Morning all.

What a night in the Champions League. Man City were thrashed 4-1 by Sporting Lisbon in what was Man Utd’s soon to be manager’s last home fixture in charge of Sporting. Viktor Gyokeres scored a hat-trick, two of which were from the penalty spot. The media are criticising Brighton FC for letting him slip through their fingers a few years ago whilst writing about how the player needs to follow his current manager to Manchester. Perhaps he will, who knows and quite frankly, who cares?

Liverpool breezed past Bayer Leverkusen 4-0 but there was a shock in Spain where Real Madrid were beaten 3-1 by AC Milan. Liverpool currently occupy top spot in the qualifying league table with Arsenal in 9th place, just out of the automatic qualifying places. That could change tonight though should Mikel Arteta’s side beat Inter Milan in Italy. A tough ask though as the current Serie A champions and the 2023 Champions League finalists are unbeaten in 10 Champions League home matches.

Mikel Arteta in his pre match press conference:

My blood is pumping – this is the kind of game that we want to play. To come to Milan to play Inter, two years ago they were in the final of the Champions League, they won the Scudetto last year so to come here and show the team that we are right now and the ambition that we have. These are the games we want to play, that’s for sure.

Inzaghi has some very specific ideas, especially in ball possession, the way he moves the position of certain players to occupy different spaces and this makes it tricky and unpredictable. But to be fair, we face in the Premier League a lot of tactical issues that we have to resolve and hopefully tomorrow we’re going to do that as well.

There’s no denying that Arsenal aren’t in the best of form right now, in fact our last performance in the league was in my opinion, one of the worst I’d witnessed in a while. To have any chance tonight, this group of players need to step it up a bit. No, a lot. Not just the players either as Mikel Arteta has to play his part, not only in who he plays but how they play. It’s all well and good talking a good game but if he/the players don’t turn our form around quickly, this will end up being another season wasted. A season which just drifts to disappointing end as it did last year.

Yesterday, Mikel Arteta was also asked about Edu leaving and after expressing his thanks for their journey together and what an amazing guy the Brazilian is, he told fans that nothing will change:

The plan and vision that starts with ownership is very clear and very ambitious, we are going to continue. We have a very strong leadership team, with unbelievable know-how, real passion and great feeling for the football club. We are not going to stop where we are at the moment. Across the club [there is] excitement, passion, and understanding of where we want to take this journey remains intact. That means opportunities for somebody else to come in, to fill that role. There are people that Edu has brought alongside him on this journey which is always very important, and we move on. We say ‘thank you’ and we have to move on because that is the reality of our industry.

Mixed injury news ahead of tonight as Martin Odegaard, having returned to full training this week has travelled with the squad although it’s not known yet whether he’ll feature at some stage but as he comes into the squad, Declan Rice is out having picked up during the Newcastle game. Riccardo Calafiori, Takehiro Tomiyasu and Kieran Tierney remain out.

Arsenal’s Adrian Clarke on Inter:

Inzaghi is an outstanding tactician who likes to set his side up in a 3-5-2. Inter Milan are hardworking and robust without the ball, while in possession they rotate positions with great intelligence to help them pass through the thirds. Left-sided centre-back Alessandro Bastoni is an assured defender who likes to carry the ball out from the back, while Inter also have classy wing-backs – Matteo Darmian or Denzel Dumfries on the right, with Federico Dimarco or Carlos Augusto down the left. Whoever starts will push on and supply the bulk of the home side’s width.

In attack, Thuram and Lautaro Martinez have already despatched 14 goals this term thanks to some clever movement, and crisp finishing However, Inzaghi’s rotation policy has seen Iranian veteran Mehdi Taremi start all three European games ahead of Martinez. Another individual to look out for is Turkish midfielder Hakan Calhanoglu. He drops deep to dictate play from a single pivot position. His passing is top-class, and if we hold a high line the 30-year-old has the ability to clip dangerous long passes in behind our back four.

Beware of the ball over the top of our defence then. David Raya, who often can be spotted off his line, needs to be careful too.

Personally, I think the performance matters tonight just as much, if not more than the result. Weird as that might sound because I’m sure we all want to see our players beat Inter but as said earlier, it’s our level of football which has been off the boil. Get that back and the results will surely follow.

Catch up in the comments.