noni about making himself a hero at the NLD, Madueke just smiled and said “that’s the plan”. I think he might be one of the guys they are expecting back. I also hope/suspect that Viktor’s muscular injury is just a short-term one, so I’d hope that’s another option. Whether Odegaard, Havertz or Martinelli are back in remains to be seen, but I do feel like we probably need one of Big Vik or Havertz to be fit and ready to play. The challenge with Havertz is that he’s had no time to build up his match fitness. If Gyokeres is ready, then he’s been playing all season, he’s missed just a couple of games, he’s been able to rest the muscle injury and hopefully it’s healed without too much loss of match fitness. So hving him start and perhaps Havertz coming on (if he’s back) will be massive for us. It means we have so many options and with Bayern also on the horizon that week, it means players can be down for some job sharing, which hopefully keeps them fresher for longer.

So all eyes will already, inevitably, be on any news breaking over the next few days on players getting out on the training pitch at London Colney. We need an Ornbomb to drop this week to get us excited for the squad getting back to full health. Something like that this week will be a lovely little antidote to the poison that is yet another international break.

Right, I think I’ll leave it there for today, such is the inevitable lack of Arsenal news given the media attention on this impending interdull. Have yourselves a great Monday and I’ll see you all tomorrow.

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Gooner born in 1982 from Harlow, Essex, now living in Uxbridge. I say what I see - frequently wrong, but hey, it's just an opinion piece, right? Leave a comment and let me know what you think.