Morning all. A very quick Friday round-up as I had a terrible night’s sleep, and this morning it’s like I exist in some kind of netherworld where everything looks more or less like it should, but feels marginally and disconcertingly different. Hopefully coffee will help. Mikel Arteta will hold a pre-Brighton press conference this morning, and after his team made it seven wins from seven on Tuesday night, it ought to be pretty drama free. To be fair, they almost always are anyway, even during difficult moments, and with one game left before the extended Interlull, he’ll have his sights firmly set on Saturday’s game. What a joy to not be playing at 8pm too. I’m sorry to all our friends across the globe for whom this is actually a decent kick-off time, but when six of our seven games have taken place in the evening, I’m all for an afternoon kick off for once. There will probably be questions about defensive injuries, with Ben White sidelined since the Sunderland game, Jurrien Timber left out in midweek (hopefully just as a means to ease him back into action), Cristhian Mosquera missing, and the notable absence of Piero Hincapie against Ipswich. As ever, I don’t expect much in the way of detail from the manager about them but perhaps this is a timely international break, and the fact it’s longer than normal – our next game after tomorrow is on October 10th! – will give these guys time to get themselves fit. By the way, a doff of the cap to Jurgen Klopp in his role as the new manager of Germany. He’s named a 44 man squad, which will be split into two for their four Nations League games. The first 22 will play the first two games, and you don’t need me to explain the rest. It will benefit Kai Havertz who will play in the first group, and who can then return to London/take some time off after a busy start to the season. Wouldn’t it be interesting if his fellow German Thomas Tuchel followed suit and did something similar? That would be extremely beneficial to Arsenal given our large England contingent, and would allay fears that Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka will be asked to play the full 90 minutes in all the games they play during this break. It’s not as if there aren’t enough English players out there to do it. You could bring in the likes of Cole Palmer, Adam Wharton, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Phil Foden who didn’t make the World Cup squad, and would be perfectly cromulent options for their games against Spain, Czechia (twice) and Croatia. And if you need to flesh things out a bit there’s always Steve and his mate ‘The Gitch’ who used to play for Aldershot reserves and liked a pint too much to make it but whose prowess on the ball would put many to shame. So many options for Tuchel. England team to face Spain: Pickford, Rice, Saka, Rice, Saka, Rice, Saka, Rice, Saka, Rice, Saka. Let’s see what happens. I thought this piece from Jonathan Liew in the Guardian about Raheem Sterling was interesting reading, particularly in the context of this week when Arsenal’s 16 year old Max Dowman caught the eye so spectacularly on the pitch. I referenced Mikel Arteta’s post-game comments in Wednesday’s post-game blog, but I really do think they’re worth paying more attention to. It’s too easy to gloss over them in the excitement of what we think Dowman can bring to this team on the pitch in the years ahead. He is just 16, we have to careful and mindful, and that responsibility starts with Arteta as the man ultimately responsible for picking the team. It goes beyond that, obviously, and he has shown us how highly he rates this young man. Not just with his continued inclusion, but even going to back to last season when we needed a goal at Anfield and Arteta’s decision was to throw on a 15 year while leaving Leandro Trossard and Ethan Nwaneri on the bench. I think the manager is right when he talks about how he has to take into account the context of the Premier League versus other European leagues. It’s more intense, it’s more physical, it’s harder (both in terms of difficulty and what you are subjected to in the tackle etc), but I also think the elephant in the room is how the media landscape in England operates. It’s not as if there isn’t spotlight elsewhere. The Spanish press is always intense, the four daily football newspapers make that inevitable, but you also have the insanity of TV shows like El Chiringuito with their lip reading and dramatic reconstructions of on and off pitch events. However, I don’t think there’s anything quite like sections of the English press when it comes to building people up and then knocking them back down with relentless impunity. I’ve found the non-stop speculation this week over that 15 year Man Utd kid pretty grotty. He is a literal child, and while I recognise this isn’t simply a construct of the media and that there are elements of this that can be attributed elsewhere (people who should probably know better and have greater duty of care too), it’s an unpleasant demonstration of how a story can spiral and become somewhat all consuming. The story then matters more than anything else, and people lose sight of the human element, the boy who is at the centre of it at an age when that kind of spotlight from all sides must be almost impossible to get your head around. It’s not at all healthy. It’s why, in the latest Arsecast which you can find below, we discuss Max Dowman through the lens of the responsibility held by Arsenal and those closest to him. Anyway, happy listening if you haven’t had a chance already, and you can join us later on Patreon as we look ahead to our game against Brighton in our preview pod. Have a great Friday folks. Download – iTunes – Spotify – Acast – RSS The post Friday round-up: Afternoon football, split squad, teenage kicks appeared first on Arseblog ... an Arsenal blog.