Morning.
Enough has been said about what went wrong against Bournemouth, and our season as a whole, for now. It’s possible those are themes we will have to revisit at some point, but there’s also the possibility that we never really talk about them in massive depth again. That, of course, is dependent on what happens on Wednesday night, and if that goes well there’s a job to do further down the line.
The reality is that winning the Champions League this season wouldn’t just change the mood or the conversation, it would render much of the frustration felt throughout this campaign meaningless. It would for me, anyway. I can’t tell anyone else how to feel but if we win two more games of football, one in Paris and one in Munich, my give-a-f*ck-o-meter would be flickering at close to zero about the 38 league games we played.
It would, in fact, be luxurious to reflect on what how we can improve next time out with a smile on my face and joy in my heart because we did something this club has never done before. I realise there are concerns and worries because of some flaws in our game which have been exposed of late. You’d much prefer to be going into the game against PSG on a run of great form, scoring goals for fun, and being parsimonious at the back, but football is a weird game. You can be iffy in one competition and excellent in another.
In 2006, the last (and only) time we reached a Champions League final, we drew with Bolton at home and lost 1-0 away at Anfield before beating Real Madrid 1-0 at the Bernabeu thanks to Thierry Henry’s goal. Results were mixed that season, and you’ll recall that the 4-2 final day win over Wigan, the final game at Highbury, clinched a top four spot only because Sp*rs were fed the dodgy lasagne and West Ham beat them 2-1 at Upton Park.
So, as Mikel Arteta prepares his players for tomorrow, he needs them to wipe the Premier League from their minds. The only thing that matters is PSG, and he needs them to remember how good they can be. Because, a significant part of recent frustration is borne out of the fact we all know this team and these players are capable of better. I don’t know what crazy motivational tool he will use – whether he’s going to kidnap all their dogs, get a magician to pull rabbits out of places rabbits shouldn’t be, or commission a death metal version of North London Forever to get them fired up – but he has to make them believe they can reach their best levels tomorrow evening.
Later this morning there will be an open training session before the team travel to Paris. All eyes will be on whether Jurrien Timber is involved after missing out at the weekend, with Arteta unwilling to expand on what the problem was. I could be getting mixed up with all the games we’ve played, but I was sure during the first-leg they showed a replay of him just tweaking his ankle a bit, so if I’m not imagining things, I’m gonna guess that’s what it is.
Hopefully it’s not too serious and his absence for Bournemouth was just precautionary, but it will be interesting to see if he trains. I think it’s fair to say that Ben White isn’t yet at 100%, which is a shame. If he were, as much as I think Timber has been brilliant this season, I wouldn’t worry about a fully fit Ben White stepping into the breach. However, since returning from his knee surgery, he’s been in and out a bit, and hasn’t been able to get himself back to his top level. What you would say though is that if there is a player you would back to dig deep and put in a performance when he’s not at his physical best, it’s him.
How much the manager reveals in terms of team news we’ll have to wait and see when he meets the press in Paris later on this evening. And obviously we can look forward to, and preview the game in written format properly here tomorrow. For an audio preview, look out for our Patreon podcast a bit later on today.
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In the meantime, there’s a story about Jorginho leaving this summer to join Flamengo in Brazil. He’s out of contract, so it’s relatively easy, but because of the ghastly Club World Cup – the competition that nobody wants but which has been foisted upon the world by fascist-adjacent FIFA megalomaniac Gianni Infantino – there’s a split transfer window this summer.
The first part opens from June 1st to June 10th to allow clubs competing in this heinous bag-of-shit tournament to bring in new players. With contracts typically expiring on June 30th, it would mean some kind of termination agreement would need to be found between Arsenal and Flamengo (who are one of the teams involved in this pathetic, meaningless abomination of competition whose trophy looks like a prop from a crap sci-fi show that ran for 7 seasons but whose main star now does commercials for pay-day loan companies and medicines whose side-effects include bleeding from the eyes and acidic piss).
I’m sure Arsenal will be open to making that happen for a player who has been solid pro for us since his arrival from Chelsea, assuming he’s fit enough by then having suffered a punctured lung in what looks to be his last appearance for the club.
Right, I’m gonna leave it there for now. Have a good one, and we’ll bring you press conference stories etc on Arseblog News later on. There’s an Arsecast Extra below if you haven’t had a chance to listen yet.
