Is Brighton our first real test of the season?

How is it Friday already?

This is what happens when The Arsenal play – and play well – in midweek. The weekend comes around, and you’re like, “blimey, that hit us quick, eh?” I guess we’re also at the stage in the season where it isn’t a grind. The season is still fresh, young, in its infancy, so having three games in a week (or thereabouts) is kind of novel and exciting. IT’s just a shame that after tomorrow, they take it all away from us again, with a horrendous international break that I think lasts until 2038. I do feel like they probably should have let the proper football get a little more into the season before doing this; why not have this window in mid-November, for example? But her we are.

And tomorrow there we are, because it’s another away day – the fourth in a row for The Arsenal – as we visit Brighton at the Amex. As a little aside, I used to have a Sega Mega Drive II and played FIFA on it. I remember having FIFA 95 and one season when I was Arsenal, there must have been a glitch in the way the console set up the fixtures, because I played the first half of the season completely away from home, before playing the second half of the season at home. Kind of how it feels right now, eh?

Anyway, back to more relevant and current affairs, and it’s that trip to the Amex that looms on the horizon. And it’s definitely the toughest one we’ll face this season I think. I know I know, that sounds a little Wthe next one is the toughest” cliched bullshit you get from football managers, but I do think this one will be a lot harder, because:

• Coventry were newly promoted
• Villa were still unsettled, having been decimated
• Chelsea at home gave us an advantage, and I think we all suspected that their ‘title-winning form’ might just be a bit of a misnomer
• Sunderland were good, but they are not as good a side as Brighton are

That’s me showing my workings, but what do the pundits think on this one, eh? Lewis Jones has us at a 1-1, which I could very much see, although Chris Sutton thinks we’ll edge it 2-1. Sports Mole go for a 2-0 Arsenal and given that Huerzler hasn’t tasted victory against us, you could see why you’d say that as a neutral party. Of course, from our perspective, we can never even think about it. There’s also this analysis that I thought was particularly detailed and quite liked how they broke it down via some numbers. Again, I could see a draw for sure tomorrow.

What of the Seagulls fans though? Given their start to the season, their performances (I thought they were unlucky against Chelsea, even though they started terribly) have their fans a little more excited and one thing they are talking about is the depth of their squad, given that they’re currently missing Evan Ferguson, Mats Wieffer, Jack Hinselwood, Karou Mitoma and Tankuba Mintah. That’s a fairly lengthy list, but until we hear from Mikel on ours with the likes of Mosquera, White and Timber all uncertain, we can hardly get too excited. And they have the impressive Malick Yalcouye who has looked really good so far. They keep busting out these good players, do Brighton.

But they also have some returning heroes too, and I watched a Brighton fan channel called Seagulls Social in which they were extolling the virtues of Pascal Gross, who is having a bit of an Indian Summer at 35. Will he be able to keep up the momentum tomorrow, having played against United in midweek? They’re saying things like “bite yer hand off for a draw” and that YouTube contributors there were saying that they fancy a 1-1. An interesting thing that one of them said was that they would have preferred this to be a game late at night, as the atmosphere could have an impact. I can kind of understand that, and hopefully the fact we’ve got it as a 3pm kick off on a Saturday can help us out, if not the ability to actually watch the game.

I would like to see what Huerzeler says about Arsenal in his press conference though. I thought his antics for the game there last season were really weird. He spent the pre-match talking it up, clearly trying to get the home fans riled and booing every time we had a dead-ball situation, then he doubled down on time-wasting afterwards, which is ironic because I wouldn’t have to look too far to see how he has his players time-waste too. In fact, just to prove it, how about this from midweek, in which one of his players was booked for…*checks notes*…. time-wasting. Funny that, eh?

That’s pretty much it for now until we get to the game tomorrow, in which I’ll do a bit more of a deep dive on how Brighton play and what the game could look like, having also been armed with information from both managers. The only other thing I’ve seen that is worthy of mention is that Jurgen Klopp is apparently only calling Kai up for two out of the four matches over the international break. That’s great news. If he can stay fit for the start of it, then come back for some rest, I’m sure all Arsenal fans will be more than happy with that outcome. Let’s hope Tommy T is as accomodating for some of our England boys too.

Back tomorrow with another match preview. See you then.