Will Arteta go ‘big’ for Newcastle midfield battle?

Morning.

It’s Newcastle away today, an early kick off for a difficult away trip. The team news from yesterday’s press conference was vaguely positive in relation to Gabriel, with Mikel Arteta saying:

We have a training session today. If he can complete that, he’ll be available. He hasn’t had any training sessions yet, but if he’s able to do that today, he’ll be available to be in the squad.

Let’s hope he came through that session ok, because this is exactly the kind of game you want him for. If he doesn’t make it, Jakub Kiwior would be the obvious replacement, although a fit Jurrien Timber could slot in at centre-half too. That would probably mean deploying Thomas Partey at right-back again though, as Ben White remains a doubt, with one of Myles Lewis-Skelly or Oleksandr Zinchenko at left-back. Ideally though, a back four of Timber, Saliba, Gabriel and Lewis-Skelly/Kiwior probably represents our best option from the players available.

That would then allow Arteta to choose a midfield of Partey, Declan Rice and Mikel Merino, an interesting development in the way we’ve approached this fixture before. Last season, and the one before that, the manager chose Jorginho, looking for a different way to play against a very physical side. He explained at the time:

If you want to go physicality against physicality, we’d have no chance to win the game, so we had to try for something different.

This time around though, you have three players – if he goes that way – who have the size and the presence to compete, but who can more than play a bit too. There is the option to use Ethan Nwaneri after his impressive midweek display, but I think we got some insight into why we haven’t quite seen as much of him as people might like when Arteta was asked about the physical demands of top flight football:

It’s a huge jump, and we need to understand where he’s coming from, and if he had any issues in the past three or five years in his growth and development. The physical side … is really important to take care of because a lot goes through the roof straight away without you knowing.

Nothing he says about Nwaneri’s talent, desire, attitude etc, leaves you in any doubt about how promising his future is going to be, but he doesn’t turn 18 until March and I think this is where some caution comes from. He came off with cramp against Preston on Wednesday night, so I’d be surprised to see him start this one, although I hope he gets a decent run out. Ideally it’s because we have the game safe, but if we need to do something to change the midfield dynamic, he is the obvious choice from the bench.

Beyond that it’ll be Bukayo Saka and Kai Havertz, plus one of Leandro Trossard or Gabriel Martinelli. I’d probably go for the latter against a Newcastle side who haven’t been brilliant defensively this season, and if there are wide, open spaces as they push forward, Martinelli probably has the edge when it comes to exploiting them.

Newcastle come into this without a win in their last five Premier League games, but Arteta isn’t paying too much attention to where they are in the table:

The league position after nine games is very tricky when you see the fixtures that they’ve had as well and certain situations that they’ve been through as well, but they’re a fantastic team. They’re really well coached, they’re very intense.

This is the first of three away games in eight days, and you can’t help look at today as a chance to give us a bit of belief and momentum going into that little run. We come into it with just 1 point from the last 6, so it’s really important we get the right result today to get ourselves going again. It’s never easy at Newcastle, but I think if we can quiet the crowd and play close to our potential, it’s a game we can win.

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Until then.