Arsenal v Manchester City: Premier League – live!

This is presumably because Sunday’s shirts are still in the wash.

I do believe that this is a lapwing on the Emirates Stadium pitch. According to the RSPB:

Lapwings are found on farmland throughout the UK particularly in lowland areas of northern England, the Borders and eastern Scotland. In the breeding season prefer spring sown cereals, root crops, permanent unimproved pasture, meadows and fallow fields. They can also be found on wetlands with short vegetation. In winter they flock on pasture and ploughed fields. The highest known winter concentrations of lapwings are found at the Somerset Levels, Humber and Ribble estuaries, Breydon Water/Berney Marshes, the Wash and Morecambe Bay.

In other words, they don’t normally hang out in north London.

Arsene Wenger talks, initially about whether his side need to show a bit more fight tonight:

Not only fighting – playing. We’re playing against a side where we need to show quality. That’s why we need to combine both. We’re angry because we lost the final and what it takes is the desire to respond. These guys are proud and want to win their games. There have been questions after the final but we played against a good side. In a final you need to fight, and after you need to accept that you can win or lose. We want to attack, of course, and we played a bit more cautious at Wembley and tonight we’ll see if we are more comfortable in a back four. Jack Wilshere, I think he’s not available tonight but he has a chance to be available on Sunday. He played two games and gave a lot and was a bit short yesterday, had to move out of training, but he should be back on Sunday.

City make two changes to the side that won the Carabao Cup, with Ederson returning in goal and Bernardo Silva replacing Fernandinho. Arsenal bring in Cech, Kolasinac, Mkhitaryan and Welbeck. Ospina, Wilshere, Chambers and Monreal are out.

Both teams are without important and injured midfielders: Arsenal’s Jack Wilshere, probably their best player on Sunday, is crocked, as is City’s Fernandinho.

Great news! The 3,000 stewards have turned up, and the game is definitely happening. Better than that, we know exactly who’s going to be playing – and it’s this lot:

Arsenal: Cech, Bellerin, Mustafi, Koscielny, Kolasinac, Ramsey, Xhaka, Mkhitaryan, Ozil, Welbeck, Aubameyang. Subs: Ospina, Holding, Iwobi, Chambers, Maitland-Niles, Elneny, Nketiah.
Man City: Ederson, Walker, Kompany, Otamendi, Danilo, De Bruyne, Gundogan, Silva, Bernardo Silva, Agüero, Sane. Subs: Bravo, Stones, Laporte, Gabriel Jesus, Zinchenko, Toure, Foden.
Referee: Andre Marriner.

Hello world!

And so to the long-awaited clash between Arsenal and Manchester City, two giants of the English game, a meeting that is particularly hotly awaited by football fans worldwide because it is now over four days since they last played each other. Surely the last thing Arsenal needed having been so emphatically and humiliatingly outclassed in Sunday’s Carabao Cup final at Wembley was another game against the same opponents. If only they could be saved from such a fate, perhaps by a sudden blast of sub-zero temperatures, a massive snow dump and consequent transport chaos.

«phone rings»

Hello? It’s who? The genie from popular Disney animation Aladdin? You’ve bumped into Arsène Wenger and done what?

Despite the snowfall, the latest from Arsenal is that “unless there is a further announcement, the match is on”. But it is apparently dependent on the safe arrival of the 3,000 stewards necessary to meet minimum health and safety standards for such a fixture. In the meantime, ground staff have been getting out their novelty paint colours, just in case more snow arrives and renders the old-fashioned white lines invisible:

Arsenal will have Henrikh Mkhitaryan, who was cup-tied on Sunday, back in the squad and will also benefit from the morale-boost that comes from an unpredictably amazing head-to-head record against City: they have lost only one of their last 32 (that’s thirty-two) home league games against the Citizens, winning 20 (twenty). Among rational adult footballers this morale boost is probably inconsequentially small, but still. Every little counts.