Cheerio Interlull

Right, that’s it. This Interlull is over and Interlulls can now go and make like a bear and hibernate until next year. And if someone wants to sneak into the cave and leave a load of traps and poison honey for it for when it wakes up, I would hail them as some kind of hero.

The last Arsenal involvement saw renowned author Oleksandr Zinchenko play and score for Ukraine as they beat Albania 2-1. Kai Havertz played about half an hour for Germany, coming on as a second half substitute in their 1-1 draw with Hungary, while Jurrien Timber didn’t feature in Netherland’s 1-1 draw with Bosnia and Herzegovina. Hopefully that was just common sense in terms of selection, and not because he couldn’t play. He was on the bench, so fingers crossed they’ve been sensible in managing his workload. I think sometimes we forget he spent a year out and is going to take some time to get consistently fit again.

Finally, across the Atlantic, Gabriel played the full game as Brazil drew 1-1 with Uruguay, a game which saw Gabriel Martinelli introduced after about an hour. So, those guys will make their way back to London, to be assessed ahead of the weekend and our game against Nottingham Forest on Saturday. As I said yesterday, there are players who didn’t go away who we have concerns over, and I saw reports that Leandro Trossard’s issue is a hamstring problem, so that’s not ideal even if the Belgian has been below par at times this season.

Potentially, we could go into this weekend without Bukayo Saka, Declan Rice, Riccardo Calafiori, Trossard, Takehiro Tomiyasu, and we know that Ben White is sidelined after his surgery. There might be good news on some of them, and with a trip to Sporting in the Champions League next week, we’d better hope the injury gods smile on us just a little bit.

Moving on, Lewis Ambrose put together a nice piece about the importance of Martin Odegaard to this team when the football begins again. You can read it here, and beyond the skipper, I thought this part about how the red cards have impacted us, in terms of results and stats, was very interesting:

Oh, the red cards. WhoScored say Arsenal have conceded almost twice as many non-penalty shots on target per game this season (4.09) than last season (2.11) but — as I posted on Bluesky — 16 shots on target have come in around 145 minutes with just 10 players on the pitch, compared to 29 shots in the other 850 minutes, more or less (I’m working without added time) when Arsenal have been playing 11 against 11. To simplify, with 10 men Arsenal have conceded a shot on target every 9 minutes, with 11 it’s a shot on target every 29 minutes.

The red cards are something we obviously have to pay close attention to, but at the same time they’ve all felt somewhat arbitrary. Not 100% within our control due to the way the officials have viewed those incidents in our games, which have been markedly different from similar incidents in others. I’m sure the manager will be hammering home the message that his players keep their heads and don’t do anything silly, but when you never quite know how a referee is going to react to a situation, it does make it a bit more difficult.

Elsewhere, it’s being reported that semi-automated offsides may not be implemented this season. The Times say: “Clubs were told that failures in the system being 100 per cent accurate has delayed it at least until next year, and some club figures believe that there is a strong chance of it not coming in at all this season.”

My understanding of this was that the testing was in place because of the need to configure the equipment at the various Premier League grounds, and while on a surface level that made sense, I couldn’t help but think of the World Cup in 2022. Leaving aside anything else about that tournament in Qatar, most of the stadiums there were built specifically for the World Cup, and never hosted competitive games beforehand. Yet, semi-automated offsides were implemented straight away, and without any controversy. Is this there something more complicated about the Premier League, or is this just another example of the PGMOL’s continued ineptitude? Your guess is as good as mine, but I know which way I’m leaning.

For some extra reading this morning, here’s Philippe Auclair on the farce that is FIFA’s Club World Cup – a tournament nobody wants or needs. As we sit here and fret about injuries to players, the game’s governing body wants to run them into the ground for commercialism, TV money and to fuel Gianni Infantino’s rampant ego.

Finally, for today, over on Patreon we have a new waffle for you, with fun stuff on getting all muscular, The Penguin, parking, John Lewis Christmas ads, and much more. Honestly, it’s more fun than you think. Listen here!

I’ll leave it there for today. Have a good one folks.

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