Good morning! Lewis here, covering for the morning. I’ve got a cup of tea on the go, and I’m already looking forward to heading out into the cool Berlin air. This time of year is great, isn’t it? It’s a bit chilly, but it’s not too dark or wet just yet. Make the most of it! It would be a perfect time for a Saturday 3pm kick-off at home, only it looks like a downpour will hit Islington just in time for the Everton game. That familiar game-every-three-days grind is back in full swing and, when you get to days like this, I find myself still looking back at the game that just happened as much as you’re looking forward to the next one. Bayern on Wednesday was a nice reminder that we’re still so early in the season; we have no idea how it’ll all pan out for the club but also individual players. Had you asked me about Myles Lewis-Skelly this time a year ago, I’d have said he was doing well in his cup and Champions League starts – he had just impressed in the win against Atletico – and was getting enough minutes as a sub in the league to keep him ticking over. Then, in the first few months of 2026, he had a run of 10 Premier League games without featuring. He was an unused sub in nine of them and missed out on the squad entirely in the other. By the end of April, I felt like he was nailed on for a summer sale. A month later, he was very obviously nailed on for a deserved start in the Champions League final, in a position we’d never seen him in at senior level just a few weeks earlier. Things change very quickly. Noni Madueke has shown in recent weeks that this could be a big season for him. His opportunities were limited in the first few weeks of the season, though he did score against Ipswich in the League Cup. Since the international break, he was our most consistent threat against Leeds and helped create the equaliser from the left, assisted the opener against Lille a few days later from the right, went back over to the left to score the winner at Nottingham Forest at the weekend, and then put in a good performance on the right in Munich the other day. It felt, at the start of the week, like Madueke had won the battle to play on the left and you had to squint to see Eberechi Eze’s path to any sort of significant football for Arsenal. Suddenly, with Bukayo Saka limping off, Eze was handed an immediate opportunity to respond and not only scored, but also posed a consistent threat in Germany. The picture of Eze having a successful season isn’t so blurry anymore. Applying these rules to others, I’m not yet worried about Martin Zubimendi, who has ‘suffered’ something of a fall from grace. He was, for very long spells last season, in the ‘first name on the teamsheet’ category. It’s not that he’s persona non grata now or anything, but it’s not easy to see his path back in. But it’s still early days. Across all competitions, only David Raya and Declan Rice played more minutes than Zubimendi last season. Including every other Premier League team, there are only seven outfield players who played more minutes. We all know he looked fatigued through the spring, then he went to the World Cup, was there until the very end, and returned to play a whopping 15 minutes of pre-season, coming off the bench in the Community Shield. I’m hoping this period is something of a reset and does him a lot of good as we approach the winter and the second half of the season. Prior to the international break he had still featured in every Premier League game so far this season – I don’t think this is a case of the manager not fancying him anymore – but with just two starts since the end of April (all competitions, including friendlies, for club and country), it makes sense that he’d be lacking some rhythm right now. And then it becomes harder to find the window to throw a player in. Sometimes luck isn’t on your side. The same way that Saka’s misfortune gave Eze had an immediate opportunity to respond to what happened at the weekend, Zubimendi likely would’ve been in line to start against Lille last week but suffered a knock in the post-Leeds warm-down. It’s safe to assume he’ll play against Fleetwood next week. The fixture list leading up to the international break offers that game, a trip to Slavia Prague, and the visit of Hull where you’d see some opportunity to rotate and possibly give Rice or another midfield a day or two off. Hopefully all of that amounts to enough minutes to trust Zubimendi a little bit more, and hopefully he takes his chances. As we’ve seen again and again, most recently this week, things can change drastically, and they can change very quickly. We’ll need the whole squad, so I’m not too worried about how anyone’s season is going to pan out just yet. Hopefully we’ll get some sort of update on Saka’s injury when Mikel Arteta holds his pre-Everton press conference today. We won’t have an Everton preview over on the Patreon for this one, but we will still have the usual Arseblog News coverage when the boss speaks. And then there’s some Premier League to sink your teeth into tonight, if you want to welcome in the weekend with Ipswich Town-Nottingham Forest. Go well! The post No rushing to conclusions as opportunity knocks appeared first on Arseblog ... an Arsenal blog.