Arsenal v Bournemouth. Off we go again

 

 

 

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By Bulldog Drummond

In days gone by this was the moment when football journalists all started their columns and broadcasts in the same way by announcing that it seems like only yesterday that the league had finished (with the glorification of Manchester City by the fawning media) and that the summer was getting shorter and shorter, and whatever happened to the cricket season and so on.

After about 65 seasons of running that story, they then started to pick up on the fact that there were actually things called pre-season games and lots of people were quite interested, so they started covering them…. a bit.  Although not that much.

So it is indeed “that time” as the journos used to say, or “Off we go again” as we like to say, as we search for any news about Arsenal playing Bournemouth at the Dignity Health Sports Park on Wednesday at 7:30pm.  Which is the true of kick off if you live in that part of the United States, but for anyone living in the UK that actually is 3.30am on Thursday.

And I am sorry to have to admit that your correspondent on Untold won’t be watching it live, for there is still such a thing as getting up the next morning to go to work.

But the club know that we’ll all be turning up when the real live season starts, so not exciting the majority with a live pre-season game at the start of the series probably doesn’t worry the club much and it will boost their American support, which I guess is what they are after.   After all, playing some league games in the United States each season is still on the agenda, and with the majority of clubs in the Premier League losing money last season, would be very much welcomed by them.

So we know there is a 26-player squad, but just under half of those players (12 if you want to be exact) are academy players.  One reason is to help the academy players feel part of the club even if they are not getting first-team league game experience, and the other of course is that too many players were nicked by those wretched international coaches and then handed back with the note saying “having him ready for next time”.

And while mentioning the Euros I was surprised by the headline that “There will be 27 Premier League players representing Spain or England in Berlin on Sunday.”  Well, well.

What we do know about the squad is that Bukayo Saka, David Raya, Declan Rice, Aaron Ramsdale and William Saliba are not on the tour.   Gabriel Magalhaes, Gabriel Martinelli and Kai Havertz are on the tour but won’t yet be ready for this game and Kieran Tierney and Takehiro Tomiyasu are not on the tour because of injury.

So pulling that together the squad list for the tour is

Hein, Setford, Nygaard, Rojas, White, Zinchenko, Timber, Nichols, Kiwior, Heaven, Rekik, Partey, Jorginho, Rosiak, Lewis-Skelly, Odegaard, Smith Rowe, Vieira, Nwaneri, Oulad M’Hand, Gower, Trossard, Nelson, Sagoe Jr, Jesus, Nketiah.

So we are going to have to start getting used to the names of some of the young players including Alexei Rojas as a goalkeeper who played in the Uefa Youth League last season for the under 21s.  He has managed to represent Columbia, Russia and England at youth level, which is quite adventurous.

But of course we need a multiplicity of goalkeepers in case any of them get food poisoning or anything else  so we also have Lucas Nygaard, who is 18.and who came from FC Nordsjaelland,

And as we have learned from previous pre-seasons, these young goal keepers like to hunt in packs so we also have Tommy Setford who is (you will not be surprised to learn given his name) an English young international keeper, but was born in the Netherlands and came from Ajax.

Moving on Josh Nichols plays either left or right back and was in the academy team for 2023/24, and played in the group games of the Uefa Youth League.  He’s been at the club since joining the under 9s side and is now a professional with Arsenal.

But least you get the opinion that Arsenal has taken a squad of goalkeepers we should move on to Ayden Heaven (previously known as Ayden John) who is both a central defender and a midfielder who played both for the under 18s and for the under 21s.

Just one more for this session: Omar Rekik who is a central defender who played for Wigan Athletic last season, as he did indeed the season before.  He has also had a loan with Sparta Rotterdam and played last season for the under-21s.  Internationally he has played for the Netherlands and in fact for the Tunisia first team.