SAKA OUT!
Ok, ok, I had a rethink, and maybe my post yesterday lacked the positive toxicity I had promised this week. What can I say, I am sorry, I failed you.
Key news on the positivity front is Saka is out.
"Bukayo is out, that's for sure,"
On Madueke, Calafiori, Timber, and Odegaard
"We will try again. Some players are quite close, but the turnaround is short, so we will try tomorrow to push everybody, and if they are in good condition, they will be part of us, and if not, they won't. They haven't been in the last few weeks, unfortunately."
My read here is Calafiori and Odegaard are the most likely to be available… but Timber won’t make it because he was properly injured and has no minutes, and we all saw the limping from Madueke, so I’d be staggered if he made it.
Let’s get into rawdogging unadulterated good vibes right now.
Is this a positive graph or am I laying the groundwork for a soft landing if Man City smack us up?
If I speak… I am in big trouble.
The purpose of this graph is to show you the immense pressure Pep G and his players are under this weekend. One slip and it’s over. Even if they batter Arsenal, which is a big ask, they still only have a 31% chance of winning the league.
Lose, and they are dead.
Draw, and they are dead.
Arsenal have easier games and the cavalry should all be back next week. Don’t forget that if the worst happens.
But, here’s the key point. Stats don’t mean anything right now. Nothing matters, bar the mentality of the players, and the focus of the manager.
Legs are tired, minds are fried, but we can see the shimmering light fractures of something silver on the horizon.
Do the players want to take the chance… or will they read mean posts from Le Grove and collapse?
Using my Gradient data for positivity…
Eberechi Eze will be an important player for Arsenal in this game. We need lock unpickers and bang-BANG players who can split the game. One of the few attackers we have that fits the bill is Eze. He’s ranked 5th for shot quality amongst midfielders in the league and he’s 4th for shots under pressure. He’s also ranked 6th in the league for quality of passing among attacking midfielders and 6th for one-touch passing. He’s also ranked number one in the league for his quality of on-the-ball attacking.
The key to his unlock is going to be technically secure players finding him in and around the box and giving him players he can pass around the corner to. I would be very shocked this weekend if he wasn’t playing with Kai Havertz, go look at yesterday’s post if you want some evidence of why I think that’s going to happen.
Kai brings the rest of the attack into the equation. Does he hang like a 9 on the last man? No. Does that come with problems? Yes. Sometimes we don’t have someone in a position to finish off attacks. But, Kai is a connector, and I would love to see how he works with a more well-rounded 9 like Kai.
The major issue with the German is his shooting. It’s not great. Particularly this season. The ranking data I use only has 4 events to speak of compared to 36 with Gyokeres. But we all know Kai isn’t great in front of goal and Gyokeres is very good.
But if we look at last season, Kai was ranked 8th overall for CF in the league. Top 20 for ball control, on-the-ball attacking, tackle resistance and ball carrying. He isn’t perfect, but he’s a massive upgrade, especially against big teams where Gyokeres gets subsumed by better players.
The key unlock that we won’t have with us is Bukayo Saka. If you have him playing with a number 9 who can be a pain in the box and get away from defenders, you have a set of problems we haven’t had on offer this season.
The best trait of Saka, that we lack with Madueke, is his control. He’s a release valve for Raya and the defence. He’s ranked number 2 in the league for ball control, and number 1 for ball carrying. Saka is ranked number 1 in the league for quality of open play crosses, and number 1 for pressured crosses. This isn’t ranked volume, it’s ranked quality. It’s not that Madueke is a bad player, but he’s ranked 50 of 87 when it comes to pressured crossing… Trossard is 54th, Martinelli is 72nd in the league. Quite dismal reading.
If you don’t have Bukayo in the starting 11, you don’t have quality balls into the box. You also don’t have much in the way of shot quality. Bukayo is 8th in the league, Madueke 52nd, and Martinelli is 71st.
The major question for Arteta is what does he want if there’s no Saka? I think you have to write off Madueke, he’s playing broken. Max Dowman, in this sort of game, is too much of an unknown, just a bench option. City are machines, you just can’t risk him killing his progress with a generational error. So that leaves you with the option of Trossard or Martinelli on the right and I don’t know about you… but Trossard has been dreadful of late, and we have seen Mikel roll with Martinelli on the right. So on the left, you have the option of Trossard or maybe even Eze. None of it feels ideal, but Eze certainly feels like more of a threat than Trossard and he’s better at shooting and creating. Eze for ball delivery to Kai, Martinelli on the right to offer us blistering pace so City can’t be too confident pressing high? Could well be. We could also see Madueke pull through again and put that idea in the bin.
Arteta has said that Odegaard and Timber are in contention. I’m feeling more positive about Martin because he hasn’t been sitting on his backside for 3 weeks. It’s probably too much of an ask to start with the Dutchman, even if he can be part of the squad. We are definitely having a Gilberto moment with him. He might not be great going forward, but he’s such a brilliant defender. The question for Arteta is whether he plays White, who hates blistering pace but is good at defending, or Mosquera who has blistering pace but young man mistakes in the locker.
Wouldn’t it be nice, for once, to go away to City without massive problems?
This data point is the one that scares me the most.
The opening 20 minutes is going to be incredibly important. If we can stifle their movement, keep them at arm’s length, and most importantly… confidently play through their press and ask massive questions of them… then I’ll feel good.
Odegaard can come deep to break their press…
Kai can will occupy their smaller centre backs…
Martinelli or Madueke are tough to chase down…
Eze is the bang bang quality…
All that underpinned by a world class defence that, on it’s day, could suck the joy out of a trip to Disneyland.
Once you dance through a beastly press and show a team it can be broken, it changes the whole psychology of the stadium. Every minute past the opening 20 will become more and more painful. If you can get into the second half 0-0, City will have to come onto Arsenal. They will have to take more risks. They will leave openings we can expose.
The mentality will likely be risk-averse. Bed in. Make them come to us. And lean on outrageous defensive abilities to squeeze the movement and joy out of the spectacle.
It’s a big afternoon. This is the battlefield where warriors are tested, shaped, and lionised.
My view? We can do it. That Sporting win in the week will be huge for confidence. Hopefully Arteta has good news from players on the fence. It would be FABULOUS if we could go to Man City and do a madness.
Finally, I left an AI prompt in my post yesterday by accident. A few folk messaged. I have been pretty upfront about this in the past… I use a lot of AI tools to keep the Le Grove machine going and I have shared them. My philosophy on the tech is it should do the boring things that save time. I like writing, but I do not like formatting or writing descriptions for things.
Here’s my stack, as the cool kids say.
Grammarly sits over my writing so I can make amends as I go so that the chatbot tools really are just doing the bare minimum.
Claude Code I use to scan and fix my work for spelling and grammar errors. I tried Gemini, but it doesn’t spit it back in a format that’s easy to work with. ChatGPT would try and change the voice of my work and make big edits.
‘This wasn’t just a game. This was a moment of glory’ jammed in without invitation.
My prompt: Correct spelling and grammar, but keep my voice intact and keep the slang in, you faaaacking melt.
On the podcast front, I use AI to create transcripts of the podcast in Substack. I then have Claude write the podcast episode descriptions. Most people don’t read them, but they are good for SEO.
I also use AI to pick the little emojis I use on the tweets. Another boring job.
For the little graphics at the top of the post, I use Midjourney. If I have to get an image of a player, I use Grok. I use Adobe Express for thumbnails. I use a tool called Opus to cut down the shorts that go on social media. I’ve also been using Gamma to create slides, so they’ll be making an appearance to showcase stats in a prettier form. I HATE designing slides.
I probably spend about 500 hours a year writing, editing, and creating for podcasts. AI is absolutely essential to scale me up in areas I have no talent or desire to learn in. I like writing. I like talking and planning podcasts. The rest is left to the robots.
Ok, enjoy the rest of the day, and get the members before the whistle in your system right now. x
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