That’s it, that’s it. This Interlull is over and the Interlulls can now go and make themselves like bears and hibernate until next year. And if someone wanted to sneak into the cave and leave a bunch of traps and poisonous honey behind for when they wake up, I’d welcome them as a hero of sorts.
In the last match Arsenal were involved in, renowned writer Oleksandr Zinchenko played and scored for Ukraine in a 2-1 win over Albania. Kai Havertz played about 30 minutes for Germany, coming on as a second-half substitute in the Netherlands’ 1-1 draw with Hungary, while Jurien Timbers did not feature in the Netherlands’ 1-1 draw with Bosnia and Herzegovina. Hopefully it was common sense in terms of selection and not because he couldn’t play. He’s been on the bench so fingers crossed he’s wise to manage his workload. Sometimes we forget that he hasn’t worked out in a year and think it’s going to be a while before he gets consistently fit again.
Finally, on the other side of the Atlantic, Brazil drew 1-1 with Uruguay, with Gabriel Martinelli starting the game after about an hour. So the players will return to London for assessment ahead of the weekend and Saturday’s game against Nottingham Forest. As I said yesterday, there are players who are not leaving that we are worried about and we have seen reports that Leandro Trossar’s problem is a hamstring problem. So even if the Belgian has performed below par at times this season, it is not ideal.
Potentially we could spend this weekend without Bukayo Saka, Declan Rice, Riccardo Calafiori, Trossard, Takehiro Tomiyasu and we know Ben White is out after surgery. There might be some good news for some of them, and it would be good to hope that the injury gods can smile on us a little bit with next week’s Champions League trip to Sporting.
Moving on, Lewis Ambrose has put together a great piece on Martin Odegaard’s importance to this team when football restarts. You can read it here, and I thought this was very interesting, beyond the skipper and how the red card affected us in terms of results and statistics.
Ah, a red card. According to WhoScored, Arsenal have allowed almost twice as many non-penalty shots on target (4.09) per game this season than last season (2.11). But — as I posted on Bluesky — there were 16 shots on target in about 145 minutes with just 10 players. On the pitch, it’s more or less the same with Arsenal having 11 shots on target compared to 29 shots in the other 850 minutes (I’m working with no added time). 11. To simplify, Arsenal have 10 players allowing a shot every 9 minutes, and 11 players allowing a shot every 29 minutes.
Red cards are definitely something we need to pay close attention to, but at the same time they all feel a bit arbitrary. Due to the way officials view incidents that occur in our games, which we do not have 100% control over, they are significantly different from other similar incidents. I’m sure the manager will make sure to get the message across that the players come to their senses and don’t do anything stupid. But things get a little worse when you have no idea how the referee will react to the situation. difficult.
Elsewhere, reports have emerged that semi-automatic offside may not be implemented this season. The Times says: “Clubs have been told that system errors are 100% accurate. “It has been postponed until at least next year, and some club officials believe there is a high possibility that it will not appear at all this season.”
From what I understand, the testing was done because the equipment had to be configured at various Premier League stadiums, and ostensibly we couldn’t help but think of the 2022 World Cup. Aside from other points about the tournament in Qatar, most of the stadiums there were built specifically for the World Cup and had never hosted a competitive game before. However, the semi-automatic offside was implemented immediately and without controversy. Is there something more complicated about the Premier League? Or is this just another example of PGMOL’s continued incompetence? Your guess is as good as mine, but I know which way I’m leaning.
For further reading this morning, Philippe Auclair tells the humorous story of FIFA’s Club World Cup. This is a tournament that no one wants or needs. While we sit here and fret over player injuries, the game’s governing bodies want to run them into the ground for commercialism, TV revenue and to titillate Gianni Infantino’s rampant ego.
Finally, today we have a new waffle on Patreon with fun content including muscle workouts, penguins, parking, a John Lewis Christmas advert and more. Honestly, it’s more fun than I thought. Listen here!
I’ll leave it there for today. Have a great time, everyone.
