Pressure grows, ‘the assist king’ + loan watch

Morning all.

If there were bits and pieces yesterday, there aren’t many today. We’re in full Interlull mode, but Arsenal Women were in action last night and endured a 5-2 humbling away at Bayern Munich in the Champions League. It has added to the pressure on head coach Jonas Eidevall, and with Chelsea on the horizon this weekend, this could turn out to be a seismic seven days after the disappointing draw with Everton last Sunday.

I know you can’t judge a situation based entirely on Internet comments, but it feels like the scrutiny he is under is pretty intense, and faith in him is pretty low. It’s something Tim and Jamie spoke about in the latest Arsenal Women Arsecast (recorded after the Everton game), and last night will only have heightened that. Let’s see how it plays out, I guess, and remember you’ll find the best coverage of the women’s team over on Arseblog News.

Elsewhere, I saw Erling Haaland being asked about throwing the ball at the back of Gabriel’s head in the game against Man City last month. As you might expect, he’s not exactly contrite, and while some people have taken exception to his comments, I don’t really mind them at all.

Let’s remember what Gabriel said afterwards:

I don’t even remember this. It’s normal, they were happy after scoring in the last minute. It’s a battle, a war and provocation is normal in football. Now it’s over and we’ll be waiting for them at our house.

Except we know Gabriel remembers. That’s what he does. He keeps the receipts. And when he exacts his revenge in our next game against City by scoring a winner with his head, then lifting up his shirt to reveal a t-shirt that says ‘Stay Humble!’ before launching an entire range of ‘Stay Humble!’ merchandise, we’ll all have a great laugh about it. Erling Haaland included, I’m sure.

*cough*

Meanwhile, things are going well for on-loan Nuno Tavares at Lazio, who has provided 5 assists in 5 appearances so far in Serie A. Thankfully we live in a world where nobody goes over the top in their early appraisal of a new player, so he’s simply been labelled ‘King of the assists’ by the Portuguese press. Nicely understated. He’s going to have to keep going to become the GOD OF ASSISTS. It’s important to have a target.

Anyway, it’s good for him that things are going well, he says:

I feel more and more at home at Lazio. Things are going well for me personally and collectively. It’s good to have this understanding with them in this short space of time. We can only improve. I’m very happy to be here.

His loan to the Italian side includes an obligation for them to make the deal permanent if he achieves certain targets during the season – ones I suspect have more to do with appearances than assists. It’s worth remembering that his loan to Marseille also started in a really positive way, with three goals in his first four games, and while he ended up making 39 appearances for them in total, they chose not to make the move permanent. Fingers crossed it continues well for Captain Chaos in Rome though.

In other loan player news, Albert Sambi Lokonga made his comeback from a hamstring injury to play a few minutes for Sevilla in a 1-0 win over Real Betis last weekend; Fabio Vieira has had a couple of brief appearances for Porto after a thigh injury; while goalkeeper Karl Hein is basically ever-present for struggling Real Valladolid so far this season.

Right, beyond that, not a lot going on. For a bit of extra listening, we have an exclusive Patreon podcast, chatting to Arsenal fan and New York Times tech reporter Ryan Mac about the book he co-authored about Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter called: Character Limit. It’s a fascinating book, and a great conversation with Ryan. You can get instant access to that and everything we do on Twitter for just $6 per month, right here.

For now, have a great day.