Morning. Welcome to a new week, and the final round of international games will take place today and tomorrow. After that, Mikel Arteta will welcome home his traveling players, see who has not been injured and then make his plans for the derby.
Kieran Tierney will not play for Scotland against Ukraine tomorrow, despite Steve Clarke saying he was “fine” after a clash of heads at the weekend. Whether that was just a case of a manager not giving anything away, or if Tierney wasn’t doing as well as he thought, I have no idea. Hopefully, it’s just a case where common sense has prevailed, and he’ll be fine by the weekend.
Featured players in action over the next few days:
Bukayo Saka: He will probably be involved when England take on Germany tonight, but with the pressure on Gareth Southgate after losing to Italy, he can play for his team and play a 9-0-1 formation.
Granit Xhaka: Switzerland takes on the Czech Republic on Tuesday night.
Martin Odegaard: Norway plays Serbia, also on Tuesday night.
Beyond that, we already know that Thomas Partey will not play for Ghana, while Takehiro Tomiyasu has been dropped from the Japan squad. A statement from the Japan Football Association (via Google Translate) said:
We would like to inform you that defender TOMIYASU Takehiro (Arsenal) will retire from SAMURAI BLUE before the Ecuador National Team match KIRIN CHALLENGE CUP 2022 on September 27 due to club circumstances.
I don’t know what ‘club circumstances’ means, but maybe there was an agreement that he would play a game for Japan during this break, although I think that’s unlikely. That said, with the World Cup looming, there could be more cooperation between national setups and clubs, to ensure key players are not missing for the tournament. If Tomiyasu came with our advice that he wasn’t ready for 2 x 90 minutes in the span of three or four days, maybe that was taken into account. Japan need him for the World Cup much more than they need him for a relatively pointless game against Ecuador.
Anyway, we’ll see how it all works out. Going back to Tierney and Zinchenko, I think it’s great that we have two left backs with such quality. They’re obviously quite different in terms of what they bring to the side – KT is a better all round defender, Zinchenko is better technically and more comfortable in those central areas – but as a pair they’re about as solid as I can remember because of this. position at some time.
Discussions are always interesting when a new player arrives and does well. I remember a certain moment last season when Nuno Tavares deputized for Tierney well, and we had a litany of questions for the Arsecast Extra about whether the Scotsman’s Arsenal run went through. Those were a bit premature in the end, although Nuno is doing well in Marseille as a full-back, not as a full-back.
It’s been similar this season too. Zinchenko is lovely to watch, and he was so impressive in the opening weeks of the season. And when he took a hit, how cool was it to have such a solid option instead? We’ve all had some concerns about Tierney’s injury history at Arsenal and, indeed, it has been a feature of his career, as the following chart illustrates:
Those stats are from Transfermarkt, by the way, and Zinchenko has quite a bit of history too.
Except, did you realize this was page 1 of 2? Here is page 2.
Apart from a knee operation in 2019, there is nothing serious, but there are many small aches and pains. And when you look at this season so far, it’s quite interesting to note how many minutes they’ve both played.
Zinchenko
Premier League: 324′ from 4 games Europa League: 21′ Total: 345′
Tierney
Premier League: 263′ of 6 games Europa League: 69′ Total: 332′
I know the sample size is quite small, but if Arsenal’s left-back position was essentially a time-share situation throughout this season, I wouldn’t be at all surprised. Which doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a bad thing. One of the benefits of having depth is that you have confidence in both players, so instead of playing someone who might be in that red zone or struggling with a shot, you can pick the other one and thus avoid exacerbating any injury issues that may arise. can have. .
Another one that will play out over time, and it could be the case that one of them is the clear leader in terms of minutes, but I suspect the benefit of having two players of such quality is that they will come out fairly even. the end.
Right, that’s your lot. James and I will be recording Arsecast Extra this afternoon. Keep an eye out for the call for questions on Twitter @gunnerblog and @arseblog on Twitter with the hashtag #arsecastextra, or if you’re an Arseblog member on Patreon, leave your question on the #arsecast-extra-questions channel on our Discord. server.
We’ll have the capsule for you sometime in the afternoon. For now, take it easy.
