Morning all.
It’s January, so this is going to be a month absolutely filled with spurious stories about players, transfers, and potential deals which have about as much hope of happening as I have of running a four minute mile by the 31st. Less than zero. Minus infinity.
Let’s start today with something that has actually happened, or will happen, and that is the fact that Mohamed Elneny and Takehiro Tomiyasu won’t be available for this weekend’s FA Cup game against Liverpool. They’ll be travelling to the African Cup of Nations and the Asian Cup respectively, and depending on how Egypt and Japan do in those tournaments, may not return until mid-February.
With all due respect to Elneny, he’s not really a big miss with just 1 Premier League minute so far this season, but Tomi is a different matter. With Oleksandr Zinchenko having succumbed to an inevitable calf problem because of how much he has had to play without having the handy break of a calf problem to keep him fresh, he would have been a very useful option for us.
Jakub Kiwior deputised against Fulham, and I wonder if when that is the only option we have, we should simplify that role a bit. He does have experience in the centre of midfield, playing almost half a season there for Spezia in the 2021-22 season, but there is a very significant difference between sitting in a deep-lying midfield position in Serie A – a slower, more defensive league – and what Mikel Arteta asks of his left-back in the Premier League.
We’ll have to wait and see if Zinchenko is fit again for Liverpool. The normal course of his injury trajectory is to find out he’s got a minor strain then we don’t see him for three or four weeks. If that is the case this time, and Kiwior is the only option at left-back, we can all be thankful that Mohamed Salah is hanging out with Elneny at AFCON and not available to cause us problems down that side, but I think it would be a better idea to allow Kiwior to concentrate on the defensive side of things.
I know our sample size with him is relatively small, but it’s still really hard to judge a player when they’re being asked to play outside of their comfort zone. And you might also ask a question as to why we don’t modify our own system a bit based on who is available? That’s one for the manager obviously, and while Kiwior wasn’t great against Fulham, he was far from alone there on a day when every single outfield player’s performance level was below their best.
I saw some chatter about how we might be considering cutting short Kieran Tierney’s loan with Real Sociedad to give us some cover, but I suspect that’s wide of the mark. I don’t know that recalling an injury prone left-back to give us cover for our other injury prone options in that position is really going to work – and Tierney seems to be playing sufficiently with Real Sociedad since returning from his hamstring injury to preclude any kind of recall. Usually the club that takes a player on loan would have to agree to changing the parameters of the deal, and I don’t know why they would if they’re happy to start him in La Liga. Anyway, it’s all about whether this is something we’re actually trying to do, and I very much doubt it is.
Speaking of loan players, L’Equipe report that Nantes would like to cut short Marquinhos’ loan from Arsenal. With just 149 minutes of action across seven Ligue 1 appearances, it’s hardly been a resounding success, and it follows a fairly indifferent loan spell at Norwich last season too. He’s still young, obviously, but he feels like a modern day equivalent of Amaury Bischoff or something. A punt on a young player who’s got about a one in a hundred chance of turning out to be good enough to play for Arsenal, and I’d say there’s about a one in a million chance of that one in a hundred being any less than one in a trillion. Or something.
Righto, let’s leave it there for this morning. Have a good one folks.
