Morning.

After all the fuss, I guess this a proper ‘Welcome to the Interlull’ morning. Now I have a Bo Burnham earworm in my head, so I think you’re going to have it too (v NSFW!). Over on Arseblog News, Andrew put together a list of who is doing what during the break – the players who are away, the ones who are staying at the training ground.

One man who will be around is Raheem Sterling, rekindling his relationship with Mikel Arteta after their time at Man City together, and I’m really curious about what we’re going to get from him. There’s no question he had a fantastic career for club and country, and while at City he won plenty of trophies while a key part of Pep Guardiola’s team. Look at the stats: 339 games, 131 goals, 73 assists. That is very significant number of goal contributions.

Obviously things didn’t go as well as he might have wanted at Chelsea, but I don’t think it’s possible to look at players at that club and really judge them properly because of how unstable the environment has been since Abramovich was sanctioned out its ownership, before being taken over by Todd and Chad and Chud and Chet and all the lads at that hedge fund who bought a trillion players with borrowed money, and will have to pay the piper at some point. I don’t think their hiring of managers has been great either, but in some mitigation to those individuals, turning up to work every day and having to learn the name of another three random lads must make life difficult.

The fun part though is that Chelsea continue to pay the majority of Sterling’s £325,000 a week wages, and with a contract until 2027, this is a situation they’re going to have to deal with again next summer. It seems pretty clear that he didn’t much care for what was going on there, and in his first interview as an Arsenal player, he said:

I spoke with Edu and you can see the real togetherness from Mikel’s time here, you can see the journey that the boys are on, and you can see the hunger. The togetherness is something I’m looking to be a part of.

When you’ve come from a club that has isolated 15-16 players, and treated some long-standing academy graduates like absolute crap, you can understand why joining a club like Arsenal right now is so tempting. This is a team/squad/club that has been united under Mikel Arteta, and it’s the kind of environment which allows players to thrive, even if they’ve gone through a difficult period in their career. Kai Havertz is a great example of that.

I think Sterling is a little different because in the context of how he arrived, he felt a very welcome addition. The deadline was looming, we needed some extra quality and depth, and while he wouldn’t have been anyone’s first choice at the start of the summer, it felt a bit like Indiana Jones diving under the door and then grabbing his hat at the last minute, phew! Havertz had a bit more to overcome because his move happened much earlier in the summer, and there was a lot more doubt about whether or not he was the right signing or the kind of player we should have spent that money on.

Nevertheless, there is still a lot for him to prove. He turns 30 in December, and there’s been a lot of football put into those legs from a very young age. He sounds motivated though, saying:

To be at a football club like this, where you can see that hunger and desire year on year, that they’re pushing and pushing and pushing. That’s exactly how I am as a person. Each day you want to get better, each year you want to do better than the previous year.

Last year he had 10 goals and 8 assists in all competitions for Chelsea. If he improves on that for Arsenal this season, I think we can probably say it will have been a successful loan. My hope is that working within the more structured, organised environment at Arsenal will suit him far more than the chaos at Chelsea. His best years were at Man City (caveat: he was in his prime and Man City were dominant), but there are certain players who operate best in a side with real tactical definition.

His versatility is useful too. There has been such discussion about having back-up/cover for Bukayo Saka and I think he can definitely provide that. My slight concern is that I’m not 100% on how he operates defensively, and the wide players in this team have a lot to do in that regard. That worry is offset by the fact he knows Arteta very well, Arteta knows him very well, and what is expected him of him in all aspects of the game will be very clear to both. He will be under no illusions as to the foggin estandards.

So, let’s see what we get, and hopefully over the course of the next two weeks or so, we can get him ready and ship-shape for some very tricky fixtures.

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Arsenal Women are in Champions League qualifier action this evening, taking on Rangers – and, over on Arseblog News, Tim has all the preview content as Jonas Eidevall and Leah Williamson met the media, and there’ll be all the usual post-game coverage too.

Good luck!

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I’ll leave you with the final, final, final bit of Declan Rice stuff as a clip of Dermot Gallagher does the rounds on social media. What that illustrates very clearly to me is that there is a lack of consistency in the way they judge incidents based on who is involved. Which means there’s bias – subconscious or otherwise – in the decision making.

Anyway, here’s a bit of the Arsecast Extra wonderfully animated as always by Poorly Drawn Arsenal.

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