Morning.
Ahead of tonight’s friendly against Bayer Leverkusen, everyone’s doing the training pics thing to see who might be available or not. It’s interesting to see the likes of Declan Rice, Bukayo Saka and William Saliba taking what looks like a full part in the sessions, while there doesn’t appear to be any sign of Jurrien Timber or Takehiro Tomiyasu. Perhaps Mikel Arteta might provide a little info later on if/when he meets the press post-game.
The young players like Ethan Nwaneri, Myles Lewis-Skelly and Ayden Heaven are still involved, and it’ll be interesting to see if their tour exploits earn them some playing time at the Emirates in the two games we have this week. In reality, these are the last two fixtures the manager has to get his senior players up to speed, so maybe there isn’t as much room for sentiment as there might be otherwise. I also think tonight’s opposition, with Arteta’s big mate Xabi Alonso in charge of the Bundesliga champions and former Gunner Granit Xhaka returning, adds just a little extra to proceedings.
Tonight is also likely to see Riccardo Calafiori pull on the red and white for the first time. Where he plays might tell us something about the season ahead, and how long he plays for might give us an indication as to his readiness to compete from the very first game. I’m curious to see if he’ll start, or whether Jakub Kiwior or Oleksandr Zinchenko – who are a little ahead of him in their physical preparation – get the nod.
Speaking of Zinchenko, it was announced yesterday that he has changed his number from 35 to 17. I had assumed the club would retire that to honour Cedric, but they are a heartless bunch, so it’s been nabbed by the Ukrainian international. I know it’s not a particularly interesting story in and of itself, but he was a player who had a little bit of a question mark above his head this summer. I think this makes it almost certain he’ll spend the upcoming season with us, bar some kind of extraordinary offer, but I can’t really say that’s something I’m expecting.
What happens next summer is the key, because at that point he’ll only have a year left on his deal, and it doesn’t look as if there are any plans to offer him a new one. My guess is in the absence of any significant bid or interest, Zinchenko is viewed as an experienced squad player who will provide depth over the course of the two leagues and the two cups. There will be games he can start, there will be games where his quality on the ball will be useful, but there is also a need for him to do a lot better defensively than he did at times last season (and even in pre-season). On my own list of priorities, his potential departure was not particularly high as long as we did something to address the left-back position, and with the arrival of the Italian Stallion, that seems to be the case.
Elsewhere, having been linked strongly with moves to Charlton and Barnsley, it looks as if Karl Hein will spend next season playing in La Liga after Valladolid made a late move to procure his services on loan. With all due respect to the other two clubs, I think it’d be far better for him to play at a higher level than League One, and in terms of his development as a player and a person, going abroad and facing top class players in Spain will be much more useful.
The challenge, of course, is for him to earn his place and keep it. You might remember a certain Emi Martinez going off on loan one season to Getafe, but he barely played at all. Valladolid also only just signed a Portuguese keeper, Andre Ferreira, in May, so there’s going to be a battle for that number 1 spot, but that’s what it should be about and we’ll see if he can rise to the challenge.
The match streams later on the official Arsenal website, and I suspect a few hooky ones will be doing the rounds too (I bought mine though, every little helps to fund the arrival of that midfielder and attacker we all want), so we’ll bring you a match report and (hopefully) some post-game chatter from Mikel Arteta a bit later on Arseblog News.
For now, have a good one.
