Morning. First up, a big win last night for Arsenal Women in the Champions League. They came from behind to beat Real Madrid 2-1 thanks to two goals from Alessia Russo. It’s been a difficult campaign so far, perhaps a touch of a Champions League winning hangover, it’s hard to say. Nevertheless, as ever Tim and co have you covered with report and reaction over on Arseblog News. Over to the men, and there’s a training gallery on the official site as we start to prepare for the North London derby on Sunday. We’ll have to wait and see who is available again, maybe Mikel Arteta will be more open than normal with his injury updates, but none of Viktor Gyokeres, Martin Odegaard, Kai Havertz, Noni Madueke or Gabriel Martinelli are in these pictures. Maybe they weren’t there because they’re in ICU; maybe it’s all part of the subterfuge cooked up between the manager and Stuart MacFarlane; who can say?! One man who is in there is Gabriel Jesus, so perhaps he’s a possible inclusion in Sunday’s squad. He last played in January, so there’s zero chance he’s a starter, but someone who could come on and do 15-20 minutes against tired legs? Let’s wait and see. I’d be very glad to see him back. As I’ve said previously, I don’t think there’s a realistic chance we get ‘prime’ Gabriel Jesus back (and I mean good prime, not the crappy drink or evil Amazon’s video thing), but he must really feel like someone who has missed out on a lot. It’s not that he has a point to prove, but a desire to make up for so much lost time. As well as, perhaps, finding a way to make the most of what’s left of his career. He’s still only 28, so there’s scope for him to play for a while yet. Could he look at someone like Danny Welbeck, whose career was also blighted by serious injury in his 20s, and take some inspiration from that? I’d be surprised if he was banging in goals in the Premier League at 34 like Welbz, but I hope his story is not finished yet. A few goals in red and white between now and the end of this season could be very useful for us too. Away from the pitch, and the club announced yesterday that the current deal with the Rwanda Development Board, which sees Visit Rwanda as the sleeve sponsor, would be coming to an end at the end of this season. This is a bit of a surprise, to be honest, as we had heard from pretty reliable sources that a renewal – and a long-term one at that – was quite close to completion. There’s no issue between the RDB and owners KSE, as they have recently agreed partnerships with the LA Rams and SoFi Stadium, so something has obviously changed in the last few weeks on the Arsenal front, but quite what, or why, I don’t know. Maybe there’s a better offer from elsewhere, but this is fairly 11th hour stuff, so we’ll have to wait and see what comes out, if anything. In recent times, there were efforts from a group called Gunners For Peace to put pressure on the Arsenal board to reconsider the partnership. They ran a satirical campaign to highlight their objections to the sponsorship. Whether that had some influence, I’m unsure, but it really does feel like this late development, whatever it was, was the key driver of the decision to end the partnership. Then it becomes a question of, what next? Clearly this is a welcome development, but I'm going to hold off celebrating until we find out the replacement… — @AAllenSport (@aallensport.arseblog.com) 2025-11-19T11:09:39.666Z From what we’ve heard, there are suitors for what is, right now, a coveted sponsorship deal and a place on our shirt. Personally, I wish sleeve sponsors weren’t a thing, but this is the world we live in now. Every piece of material real estate can generate revenue, and if everyone else is doing it, you’d be mad – from a business perspective – not to do it too. Unfortunately, when you’re dealing with this kind of money, you’re not always attracting partners who are whiter than white. I’ve seen ‘technology’ companies as a kind of catch-all, but drilling down into that you’re looking at the social web (and you can expand that out as you wish), and the never-ending range of dodgy crypto companies who pop up from who knows where with who knows what kind of background. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if some of the billions being invested the AI bubble end up being used for deals like this – not necessarily at Arsenal, but the more they spend the more they have to spend, and right now they are spending a lot. So, it might be a slight case of out of the frying pan and into the fire when it comes to the next sponsor. I know this is something I’ve mentioned before, but the cognitive dissonance required to be a football fan these day is really quite tiring. We love the game, we love our clubs/countries, and we love the players (some of them anyway). This is typically hard-wired into us from an early age, and we exist in kind of perpetual Stockholm Syndrome because of that. If people had understandable objections to Visit Rwanda, shouldn’t they also apply to our shirt and stadium sponsor? Yet, we have become inured to that because of the longevity and ubiquity of that deal. There is never a moment where some kind of mental or moral compromise isn’t required, and it does get a bit much. Then there’s a game, and a wonderful young man like Bukayo Saka – who represents every single thing that’s good about football and life itself – does something amazing and our focus is on that. How can we deny ourselves the joy that brings? And look, everyone else is doing deals that don’t always stand up to scrutiny, so we either keep up with the Joneses or get left behind. The most important thing is we get to enjoy Saka and Arsenal. I dunno, I wish I had a good answer, other than to try and do the best we can here. This week, I instructed Acast, who run the advertising on the Arsecast, to cut ties with a long-time advertiser because their managers are now told that in order to hire a human being for a job, they have to make a case as to why AI can’t do it. Seriously, even if there are some good use cases for this technology, prioritising machines over people is not an ethos I care to be associated with. In the grand scheme of things, it won’t make any real difference to anything, not least that company, but what else can you do? Anyway, we’ll keep doing our stuff, we’ll wait and see what the next sleeve sponsor is, and react then. And as we’re getting close to Christmas and all that, the Goodly Morning mugs are on sale again, and as we always do, we’ll pledge to donate every penny we make from them – and then we’ll double it for good measure – to good causes which can help people at this time of the year. Get yours here! Ok, I’m gonna leave it there for now. We’ll have an Arsecast for you a bit later today, but for now, have a good one. The post Jesus trains : Arsenal announce end of Visit Rwanda deal appeared first on Arseblog ... an Arsenal blog.