Hello, Arsenal fans, it’s Art de Roche here. Welcome to Arsenal Today: a new daily bulletin from The Athletic’s Arsenal team. From Monday to Friday, we’ll keep you up to date with the latest goings-on across the Arsenal beat, as well as directing you towards some of our favourite pieces we’ve published.
It wasn’t champagne football but thankfully Arsenal got back to winning ways fairly quickly by beating Shakhtar Donetsk 1-0 at the Emirates in the Champions League last night. There was a wholesome moment at the end of the game too that might not have been caught by the TV cameras.
Despite not coming off the bench, Oleksandr Zinchenko still made an effort to head over to the away end at full time. Having spent four years of his youth career at Shakhtar, he gave away his matchday shirt to a travelling fan.
As for the stories out of the game, this is what we’re talking about today:
- James McNicholas was alongside me at the Emirates and he has written a piece that will be published shortly about the form of Gabriel Martinelli rising as Leandro Trossard seems to go through a leaner spell in front of goal, be sure to give it a read. It’s Liverpool on Sunday and Martinelli has scored five goals in 10 games against them, his joint-most against one opponent, with another five in eight against Crystal Palace.
- I wrote The Briefing from the game, which includes a look at Gabriel Jesus’ use off the right wing and also what Mikel Arteta might do without William Saliba and potentially Riccardo Calafiori against Liverpool. Saliba is suspended and Calafiori was replaced with an apparent injury. That gave Arsenal supporters another look at Myles Lewis-Skelly. When it comes to academy graduates, Ethan Nwaneri is in more demand to feature among the fans but Lewis-Skelly showed character once again and it will be interesting to see how his involvement in the first team continues to develop if Calafiori cannot make the Liverpool game.
- On those injury doubts — and moving Thomas Partey to right-back after taking Ben White off at half-time — Arteta had this to say in his post-match press conference: “Ben, it was my decision to take him out. He had a yellow card. We’ve played enough with 10 men in this recent period, and they had a lot of density on that side, a lot of attacking players on that side, and it made sense. Riccy (Calafiori) felt something. I don’t know the extent of that. It’s not great news.”
- Speaking of academy graduates, if you haven’t caught up with it yet, we explained the full details yesterday of why Jack Wilshere is leaving his role as Arsenal Under-18 head coach to take up a first-team coaching position at Norwich City. Our story explains Wilshere’s motivations and what the reaction has been among players and staff at Arsenal.
- While Arteta waits for his players to recover for the match this weekend, we have something exciting in the pipeline. This week is the 20th anniversary of the infamous battle of the buffet, or pizzagate, depending on which you prefer. Not just our Arsenal writers, but other members of The Athletic team have been speaking to some of those who were involved on that day at Old Trafford to relive their stories and we’ll bring you that in the next 24 hours.
With that, enjoy rest of the week and start gearing up for the visit of Liverpool on Sunday.
(Top photo: Zinchenko hands his shirt to Shakhtar fans at the Emirates. Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)
