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Arteta didn’t see the reaction to the reaction but reacts to ...

2026-10-31T13:47:31Z

Arteta didn’t see the reaction to the reaction but reacts to the reaction to the reaction

Morning all, let’s do a bit of a Saturday round-up ahead of tomorrow’s game against Liverpool which we’ll cover in more detail then.
First, Mikel Arteta responded to the appeal against Max Dowman’s red card, and said:
We’re very disappointed, to be fair, especially with the reckless tackles that he receives – his reaction is minimal in relation to the action. We’re disappointed it hasn’t been overturned having watched it back.
We’ve put every argument on the table to make a case for it – not only the action that is so evident, but when you look back in slow motion, the previous action and Max’s action is clear. Obviously, we have a very different opinion. I think you also have to look at the context of the player, the age and what happened previously.
You already know what I think. Ultimately, there’s only one person who was in any danger of being hurt on that pitch on Tuesday evening, and it was Dowman himself. Arteta said:
It could have been really bad, and we’re lucky today that he hasn’t had a broken foot – that’s clear.
But as we’ve discussed this week, football’s attitudes to things like minor retaliation versus a ‘crunching’ tackle are a bit topsy-turvey, and Dowman is a victim of that. The fact they didn’t even reduce the ban, which there is definitely precedent for, suggests to me they have chosen to overlook what the replays show, and that’s quite disappointing.
Still, it was interesting to hear Arteta reference Dowman’s age when referring to this, then a bit later on suggesting that if he’s going to play with the big boys, he’s not going to get any special treatment because of how young he is. There’s been discussion and debate about the manager giving the 16 year old a bit of an earful on the sideline as he went off, but in this instance he stood behind his ‘tough love’ approach. Referencing the fact Dowman had been sent off for England U19s a few weeks ago for something similar, and the conversation they’d had in the dressing room before they went out, he said:
I haven’t seen the reaction to my reaction, whether it’s positive or negative. But you need to understand the context, the relationship that I have with him and what we discussed just before we went out.
You want to see the reaction of his teammates? When they have to play with 10, you want to see that? This is the environment and this is the reality. Otherwise we are in Disneyland, we are not in Disneyland, we are in the Premier League at this level and we look after him so much that you cannot imagine. But at the same time we are going to demand of him, like to anybody else, because he needs to earn the right to play. Otherwise the rest of the boys, what are they going to tell me? You need to be fair.
As I said yesterday, hopefully it’s a learning moment for Max, one he can carry forward for when he returns and beyond. Professional football is absolutely ruthless, there will be managers/players who will try and expose that youthful temperament again, and we know how they’ll do it. He’ll get kicked again, they’ll try and bully him again, but next time he’s got to remember that referees are more inclined to punish the guy who retaliates than the one who perpetrates the first offence. It’s upside down, of course, but that’s the environment in which we exist and one he’s got to get to grips with. I suspect that whatever your own view of Arteta’s reaction, that message will have been made loud and clear to Max Dowman this week.
—
Elsewhere, because this is very, very funny, Aston Villa say they’re going to take legal action against Jamie Carragher for some comments he made on a podcast. Via their official social media channels, they released a statement which said:
Aston Villa will initiate legal action against Jamie Carragher for his unacceptable insults about the club and its fans. Aston Villa will not allow anyone to stop our ascension in English and European football. Nassef Sawiris, chairman.
Apparently Carragher’s remarks were about Unai Emery potentially joining Man Utd, and pointing out that there is a kind of pecking order in terms of club stature. Which, regardless of the fact United are a mess right now, is unquestionably true in terms of the size of the fanbase, the history etc. Villa are a successful club with good history of their own, but United are – in this general context – a bigger club. Like Barcelona are bigger than Valencia, like Bayern Munich are bigger than Borussia Dortmund, like some side from the Isle of Man third division are bigger than Sp*rs.
How thin skinned and pathetic do the people running Villa have to be to take exception to something Carragher said, to then ruminate on it, decide that legal action is the best course of action, and then make it public? Genuinely it’s hilarious and embarrassing. Also, I’d be quite happy for Emery to take over at United. He’s done a fantastic job at Villa, but as Arsenal fans we know he’s exactly the man you need to take over a club that’s something of a sleeping giant and a mess on and off the pitch. Emery in at Old Trafford all the way, in my opinion. They’d be facing that side from the Isle of Man third division in no time.
Right, I’ll leave it there for this morning. Happy Halloween, I hope your little visitors aren’t too scary later on, and that your dogs don’t freak out with the fireworks too much.
Till tomorrow.
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Episode 898 – Forward questions Welcome to another episode of ...

2026-10-29T14:00:18Z

Episode 898 – Forward questions

Welcome to another episode of the Arsecast – the original Arsenal podcast.
In this episode I’m joined by Harry Symeou to discuss Arsenal’s midweek elimination from the Carabao Cup at the hands of League Two Fleetwood Town. We chat about the team selection, the goal we conceded, and the goal we scored before the conversation widens out into questions about the team’s attacking potency, in particular the roles of Kai Havertz and Viktor Gyokeres, and whether the club need to be active in the January transfer window to bolster the forward line. We also chat about the red card issued to Max Dowman, the decision to appeal it, Mikel Arteta’s reaction on the sideline when the 16 year old trudged off the pitch, the penalty shoot-out, and lots more.
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Arsenal right to appeal Dowman red Morning all. Let’s start ...

2026-10-29T08:10:59Z

Arsenal right to appeal Dowman red

Morning all.
Let’s start with the news that Arsenal are set to appeal Max Dowman’s red card against Fleetwood on Tuesday evening. I think that’s probably the right thing to do, because had that gone to a VAR review, I think they’d have really struggled to make a compelling case that this was violent conduct.
Was it a small retaliation? Yes. Did it meet the threshold for violent conduct? Not for me. As laid out in the rules of the game, it is defined thus: Violent conduct is when a player uses or attempts to use excessive force or brutality against an opponent when not challenging for the ball, or against a team-mate, team official, match official, spectator or any other person, regardless of whether contact is made.
So, on that basis I think Arsenal are right to appeal. They might cite other incidents to make their case. Perhaps the fact Cole Palmer received just a yellow card in Chelsea’s last game against Sp*rs for what was a much more violent action against Mateus Fernandes. Imagine if we even used one of our own players, demonstrating how Bruno Guimaraes was allowed to forearm smash Jorginho in the side of the head, but didn’t get sent off because he didn’t use his arm like a weapon (or something).
Mikel Arteta is a man who, just last week, ‘joked’ he had a collection of images to show other managers outside their techincal area 36 times in ten minutes. If you don’t think he can’t dig up a few more examples of players getting away with violent conduct, you haven’t been paying attention. Whether it’s going to be sufficient to have the red card overturned is another thing, but at the very least we should see a reduction in what is, as it stands, a three match ban. I think the red was very, very, very harsh, but to miss three games because of that is absurd and unfair, so I think we’re right to appeal.
Once again though, there’s a conversation to be had about the punishments for red cards, and how it’s kind of ridiculous that every act of violent conduct = a three game ban. Some acts are more violent than others, some really do endanger the safety of an opponent, and yet they’re all treated the same. It’s never made sense to me, and I don’t really understand how there isn’t a disciplinary panel that assesses each sending off and applies the ban after the fact based on the seriousness of the incident.
Despite his frustration in the moment, I’m sure the manager’s view of Dowman’s behaviour might well have softened on watching the replays. In the heat of the moment part of it, I’m sure, is that we currently have Christos Tzolis and Bukayo Saka sidelined while Noni Madueke missed out on the midweek game to protect an ankle knock. So, we’re very light in the wide areas right now, and while the root cause of that might lie more at the door of the Sporting Director, he would have wanted Dowman available this weekend for the trip to Anfield.
I still think Arteta’s reaction was poor, but football is a game of opinions. I’ve seen some suggest if Max is gonna play with the big boys, he’s got to be treated as an equal. Perhaps that’s fair enough, but I’ve never seen Arteta react like that to a senior player being sent off, and we’ve had plenty of red cards during his tenure. You could argue that his age is why it’s different, that we all need to learn lessons when we’re younger in ways that differ from when we’re more grown up.
For me though, as talented as he is and as excited as we are about what he might become, it’s too easy to lose sight of the fact he is just 16, and that does make it different. It was so interesting that last week, after Bukayo Saka got injured against Bayern, there were myriad conversations about how Arteta was culpable to some extent because of how much he asked of the player since his breakthrough. And in the same breath, many of the same people were saying ‘It’s time for Dowman!’. I find it a little hard to square that circle. Do you actually care about the welfare of a young player or not?
I think Arteta has generally been rightly protective of Max. He knows that exposure at this age is something he and his staff have to consider for all kinds of reasons, and his playing time this season has been limited. In this instance though, regardless of the fact it’s just a few sharp words on the sideline, he’s made this a bigger issue than it should have been, with Dowman firmly in the spotlight, and I’ll be curious to see how he addresses it in his pre-Liverpool press conference tomorrow.
Ok, I’m gonna leave it there for this morning, but we’ll have an Arsecast for you a bit later on, so stand by for that. And for a little extra, Tim’s column this week touches on Myles Lewis-Skelly, while over on YouTube, Lewis has a new video examining how midfield rotations were key against Everton, and how that might play out across the rest of the season. You can watch below (and please subscribe to the channel).
Until later.
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A Thousand Myles This Monday marks six months since Arsenal ...

2026-10-28T18:22:35Z

A Thousand Myles

This Monday marks six months since Arsenal defeated Fulham 3-0 at Emirates Stadium. The game offered a rare oasis of calm in an otherwise fraught season of nailbiting wins. The Gunners, in the midst of a five game ‘playoff’ for the league title with Manchester City, as well as a Champions League semi-final against Atletico Madrid on the horizon, raced into a three-goal lead by half-time at the Emirates, earning an uproarious reception as the players made for the tunnel at half-time.
The previous weekend had seen Arsenal labour to a nervy 1-0 win over Newcastle and a stodgy 1-1 away draw with Atletico Madrid. Bukayo Saka had been parachuted back into the team after an extended absence; but it was clear that Mikel Arteta was looking for ways to try to ease the ketchup out of the bottle, so to speak.
Martin Zubimendi, who, at that point had played more league minutes than any other outfield Arsenal player, dropped to the bench. Myles Lewis-Skelly started in midfield for the first time in his short Gunners career. Myles was supposed to start an FA Cup tie at home to Wigan in that position before Riccardo Calafiori was injured in the warm-up, meaning Lewis-Skelly reverted to left-back with Bukayo Saka playing in a central role instead.
The BBC Sport match report for the Fulham game said, ‘Boss Arteta has to be given credit for taking what could be perceived as risk by playing left-back Myles Lewis-Skelly in midfield for the first time and leaving out Martin Zubimendi, who has played the most minutes of any outfielder in the Gunners squad. The 19-year-old Lewis-Skelly looked assured in the role and, with Calafiori, Saka and Eberechi Eze all in the side, the Arsenal attack flowed better than it has done for many weeks.’
Myles kept his place for the second leg of the Champions League semi-final against Atleti and again for the crunch away win at West Ham. He then started the Champions League semi-final. Probably a week prior to that Fulham game, many Arsenal fans were talking of an inevitable summer sale following the purchases of Piero Hincapie at left-back and Martin Zubimendi in midfield.
His homegrown status made him a potentially attractive sale. His path appeared to be blocked. The talk clearly wasn’t lost on Lewis-Skelly. When he posted a picture with the Premier League trophy on his Instagram account, he captioned it ‘pure profit.’ It was an amusing clapback.
His destiny appeared to change with a roll of the dice. Arteta made a brave call to sit Zubimendi down in favour of a teenager who had yet to really play a senior game in central midfield. Lewis-Skelly repaid his manager’s faith. Lewis-Skelly, who had burst onto the scene in an unfamiliar left-back position, had repeated the trick in central midfield.
It is a quite extraordinary achievement for a teenager to break into a team the quality of Arsenal’s twice, in different positions. He has achieved it so matter-of-factly that I feel like everyone has barely noticed. This summer could also have proved complicated for Myles.
Firstly, his late season resurgence wasn’t quite enough to win a place in England’s World Cup squad. I think that was a short-sighted decision from Tuchel. However, in the September international break, MLS started three of England’s four Nations League games in central midfield.
In many ways, being spared an exhausting summer at the World Cup probably did Myles a favour in the long run. It enabled him to play a full pre-season and in central midfield too. With Declan Rice, Mikel Merino and Martin Zubimendi going to the final weekend of the tournament, as well as Odegaard, Eze and Bruno going to the latter stages, he had a clear run at the position.
This put him in a strong position to start the season. However, his pre-season was complicated by two things. The signing of Bruno Guimaraes, who could have offered a further road-block to Myles’ progression. There were also strong rumours that some people in the club (!) were touting Lewis-Skelly around in a bid to raise the funds for a much-needed attacking A-lister.
While this talk was swirling around in the summer, Myles’ response was to score in a pre-season friendly against Como. What followed was even more impressive, Bruno came into the season with some fitness concerns. Lewis-Skelly’s form was such that his presence in midfield made that a total non-issue. He starred in wins at Villa Park and at home to Chelsea.
In truth, I still don’t think Bruno has done enough to firmly dislodge Myles from the role of Declan Rice’s midfield partner. His apprenticeship at left-back has also proved hugely useful and is helping him to pick up even more minutes. At Fleetwood, he played in both positions during the game, while he started games against Everton and Lille at left-back too.
Having a minor and a major is very useful for a young player looking to build his CV. He came on for Bruno in the Allianz last week and, in my view, outshone his more experienced, more expensive teammate. (Please don’t think I am having a dig at Bruno here, he has clearly conjured up some huge contributions this season too).
In a September interview with Men In Blazers, Lewis-Skelly talked about how he uses mindfulness techniques to deal with pressure and nerves. ‘There’s a Buddhism concept; it’s about the monkey mind. It’s practically about the restless mind, how you can jump from concern to concern.
‘So whenever I feel a type of weight, for me it’s important to bring my nervous system down and to bring stillness back to my mind, to be calm. Whether it is through breathing techniques, music or talking with other people, I just feel like it is important I always remain calm.’
It shows in his play and it shows in how he has dealt with certain situations. His re-ascension in the last six months has been very far from frictionless. Nothing has been given, pieces haven’t fallen into place. He has forced his way in and when he got the shirt, he gripped it for all its worth.
Just think how unlikely it felt in January that Lewis-Skelly would be significantly ahead of Zubimendi in the midfield pecking order before the clocks went back for winter. It takes a special player and a special character to negotiate those numerous challenges and to get into this team. He has met those challenges so firmly that we have barely even noticed them. His is a significant talent.
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Fleetwood Town 1-1 Arsenal (5-3 pens): A dismal night at Highbury ...

2026-10-28T08:36:00Z

Fleetwood Town 1-1 Arsenal (5-3 pens): A dismal night at Highbury

Match report – Player ratings – Arteta reaction – Video
Arsenal crashed out of the Carabao Cup last night, going down 5-3 on penalties to Fleetwood Town after a 1-1 draw in normal time.
Mikel Arteta made changes, as you’d expect, with starts for young players Marli Salmon, Max Dowman and Ceadach O’Neill, while thus far peripheral senior men like Martin Zubimendi, Cristhian Mosquera and Piero Hincapie also came in for what ought to have been valuable playing time. He also decided, somewhat curiously in my opinion, to start both of his strikers, with Viktor Gyokeres up front and Kai Havertz behind him in midfield.
There was a surreal start to the game when the referee spotted a drone hovering above Highbury Stadium and stopped play. I’m unsure what the big issue was however. Was he worried about player safety, TV rights? Whatever it was, we were stalled for 8 minutes until it was sorted out, not ideal for both sets of players on a night when conditions weren’t exactly clement.
When play began again Arsenal dominated the ball but struggled to test the home side. Hincapie headed a Dowman cross over, before the 16 year old had a clear sight of goal but scuffed his right-footed shot wide. In the middle, Gyokeres looked unhappy as if the ball should have been squared but the shot was the right decision, the execution of it was the issue.
Then, Fleetwood scored. We weren’t competitive enough around the second ball after a long kick from the goalkeeper, they played it forward, and Aaron Loupalo-Bi got the wrong side of Salmon before firing home through the legs of Illan Meslier. It’s not great defending from the 17 year old, but it’s one of those moments as a young player that are inevitable and that ultimately you learn from. He was superb against Ipswich in the last round, and given how badly we fared further forward with more experienced players, I don’t think we should give this much more than a passing mention.
Decent balls in from Dowman gave Havertz and Timber headed chances which they spurned before the break, and that was the extent of our attacking play in that first period. So, it was no surprise when the manager made changes at the break with Ben White and Martin Odegaard replacing Salmon and Timber. It meant a bit of a reshuffle, and early in the second half we found an equaliser.
O’Neill, who looked lively on the left, played a decent ball in from that side, Fleetwood’s defenders didn’t deal with it, Gyokeres – as he does too often – fell over, but on his way down touched it beyond the keeper for 1-1. And that should have been the point at which the game changed in our favour, but what we produced subsequent to the goal was just dismal. Odegaard made us a little bit better, but around him few others stepped up.
Havertz was abysmal missing a great chance after Odegaard’s clever pass put him through, and Gyokeres completing 5 of 9 passes all night against League Two opposition illustrates the limitations of his game in stark fashion. When we need a focal point up front, he just cannot provide it. Eberechi Eze came on and made little difference, and while perhaps there’s some mitigation for Martin Zubimendi playing with a broken nose, he completely failed to impose himself on the game in any meaningful way for a player of his calibre. And then everything was compounded by the red card.
After a bit of a scramble near the touchline there was a strong tackle on Dowman, one which took ball but also slid through on the man. He took exception to it, there was a very slight retaliatory movement with his leg which sparked a bit of a melee (Ben White was right on the scene to protect his teammate), and the referee adjudged it sufficient to send Dowman off. I think it’s very, very harsh.
I don’t think the challenge from the Fleetwood player is quite as bad as some make out, but I can understand why Max reacted. He shouldn’t have done that, but you can’t send a player off for that. It wasn’t a kick, it wasn’t violent conduct, and I think an experienced referee should have been able to sort that out with a couple of yellow cards. Whether Arsenal will appeal the severity of a three match ban remains to be seen, but I think they have a good case to do so if they choose.
What I really didn’t like, however, was Arteta’s reaction as Dowman went off. He clearly gave him an earful, and said afterwards, “Something that we discussed already before the match.”
A little earlier there had been a confrontation between Odegaard and a Fleetwood player, and I think we can all understand the manager warning his players not to rise to any kind of bait. Nevertheless, Max Dowman is 16, and the manager’s job is to protect him. It doesn’t mean he has to be mollycoddled, it doesn’t mean he shouldn’t face the internal consequences of being shown a red card, but that should have played out in the dressing room, not on the touchline and on live TV. Arteta has done incredible work at this football club, but he’s not infallible, and in my opinion he got this one really wrong – regardless of how frustrated he might be with the reaction from Dowman.
There was a late flurry from Arsenal as we looked to avoid penalties. The keeper made a very good save from Ben White, Odegaard had a shot which required another stop, and just before the end there was a really presentable chance for Havertz from an Eze cross which he headed tamely wide with no conviction. A moment which summed his own performance, and that of the team. Feeble.
So then penalties. Fleetwood made no mistake with five solid spot kicks, we made one through Bruno Guimaraes, and that was that. A massive win for the home side, and fair play to them for it. It’s a night that will live long in the history of that club, and this is what cup football can throw up. It’s not the first time we’ve been the giant killed by a lower league side, but I really don’t think we can have any complaints because of how poorly we played overall. Congrats to them.
Afterwards, Arteta said:
First of all, congratulations to Fleetwood for going through the next round. The manner that they have done it, and for us a very sad day. There is nothing to criticise the players for their attitude, their application. The determination – you could see that was there from the start.
The team keeps trying and trying with the ball with chances, shots and especially shots that we had not to score many more goals. Then you don’t capitalise, then you cannot go through to the next round. Unfortunately, we are out.
I will say I think that’s a very generous assessment of our performance. Protective almost, in a way the comments about Dowman were not. There’s a big difference between having a lot of the ball and making that possession count, and while nights like this can happen, upsets are part of football, too many players out there last night let themselves down. Ahead of a big game at Anfield at the weekend, it’s not ideal, because some of them are going to have to play, and if they’re anything like they were last night, we’ll be in trouble. If you already harbour some concerns about our attacking potency, last night will done nothing to assuage them.
I can’t sit here this morning and say I’m devastated at going out of this competition, but this was a night which produced many more questions than answers. If you were generous you’d say we were rusty and the changed nature of the side meant we lacked cohesion. The other assessment might be that we were absolutely terrible on the night, and even if some players are trying to find some rhythm and match sharpness, we ought to have produced a lot better than that embarrassing load of shit. I tend to connect far more with the latter than the former.
Any defeat at Arsenal creates fallout. That’s something we’re going to have to contend with ahead of the weekend, and the lack of a post-game press conference means legitimate questions about the performance, some individuals, and the manager’s reaction to the sending off will have to wait until Friday, so this is gonna linger like an eggy fart in lift for a few days more.
Update: Seems there was some post-game stuff.
Right, I’ll leave it there for morning. Have a good one folks.
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Fleetwood Town v Arsenal – live blog Join us for live blog ...

2026-10-27T23:22:34Z

Fleetwood Town v Arsenal – live blog

Join us for live blog coverage of our EFL Cup clash away to Fleetwood Town, kick-off 20.00.
We’ve got up to the second live text commentary, updates, goal clips, observations and occasionally witty asides. If you want to join the chat, register an Arseblog Live account.
To do that, go to Arseblog Live – click login on the top right, and then choose ‘sign up’ to complete the process with your username/password.
We also have added BlueSky functionality, so key moments – goals, cards, HT and FT scores etc – will be pushed to https://bsky.app/profile/live.arseblog.com
CLICK TO LAUNCH Fleetwood Town v Arsenal LIVE BLOG
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‘The 22’ launch event info – November 6th 2026 Hi folks! I ...

2026-10-27T18:08:22Z

‘The 22’ launch event info – November 6th 2026

Hi folks!
I just wanted to give you details of our London event for the launch of The 22, the limited edition book we told you about last week.
This will be taking place at Big Red on Holloway Road on Friday November 6th, from 4pm – https://maps.app.goo.gl/BVG9SCHXuYaKbhar9
If you’d like to come along, please register your interest via this link – https://arseblog-yumastudios.eventbrite.co.uk
We’ll have music, drinks, Arsenal fans, and of course a very special book celebrating the Premier League title win and the incredible celebrations that followed on the streets of North London.
On Monday, those registered will receive an email which will allow them to purchase the book ahead of the event, and collect it on the night. These purchases will be for collection only.
It will also be possible to take payment on the evening if you prefer to do it that way. Books are limited to a maximum of two per person.
Pre-sale for Arseblog Patreon members will now be on Friday October 30th at 3pm (Dublin/London). We’ll make a post on Patreon with a link to get your copy!
The remaining books will go on sale on November 7th, with worldwide shipping available.
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Arsenal 2-0 Everton: Konsa and Gabriel get the goals Match report ...

2026-10-25T09:05:25Z

Arsenal 2-0 Everton: Konsa and Gabriel get the goals

Match report – Player ratings – Arteta reaction – Video
Arsenal made it 7 wins from 8 so far in the Premier League this season with a relatively comfortable 2-0 win over Everton at home yesterday.
Mikel Arteta made some changes from the midweek team, with Ben White, Myles Lewis-Skelly, Mikel Merino, Eberechi Eze and Viktor Gyokeres all handed starts. And as a team that has been a bit slow to get going in games so far, an early goal was just the tonic after all the effort against Bayern Munich on Wednesday.
We put pressure on Everton from the off, with a couple of corners from the Declan Rice side, but another – delivered by Martin Odegaard – drew dividends. Gabriel flicked the ball on, Pickford got a hand to it, it dropped into a dangerous area at the near post and before a defender could get it away, Ezri Konsa was there to poke home from close range to make it 1-0. I quite enjoyed his post-match interview where he spoke about having to wait a long time for his first Arsenal goal, he only joined in the summer and he’s a defender, but I guess you can’t argue against his desire to get off the mark.
After that, Everton enjoyed a little period of the game where they had some possession, but posed little threat, before Arsenal upped the ante and probably should have gone in at half-time further ahead. A lovely move ended with Eze playing a ball into an area where I thought Gyokeres should have attacked it but he was on his heels a bit and it rolled not far wide – maybe Eze could have taken the shot on himself. Rice then fed Noni Madueke who turned well but dragged his shot wide of the far post with his right foot; Merino had an effort blocked; Madueke nearly produced a superb strike with a brilliant touch, turn, and shot from the edge of the box which fizzed just wide of the near post with Pickford rooted to the spot; Odegaard danced through the defence to see a shot deflected wide; and just before half-time Merino flicked a Rice free kick over the bar.
The only thing Everton had to offer was a chance for Thierno Barry when Ben White was unaware of his presence when trying to head back to his goalkeeper, but David Raya was there to make the save. It was pretty much one way traffic, and we absolutely deserved the lead at the break.
In the second half, there was a scare for Gabriel when he landed badly on his knee making a clearance. When he stayed down I thought ‘Oh crap he’s done his hamstring and his ACL and maybe his entire spine and nervous system’. Arsenal seemed to be readying Cristhian Mosquera to come on and replace him, but the Brazilian got some treatment, stretched himself out, and got back on. I was unsure about this, we’ve seen it happen more than once when a player who is hurt compounds the matter by not coming off immediately, but in this case it worked out well because he was the man to double the lead.
The manager had made a triple sub at that point with Kai Havertz, Bruno Guimaraes and Riccardo Calafiori replacing Gyokeres, Merino and Lewis-Skelly (who had been booked), and it was a nice pass from the summer signing to find Ben White’s overlapping run. He stood up a nice cross to the back post and Gabriel was there to head home for 2-0. I was not at all worried about offside despite a VAR check, White timed his run perfectly, you could see that in real-time, and the replays showed that.
Everton did have a decent chance when Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall flashed a header just wide, but really that was about it. There were late cameos for Max Dowman and Martin Zubimendi who took a pointy elbow to the nose and needed treatment for that. Hopefully it doesn’t exclude him from the midweek EFL Cup game, because we need him to be there to start to give Rice a rest.
And that was that. Solid, effective, and with plenty to like about aspects of our performance. Sometimes I feel this Arsenal team can be a bit shot-shy, often looking for the perfect opening before letting fly, and it felt to me like they were instructed to just have a go a bit more yesterday. Merino and Odegaard took five shots each, none of them especially dangerous but it was interesting to note the positions. Four of Odegaard’s were from outside the box, with two of Merino’s from distance (and one from just on the edge). Maybe it’s nothing, just an anomaly, but mixing it up against a team that sat pretty deep is a good idea in my opinion.
Afterwards, Mikel Arteta said:
We’re very happy with the victory, the performance and the week, because we were given a terrible schedule. Playing Sunday afternoon, then Wednesday night in Munich, coming here really late on Thursday and then having to play again in the Premier League against a really tough opponent on Saturday at 3pm. We have overcome some injuries, and I’m really proud of the mentality of the team in the conditions today.
And paid tribute to his central defensive goalscorers, in particular Konsa who has had a strong start to his Arsenal career:
The two centre-backs scored the goals today. We want to be the best in every phase of play, and we won’t stop until we do it. [Konsa is] unbelievable. To come to a club like Arsenal with no pre-season, Saliba is here and other players, and to position yourself in that manner with the naturality he has and put in the performances he has – the chemistry with Gabi that is so solid – is so difficult to do. We’re lucky to have him.
So a clean sheet, a first half goal, a set-piece goal at long last too, and three points, it’s hard to argue. You can see where we could improve, more efficiency in the final third is going to be an ongoing conversation this season I feel, but I think the manager is right to be proud of his team after a Sunday > Wednesday > Saturday schedule provided a real test – in trying conditions too – and his team came through it very, very well.
There’s a midweek game against Fleetwood to think about next, before what is always a difficult trip to Anfield next weekend. But after that defeat to Brighton, the team has generated some momentum, and let’s hope we can keep that going.
—
Before I go today, a word of thanks to Andrew and Lewis for keeping things going in my absence, and my apologies that we didn’t have a post-Bayern Arsecast for you. I’d been feeling a bit unwell for a few days, went to A&E to get checked out, and after doing that they decided to keep me in hospital for a bit. Having run a whole loads of tests, and with a need to then wait for results, they let me home on Friday evening. So it’s not a clean bill of health, but they’d done as much as they can at that point.
I just want to say thanks to everyone who was in touch and sent messages/emails – it’s much appreciated. It’s not that you take your health for granted, but when something happens out of the blue it does make you appreciate how life was the day before you found out something wasn’t quite right. I don’t think there’s anything more scary than starting at a white wall in a hospital before they feed you head first into a machine that makes Berlin techno-noises. There’s just too much time to be left alone with your own thoughts, and I don’t like it!
Anyway, we’ll wait and see, and for now things continue as normal. We’ll have an Arsecast Extra for you tomorrow as usual, and in the meantime look after yourselves. Have a great Sunday folks.
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A sweet end to the week against the Toffees? After Lewis started ...

2026-10-24T10:52:32Z

A sweet end to the week against the Toffees?

After Lewis started yesterday’s blog with an ode to Berlin’s crisp autumnal air, I feel it’s my duty to point out that the weather is due to be fucking horrible in London today. There’s a storm on its way, with very heavy rain forecast across the capital from this afternoon until the early hours. If you’re heading to the match, you’ll want to reach for whatever waterproof Adidas merch drop you’ve been tempted into buying in recent years. And an umbrella. And possibly galoshes. Look ’em up, kids.
Weather aside, a showdown with Everton is always welcome, particularly on home turf. I was looking through the record books yesterday, and the Toffees have won just four of their last 50 visits to Highbury and the Emirates in all competitions. Arsenal have won 38, outscoring them 109–36. What’s more, their only win in north London this millennium came during the pandemic, so it doesn’t really count. We’ve faced each other 226 times in competitive fixtures. Plenty of history to get through, most of it rather enjoyable from our perspective.
My own fond memories stretch back to the early nineties, listening to Jonathan Pearce’s commentary on Capital Gold Sportstime. That’s how I experienced Anders Limpar’s four assists for Wrighty in 1991, Wrighty’s lob over Neville Southall the following year, and even Tony Adams’ title-clinching goal in 1997/98. We’ve given Everton a few batterings since then, too, including the 7-0 at Highbury in 2005 and a couple of 5-1 wins at our new home in the last decade.
More of the same would be lovely, although the Premier League rarely dishes out winning margins like that these days. A disciplined David Moyes side who’ve conceded just seven league goals won’t be inclined to hand out gifts. The Toffees have also had a whole week to stew on their 2-0 defeat to Chelsea, while we’ve been to Germany and back, picking up a nasty injury to our star player along the way.
As you might expect, Bukayo Saka was a hot topic at yesterday’s press conference. Arteta sounded pretty pessimistic, despite the winger still needing another MRI scan and further specialist opinions. I know we shouldn’t speculate on such matters (unless we have English Literature degrees), but I’d be surprised if we see him again this year.
It does raise uncomfortable questions about how we’ve managed him. Asked whether Saka is less robust than he used to be, Arteta pointed to the demanding schedule.
“He’s certainly been different in the last year or so, but the demands that go into the players are immense with club and international competitions, and the times between games are getting narrower. There are less than 66 or 67 hours between games, and every hour is important. The support would be really appreciated, and it’s the same for every team.”
He has a valid point. But isn’t it also our responsibility to manage him through that schedule? Did he need to start nine of the 12 games we’ve played this season?
Remember, he went all the way to the final weekend of the World Cup, then played the last half-hour of the Community Shield less than a month later. I know schools of thought differ on these matters. Players want to maintain their rhythm, managers want their best players on the pitch, and so on. But he was missing games with an Achilles problem in April and was still managing it Stateside, where he had to sit out England matches.
Saka remains a phenomenal player. It just feels as though the minutes he played between breaking through as a 17-year-old and the hamstring injury that required surgery in December 2024 may have caught up with him. That’s just my feeling. Understandably, Arteta sees it differently.
Asked if Saka is burnt out, the manager said: “I don’t have that feeling at all. But certainly what we have to be very mindful of is to create the right ecosystem around a player to maximise his qualities. We need to understand what he’s capable of sustaining when he comes back, whenever that is.”
Ever the pragmatist, Arteta has already told Saka that, whatever he’s dealing with, the team still needs his energy around the place.
“I’ve already told him, go in that building and be the first one there with a good spirit and energy because that’s what the team needs. If everybody is like, ‘Bukayo, how are you? Are you sad? Are you OK?’ That’s exactly what we don’t need.
“It is what it is. This is part of our job to have this, to have some nice and bad results, a defeat, a problem; we need to deal with that. We cannot change that now. What we certainly can dominate is the narrative from here to the Everton game, together with the best energy and the spirit to go and win the game again.”
When it comes to who can fill in for Saka, options are thin on the ground. It looks as though Noni Madueke’s brief flirtation with the left flank is over as quickly as it started, or else it’s Max Dowman. You’d expect the former to start today, with the latter getting minutes against Fleetwood Town in the League Cup on Tuesday. Given Max’s dramatic contribution against the Toffees earlier this year, though, you can’t rule out an appearance this afternoon. Running the ball from the halfway line into an empty net is a decent audition.
Elsewhere, Arteta confirmed Piero Hincapie is available after his recent ankle problem, giving him the option to hand Riccardo Calafiori a breather. Ben White could cover for Jurrien Timber, while Myles Lewis-Skelly, Mikel Merino and Viktor Gyokeres will be champing at the bit to start after coming off the bench in Munich. There’s a balance to strike between resting the likes of Rice and Bruno and giving their new partnership time to bed in. I expect some, but not lots of rotation.
Having spent much of this season warming the bench, Martin Zubimendi must be wondering how he gets back into the side. He was our second-most-used outfield player last season, so it’s quite a change in circumstances. Arteta touched on his situation yesterday:
“He had a few [opportunities], then he had the [ankle] injury, and it’s true he had one game where he was almost fully available to play some minutes, but not to start the game. And from now, he needs to earn the right to play. I need to find the right games to give him the opportunity, and I know when I do that, what his response is going to be. But he’s been exceptional, whatever the role that he had to assume. And I expect that from every player. And he’s a player that deserves more minutes at the moment.”
Watch out, Fleetwood, is all I can say.
From what I can tell, Everton arrive with a completely clean bill of health, which is pretty remarkable given their squad is so small. After joining from Arsenal with an Injury, Christian Norgaard was fit enough to make his long-awaited debut last weekend. I was watching at home, and to say he looked off the pace would be an understatement. He was comically slow, like he was wearing tree trunks for boots.
Speaking yesterday about the cameo, David Moyes said: “When we brought him on, we realised he’s a little bit further away than we hoped…Christian was the first one to come to me and say he was sorry about it.”
Once today is out of the way, let’s hope he gets up to speed, any kind of speed, because he seems like a nice fella. The Dane isn’t the only reunion on the cards, we’ll also welcome back Ainsley ‘the Bird Catcher’ Maitland-Niles. Honestly (and I know it’s wishful thinking), but if we’re a few goals ahead in the dying seconds, I’d be up for conceding a cheeky penalty just to see what he does.
At this stage of the season, it’s about putting points on the board, even if the usual tension is dampened somewhat by Manchester City’s impending relegation to Hackney Marshes. The league ‘leaders’ face Aston Villa in the early kick-off, but whether they win 10-0 or lose by the same scoreline, they currently exist like a turd that can’t be flushed.
To be fair, given the weather and the state of the UK’s godforsaken water companies, flushing them would probably only ruin some poor swimmer’s day. So maybe we can wait a bit longer.
I hate to segue from such grotesque imagery to the recently departed Mr Friar, but I believe the club will be paying special tribute to our life president this afternoon. There have been plenty of warm words and anecdotes about his incredible service to Arsenal, and it’ll be good for those of us heading to N5 to pay our respects together.
That’s about it from me. As you’ll know by now, Andrew M has been out of action for a couple of days, so the rest of the team will do its best to bring you as much of the usual matchday coverage as possible. I don’t yet know whether that will include a Live Blog or Player Ratings, but remember, the new Arseblog app on iOS and Android has plenty of new features, including live match updates. There’s just less swearing…
Right, I’m off to find my wetsuit. Come on you Gunners!
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Declan Rice- the hero that Arsenal need ‘I see him like a ...

2026-10-23T14:46:54Z

Declan Rice- the hero that Arsenal need

‘I see him like a lighthouse, he will light (up) the others and improve the others, and make the team better. The way he talks, the ambition he has and the passion for the game is exactly what we need.’ These were the words of Mikel Arteta upon signing Declan Rice in the summer of 2023.
However, this season, it seems as though Arteta has revoked Rice’s lighthouse license. ‘I went to him and I said: ‘You are not the lighthouse anymore. You are something else.’ These were Arteta’s words after the 2-1 victory over Leeds. In this game, Rice assisted his midfield partner Bruno Guimaraes with a deft flick.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about how there had been a clear and obvious attempt to get Bukayo Saka into more optimal shooting positions. I deduce that having failed to secure any one of Rogers, Vinicius or Alvarez during the summer, Arteta and his staff had to consider how to juice more goals from the Arsenal orange with existing personnel.
Christos Tzolis was Arsenal’s only attacking signing and if he simply replaces the output of Trossard and Martinelli from last season, he will have been a wildly successful signing. I think getting Saka into more shooting positions is a simple case of banking on the team’s best attacker to do a little bit more.
When Arteta talked about Declan Rice no longer being a ‘lighthouse’, I think it is an acknowledgement of two things. 1- that Rice is being tasked with doing more in the final third this season and 2- a midfield of him, Bruno and Odegaard ought to operate more like a carousel where all three players are eights in the aggregate.
What I mean by this is that they are all capable of playing as sixes, eights and tens simultaneously within games. There was a move towards greater flexibility in midfield when Martin Zubimendi signed last summer. Whereas Thomas Partey and Jorginho were players who had to sit at the base of midfield for mobility reasons, Zubimendi and Rice offered the opportunity for both players to sit or push forward depending on the phase of play.
I think the signing of Bruno Guimaraes has furthered this sense that the midfield operates flexibly and the upshot is that Declan Rice is becoming far more creative this season. It’s not the first time that Arteta has asked Rice to be more impactful in the final third.
Towards the end of the 2024-25 season, with Arsenal suffering with attacking injuries and playing Mikel Merino upfront, Rice was asked to push forward more often. This season so far, Rice’s data is shape shifting yet again towards creativity and away from his more rumbustious qualities.
2025-262026-27 Assists0.150.61 Successful passes54.1671.67 Line breaking passes12.8923.64 Successful dribbles0.410.61 Touches80.4292.42
As you can see from the table (all data taken from Fotmob and expressed per 90 minutes), Rice’s creative statistics are all trending upwards compared to last season. He has four assists already this season. But as well as his creative data trending upwards, some of his more out of possession duties are reducing ever so slightly too.
2025-262026-27 Distance covered11.4km10.9km Sprinting224m212m Number of sprints10.409.85 Defensive contribution10.959.24 Tackles 2.031.36 Recoveries5.233.94
In short, Rice is doing a little less scurrying and collecting and a little more passing and creating. I suspect the logic for this is the same as the clear decision to ask Saka to take up more shooting opportunities. Arsenal have to create more threat this season without having really improved their final third personnel in the market.
That being the case, Mikel Arteta has asked two of his best players to adapt their games in pursuit of that aim. It reminds me somewhat of that Simpsons episode where Marge finds a cheap Chanel dress and she keeps redesigning it so as not to let on to some rich friends that she cannot afford to buy another Chanel dress.
The signing of Bruno Guimaraes also represents another change for Rice, Partey and Jorginho were very similar players and that gave Rice a higher physical burden. The addition of Martin Zubimendi changed that somewhat and both players adopted a mix and match partnership whereby they would consistently swap between deeper and more advanced positions.
The rise to prominence of Myles Lewis-Skelly offers a very different and very useful variety in midfield too with his press resistance and ability to progress through dribbling. Bruno Guimaraes is a relatively similar player to Rice, capable of playing deeper and in more advanced areas, as well as being highly attuned to the physical demands of being a Premier League central midfielder.
We are yet to see exactly how a Rice, Odegaard and Bruno midfield will operate in practice; but we can see that Rice’s role has evolved yet again. It speaks to his quality and his intelligence- at West Ham the iteration of his partnership with Tomas Soucek evolved season on season too. Sometimes he would sit deeper and allow Soucek to push on and some seasons he would play in a more advanced position with Soucek behind him.
Rice has always shown a high aptitude for adding bows and whistles to his game season on season. Once again, he is being asked to do something a little bit different by Mikel Arteta and he is responding in kind. His capacity for learning and application is, for my money, unrivalled by any English midfielder I have seen in the last 25 years.
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No rushing to conclusions as opportunity knocks Good morning! ...

2026-10-23T09:36:35Z

No rushing to conclusions as opportunity knocks

Good morning! Lewis here, covering for the morning. I’ve got a cup of tea on the go, and I’m already looking forward to heading out into the cool Berlin air. This time of year is great, isn’t it? It’s a bit chilly, but it’s not too dark or wet just yet. Make the most of it!
It would be a perfect time for a Saturday 3pm kick-off at home, only it looks like a downpour will hit Islington just in time for the Everton game.
That familiar game-every-three-days grind is back in full swing and, when you get to days like this, I find myself still looking back at the game that just happened as much as you’re looking forward to the next one. Bayern on Wednesday was a nice reminder that we’re still so early in the season; we have no idea how it’ll all pan out for the club but also individual players.
Had you asked me about Myles Lewis-Skelly this time a year ago, I’d have said he was doing well in his cup and Champions League starts – he had just impressed in the win against Atletico – and was getting enough minutes as a sub in the league to keep him ticking over.
Then, in the first few months of 2026, he had a run of 10 Premier League games without featuring. He was an unused sub in nine of them and missed out on the squad entirely in the other. By the end of April, I felt like he was nailed on for a summer sale. A month later, he was very obviously nailed on for a deserved start in the Champions League final, in a position we’d never seen him in at senior level just a few weeks earlier.
Things change very quickly.
Noni Madueke has shown in recent weeks that this could be a big season for him. His opportunities were limited in the first few weeks of the season, though he did score against Ipswich in the League Cup. Since the international break, he was our most consistent threat against Leeds and helped create the equaliser from the left, assisted the opener against Lille a few days later from the right, went back over to the left to score the winner at Nottingham Forest at the weekend, and then put in a good performance on the right in Munich the other day.
It felt, at the start of the week, like Madueke had won the battle to play on the left and you had to squint to see Eberechi Eze’s path to any sort of significant football for Arsenal. Suddenly, with Bukayo Saka limping off, Eze was handed an immediate opportunity to respond and not only scored, but also posed a consistent threat in Germany. The picture of Eze having a successful season isn’t so blurry anymore.
Applying these rules to others, I’m not yet worried about Martin Zubimendi, who has ‘suffered’ something of a fall from grace. He was, for very long spells last season, in the ‘first name on the teamsheet’ category. It’s not that he’s persona non grata now or anything, but it’s not easy to see his path back in. But it’s still early days.
Across all competitions, only David Raya and Declan Rice played more minutes than Zubimendi last season. Including every other Premier League team, there are only seven outfield players who played more minutes. We all know he looked fatigued through the spring, then he went to the World Cup, was there until the very end, and returned to play a whopping 15 minutes of pre-season, coming off the bench in the Community Shield.
I’m hoping this period is something of a reset and does him a lot of good as we approach the winter and the second half of the season. Prior to the international break he had still featured in every Premier League game so far this season – I don’t think this is a case of the manager not fancying him anymore – but with just two starts since the end of April (all competitions, including friendlies, for club and country), it makes sense that he’d be lacking some rhythm right now. And then it becomes harder to find the window to throw a player in.
Sometimes luck isn’t on your side. The same way that Saka’s misfortune gave Eze had an immediate opportunity to respond to what happened at the weekend, Zubimendi likely would’ve been in line to start against Lille last week but suffered a knock in the post-Leeds warm-down.
It’s safe to assume he’ll play against Fleetwood next week. The fixture list leading up to the international break offers that game, a trip to Slavia Prague, and the visit of Hull where you’d see some opportunity to rotate and possibly give Rice or another midfield a day or two off. Hopefully all of that amounts to enough minutes to trust Zubimendi a little bit more, and hopefully he takes his chances.
As we’ve seen again and again, most recently this week, things can change drastically, and they can change very quickly. We’ll need the whole squad, so I’m not too worried about how anyone’s season is going to pan out just yet.
Hopefully we’ll get some sort of update on Saka’s injury when Mikel Arteta holds his pre-Everton press conference today. We won’t have an Everton preview over on the Patreon for this one, but we will still have the usual Arseblog News coverage when the boss speaks.
And then there’s some Premier League to sink your teeth into tonight, if you want to welcome in the weekend with Ipswich Town-Nottingham Forest.
Go well!
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Honours even at the Allianz Arena, but worries over Saka MATCH ...

2026-10-22T11:58:47Z

Honours even at the Allianz Arena, but worries over Saka

MATCH REPORT – ARTETA REACTION – QUOTES ROUND-UP – VIDEO
Arsenal and Bayern Munich shared the spoils of a ding-dong Champions League encounter that left Mikel Arteta guffawing at the quality of the two sides.
Part chess match, part basketball, it was an absorbing contest at the Allianz Arena. There’s plenty to sink our teeth into, so let’s crack on.
Aside from the absent Christos Tzolis, William Saliba and Piero Hincapie, Arteta had close to a full squad to choose from. Fresh from their lively cameos at Nottingham Forest, Jurrien Timber and Noni Madueke came into the starting lineup, while Bruno Guimaraes retained his midfield place ahead of Myles Lewis-Skelly.
Bayern were somewhat depleted. We knew Jamal Musiala was injured and Michael Olise suspended, but Luis Diaz only being fit enough for the bench felt like an added bonus. Joshua Kimmich was also absent following the death of his father. Our sympathies to him.
As someone who doesn’t watch a lot of German football, I was struck by how few players I recognised in their lineup. That probably gave me, and perhaps a few others, a false sense of security. Our record in Bavaria should have put paid to that. A solitary 2-0 win in 2013 is the only thing to crow about, and even then we went out on away goals.
Arsenal started briskly, Raya twice sending long diagonal balls towards the right flank in the opening seven minutes. It was a tactic he would use throughout the evening, the aim being to gain territory, compete in the air and pounce on the loose ball.
An early foray into the Bayern box came to nothing, and Odegaard missed a chance to thread a pass behind the defence before Saka offered a glimpse of what he might bring to the occasion. He muscled Alphonso Davies off the ball and charged down the right, looking sharp and up for the challenge.
That made it all the more galling to see him go down clutching his thigh in obvious pain. He immediately signalled that he needed to come off, leaving Arteta to reshuffle his attack. More on the injury later. For now, Eze, whose afternoon at the City Ground had ended after an underwhelming 45 minutes, came on down the left, with Madueke switching to the right.
We continued to enjoy more of the ball, while Havertz’s early booking for a late challenge on Josip Stanisic underlined how keenly contested everything was. So did the sight of Ezri Konsa following Harry Kane almost to the Bayern penalty area. Arteta had predicted a man-to-man encounter, and neither side were going to let him down.
Gabriel made an important challenge to stop Davies getting a shot away before Arsenal fashioned their first real opening. Odegaard curled in a corner, Neuer flapped and Calafiori fired well over from the back post.
Bayern had left three players upfield and wasted no time exploiting the space. Kane grabbed a ball and launched a quarterback-style pass towards Davies, with Gnabry eventually testing Raya with a low shot. The whole thing happened in seconds, giving Arteta ample reason to remind his players that our corners are ideally supposed to threaten the opposition’s goal, not ours.
The team responded by taking the lead with a move that was beautiful in its simplicity. After Arsenal recycled possession in midfield, Odegaard shaped to send Havertz through, paused, then looked up again to spot Eze sprinting behind Konrad Laimer down the left.
The pass was perfectly weighted. Eze let it bounce a couple of times and, by the time he struck across Neuer with his left foot, he was almost level with the edge of the six-yard box. A lovely finish, followed by the familiar experience of starting a celebration only to be told to put it back in its box.
The flag had gone up, but replays showed Stanisic on the near side just playing him on. VAR confirmed the goal, a welcome moment for a player who had taken plenty of criticism at the weekend. It was also our fifth goal from a substitute this season. (0-1)
On the way the goal played out, Odegaard told TNT Sports:
“It was a good timing in the end, and a great finish. I’m really happy for him to get his goal.
“The way he performed as well was a top performance from him. He’s a top player, and I think everyone knows his qualities, and today you could really see that out there.”
Bruno had a half-chance to double the lead from a corner, and I took encouragement from Ismael Saibari resorting to a wayward effort from distance. It felt as though we had a decent handle on Bayern, which was obviously the cue for that momentary sense of calm to be nipped in the bud.
Konsa had marshalled Kane well, but a throw-in on Bayern’s right left him unsure whether to follow his compatriot into the centre circle. You could see him pointing towards the striker, aware of the danger, but nobody else picked him up.
Kane received the ball in acres of space and, crucially, had time to measure his pass. It was a beauty, finding Davies as he darted inside Timber and through on Raya. The Canadian finished first time. That was all it took. Europe’s best teams don’t need you to switch off for very long. (1-1)
Arsenal resumed their probing, Bayern remained dangerous on the break, and the half ended with a flurry of corners that neither side could turn into another goal.
There was no let-up after the interval. Eze won a corner, Rice sent it towards the back post, and Bruno’s downward header was somehow kept out by Neuer, who pushed the bouncing ball up onto the bar before it was cleared. Replays showed it was right on the line when the 40-year-old intervened. Some stop by the veteran.
At the other end, Raya produced a flying save to repel Upamecano’s header after the Frenchman had barraged through the middle of the pitch like it was a Champs-Élysées shopfront. Eze then wriggled into the box and forced Neuer into another stop before Davies had a shot blocked.
It was breathless stuff, although probably a little more stretched than Arteta would have liked. Bayern were beginning to build momentum when they were awarded a penalty by a referee who, to his credit, was impressive throughout.
There wasn’t much to argue about. A cutback found Kane 12 yards out and Timber, throwing himself across the shot, inadvertently blocked it with his hand.
Who had our old nemesis scoring a penalty on the bingo card? Yes, all of you. Kane took it well, to be fair, shuffling through his run-up to send Raya the wrong way before planting the ball in the top left-hand corner. Just his ninth successful spot-kick against us. FFS. (2-1)
I feared the worst at that point. For the next five minutes, Bayern swarmed all over us, forcing mistakes and penning us back around our own box. Laimer went close, although we did briefly threaten an equaliser when an Odegaard free-kick caused a scramble that ended with Gabriel appealing for an imaginary handball. Worth asking, I suppose.
Both managers made double changes with 20 minutes remaining, and those substitutions helped swing the contest back our way. Bayern brought on Luis Diaz and Lennart Karl for Saibari and Gnabry, but a shot from the Colombian, comfortably saved by Raya, was about as threatening as the hosts got from there.
Arteta replaced Havertz and Bruno with Viktor Gyokeres and Myles Lewis-Skelly, who both made their presence felt. We settled, began keeping the ball again and patiently searched for a way through. Eventually, another moment of attacking quality brought the equaliser.
Timber, Eze, MLS and Konsa were all involved as Arsenal worked possession from left to right. Rice laid the ball off to Madueke and surged into the box, where he collected a deft touch from Gyokeres before hammering low across Neuer.
It was a fine move with a finish to match. Rice’s first goal since March, too. When he strikes a ball like that, you do wonder whether we could arrange for him to be in the penalty area a little more often, even if I appreciate he’s quite busy everywhere else. (2-2)
Rice later reflected:
“When you play against Bayern, a team that go man-to-man over the whole pitch and follow you everywhere, it’s such a tough game for 95 minutes, and you have to apply certain principles and concepts, and you’re constantly thinking about where you can move into the space.”
Arteta sent on Mikel Merino in search of a winner in the closing five minutes, but the tempo finally dropped. Diaz picking up an injury and having to go off just 20 minutes after his introduction didn’t help the flow.
There was still time for Timber to unleash a rasping effort that Neuer tipped over. The resulting corner came to nothing, but after a contest like that, a draw felt fair.
Arteta’s immediate post-game comments were telling:
“Wow, what a game, that’s the level. That’s one of the highest levels that we played. The level of the opposition, what the game required, and our level as well. Two teams that want to press each other constantly, two teams that want to attack, that want to play. I think it was a fascinating game.”
In his post-game press conference, he added:
“We’ll take the draw, but it doesn’t mean we’re really happy about it because we prepared a team to win the game – you could see that from right at the beginning, with the mindset, the purpose the adventure team had to be very dominant and cause Bayern problems.”
Vincent Kompany, who had recovered sufficiently from a virus to take his place in the Bayern dugout, said:
“We faced a strong opponent; we felt it, we saw it. I think we had our moments. A few big chances that I didn’t think we’d get. A bit of a shame, because in the last ten to 15 minutes we suffered. It took a bit of our momentum. We still had the feeling we could win the game. But this is a strong opponent, and the game was never over. In that moment, the equaliser was a shame.”
Hopefully, the performance, if not the result, briefly quietens some of the tiresome discussion about Arsenal’s style of play. As Ben White once said, “Obviously, we’re quite good at football.”
It does help when the other team wants to play some too. In the Premier League, we spend plenty of time trying to prise apart a low block, with the opposition apparently hoping to win through the sheer structural integrity of their back five. Last night, both sides were prepared to press, attack and take risks. The spectacle benefited accordingly.
The obvious downside was Saka’s injury. He looked thoroughly unhappy as he limped off, and Arteta acknowledged the medical team’s concern.
“They are a bit concerned,” confirmed the Spaniard. “A player that has to come off with a really sharp pain is never good news.”
Saka was still limping on his way to the team bus, which does little to ease fears of a spell on the sidelines. We’ll have to wait for a proper assessment before knowing how long.
My brother cheerfully messaged to suggest a grade one quad tear could mean three months out. I’ll take that with a pinch of salt, seeing as his medical qualifications amount to an English literature degree from the University of Nottingham. Clearly, I missed the chapter of Wuthering Heights dealing with muscular rehabilitation.
A sad note to end on, but a memorable game. With seven points from nine, Arsenal remain in the automatic qualification spots after three games. Wins over Slavia Prague and Borussia Dortmund in November should help us consolidate that.
Right, let’s leave it there. Blogs should be back tomorrow, hopefully with an Arsecast and a pre-Everton Patreon podcast with Lewis. For now, have a great Thursday.
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Bayern away the kind of European clash Mikel Arteta relishes ...

2026-10-21T09:51:54Z

Bayern away the kind of European clash Mikel Arteta relishes

Morning.
Arsenal are in Champions League action this evening, taking on Bayern Munich at the Allianz Arena. There’s no major team news to report. Martin Zubimendi is with the squad, as he was on Sunday, and apparently Kepa is back after missing out the trip to Forest with an injury.
I don’t think we’ll see too much in the way of change from the team that started at the City Ground, although I suspect Jurrien Timber will replace Ben White at right back, and after scoring the winner, Noni Madueke is likely to get the nod on the left. I do wonder about whether the Declan Rice, Bruno Guimaraes, Martin Odegaard is exactly the right fit for an away game against a team as strong as Bayern, so if Myles Lewis-Skelly is in the manager’s thoughts, that wouldn’t surprise me.
They are without Michael Olise who was sent off in their last game, so that’s good, but make no mistake, this is very strong opposition who, this season, have scored 5 twice, 6 once, and even 7 in one game. There are no surprises in terms of who the danger men are and where those goals come from, and I’m sure the manager’s game plan will have been built around the threat they pose.
As I said yesterday though, this is a different challenge for us than facing a team who will sit deep. We will have to defend well, but also make the most of the periods in the game when we have the ball and can cause them problems. We’re not the quickest team, but for me it’s more about how quickly you move the ball than how fast you can run. That’s something I’d like to see from us later.
At the same time, Bayern don’t come up against opposition of this calibre every week in the Bundesliga, and if they get something from this game, they will have to work hard for it. For Mikel Arteta, matches like this have an extra importance, I think. Having reestablished Arsenal as a Champions League club over the the last three seasons, he’s used fixtures against the bigger sides as a marker of progress, and even though this is ‘just’ the league phase, I’m sure he’ll be out to do that again – especially at a ground that has given Arsenal some painful experiences down the years.
He says:
I’m really looking forward to the game, this is the stage, this is the kind of team, this is the kind of coach, this is the kind of club, the stadium that you want to be involved in. When you look at the squad the starting possible XI that they have, you know, first of all, as a team, how incredibly well coached they are, the mindset that they have, the competition that they have in every action and the individual quality moments that they can creator throughout the game when you look at the goals and chances that they generate.
That’s the opposition that you want to be facing and we will be facing and we’re just going to confront that and go for it.
So, let’s see what we get later on. Our league phase record has been very, very good, and I’m positive that’s something the manager will want to continue. I’m also looking forward to a game that gives us something a bit different from our last couple of Premier League fixtures.
—
Elsewhere, I’m loath to comment on absolute bullshit, but sometimes it feels necessary. Mikel Arteta was asked a question in his press conference yesterday by the Daily Mail, looking for a response to comments from Graeme Souness who labelled Bukayo Saka a ‘cheat’ on Piers Morgan’s podcast. I know, Daily Mail + Souness + Morgan = a triumvirate of cuntery that is hard to top, but still. He said:
I haven’t heard it so I’m not going to make any comment.
I’ll comment though. Graeme Souness is a silly old prick who has unfairly targetted a player who is, in the world of football, one of the good guys. If he gets a lot of free kicks, it’s because he’s kicked a lot, and has been ever since he made his breakthrough. Look at what people have been allowed to do him down the years. Studs down the Achilles, rotational fouling every time he gets the ball, getting clattered from behind time and time again, and even subjected to stuff that is more akin to assault than a tackle on a football pitch.
So if he has modified aspects of his game to withstand that, it’s not cheating. Kicking someone and fouling someone is cheating, but that’s seen as a manly, good old fashioned part of the game. Something Souness, of course, was prone to himself, but he doesn’t view inflicting violence on other people as anything other than just part and parcel of football. Studs in the knee, fine. Being awarded a free kick when you get fouled, ooooh, we can’t have that.
Here’s the thing. I’ve never seen Bukayo Saka do what Michael Owen did against Argentina, or what Wayne Rooney did with Sol Campbell, or what Jamie Vardy used to do for Leicester, or what Steven Gerrard did more than once during his Liverpool and England career, or what Harry Kane has done throughout his career to win penalties. But Bukayo Saka is a cheat? It really makes you wonder what the difference is, eh?
Also, when we’re right in the middle of the biggest cheating scandal in English football history, and perhaps in the history of the professional game (at least in the modern era), using the word ‘cheat’ is particularly loaded. I have no idea why a 73 year old man feels the need to court controversy like this, he could just shuffle off and nobody would miss him at this stage, but it’s deliberate, it’s unfair and it needs pushback. I understand why Arteta didn’t take the bait so obviously dangled by that noxious rag at his press conference last night, but as fans we don’t have to stand by and accept it.
I know, I know. We could just ignore it, not give it oxygen etc, but I think we also have to be quite conscious that we’re living in somewhat febrile times, and when a young black man is given an unfair label – for no good reason by the way – they are the ones who are likely to suffer the consequences, not the daft old bastard who throws stuff like that out into the ether.
—
Right, I’m gonna leave it there for now. As ever, we’ll bring you live blog coverage of the game later, as well all the post-game stuff on Arseblog News like the match report, player ratings, manager reaction, quotes round-up and more. There’s also a preview podcast on Patreon if you need something to listen to ahead of kick off. Don’t forget the updated Arseblog apps also have a cool new matchday centre, full of stats, alerts, and much more.
Catch you later for the game.
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Is it who we are, or who we have to be? Morning all. Arsenal will ...

2026-10-20T08:24:54Z

Is it who we are, or who we have to be?

Morning all.
Arsenal will have a training session at London Colney today before heading to Germany later for our game against Bayern Munich tomorrow. I’m going to strongly wager that tomorrow’s opposition don’t set up the same way Nottingham Forest did on Sunday, and perhaps that will make for a more interesting game.
When you look at some of our results in Europe against ‘big’ teams, it probably does tell you that, while we can all harbour some concerns about our attacking play and/or attacking talent, the issue isn’t just down to that. In the last two seasons alone, we’ve seen:
Arsenal 4-0 Atletico Madrid
Inter 1-3 Arsenal
Arsenal 3-1 Bayern Munich
Arsenal 2-0 PSG
Arsenal 3-0 Real Madrid
The win against Atletico came without Martin Odegaard or Kai Havertz, both of whom were injured at the time, but against a team who many view as one of the most obstinate and defensively well organised in Europe under Diego Simeone, we took them to the cleaners. Partly because they didn’t actually play defensively (they probably should have), but also in part because we made the breakthrough in the 57th minute with a set-piece goal from Gabriel. What Arsenal would have given for one of those corners at the City Ground to produce something on Sunday.
Here was a stat on Match of the Day on Sunday: no team across Europe has won more games by a single goal margin than Arsenal since the start of last season, 18 – the next best is, quite amusingly, an Italian team (Inter Milan with 16):
No team has more single goal margin wins than Arsenal in the last 12 months
Lewis has some good stuff on this in his latest newsletter, which I think provides some good context for our struggles (if you want to call them that), in comparison to a team like Brighton who have gone goal crazy this season. I’ve seen people say ‘If they can do it with the players they have, why can’t we?’. There’s context, which Lewis lays out, but also the fact is teams don’t set up against Brighton in the same way they do against us. Seeing how they’re performing this season so far, that might actually change as managers and analysts recognise the threat they pose, but so far that’s not something they’ve had to contend with.
Essentially, this is a literal consequence of us being good, really good. If we were crap, as we have been, we would not have to face this kind of approach over and over again. Teams would feel more emboldened to attack, because they don’t fear us. As it is, manager after manager looks at this Arsenal team and decides the best way to get something from the game is to make life specifically difficult for us – as Oliver Glasner outlined on Sunday. As I said in yesterday’s blog, I think two things can be true. We can be better, we need to be better, but dismissing or downplaying the opposition as a factor isn’t reasonable, in my view.
Then there’s a wider question of whether this is what Mikel Arteta wants. Is this his preferred style and way of winning games? Even if I can see his strengths are probably more defensive than attacking (if we put it in those simplistic terms), my strong opinion on this is that it is not, and I know some will disagree. He is, however, the arch-pragmatist, and he recognises his job to is produce results with what he’s got. Think back to when he first took over. He spoke specifically about wanting to play a 4-3-3 but with the players he had he used a back three until such time as he recruited better players for the requisite positions.
Obviously he has a big influence on recruitment, and over the years I think how we’ve added to the forward line has been considerably less effective than the way we’ve built our defence and midfield, but it’s also reasonable to suggest that the pool of attacking elite talent is smaller than in other positions. If you look back at this summer, a manager who wanted to bring in Vinicius Jr (for all his troubles so far this season at Real Madrid), and Julian Alvarez isn’t one who is 100% happy with the options he has.
He will absolutely back those players publicly, because anything else would be stupid in the extreme, but you don’t pursue that talent level for no reason. You do it because you know you need to be better, you know there’s room for improvement, and because ultimately you’re not completely happy with what you have. In the absence of that though, what you have is what has to get you results, and this manager has demonstrated an ability to do that time and time and time again without ever blaming what he doesn’t have.
So, I don’t think this is necessarily what he wants. I think he’d be far happier if we scored more goals, if games were less intense, if the nerves weren’t as shredded as we head towards injury time knowing one moment from the opposition could cost us valuable points. For now though, his job is to find a way to do that with this squad and against opposition who week after week try and implement a blueprint that negates us as an attacking force. And it’s worth pointing out that whatever concerns we all have, more often than not the opposition don’t succeed. Arsenal do.
Right, I’ll leave it there for this morning. We’ll have a Bayern Munich preview podcast for you a bit later this afternoon over on Patreon. For now, have a good one.
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Nottingham Forest 0-1 Arsenal: Madueke makes the difference on a ...

2026-10-19T07:28:54Z

Nottingham Forest 0-1 Arsenal: Madueke makes the difference on a difficult day

Match report – Player ratings – Arteta reaction – Video
Arsenal made it 10 wins from 11 games this season, and three in a row since the end of the Interlull, after a late Noni Madueke goal earned us all three points against Nottingham Forest.
The first half happened. Mikel Arteta brought his ‘big guns’ back in, Eberechi Eze kept his place on the left hand side, but it was a 45 minutes of football to be endured rather than enjoyed. There were a couple of half-chances for Kai Havertz, and that was about it, but despite the fact we’d had nearly 75% possession at the break, Forest had more shots than us in the opening period (five to three).
It wasn’t much better in the second half, but we’d changed something by then with Madueke on for Eze, and he did give us a bit more on the left. Nevertheless, the challenge we faced was a difficult one, and this is where the analysis of this game gets interesting, because I think two things can be true. First, as a team we lack final third quality which makes life more difficult for us when we face a well organised, well disciplined team who sit in a low block.
The second thing is that we faced exactly that team yesterday, and I think it’s too simplistic, or one-eyed, to suggest that our failure to find a breakthrough is entirely down to our shortcomings. Forest were set up to snuff us out, to make it really tough to find space to create chances, and they did that really, really well. Speaking afterwards, Oliver Glasner made it clear he was impressed with that aspect of their game plan:
I think the performance in many parts was really good. Defensively it was on a very good, maybe on a top level, and giving them one shot on target. At the end, with one situation that always can happen, we are losing the game. So for me personally it’s a very frustrating result, but another, I would say, positive performance.
Which isn’t to make excuses for us, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to point out that the opposition are a factor. Someone like Daniel Munoz, for example, is a wing-back who gets forward again and again, but in this game barely crossed the halfway line. Some of that might have been the fact we dominated possession and played a lot of the game in their half, but clearly some of it is instruction too, and it does make it difficult.
All the same, it’s a challenge that as champions we are going to face again and again this season, and we need to find ways to deal with it. There were moments, a Gabriel header that he’d back himself to do better with, and then a glorious chance for Declan Rice created by substitute Jurrien Timber but he skied his shot over the bar when he should have hit the target. It was slim pickings overall though. Havertz and Bukayo Saka were below par again, there was no room for Bruno Guimaraes to try and find the forward passes he likes so much, and you couldn’t help but wonder where the breakthrough was going to come from.
Then Madueke picked up a pass from Rice, drove into the box, made space with a nice stepover/shimmy, and fired a shot which deflected off the thigh of a defender and into the back of the net. It was reward for his endeavour, and that little extra he has in terms of a burst of pace allowed him the room to get that shot off. Perhaps a touch of good fortune, but it also showed the value of just letting fly rather than trying to fashion the perfect chance.
So with 10 minutes to go, and not a lot of injury time, you felt that would be that. Arsenal controlled possession as we headed towards 90 minutes, and looked pretty assured, but then – as football can often do – it went a bit mental. An extremely foul throw from Liam Delap brought about a chance for Chris Wood which Rice got back very well to block in our box; then Murillo almost scored what would have been a contender for goal of the season with a run into our box and a right footed shot that just started dipping after it flew over the top corner; before Ezri Konsa had to deny Delap with brilliant block which led to a corner that ultimately Forest wasted in the final seconds.
It’s hard to really explain how we found ourselves exposed like that three times in three minutes, and I’m sure it’s something the manager and his coaching staff will analyse in detail because I think we kinda got away with it a bit there. Credit to our lads for their defensive work, but the fact they had those opportunities at all is a bit of a worry. Still, after the final whistle, and after two successive 0-0s here in the last two seasons, Arteta was pleased with a win at the City Ground at last:
A big win. A win that we didn’t have in the last two seasons at a really tough place. We knew the game was going to be with small margins. They are extremely well-coached, their shape is like a Christmas tree, you have no space to play.
In the second half we had to play a completely different game. Elevate the level of threat and risk that we would have to take. But at the same time, be very composed and disciplined to make sure that the game doesn’t open up and lose it, and we sustained the level. We had better moments, more sustained attacks, much closer to the 18-yard box.
He also had some words for the match winner, Madueke, saying:
We’ve seen a different Noni since the international break, and that’s what we need. Another level of anger and conviction in his actions, and he’s becoming now decisive in matches which is what we expect from our players.
His contribution was telling, and fair play to him. Another player making a big impact off the bench, after another game in which Arsenal failed to score a first half goal. I think first and foremost we need to give this team credit for the way it has the ability to win games. As I said above, it’s 10 wins from 11 in all competitions this season, and that’s no accident. There’s a resilience and character that I think we can all see that we shouldn’t overlook. If I said we have the knack of winning that feels a bit unfair, as it it’s just a temporary thing, because this is a big part of who we are. We are ridiculously effective, if not necessarily always convincing and/or entertaining.
Again, two things can be true. I recognise that teams will make life hard for us, in the Premier League in particular the level is so high these days, and as defending champions we also face a particular motivation from the opposition because everyone wants to measure themselves against the team that just won the league. It’s not easy, but I also think we can be a bit pedestrian at times, and that in the final third there is obvious room for improvement in terms of the individual quality of certain players. Some of that is their own level of performance which can be better, but overall our recruitment in this area of the pitch has not been as effective as in other positions, and in the medium-long term that is something we have to address.
Until then though, Mikel Arteta has to find a way to get more from the players we have, and to think of ways to deal with teams who will see the way Forest played, and others have played against us this season, and use it as a blueprint. It won’t be the last time we face a side who sits as deep as that, and with the squad we have there’s a need to be find solutions. Sometimes it’s a goal like Madueke’s yesterday, or Guimaraes at Sunderland which cracked that game open. What we can be reasonably assured of is that this an Arsenal team that will not be found wanting in terms of effort, and one that more often than not can find a way to make that breakthrough.
Which is to say, get ready for the grind folks. It’s gonna be like this a lot. Although I will come back to that first half issue we have, because as tough as it is, earlier goals tend mean more open games, and some improvement there would make the opposition’s main challenge an attacking one rather than a defensive one in terms of their own game plan. I know it’s very simplistic to say ‘just score earlier’, but there’s no doubt it would help.
Right, I’ll leave it there for now. James and I recorded the Arsecast Extra straight after the game last night, so if you haven’t had a chance to listen yet, that’s below. We’ll have an episode of The 30 over on Patreon later this morning too, so stand by for that.
Download – iTunes – Spotify – Acast – RSS
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Nottingham Forest v Arsenal – live blog Join us for live blog ...

2026-10-18T16:35:15Z

Nottingham Forest v Arsenal – live blog

Join us for live blog coverage of our Premier League clash away to Nottingham Forest, kick-off 16.30.
We’ve got up to the second live text commentary, updates, goal clips, observations and occasionally witty asides. If you want to join the chat, register an Arseblog Live account.
To do that, go to Arseblog Live – click login on the top right, and then choose ‘sign up’ to complete the process with your username/password.
We also have added BlueSky functionality, so key moments – goals, cards, HT and FT scores etc – will be pushed to https://bsky.app/profile/live.arseblog.com
CLICK TO LAUNCH Nottingham Forest v Arsenal LIVE BLOG
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No messing around from Mikel Morning all. Here’s a quick ...

2026-10-17T12:38:32Z

No messing around from Mikel

Morning all.
Here’s a quick Saturday round-up for you, starting with Mikel Arteta’s answer to a question in his press conference yesterday as to whether he might be concerned about some players lacking rhythm because they haven’t started many games. His response:
They need to train more then. What I don’t want is an excuse. So what do we do then? We send you on holidays? So you play, you have to be available. When you don’t play, you have to make sure that you do everything you can to impact the team there.
Because otherwise, the ones that are playing a lot say, ‘No, but I don’t perform because I’m tired!’. So then it’s always an excuse. I hate excuses.
We know the role. We know that the competitiveness that we need in the team is at the maximum level. And they are doing amazingly well.
I don’t see any player that is playing that lacks rhythm or lacks this. Everybody’s involved. Everybody has played minutes. And it will continue to be like this because they have really deserved that. So hopefully we can maintain that because it’s a massive asset for us.
I think we all know he is a very demanding manager, and that’s a big part of what makes him so good, but sometimes you get a little reminder just how much! I get it though, and maybe that tough love, if you want to call it that, can be formative and useful. Look at Myles Lewis-Skelly, he made a breakthrough in one position, Arsenal went out and bought an established and experienced international player to play in the same position, and he spent most of last season on the bench.
In the end it finished strongly for Myles. Circumstances helped a bit but when he was given his chance in midfield, he took it with both hands, so much so that he started a Champions League final, and has now established himself as a regular in his favourite position. It took a while but I’m going to guess that if there was some disappointment in the early part of last season, the reason he got his chance was because of how he upped the ante in terms of his training and his attitude.
At the same time though, things like rhythm and confidence are important for some players. You can really see when they don’t have it. Viktor Gyokeres, for example, hasn’t even played an hour yet in the Premier League this season, he’s yet to score, and on Tuesday against Lille he was probably the one player who has been peripheral so far this season who didn’t really make an impact. On the striker, Arteta said:
These are moments in a player’s career, or in a season, I would say, and we are trying to help him as much as possible. He has some very good moments; three or four times he’s been in front of goal with no keeper, and the ball should arrive to him, and it doesn’t. Then maybe they are talking about something else, but these are the strikers. It’s very small margins – scoring or not scoring changes the narrative. We should know the perception of how much he can help the team.
I’m not sure I necessarily agree that there were three or four moments like that in the Lille game, but referring to what the manager said above, he does feel to me like a player for whom rhythm is important, and right now there is none for him. Clearly there’s no mollycoddling here though. The message is very clear, when you get to play, make an impact or train harder to ensure the next time you get a chance you can take it.
There was also a question about William Saliba being missing from the team photo, and Arteta spoke about how despite a key player being absent for a medical appointment () they had to go ahead with anyway because there were commercial demands:
What happened was that we have tried to do that picture three times already, but we have had to cancel it at the last minute for different reasons. We have some commercial obligations and had people who came and flew over to do that, so we decided to do that picture at least. We’ll have another picture with the whole family. Hopefully we can get them all together at some point one day, and will announce that as well.
I realise it’s not the most important thing in the world, but to have an official team photo without someone of Saliba’s importance and stature does feel wrong. He played a huge part in our title win last season, so regardless of why he was absent, for him to not be in the picture where we have the Premier League trophy front and centre is wrong needs to be corrected. Fourth time lucky, hopefully – leaving Stuart MacFarlane to ponder how to fit the Frenchman into what was lovely symmetry in the one they actually took!
—
Finally for today, and you may have seen this already, but for the last couple of months I’ve been working on something really special with my friend James Clifford Kent. He’s someone I’ve known for 22 years through this website, we’ve played football together and lots more down the years. He’s a superb photographer (among other things), and captured some incredible images of the parade after we won the title.
So, to commemorate that very special moment in all of our Arsenal supporting lives, we’ve put together a book we’re calling ‘The 22’. It features the story of the season in words from me, all the ups and downs, hopes and dreams, fears and worries and special moments, and amazing pictures from James.
It has a foreword from Ian Wright, and each one comes with a collection of postcards, a double-sided A2 print, stickers, a bookmark, and a premium presentation box. It is strictly limited edition, with only 2026 individually numbered copies available, so it’s a real collector’s item. We’ll be having a launch in London on the afternoon/evening of November 6th (venue to be announced next week), which we’ll ask people to register for. We’ll give you details on how to do that in due course. Pre-orders will be available to Arseblog Patreon members from November 2nd, with a final batch going on general sale online on November 7th.
So, whether it’s for your own Arsenal collection, or perhaps even the Christmas gift for the Arsenal fan in your life (yeah, we’re closing in on that time of year again!), hopefully we’ve got you covered.
Right, I’ll leave it there for now. Have a great Saturday folks.
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Arsecast Extra Episode 716 – 11.10.2026 Welcome to another ...

2026-10-16T10:28:07Z

Arsecast Extra Episode 716 – 11.10.2026

Welcome to another Arsecast Extra, the Arsenal podcast, with myself and James from @gunnerblog.
In this episode we look back at Saturday’s 2-1 win over Leeds. We begin with some surprising selection decisions from Mikel Arteta, and a first half which saw the opposition pose more goal threat than Arsenal. Then, after falling behind in the second period, we got ourselves going with Riccardo Calafiori’s equaliser before Bruno Guimaraes came off the bench to score the winner. There’s discussion of how the game changed, the impact of the subs, how to frame the performance and the result, and some chat about players who didn’t get off the bench. In part two we answer listener questions about Bukayo Saka and his performance, how left footed we were from the start of this game, being more creative in open play, the Arsenal crest/badge, and lots more.
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Who cares? Morning all, welcome to a brand new week. So Man City ...

2026-10-16T09:52:01Z

Who cares?

Morning all, welcome to a brand new week.
So Man City remain top of the Premier League after a 3-0 win over Liverpool at Anfield yesterday. The home side were on the end of a really terrible decision which saw them go down to 10 men, after which City scored three goals. And I could not have cared less. It felt utterly pointless.
Liverpool fans sang songs about the opposition being ‘cheating bastards’, which they are, while the visiting fans whooped it up in their costumes, backing their owners, being described in some quarters as ‘defiant’. We’re all tribal, I get it, but this was grim stuff all round. The tiptoeing around the verdict on commentary only added to the futility of the experience.
Men employed by a company who pay billions for the rights to show the Premier League, and who are intelligent enough to know the damage City have perpetrated over the years, also have to kind of protect the product. But here is the real danger for Sky and the Premier League. It’s not about the microphones picking up some salty language about Gary Neville being a wanker and then being quickly muted. It’s not about how Man City are working hard to dismiss all this as ‘noise’ and present themselves as strong characters because they won a game of football with all this going on.
It’s that their continued participation in a competition they have won and then dominated through fraud is going to make your average football fan question why they are even bothering to watch. What’s the point? We keep hearing about a process, and while I understand an appeal is underway, they have already been found guilty. Not just a little bit guilty either. 114 of 115 charges. Read the findings. The evidence is laid out in black and white. There is too much pussyfooting around that cast-iron fact.
So, like many of you I sat down to watch this game yesterday, because of everything that had gone on since the guilty verdict came down. The added spice of it being at Anfield because of the rivalry of these two clubs over the decade in particular felt like it could spark something hugely entertaining. But then you realise that even that is false. It only happened because Man City cheated, and there’s a hollowness to it. It’s fake. A facade of sporting rivalry that Liverpool were ultimately victims of because when you win 90+ points in a season (twice?) and don’t win the league you’ve been swindled.
Maybe I’d feel different this morning if Liverpool had won, but I don’t really think so. By full time I was almost chiding myself for committing time to something so trivial and inconsequential. They won, they scored some nice goals, but if the sanctions are what they ought to be, they don’t matter a single bit, except to City fans, and I really couldn’t care less about them.
They’ll beat Ipswich in their next Premier League and I won’t care. They’ll go to Aston Villa after that and probably win there too and I won’t care. It’s all a charade at this point, and it’s why we need a resolution to this as quickly as possible. Otherwise apathy takes hold. People understand they’re being asked to pay for something which is fundamentally bogus. In the lexicon of the Premier League itself, a sham. And why should people commit time and money to something like that?
There have been decent voices speaking up on this over the weekend. I enjoyed Paul Merson on Soccer Saturday, but the fact you had three others beside him trying to undermine his point only does City’s work for them. Joe Cole was garbage on TNT Sports after our game against Leeds, and he was far from alone. I suppose you have to acknowledge that despite the fact there’s a weariness to the term sportswashing, City have done a damn good job at that aspect of it, even if in the end they got caught red-handed.
But that’s what the sportswashing is for. It’s part of the plan, and the plan remains in place: Deny. Obfuscate. Lie. Obstruct. Deflect. Muddy the waters. Amplify those friendlier voices who, for whatever reason, are prepared to ignore the evidence and the verdict to help these industrial scale cheaters deny and obfuscate and lie and so on.
They have a very good team with very good players. They scored good goals against Liverpool. They’ve won six out of six in the Premier League so far. 18 points from 18. And who gives a single shit? Why does any analysis matter? Why should I care what Jamie Carragher thinks of a man as craven and pathetic as Enzo Maresca, regardless of how good a manager he might be? Why should I allow myself to be inflicted by scenes their fans glorifying their cheating?
Who cares?
—
Arsenal, meanwhile, are in Champions League action tomorrow evening against Lille. Mikel Arteta meets the press around lunchtime, and perhaps we’ll get some info on the injuries sustained to Piero Hincapie and Martin Zubimendi, who also left the post-Leeds warm down early. Not ideal, but let’s hear what he has to say.
We recorded the Arsecast Extra yesterday, and you can find that below if you haven’t had a chance to listen yet. For now, have a good one folks.
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Good stuff from the other Mikel Morning. I’ve written here ...

2026-10-16T07:53:45Z

Good stuff from the other Mikel

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.
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Arsenal 3-0 Lille: A second half flurry and a deserved win Match ...

2026-10-16T05:42:06Z

Arsenal 3-0 Lille: A second half flurry and a deserved win

Match report – Player ratings – Arteta reaction
Arsenal’s first home game in this season’s Champions League ended in victory, with a 3-0 win over Lille.
Mikel Arteta made changes, with starts for Jurrien Timber, Mikel Merino, Bruno Guimaraes, Eberechi Eze and Viktor Gyokeres, with Myles Lewis-Skelly shifting to left-back in the absence of Piero Hincapie. It wasn’t a scintillating first half by any means, we felt a bit sluggish going forward, and the plan appeared to be quite limited: give it to Noni Madueke on the right and see if he can produce a decent cross. Which he almost did quite a few times, but not quite.
Still, there were chances. Merino headed straight at the keeper after good overlapping work from Timber, the Spaniard also hooked a shot over the bar, and was in position for a tap-in from a Lewis-Skelly cross after he’d worked it well with Eze on the left, but unfortunately he could only hit it at the keeper. Guimaraes put one wide of the near post, and Eze had a good opportunity too, but his finish lacked some conviction at the keeper made a save.
Not brilliant, and with obvious room for improvement, but the way the commentary team on TNT Sports were going on about Lille, you’d swear they were tearing us apart for the entire half. They were defensively disciplined, fair enough, but offered little or no threat beyond a ‘goal’ which was rightly disallowed for offside.
The pattern, and the Arsenal domination continued after the break too. We had 75% possession, and upped the intensity. Lille’s pass success rate fell from 85% in the first half to 61% between the start of the second half and our breakthrough via Jurrien Timber. At that point though, the manager was already readying changes because we were past the hour mark without scoring. What a lovely goal it was too. His first touch from Madueke’s pass was superb, dragging the ball away from the defender and into a position where he could have a shot, and he clipped the ball beautifully over the advancing goalkeeper to make it 1-0.
We got the triple sub immediately afterwards, with Bukayo Saka, Kai Havertz and Martin Odegaard on for Madueke, Gyokeres, and Merino, and talk about making an immediate impact. After Odegaard and Timber hassled the defender into a mistake, Guimaraes played a first time pass to Saka who delivered an early ball across the box for Eze to apply the finish and make it 2-0 with his first goal of the season. At times I think Arsenal have a tendency to err towards control in possession rather than risk the more difficult pass, but here we saw the benefit of using the ball more quickly, because it opened up the space for the goal.
The third came shortly afterwards too. We saw sharp movement from Havertz, Odegaard’s pass behind the defence to find the German was precision personified, and when he pulled it back for Saka he made no mistake from close range to absolutely settle game and make it 3-0. Afterwards, Arteta talked about making a tactical adjustment which gave the team more control, but also spoke about increasing the techincal level. When you turn to your bench and you bring on Havertz, Odegaard and Saka, you do exactly that, and it paid dividends in a big way.
I think we could have scored more. Eze really grew into the game – which was good to see – and ended up with 5 shots, as did Bruno whose determination to make things happen in the final third isn’t always met with perfect execution, but he is the kind of player who will look for the more difficult pass if he thinks it will lead to something dangerous. I have to assume that’s a key part of why we brought him in, and it’s a quality in his game I hope we look to maintain because it’s something we really, really need.
There was a late cameo for Max Dowman with the game done and dusted, Olivier Giroud came on for Lille and got a nice enough reception and a big hug from Arteta afterwards, and overall I think this is a game we absolutely dominated and deserved to win. I was especially pleased to see Saka score and produce an assist after what was a poor performance against Leeds at the weekend. I’ve noticed a groundswell of discussion around him that, while understandable on the one hand, has felt a bit over the top on the other. We know he can do better, he knows he can do better, but I’ve really disliked some of the commentary around him and hopefully this effective cameo will remind some people he’s still a player with lots to offer. More consistency from him is important, of course, so let’s hope that’s what he can produce.
So, overall a solid win, decent minutes for most of the players who came into the side, and solid prep for Sunday’s visit to Nottingham Forest – a game we’ll talk about a bit more later in the week.
—
However, despite the victory, it was a sad day off the pitch for Arsenal with the news of Ken Friar’s death. Afterwards, Mikel Arteta said:
It’s a really sad day for everybody that loves Arsenal Football Club, anybody who loves football, and anybody who has come across him. I had the privilege, the honour, to meet him and to spend time with him, to learn from him. There are people at football clubs who have a role and fulfil it, and others who create an identity, values, and they have a vision to create that future for the football club.
The legacy Ken is going to leave, to all of us, to our football club, to everybody that has been close to him, is going to be forever. I want to pass on all our love to his relatives, his family, so they know that the way we feel about him cannot be anything but extraordinary.
The word ‘legend’ is one which is bandied about a bit too easily, but there’s no doubt Mr Friar was one of those. He spent almost his entire life at Arsenal, literally from boy to man, and that kind of service is extraordinary. Football is an industry where almost everyone becomes a target in one way or another, players, managers, board members, owners, but there are just countless stories of his decency and goodness from anyone who ever encountered him, and it’s probably fair to say this football club will never see his like again. How wonderful that he got to witness us winning the title after such a long wait.
For more on why he leaves such a legacy, we republished a piece from Nick Ames, written for our 2012 book ‘So Paddy got up‘, in which he outlines his connection with Arsenal from such an early age, and how he endured across so many years in the ever-changing landscape of football. You can read that here.
RIP Mr Friar, and thank you for representing the club in the way every fan could understand and connect with.
—
Right, I’ll leave it there for this morning. More here tomorrow, including an Arsecast. Until then, have a good one folks.
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Glass houses and job cuts Morning. There were a lot of goals in ...

2026-10-16T04:58:15Z

Glass houses and job cuts

Morning.
There were a lot of goals in the Champions League last night. Aston Villa and Liverpool both scored 6, which looks impressive obviously, but probably tells you something about the league stage of this competition. Maybe the quality of some of the teams is questionable, maybe it’s to do with the power of the Premier League, maybe it’s just one of those nights. I dunno.
Man City faced their French doppelgangers PSG and lost 4-2. How interesting it was to read Luis Enrique before this game give his backing to City, saying:
I hope everything works out well for Manchester City because I think what they have done on the pitch has been incredible over the last few years and they certainly deserved to win on the pitch all the trophies they have won. The trophies you win on the pitch remain on the pitch. They deserved to win that and I hope they can avoid the sanction.
For some reason, I have this image of Enrique sitting in a glass house with a large collection of stones in front of him, but there’s a sign in big letters that says ‘DO NOT THROW’.
Lance Armstrong still had to do the cycling. Ben Johnson still had to run the races. Nevertheless, isn’t it interesting that the man in charge of a club/team which has essentially been built in the very same way as Man City doesn’t view what happened there as worthy of sanction? Obviously what he thinks will have no bearing on what ultimately happens, nor should it. But perhaps there’s some cognitive dissonance at play here because applying careful consideration to the success you’ve had at a club like that might make it feel like less of an achievement, regardless of how well you’ve moulded a particular group of players into a very effective and, at times, entertaining team.
This year we had the first Enhanced Games, where athletes could compete and take Performance Enhancing Drugs. It’s the brainchild of some cunt who probably thinks generative Ai is great, but will inevitably be on the end of multiple lawsuits when juiced-up ‘roid heads take part and their enlarged hearts blow up mid-event while hardly anyone’s watching because this will be of zero interest to people who actually love sport. Maybe we can make an Enhanced League and just have Man City and PSG play each other every week, until it descends into a kind of dystopian last-man-standing thing. Erling Haaland is The Running Man. Watch out Erling, Khvicha is after you!
Elsewhere, it’s being reported that after hiring a team of consultants, Arsenal are set to cut up to 60 jobs in the name of ‘efficiency’. On the one hand, I guess every business will look at how they can streamline operations, to be more cost-effective, and to see where changes can be made to, effectively, save money. On the other, football clubs aren’t really normal businesses.
You have some people earning the average wage, you have others earning many multiples of that, and to be fair, that’s because they possess an extraordinary level of talent (mostly), in an industry where that is rewarded handsomely. Players and managers at this level will make that money at Arsenal, or if they can’t, they’ll go somewhere else to get it. That’s the job market, supply and demand.
However, in order to create the perfect environment for those people to operate at their very best level, there’s a supporting cast, so to speak, who are hugely important. These days football clubs like Arsenal require a large staff, not just on the football side of things (coaches, physios, medical), but behind the scenes too. The people we never see. The people who keep things running. New technologies might impact some people. Do you need someone on the end of a ticketing phone line when an automated chatbot can do the job? Maybe not as well, but well enough to save you a few salaries, and the net result is increased customer frustration because we’re fucking tired of being asked to talk to robots as if they’re sentient or know anything at all.
Grim, but this is the world we live in. We are owned by American billionaires with a particular corporate culture, so it should come as no surprise when that manifests itself in things like this. At the same time though, it’s hard to justify when the people who are going to lose their jobs and be made redundant are the ones whose salaries most likely contribute the least to our wage bill. A quick Google says the average wage in the UK is around £40,000 a year, and while I’m sure some of those cuts will also impact people with higher salaries than that, 60 job cuts at 40k = £2,400,000.
I realise this is very simplistic, but that’s about the salary of one decent player. It’s probably a good deal less than we’ve paid an agent to complete the transfer of a fairly average player. Mikel Arteta’s reported new salary is £20m a year. I don’t begrudge him that, as I said before we could pay twice as much and end up with a manager half as good, but when you see those wages, when you see a club spend tens of millions on players (and I realise the two things are connected, if not explicitly), and then you read about regular people losing their jobs, it just doesn’t feel right. Especially given the record revenues, massive uptick in commercial income, prize monies, and more of recent seasons.
I get it. It’s business, but a faceless consultation group coming in and the end result means 60 job cuts dressed up as efficiency when we all know it’s cost-cutting is the worst kind of faceless capitalism there is. I find it so hard to square the circle of how a club which exists in a community and does incredible work there, work which should be commended and appreciated by Arsenal fans far and wide, can just take a scythe to a significant section of its workforce and expect fans to just be ok with it. I know the footballing side of things is probably sacrosanct, but I’d wager it’d be easier to find the ‘efficiencies’ they want by being better there in terms of something as basic as recruitment than sacking 60 people. But what do I know?
Anyway, I’ll leave it there for now. Stand-by for an Arsecast which we’ll have for you before lunchtime. Until then.
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Episode 897: On and off the pitch Welcome to another episode of ...

2026-10-16T04:10:05Z

Episode 897: On and off the pitch

Welcome to another episode of the Arsecast – the original Arsenal podcast.
In this episode I’m joined by Andrew Allen to discuss the 3-0 win over Lille in the Champions League. We chat about the manager’s team selection, and his comments about Noni Madueke and volume, before we discuss a decent – if not great – first half, and the way Arsenal changed things in the second period. There’s some focus on Jurrien Timber after his excellent goal, as well as Eberechi Eze hopefully kick-starting his season, and increasing the technical level with the introduction of Bukayo Saka, Kai Havertz and Martin Odegaard. We also speak about the Mr Ken Friar after he passed away this week, paying tribute to his legacy and incredible tenure at the club, as well as reported job cuts, and more.
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