Mikel Arteta remains Mikel Arteta

Morning.

A quick Saturday blog for you, starting with Mikel Arteta providing an ‘update’ on the injured players at his press conference yesterday. I say update, because really we’re none the wiser when it comes to their availability for tomorrow and beyond. Asked about said players, he replied:

We’ve put in a lot of energy during the international break, with all the medical staff as well, to try to bring them as quickly as possible. Tomorrow we have another training session, see how some of them are feeling, whether it’s a bit too close for this game, or we feel that they can contribute to the game. So tomorrow we have more clarity.

And then when asked if he could give names of those who might be close, he said (laughing):

I can, but I’m not gonna do it!

Could he be any more Arteta?! I guess the next potential update is when the people who hang around outside the team hotel provide some info when they go for their morning walk on Sunday.

“Odegaard is with the team!”, they might ‘reveal’ on social media, but I can remember at least once instance where a player was pictured on that morning amble who then turned out to be missing from the match day squad. Anyway, it’s as expected really. There’s no way the manager was ever going to give us detailed info on those players and their potential inclusion for Sunday, so we’ll just have to wait and see what tomorrow brings.

He did go into a slight bit of detail on Gabriel though, saying:

He’s going to be out for weeks. We need another scan next Wednesday, and we’ll then have the timeline, probably much clearer than it is at the moment.

Again, nothing out of the ordinary there, but I’ve seen people talk about how he said ‘weeks’ and not ‘months’ as if that were a positive. Maybe it is. I hope so, but maybe too it’s just a turn of phrase that doesn’t mean much until we get the results of that scan. Also, as much as I admire Mikel Arteta, I don’t trust him at all when it comes to time related issues. I’ve mentioned this before but it’s a strange quirk of his that weeks and months of player absences blend into periods that don’t necessarily add up to reality. He’ll talk a player being missing all season when they’ve actually played quite a bit, but in this case, let’s hope he is like a stopped clock.

Then there’s Gabriel Jesus, who is back in training, and doing well, but Arteta seemed to downplay his chances of making the squad this weekend, saying of his progress:

Very good, so he’s doing everything with the team at the moment for the last almost two weeks. We’re going to give him some exposure as well internally with some games so he gets that fitness. But he looks really good in training and he’s going to be a big addition to the team.

Whether that’s a behind closed doors friendly, or a game with the U21s or something, I don’t know, but he certainly looks sharp in training. Obviously, having been out for so long, his return has to be carefully managed, but what a story it would be if he did make the bench for tomorrow and came off it to make a contribution that helped us win the game. Let’s see.

Elsewhere, there’s a really lovely piece on the BBC website about the Arsenal Supporter’s Club, a place I remember seeing on my very first visit to Highbury. Well worth your time this morning. Also on the BBC, an interview with Bukayo Saka who is, reportedly, close to signing a new deal with the club. He talks about his football journey from playing as a kid to being the star he is today:

I remember being in the changing room one time – we just played a game, our team was so good. We just smashed the team. The coach came in, I think it was Greg Lincoln, and he came in and said: ‘Listen, boys… look around… it’s an unbelievable team, but only one of you is going to make it, maybe even two.’ And I just remember that day just thinking, ‘oh my God, it needs to be me. It has to be me’.