Arsenal v Brighton tomorrow at 3pm, fitness, fouls and cards

• Arsenal v Brighton tomorrow at 3pm, fitness, fouls and cards
• What Arsenal players did at Great Ormond Street hospital

By Tony Attwood

Kai Havertz is said to be ready to return to Arsenal’s first team in “days” rather than “weeks”,  Mikel Arteta has said.  So if not against Brighton and Hove then against either Villa or Bournemouth.   One of those will mark his return and I think we will all probably rather pleased.

But we should not forget we have Viktor Gyökeres and Gabriel Jesus available.   However, Martinelli appears to be out for a while, with several of our recent opponents from lower down the league having taken on the approach of “if you can’t beat them, kick them which served such lesser clubs quite well in the last campaign.

Gabriel Magalhães also appears to be out still, so it will be Riccardo Calafiori and William Saliba running the defence at least for another match or two.

And what is interesting is that despite the constant assault on Arsenal’s players, those players have learned not to retaliate, and in fact not even to appeal to the referee as they did last season.

Arsenal are bottom of the league table for fouls having committed 166 this season.  .   

ESPN publish a regular update showing cards handed out in which they give one point for a yellow card and three points for a red card.   That’s a bit arbirtrary in fact, but it nonehtless give an idea of just how naughty some teams are.

Using their approach, we can see the dirtiest and cleanest teams in the league at the moment….  Tottenham are on 195 (20% more than Arsenal) and Brighton on 204 (23% more).   And of course the cards reflect this, although the media is rather reluctant to point this out   Using the three points for a red forumula we get….

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Undoubtedly, part of the reason for the reduction over last season in terms of cards has come with players having the example of Declan Rice shown to them on videos, as when he got a second yellow for allegedly kicking the ball back a couple of yards at a free kick.   The fact that Joël Veltman was preparing to take the free kick from completely the wrong spot, and Rice was passing the ball back to the right place, has not been widely reported.

Certainly, from the outside, it looked for all the world as if referees had been told to “get Arsenal” with the cards, but this one went too far, and there was an outcry.   This season, refs have backed off somewhat for fear of losing the universal seal of approval that the media give them.

What everyone is aware of is that Arsenal were knocked off track last season by injuries, and yet still managed to come second in the league for the third season running.  This season, they have improved the depth of the squad, and it is possible they might go even further during January.

 A look at the last six games table is quite informative at this stage, and here we look at not Arsenal near the top of the league (but slipping behind the performance of late of Villa and Manchester $ but still some way above Brighton).  And we go down to Tottenham, just to see how far they have slipped in recent games, despite all the spending on transfers in the summ.er of around £170,000,000 for eight new players