Good morning to you, I am unfeasibly tired today and my alarm no longer works. Either that or I have grown so used to the sound that I just incorporate it into my dreams and turn it off with a slap. So, a bit late today.
The manager will meet the press today ahead of the Burnley game tomorrow after the quietest week in living memory. I can’t imagine there’ll even be that much to talk about as, with all due respect to Burnley, it’s not as if this is a game against one of our great rivals or a team we have an intense history with (like the Orcs of Mordor).
I thought the last time we played them was in the FA Cup when Eduardo scored that sumptuous volley with the outside of his foot, but it turns out they had a season in the Premier League in 2009/10 which I had completely forgotten about. We beat them 3-1 at home, goals from Fabregas, Walcott and Arshavin, but could only draw 1-1 away – which sounds about right. One should never underestimate our ability to make supposedly inferior opposition happy. We’re like football Samaritans sometimes.
Anyway, the early team news is that Kieran Gibbs is a doubt with a hip problem. Sadly it’s not a question of him just not being fashionable enough, but his leg socket is mildly bollixed (that’s the technical term out of the doctor’s manual right there), and he’ll be assessed further and a decision made on his availability later.
I suspect if there’s any worry at all we have to be cautious, simply because we don’t have the depth to take any chances. There’s a midweek Champions League game to think, and a trip to Swansea next weekend, and given the rickety state of our defence anyway, we’d be mad to ask him to play through the pain against Burnley.
Given the opposition it’s a good chance to move Monreal over to the left hand side, Chambers shifts into the centre of defence and Hector Bellerin gets a start at right back. Having been officially added to the first team squad this week (at least on the Arsenal website), the young Spaniard should get another chance and, crucially, gain some more experience. Between now and January it’s hard to imagine we’re not going to have to use all of that defensive ‘depth’ so to be able to blood the younger ones in game like tomorrow’s might be important.
The other all important news is that Yaya Sanogo is back and fit again (watch out Welbz … *cough* …), while Serge Gnabry is still a few weeks away from being involved. I’d be curious to know what happened there because although his age and experience made him very much a fringe figure in the first team squad, he did have a few games where he made a good impact – I think Swansea away in particular.
In this day and age for a player to be out for a long as he has – even if it’s across a summer – without us knowing the precise reason for it is a bit strange. Was it a cruciate? Something more serious or more potentially damaging? Anyway, maybe it’s not a bad thing that something can be kept under wraps in the culture we now live in. Where everything is fair game to one extent or another.
And that culture, in the absence of anything else going on this morning, is the theme of this week’s Arsecast. A couple of weeks back Tim Stillman wrote this piece which is a worth a read for context before you listen. In the podcast I’m joined by Tim, Goonerholic and the Man from East Lower to discuss the impact of social media, the online discourse and the immediacy of reactions to the perception of what’s going on at the club.
The concept of criticism is hardly new, players in the past got pelters from the crowd and there have always been those who found themselves a lightning rod when things haven’t been going well. The difference now, of course, is that we can do it any time of day or night, with any amount of people from all over the world. Everyone has a platform, some larger than others, and everybody’s got an opinion. How does it affect the way we follow our football clubs and shape the way we think? Hopefully it’s an interesting discussion and something to keep you going this Friday.
You can subscribe to the Arsecast on iTunes by clicking here. Or if you want to subscribe directly to the feed URL you can do so too (this is a much better way to do it as you don’t experience the delays from iTunes). To download this week’s Arsecast directly click here – 41mb MP3.
The Arsecast is also available on our SoundCloud channel, as well as via the SoundCloud app for iPhone and Android. You can now also find it on the Stitcher podcasting app for iOS and Android. Or, you can listen without leaving this page by using the player below.
.
Right, as always we’ll have press conference coverage on Arseblog News, as well as any stories throughout the day. In the meantime, have a good one, more from me tomorrow ahead of the Burnley game.
Until then.
