By Tony Attwood

• Everton v Arsenal this evening: clubs almost equal in recent performances
• How top clubs have at least 6+ of the top players in the world in their squads

Below is the top four of the league table as of lunchtime on 20th December.  You might wonder why I am publishing it here….

 

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Arsenal	16	11	3	2	30	10	20	36
2	Manchester City	16	11	1	4	38	16	22	34
3	Aston Villa	16	10	3	3	25	17	8	33
4	Chelsea	16	8	4	4	27	15	12	28

 

Well, the reason is that you would hardly know that Arsenal are top of the league from this morning’s headlines, and to show I am not cherry picking from a variety of papers, all these comments are on the website of one paper – the Telegraph – this morning, 20 December, ahead of the game against Everton.

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Why Viktor Gyokeres is struggling at Arsenal

Amount of opportunities passing Swedish striker by have become a significant cause for concern

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Arsenal players express frustrations in dressing-room talks after late Wolves win

Declan Rice and Martin Odegaard among members of Mikel Arteta’s side, angry with standard of performance against Premier League’s bottom club

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Warning lights flashing for Arsenal after last-gasp own-goal win

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It is happening again… Arsenal’s injury woes dissected

Mikel Arteta keeps losing players in positional clusters with hectic schedule taking its toll. Plus: Jesus returns from 11-month absence

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Noni Madueke makes a mockery of an embarrassing petition to put Arsenal frustrations behind him

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Now my point is that Arsenal are top of the league and yet one newspaper manages on the day of a league match to publish every single one of these negative stories without any balancing commentary about Arsenal being, well, top of the league.

Of course this is a democracy and so they can do pretty much as they wish, but I think that we as supporters need to understand the assault that Arslenal players are under on a daily basis, where they are getting no recognition from the media even for the simple fact that the club is currentlhy top of the league terms of pomts and that the club is also currently 10 points above the club in fifth.

The psychological damage done by the media can be intense, and it would not be surprising to find that some players, on being approached by Arsenal via their current club, for a possible transfer, might well say, “I’d love to move but really I don’t want all that negativity.”

And here we need to remember that this is negativity, not just once or twice a week and not just every day, but negativity four or five times a day.

Sadly there is nothing I can do apart from keep writing articles about Arsenal in which I show my support for the club, the manager and the team.

And so moving on in that regard, the team news is that Riccardo Calafiori is out with five yellow cards.  Elsewhere in terms of injury news we find that….. 

Max Dowman will be out for some weeks, Kai Havertz is still out and the return date is not clear. Gabriel dos Santos Magalhaes is “pushing hard” for a place in the squad. Ben White will be out for a few games (although one source has him down to play today and his is not a hamstring injury) and Cristhian Mosquera Ibarguen will be out for weeks.

The Metro go with

Raya

Timber, Saliba, Hincapie, Calafiori

Odegaard   Zubimendi  Rice

Saka,  Merino  Trossard

The Standard offers a similar line up but with a few modifications

Raya

Timber, Saliba, Hincapie, Calafiori;

Zubimendi, Rice, Odegaard;

Saka, Gyokeres, Trossard

Football Lineups who I don’t think we have quoted before come in with this one although Arsenal are saying White is not available.

Raya;

White. Timber, Saliba, Hincapie, Calafiori;

Eze, Zubimendi, Rice,

Saka, Gyokeres, Martinelli

I must say I have been impressed by Martinelli of late, but I wonder if he is being kept as a substitute simply because, as yet, he can’t sustain the performance through the game – or maybe because his speed really does take teams apart when the defence is getting a bit tired.

We shall see.