Good morning all, hope you’re well! It’s St. Martin’s Day in Germany, a day I’d never heard of until I had a child over here. Kids will leave Kindergarten and chant as they walk through their neighbourhoods with lanterns this evening, as is tradition. Doesn’t sound creepy at all, does it? St. Martin was, as the story goes, a 4th-Century Roman soldier and is best known for sharing his cloak with a freezing beggar. Fitting, then, that Martin Zubimendi should be linked with a move to Chelsea (and others). It would be the saintly thing to do to share some of our midfield spoils with the desperate, downtrodden, shivering squad that Xabi Alonso has at his disposal. I hope we let them get absolutely glacial – Siberian, even, given their history – and keep our glorious cloak of midfielders all to ourselves. The first rule of the international break is, of course, to ignore all transfer rumours. Club football goes away but there are still pages to fill, newspapers to sell, online traffic to amass, and something has to fill the void. And, speaking to Marca, the midfielder has denied that he’s unhappy: I’m calm and happy with how I’m handling this situation. (Not playing) is something I’ve never experienced before, and I think you learn from these situations too. I’m patient. When you’ve been playing a lot of minutes and your role changes to not playing as much, I’m able to see the positive side. I think everything passes, that just like last year the opposite happened to me and I played practically everything, this can change very quickly. Asked about the toll that playing so much took on him last season – Zubimendi was the only Arsenal player to play in all 38 Premier League games, he started 34 of those and had the third most minutes in the squad, behind David Raya and Declan Rice, across all competitions – he admitted that that was a factor: I don’t like to blame everything on my physical condition, but I definitely noticed it that year. It was a new year for me, with a lot of new stimuli. I played a huge number of minutes and, to be honest, I was tired. Then there were other things too, but one of them could very well have been my physical condition. I spoke with Mikel at the beginning of the season. As he does with all the players, he explained the plan to me. He warned me that there were new signings and that there would be playing time for everyone. And here we are, fighting for it. And he completely dismissed any suggestion that he is talking to other clubs, given those links to the Madrid sides and Chelsea: I haven’t wasted any energy on outside things. I’m busy enough trying to earn a place, get playing time, and fight to win this Premier League, which is looking so promising. I haven’t spent any energy on it, nor have I contacted anyone. To be honest, I’m sometimes surprised by the press too. I understand that the winter transfer window is approaching and rumours can surface, but I think we need to be a bit more careful with what we publish. Ultimately, everyone has a team they play for, and we need to respect that. I’ve also read that I might be close, but not at all. Still, I do think the case of Zubimendi is an interesting one. Having lost his place late last season, he returned late in the summer, and is yet to start a Premier League game in 2026-27 following the emergence of Myles Lewis-Skelly and the arrival of Bruno Guimaraes. Here we have a player Arsenal desperately wanted and agreed a deal for a year ahead of signing him, would they really be looking to move him on again now that he’s spent what is essentially just a quarter of a season not as first choice? So much focus has been placed on building a squad that can sustain injuries or absences, and then we’d leave ourselves light again? Maybe? You never can know how transfers pan out ahead of time, and things can change quickly in football but, as Zubimendi suggests, they can change quickly in the other direction again too. Did anyone, for instance, envisage Lewis-Skelly starting against Atletico Madrid just a week before it actually happened? I do think his particular rise, and a stressful second half of the season, has clouded what we all thought of Zubimendi’s first half-season at Arsenal, and how much he contributed across the entire campaign. At this stage a year ago, we were two points worse off than we are now but still top of the league by six points, with more goals scored and fewer goals conceded than we are 10 games in this time around. He was a big part of that. He was a huge part of winning the title and reaching the Champions League final – he started 43 of our 53 games across those two competitions. He started every Champions League knockout game up until the semi-final second leg and played all of extra-time in the final. And if he was suffering physically, there was no break in the summer, as he went off to the World Cup, Spain went all the way, and he was back on the pitch for Arsenal (having had no pre-season) in Cardiff as we won the Community Shield, less than a month on from the World Cup final. For all that, I can also see why someone would possibly want to make the case for moving on. Seeing a player not be used (Zubimendi has played in seven of our league games so far this season, by the way!) feels like an obvious place to upgrade, and we’ve been scarred before by letting players sit on the bench before then struggling to move them on for a fair fee. We’re also going to need to refresh the age of the team and especially the midfield before long. When you don’t just look at the players themselves but actually account for who is playing the minutes, we have the third-oldest squad in the league this season. The frontline will need new faces soon – that’s not news to anyone – in terms of age as well as quality, but the midfield will need it on the age front as well. We’ve also given the fewest minutes in the league to players under the age of 23 (around 6%) by some distance. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, but if you don’t get the balance right it will break before long. Right now though, this season, we’re likely to need our whole squad. We can’t be making it weaker. If one of Declan Rice – God forbid – or Bruno Guimaraes were to pick up a knock and miss a month, Zubimendi would suddenly be in line for a lot of football. Zubimendi who, again, was central to us winning the league last season. It’s far too soon into the season to write his campaign off, especially when we saw how things changed so suddenly in that exact position back in May. Let’s see how things look when the summer rolls around, but there’s no need to rush into a decision. Right then, have a great day all – and I’ll leave you with the gorgeous generosity of another St. Martin close to our hearts. The post Zubimendi addresses tiredness and transfer talk appeared first on Arseblog ... an Arsenal blog.