- Arsenal injuries and today, the dodgiest of dodgy referees
- Each ref has his own favoured results – including our ref this weekend!
By Tony Attwood
According to the Standard Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta revealed after the match that Saka had been dealing with a minor illness issue, but he is expected to be ready to start against Forest in the Premier League. Kai Havertz and captain Martin Odegaard are also “set to return” as these journalists like to say. I might try that myself sometime… “Tony Attwood is set to return to his desk in the study, despite having a cold and a nasty cough.” Still I don’t suppose anyone is interested.
The paper also notes that Riccardo Calafiori is expected to start having been given a “full rest against Lille on Tuesday.” But on the other hand they reckon “Viktor Gyokeres and Mikel Merino did not do enough to push their cases for more starts, but Eberechi Eze did score in that routine victory.”
All of which edges us to the fact that the problem for Arsenal is not too many players injured and not enough reserves, but too many players available to select from. And indeed this was the point last season – the club has two spare places in the squad, which they (like most Premier League clubs) keep vacant in case emergency players need to be bought in the next window following an injury or two).
Meanwhile the general consensus is that Christos Tzolis won’t be back for another couple of weeks. But the depth of the squad is emphasised by the fact that although Timber is back and available his return is being carefully managed, as Ben White can deputise. Likewise Zubimendi could come back.
It is still a bit too early to see a return for Salbia after his international injury but he’s “getting there” and with Arsenal maintaining a position in the top two in the league, no one is going to rush him..
So the Standard give us a line up of
Raya;
White, Konsa, Gabriel, Calafiori;
Rice, Guimaraes;
Saka, Odegaard, Eze;
Havertz
Yahoo Sports offer us just a couple of variations.
Raya
Timber, Gabriel, Konsa, Calafiori
Rice, Guimarães
Eze, Ødegaard, Saka
Havertz
And we get another slight variation from Football Line ups
Raya
Timber, Konsa, Gabriel, Lewis Skelly
Rice, Guimarães
Madueke, Merino, Eze,
Gyokeres
That seems to me quite an interesting variation in the third selection with the use of Gyokeres at centre forward – but it could be a handy re-introduction for the player, with the possibility of changing the “number 9” in the second half as the opposition defence get slightly mroe tired and have become use to one centre forward only suddenly to find Havertz turning up and playing in a completely different way.
But of course what we never know is who has had a bit of a knock in training, or indeed what problem the Arsenal scouts have noticed in terms of the opposition defence.
Now AI Score – a website I have not picked up on before, and my apologies for that… I’m obviously getting less alert in old age. But in essence they tell us that in the last 18 games between the two sides (which I guess is the run in the Premier League, although they don’t say that and I haven’t counted) the results have been Arsenal have 11 victories, Forest have four, and three have been draws.
At the City Ground it has been ten games, four of which have been won by Arsenal, four by Nottingham Forest and two have been draws.
However we can of course go back further and World Football Net do that for us giving us a review of 109 matches between the two clubs of which Forest have won 29, Arsenal have won 56 and 24 have been draws, with Forest having scored 112 goals in this process, and Arsenal 175.
Now if we go back through just the last four (which of course are the most relevant) we find thanks to World Football the last two games at the Forest stadium have been goalless draws, and the last two games at Arsenal Stadium have been 3-0 wins to Arsenal.
The last time Forest beat Arsenal was some seven games ago on 20 May 2023 when the score was Forest 1 Arsenal 0.
So all things considered I am gong for an Arsenal win – probably 0-2 or maybe 1-3.
