Gunners looking to bounce back in Bruges

Morning everyone.

We’re in Champions League action this evening, taking on Club Brugge for the first time ever. The team news is that Declan Rice has not travelled, not due to fatigue, but Mikel Arteta revealed he’d been ill since the Villa game. This is a good chance to give him a rest anyway, so hopefully he’s got the Lemsip extra-strength handy and he’ll be ok again for the weekend should we decide to use him then.

Leandro Trossard is out having re-aggravated the issue which kept him out for a couple of games; William Saliba remains sidelined; and there’s an issue for Max Dowman who picked up an ankle injury at the weekend. That, however, opened the door for Gabriel Jesus to be register for this stage of the competition. He’s with the squad in Belgium and could play for the first time since January if he gets on at some point.

On the Brazilian’s return, Arteta said:

We have the situation of Gabi, who we were expecting to be training with us by the end of December. But Gabi has been pushing every single day and he kept telling everybody ‘I am going to be earlier, earlier, earlier!’ and he has done it. So thanks to his work and all the work that the medical staff have done with him throughout these months.

I’ve said this before, and I realise there’s a danger of hoping for too much from Jesus, but when you look at all our centre-forward options, he’s the one who has just got something a little different. I don’t mean to say Kai Havertz and Viktor Gyokeres are the same, clearly they’re not, but in terms of size, how you work to their strengths etc, there is something of a through-line between those two, and even Mikel Merino, when it comes to their effectiveness in the opposition box.

I don’t know if we can call it an x-factor after he’s been out for so long, but Jesus has skills that none of these guys possess, and if he can tap into those again, I think he could be a very useful player for what remains of this season. I don’t expect him to start tonight by any means, and I think this is a chance to push Gyokeres back into the line-up and see how much he can do after an injury of his own, but I hope we get him on the pitch at some point.

There’s little room for rotation at the back given the injuries we have there, but in midfield players like Christian Norgaard and Ethan Nwaneri will be hoping for minutes, and up front you wonder if he might start Noni Madueke on the right to ensure Bukayo Saka is bright and ready for Wolves on Saturday. Gabriel Martinelli on the left seems the obvious pick there, and as I said Gyokeres up top will be interesting against opposition you’d imagine are a bit less challenging than some of what we face in the Premier League.

I will confess, I know very little about Club Brugge, but I did read they sacked their manager the other day and have a new man in place for this game. Desperately seeking the new manager bounce? I dunno. Arteta says:

Obviously, you look at all the games and analyse the manager and their identity, and obviously, the last performance they had was in the Champions League and the domestic competition. In the afternoon, we got the news that they have a new manager. So you have to adapt, it’s not the first time that we are facing this situation. So, ok, we have to think about what the possibilities are and look at his past and we have to focus much more on what we have to do. We have to be able to adapt in relation to what they do as we said in terms of their formation and the players that they’re going to pick. Then we have to focus on ourselves, what we have to do to be better than them.

They currently sit 27th in the 36 team Champions League table, so the expectation will be for Arsenal to keep up the 100% record in Europe this season. Apparently results last night mean we’ve already qualified for the knock-out stages, but we know Arteta will not allow any complacency, particularly after losing our last game, so let’s see how we respond to that.

As ever you can join us later for live blog coverage, as well as the report, player ratings, reaction, and all the rest on Arseblog News.

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Before we go today, every week Andrew Allen sends out a great Arsenal/football related newsletter to our Patreon members, and as a bonus this week he’s put together a pretty definitive Christmas gift idea list. It’s full of great stuff from official sources, but also loads of independent creators and creatives too, and in this day and age it’s great to show your support to non-gigantic-corporations who foist Ai garbage on you when you never asked for it.

We’ve made it free for everyone to read, so hopefully it can give you some inspiration for Arsenal-related gifts for the Gooners in your life. Check it out here, and feel free to share far and wide if it might be useful for others: https://www.patreon.com/posts/arsemail-gift-145375688

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Right, that’s it, catch you later for the game!