Saturday round-up: Arteta on Odegaard, Calafiori, Sterling

Good morning, a quick Saturday round-up for you.

At his press conference, Mikel Arteta gave nothing away about the injury sustained by Martin Odegaard. I wasn’t necessarily expecting him to go into a lot of detail, but he said:

We need some more tests so let’s see what happens in the next day or so, this afternoon probably, and see what happens, what the extent of the injury is and how quickly we can get him back. He’s super positive about everything. We know Martin – he wants to be there every single day but we have to wait and see.

In some ways that almost sounds encouraging, but I don’t think there’s any realistic chance we see him on Sunday, or anytime soon. He was similarly vague on Riccardo Calafiori:

It’s another one that we have to wait another day or so.

I think there’s a much better chance he’s involved than Odegaard, but we’ll have to wait and see. The one piece of good news is that Gabriel Jesus was in training:

Gabby was out there, he’s got another session tomorrow and if everything goes well he will be ready to be selected in this squad which is great news for us.

So, while we go into tomorrow’s game with two big pieces missing from the centre of the pitch, it does look as if we’ll have plenty of firepower to choose from. Even if Kai Havertz is repurposed into midfield, it leaves us with Bukayo Saka, Gabriel Jesus, Gabriel Martinelli, Leandro Trossard and Raheem Sterling to choose from and to cause the opposition problems.

Arteta spoke about Sterling, and for a manager who is often quite by the book when it comes to discussing individuals, he gave the former Liverpool and Man City man his full backing:

I see his hunger – he’s a player who wants to play every minute of every game, and when that’s not the case, he’s not happy. He loves football, it’s what he likes doing every single day and I see that. His commitment, the level of energy that he’s bringing to the team, and the quality is a big boost. You can feel that in the players as well when he walked through the door, we are better with him. He’s going to make us better.

The first call I had with him, I knew straight away after 10 seconds, we had to bring him because he really wanted it.

I thought that aspect was quite interesting. The manager basically said he was unsure about a player heading towards 30, and whether or not he had the motivation to live, train and play to the standards he expects. He obviously knows him very well from their time together previously, and he was credited with helping Sterling produce exceptional numbers for City. Arteta made it clear that was all down to the player and his quality, so let’s hope we see plenty of that over the course of the coming season. How long has it been since we had a debut goal? I’d fancy one of those. If the universe has given us the runaround with regards injuries in the last couple of weeks, it’d be nice to get a bit back.

Right, there’s not much else going on but if you haven’t had a chance yet to listen to the Arsecast, beyond the Arsenal chat, we have a brilliantly put together feature about the new book ‘Black Arsenal’. Tayo Popoola chats to Femi Koleoso, the drummer from Ezra Collective; photographer Eddie Otchere; and Amy Lawrence about their contributions, and some of the themes contained in the book itself. You’ll find all the links you need below.

After that, if you fancy listen to myself and Lewis go over many and varied midfield permutations for tomorrow’s game, the preview podcast is available over on Patreon right now. Have a great Saturday folks.