A New Year’s Day ramble

Good morning everyone, and welcome to 2026. Here’s a quick New Year’s Day blog for you.

Things are pretty quiet from an Arsenal perspective, which is just fine by me. We did our work on Tuesday, and did it very well, so for today eyes will be elsewhere a little bit. Man City are in action later, travelling to the Stadium of Light to take on Sunderland. Can Granit Xhaka’s side do us a favour? I’m not particularly hopeful but you never know.

What lies ahead for them this weekend is a game against Chelsea, and it looks as if they’ll face them at an opportune time. Reporting this morning suggests Enzo Maresca is on the brink at Stamford Bridge, so Chelsea may go to City with a caretaker manager in charge. It’s hardly ideal for them, and it just feels like one of those things that always seems to go City’s way. I have no strong evidence to back this up, it just seems like their toast always falls butter side up. In a title race every rub of the green can be crucial and this would certainly be useful for them.

Maybe Chelsea’s rag-tag bunch of two billion pound waifs and strays might be liberated and put in the performance of a lifetime, but chances are their scattergun approach to buying as many thoroughly dislikeable players as possible will see them get a real pounding from a typically well-coached City side. I guess we’ll see.

What else? As I said, it’s quiet from our side, and Mikel Arteta’s press conference tomorrow might give us a bit of insight into Declan Rice’s situation before we face Bournemouth on Saturday. I did like the interaction of our trio of strikers after the final whistle on Tuesday, both Kai Havertz and Viktor Gyokeres were there to share a moment with Gabriel Jesus after his goal (pictured above). It’s a small thing, nothing out of the ordinary even, but I think you have a better chance of success when everyone’s rowing in the same direction.

There remains so much talk about the centre-forward position at Arsenal, and I do wonder if, perhaps, there was an idea that whoever we signed this summer would be the number 1 guy, end of story. Our Erling Haaland, so to speak, in terms of their squad status. I don’t think we’ve seen quite enough from Gyokeres yet, and I hope there’s more to come in the second half of the campaign, but maybe we need to step back and realise that it’s unlikely that any one of these will become the unquestioned first choice, but that all three have a role to play in different ways.

When you look at the schedule this month, with 9 games before January 31st, there’s a lot of football to go around, and no single player is going to play every minute of that. These three can really help each other, and push each other, and hopefully we see the benefit of that on the scoresheet and against opposition defences.

There was also a moment between Gabriel and Eberechi Eze, who hasn’t played as much as you’d imagine of late. He started against Wolves, but came off in the second half and hasn’t got on since. That must sting a little for him, but perhaps like Gyokeres, we haven’t seen him find the kind of consistency you’d like. I say this with all due respect to Crystal Palace, but there is a step up in what’s demanded of you when you join a club that plays every three days all season long, where the stakes are so high, and where the pressure is so intense when it comes to the delivering most important trophies.

There may well be an element of him coming to terms with that. Still, there are countless examples of players who look a bit peripheral, or who burst into life in the second half of a season, and I think he still has a very important role to play. January will probably tell us a lot about the true depth of this squad, and how the manager is prepared to use certain players, so let’s see how it all shakes out.

Right, that’s your lot for this morning. If you were too busy yesterday with the celebrations etc, there is a fun Arsecast below, recapping the 4-1 win over Aston Villa, the performance, the handshake stuff, the Emi Martinez stuff, and lots more. For now, have a good one, and happy new year!

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