Morning all.

Don’t you just Sunday football every now and again?

Two bore draws played out, the first at Villa Park as the home team were held to a 0-0 draw against Man Utd and then Chelsea only managed to take a point from their home game against Nottingham Forest which ended 1-1. Forest played the last 15 minutes with ten men after Ward-Prowse was sent off.

The best though was down on the South coast as Brighton faced Totts. The away team went 2-0 up before the break and were quite comfortable. Gary Neville muttered something along the lines of how Brighton needed to be careful in the second half otherwise they might concede a few more goals. Brighton weren’t careful, they were on fire as three second half goals won the game. Hilarious.

Add to the above, Man Utd are hogging the back pages with the will or won’t ten Hag get sacked and Big Ange is talking about the worst second half performance he’s ever seen. Or something like that.

Meanwhile, Arsenal, still with a number of players out injured and others not 100% match fit or struggling to find form, beat Southampton 3-1 without a “proper” right-back on the pitch. One could add, without a “proper” striker too.

I think the opening 7 fixtures have been tough, really tough. Away trips to The Etihad, Villa Park and Totts are never easy but we picked up 7 points from 9. Let’s not forget either that we were without Declan Rice against Totts and played with 10 men for more than half of the City game.

Our Champions League fixtures have been good too. A draw with Atalanta away from home was far from a disaster but the highlight so far is the 2-0 defeat of PSG. Plus, Bolton were despatched with ease in the League Cup.

After this international break, it’s highly likely that both Jurrien Timber, Ben White and Takehiro Tomiyasu will be back fit, perhaps Martin Odegaard and Oleksandr Zinchenko too. I’m sure Kai Havertz will have recovered from the “injury” which has forced him to withdraw from the German squad too.

The Arsenal players who are away on international duty for the next two weeks are David Raya, Mikel Merino, William Saliba, Gabriel, Gabriel Martinelli, Riccardo Calafiori, Jakub Kiwior and Thomas Partey. I’m sure like me, every Arsenal fan will be hoping all return unscathed.

On the return of club football, Arsenal’s schedule up until the next international break is tough:

October:

A – 19th Bournemouth
H – 22nd Shakhtar Donetsk
H – 27th Liverpool
A – 30th Preston

November:

A – 2nd Newcastle Utd
A – 6th Inter Milan
A – 10th Chelsea

So yes, having our injured players return as we go into the next tough period will be a huge boost for Mikel Arteta. At least for the Preston game, Arteta will be able to rotate his players an bring in one or two younger players as he did against Bolton.

Catch up in the comments.

 

 

 

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