Can we just get back to The Arsenal now?
Let’s start with an editorial correction from yesterday, shall we? I obviously didn’t watch the game; I looked on FOTMOB at who played, for some reason missed that MLS got 70 minutes, and apparently did okay, according to some people in the comments. Hey ho – like I said, I clearly didn’t watch it, so got to hold me hands up for that one.
We still discussed it briefly on yesterday’s Same Old Arsenal podcast, which you can watch here if you fancy an Arsenal lens on the internationals, as well as thoughts around #114 FC. Quite the rebrand from #115 FC, I have to say. You might want to skip the first three or four minutes, as I had some internet problems that didn’t make for good podcast/YouTubing.
Today is the start of a new week, but unfortunately, unlike normal times, in which we start to count down until The Arsenal play, we have another week of having to listen to international football, before then also watching another batch of games, whilst hoping our players can stay as fit as possible and not succumb to injury. Which feels like quite a fraught exercise. Especially when you have absolute twats like Bernardo Silva kicking their way around football matches. I mean, just look at this. That is an absolute disgrace. It is designed to ‘leave one in’ on a fellow professional, is unprofessional in itself, and just underlines what a ratbag that guy is. He gets away with murder, has done so for years, and on 9th December at The Emirates, I hope that he gets the welcome he deserves when Real Madrid visit. Let’s have somebody leave something on that little scummer. He deserves it.
As for the result, well, sadly Odegaard didn’t get the last laugh, but as much as I love the country and every year make time to visit Portugal, their football team gets no such affection. How can it be when you have players like him and Ronaldo still there? And Bruno Fernandes too!
In the only other match yesterday that we saw Arsenal involvement in, Christos Tzolis went to Germany and had what looks like an okayish game on the left wing. That’s fine – just stay out of trouble and injury, matey. Tonight it’ll be Calafiori’s go-away at Turkey, and as I mentioned a couple of days back, we could probably do with big Vik getting on the scoresheet tonight for Sweden. I had a look at when Ecuador were playing re: Hincapie, but then, having looked at who was called up on the Arsenal website, realised that we potentially have ourselves an issue here, because he hasn’t been called up by his international side. Now, on the one hand, that’s good, because it gives him recovery time. But then I wonder how bad the injury is, because the last I remember seeing was Tom Cantion explaining that he had a muscular injury before Ipswich away. That’s concerning. ‘Muscular injury’ is vague enough to mean it could be an ongoing issue, although, to be fair, Tom says that he did take part in some form of training. So the hope is that he’s at London Colney right now (not literally, but at some stage today) training and building his fitness up for the re-kickoff in just under two weeks’ time.
If he is, then it makes me a little more at ease that we’re probably going to have Calafiori play every game over this international break. If Hincapie is back and training and fit for Leeds at home, then we have ourselves the cover we need. And even then, we also have the versatility of Myles too, so that’s all good.
Other than that, there’s not tons of stuff going on, other than the fact that the ladies unfortunately lost 1-0 at Stamford Bridge yesterday. The women’s game is such that if you drop even a few points in the season, the chances of winning the league disappear a lot quicker than in the men’s game. Last season, Man City won the league having drawn one and lost three. Arsenal have now drawn two and lost one, so their chances of claiming that first WSL League trophy since 2019. It’s a long time to wait for a club with Arsenal Women’s pedigree, so the pressure looks like it’s starting to mount on Renee Slegers.
There’s some silly transfer news about players coming and going, like Haaland joining if City go down, or Eze potentially being moved on to United, but these kinds of tittle-tattle tales are best left to the gutter press to hunt for clicks on, so I’ll not bother giving them the oxygen they crave. Instead, I shall simply wish you a happy Monday in whatever you do, and I’ll be back tomorrow with some more thoughts on why Viktor Gyokeres is ‘back’ having scored a hat-trick for Sweden tonight.
Back tomorrow.