The press conferences are over, we know a little more clearly who is around the NLD (sort of) – Suburban Gooners

After spending all week bemoaning the massive injury crisis surrounding this weekend’s north London derby, Arsenal fans and them I got a little clearer idea that everything is not as bad as it seemed during the international break. If you look at the injury table in the Premier League over the last week before yesterday, the numbers were staggering. The Scum had 13 and we were down to eight with the loss of Gabriel. But yesterday’s press conference shed a little more light on reality. That reality is a little clearer for the Scum, whose manager Thomas Frank confirmed they have Kolo Muani back and available but playing with a mask, Pape Sarr back, Bergvall and Archie Gray as well. So that brings them down to seven and when you look at who those seven are, the only real players you would look at and say had a chance of making the starting XI for this lot are Solank, Maddison and Kulusevski. So while it’s still bad for them, it’s not as bad as you might think.

Their preparation remains the key question for Thomas Frank, but it is the same for Arteta, who, as usual, has not given up on a single player. He simply said – as we all expected – that there was another training session today (Saturday) and they could assess who would join the match day squad. Standard Super Mik stuff. He was never going to give us anything and even if Frank was a little more… uh… “upfront” about player availability, we still have to wait and see. But as I said before, I would be surprised if there were no players available, even on the bench. Noni is the one I think most of us are pretty confident on and then probably Odegaard given some of the noise we’ve heard and not far behind him I suspect Martinelli is the one we all have our eyes on.

There are obviously no hints in the training photos, but I wonder if there are any psychological messages regarding the number of times Saliba and Mosquera appear to be photographed together. We’re the Arsenal fans, aren’t we? If there is an opportunity to read something, we will gladly do it, that’s for sure. But after listening to a few more podcasts, watching a few more videos, and listening to a few more Arsenal fans and their views, I’m starting to think Mosquera alongside Saliba is what he’ll do. I think if Hincapie had a few more minutes as an Arsenal player at this stage there would be an element of “you’re the left center understudy so you’re ready” to tomorrow’s situation. I think Arteta will place more importance on continuity of performance than the side where we have a weakness due to injury in a game like tomorrow. If it were Wolves or Brentford at home things might be different, but given the scale and atmosphere of the game I just have a sneaking suspicion on Saturday morning that it will be the Spaniard.

The rest of the questions answered were played with the kind of straight bat my old man would call “Geoff Boycott”. He’s an old cricketer for those who don’t know and my father used to say that he would be so boring to watch, but so effective in test matches, that he would just straighten his bat defensively and block anything that was even remotely dangerous. He then only pounced when a bowler made a mistake. Mikel is a bit like that with all the questions he asks; it’s boring for 90% of them, but if there’s an opportunity to say a little more knowing that it might not come back to bite him in the ass or give fuel to opponents, referees or pundits, only then will he be able to nibble on it.

He said that “we have everyone healthy, or most of them healthy” and I think that means most of these players – aside from Kai and Big Gabi – are all in practice. We’ve even seen Gabriel Jesus in training for a few days now and it was good to see him doing a piggyback ride with Mikel. It’s easy to have him as the forgotten man at the club after making us sign a new striker in the summer and he’s only just returned to training now, but hopefully we can get a little more juice out of that particular lemon because it’s easy to forget how good he was to us when he was fit.

Arteta has said he needs a few games behind closed doors to play first, so I think unfortunately that rules him out for this weekend, but if he gets two or three over the next week or two, maybe he can make a bench in December? If Kai has to be out for another month, for example, that’s a big bonus for us.

There were also some words for Eze, which I think most of us were expecting given The Scum were so close to signing him, along with a good interview with Idris Elba which you can also watch here. It’s a beautiful video and her smile is so contagious. I don’t think he stopped smiling at all and now that the dust and excitement around the transfer has settled a bit, it’s nice to have videos like this to remind you how much it means and how proud he is to put on the jersey every time. The North London Derby is a big event for him and you know he’s going to give it his all this weekend. We’ll need it, I think. I’ll talk about it a bit tomorrow on the preview blog, but I think this game is going to be really heavy so it might take a moment of magic to unlock it. That’s what Eze has got and if you think about the fact he won the FA Cup at Palace you know he’s a player who is there for the big moments, which is why I hope he steps up tomorrow too.

But let’s leave that there for today, I think. I’m going to do a little analysis of the two teams tomorrow to try to understand how the match will play out, so I’ll get back to you at that time, if you want to come back before the match.

Have a great day, boys and girls.