Do We Really Know This Arsenal Yet?

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0:46It's Rice What a goal! Declan Rice with an absolute rocket with a free kick Arsenal lead 1-0 He's cut inside Saka! Sublime finish He's back with a bang with Mukai Saka 1-0. Unbelievable. Nothing summarizes my feelings about international football quite like Martin Odegaard's celebration with the Norway team. This is the Arsenal Vision Post-Match Podcast. My name's Elliot Smith. You can find me on Twitter again. Yeah, I don't know if you saw it. They had qualified for the, whatever that big football tournament is that's coming in the summer. I don't know. Someone will have to tell me in the comments.

1:22And they're jumping around and they're celebrating and Odegaard is sitting on a bench, not in the celebration, just kind of smirking politely to the camera. Now, he's doing that because he has a knee injury and he's unable to jump up and down and celebrate with them. And obviously jumping up and down and celebrating with Holland would be a distasteful act anyway. So a good act of considerate behavior by Martin Odegaard. But that was my spirit animal. Like, yay, yeah, international football. Hooray, can we get on with it? Because there's not a heck of a lot going on if you are not an international football enthusiast.

1:52And for those of you who are, entirely you're right. We do have a heck of a lot going on. weirdly though in the podcast world so we had a friday night clive on friday we put out the tactical summit with john mckenzie and clive for everybody and i hope you caught that uh and enjoyed it and if you didn't give it a listen it's the rare example of what we'd call sort of evergreen content around here meaning it's not going to age poorly unless we all start sudden start playing totally different football in which case it might age poorly but i think it's it's a good listen regardless that's out for everybody the friday night clive we did a game we did a draft of of arsenal 11s and then someone took the draft of our arsenal 11s played it on football manager and what do you know clive's won one nil on a set piece so that's how you know uh football manager is real life we have a history pod from tim this week we have a one club pod with tim and clive about the arsenal women this week we'll have a friday night clive this week where we'll we'll talk about the game we'll start to get into a look ahead to the fulham game as the week goes on and um yeah just lots and lots more so if you do want to be over on the patreon side of things.

2:52We'd love to have you there. And you can do that with code AVP50 and get a month to just give it a try for a couple of quid and see what you think. Otherwise, just be here. I've been saying it. I know a lot of people love social media and social media is still part of my life in a big way. But increasingly, I can tell when it's affecting my mental health. And so increasingly trying to do more things to have opportunities to be offline together. So we're planning some stuff in December, did some stuff in Chicago and Kansas City going to do some stuff in London and look for other places to get together in person and you know just want to find ways to connect in the actual physical world which as it turns out is not a bad place to be so um hope you're doing well hope you're enjoying a little bit of time away from arsenal uh although i am ready for it to be back and back with me to discuss it all is paul hello paul and tim hello tim hello there clive getting the rest he needs resting up those sore tight muscles rumor has it he's in the spandex.

3:45He's still walking, but yeah, he will be back on the one club tomorrow. Back on, I believe the Thursday pod Friday night, Clive. So we'll have everybody rotating back in for the next stretch run that is coming. I guess I'll just start with this, Tim, anything from the internationals that's felt relevant to you? I mean, we haven't had England games since the last time we potted. Zuba Mendes looked really good for Spain. So maybe he's getting some of the flowers he deserves anything from internationals that that piques your interest worth discussing no no well well that's not gonna fill up the podcast don't worry i do have topics we're gonna talk odegaard midfield i've got a great question yeah okay well so no i mean the thing is like i i'm not across uh men's international break at all because the way the calendar works Like the synchronicity of the calendar, the women's calendar gets very busy during the men's international breaks, which is kind of done deliberately.

4:46And after this week, the women have a two and a half week international break and they all go away. And so I've been like that part of my life really kind of ramps up. So I've been to their games, their press conferences, everything like that. haven't watched I think a single well no no I have I've watched one second of international football because there was a really funny goal scored by Norway I think against Israel I don't know if you saw it where like Harland is running with a defender towards the goalkeeper and Harland kind of barges him and the ball hits the Israel goalkeeper and Harland barges him so hard he like falls back into the ball and it's an own goal.

5:27It's one of the funniest own goals I've ever seen. That is the sum total of everything I have watched in this international break. I did see Saka's goal and that's literally it. Yeah. I mean, the Saka goal was excellent. Paul, I guess one of the stories from international break is how good Norway have been. They didn't need Martin Odegaard to qualify and I believe Erling Haaland with three more goals. It took Cristiano Ronaldo 114 games to score 50 international goals. It took Lionel Messi 107 games. Erling Haaland managed it in 46 games. It's kind of crazy. And his form is definitely one of those things that you just got to keep a little bit of an eye on.

6:10I think as the season develops, he's in red hot form. And while I think City have problems that may be big enough that he can't overcome them by himself, is that something that's jumped out at you from the internationals? just that his insane run of form continues? No, nothing's jumped out at me during the interlull. Okay, you guys are really helping me out here, really helping me out here. It's your own fault. How about karaoke? Anybody want to karaoke? Hang on, Elliot. I listened to the Arscast. They agreed there's literally nothing to talk about, but to be fair to them, they got a solid 20 minutes of bants right at the start of it, talking about absolutely nothing.

6:48Total shite. It was very entertaining. But Paul, they have a part two where they take questions. We burned our questions in the mailbag episode last week. So we're on our own for at least 60 minutes. I do want to say, by the way, this podcast is going to be titled something like, do we really know this arsenal yet? And I have a thesis, a hypothesis I want to throw out at you that we actually don't know anything about this arsenal yet. And I'm excited to get into it. But before we do that, let's not cut the waffle section short. I do want to know, Paul, as you know, I have quite the affinity for karaoke, both James and Andrew uh were quite dismissive of the activity on the podcast and suggested that I've tried hard to get them to participate which I will succeed in doing I believe you enjoy the karaoke yourself I do enjoy the karaoke it's uh as I mentioned on my little thing I did with Kaya Kainak that's how Kaya and I formed our bond um there's there's actually been statistical reviews of of how people best form their bonds um top in that slot is nam uh second is can't remember third is karaoke under uh severe duress and pressure fourth was american middle schools um it's a tremendous tremendous way to forge a bond with people you and i first karaoke'd in london during the covid period um added a little extra spice been in a room with meant for eight people that had like 16 17 and um yeah and people coming and going so if we didn't get it that day we never got it that was that was our i think our formative trip to london and you had to do all the tests to get out of there i want to emphasize this was not during a covid lockdown period we were not engaged in some kind of um upper class dodge the dodge the restrictions kind of activity here everything was open and available it was just would have been really cool if they had to like shut everything down and we were still in the karaoke booth and they were like sliding in pizzas under the door and we just had to do straight karaoke for two weeks look if i have to be trapped somewhere for two weeks a karaoke booth is probably the the place i would choose it would have got stronger and stronger as the two weeks went on yeah well so uh speaking of getting stronger and stronger though so you had no thoughts on erling holland tim i'll bounce it back to you before we'll get into the arsenal stuff because i've i've burned all the sort of preparatory materials i've had here do you have any thoughts on the erling holland form no um

9:18this is just just so we're aware right like when i have nightmares this is what they're i'm asking questions and you guys got nothing to say about yeah nobody's naked yet but um You know, it's still early in the pod. I guess what I'd say, right, about some of the, I mean, yes, obviously, like, pretty extraordinary, and we know he's a pretty extraordinary goal scorer. But I just kind of think international football is so different now that it's difficult to make sense of a lot of these records because, you know, because there's a lot more countries now than there were kind of 30, 40 years ago. So I think a lot less meaningful games.

10:02I think club football is going in that direction as well. They're trying to pack the calendar with as many games as possible, and it means there's just quite a lot of dross. So it's a bit like I'm not sure what you really can take from a lot of these international records anymore because it's a little bit like who are they scoring against? It's a bit like when Harry Kane became England's record goal scorer, obviously a phenomenal striker and all of that, but it's a bit like yeah the context so different though from like 34 years ago and all of these records are being broken now like appearance records scoring records because there's so many more games than they used to be and actually that's something that really came out um listening back to the kind of the cup winners cup episodes we were talking about i think uh it might have been gary lewin was kind of talking about international football happened less often as well um back then so you didn't have a great idea of these players and these opponents.

10:56And so, yeah, it does feel like, obviously, it's a phenomenal record. You asked on the last podcast, what's the thing that could stop Arsenal winning the league? Other than injuries, my other answer was Erling Haaland. And actually, City have made, I think they've put him in the leadership group this year. and there's loads of um there's some data as well about how his all-round game is coming on quite a bit like actually city use him a lot to defend corners now if you look at like his aerial jewels percentage it's gone up massively because they really use him like to defend corners so like they've clearly decided like we know you're a brilliant goal scorer but we want to bring some other things out of your game we want we want you to be like one of the leaders of this group and uh i have to say it does feel slightly ominous because he does actually seem to be taking to it reasonably well yeah he's sort of a weird guy and i think that weirdness helps him too because he just doesn't seem like any of this phases him like he knows oh this is football it's just a silly kickball game like he doesn't seem to ever be taking it all that seriously and you're right there are more nations now which means there's more minnows there's more teams to beat up on more ways to score easy goals you go back a while and it wasn't it wasn't easy there weren't a lot of countries to play against i mean if you think about pangea they had almost no one to play against at all uh very very sparse footballing calendar um i just just thought i'd do you a solid and laugh at your joke there elliot i hope you remember that in the future i just want to say i'm a little disappointed in tim i feel like he stabbed me in the back i thought we had a stick here going where we were not going to take the erling howling thing serious but uh he broke ranks i i'm i'm looking forward to putting this episode in the time capsule let me just let me just say when they dig this one up one one of they're gonna think one of my favorite bands growing up was a band from the late 80s called the stone roses who were like very like anti-establishment and all of that but their early interviews are so funny because they'd all just sit there and it'd be like oh what did you think of this song in this album they'd be like yeah it's all right fine and like to every question they'd just be like or they'd just be like what do you think of this and be like don't know don't really think about it to be honest like this podcast seems you think they're cool tim but if they were born 20 years later they'd be in front of a camera going smash that like button don't forget to hit the bell subscribe to get more content what they're doing now they're running podcasts and they're like subscribe hit the button they've got the hottest asmr youtube channel going um okay so let's get into the arsenal stuff and it's 12 minutes out of that um paul martin odegaard is injured yeah i don't you know like again not serious enough that it seems like he needs surgery but it's fair to say he's going to miss some period of this next run of games the good news is we have another international break coming very soon um because i was worried that we'd we'd start to lose the taste of international football but don't worry it's coming in four weeks but um it's starting to feel like that remember the argentinian flight that crashed and like they were stuck up in the andes i think would have been or the peters i don't know the andes and uh they had no food and uh after about like you skip a meal or two but after three meals they started looking around to see who they were going to eat and stuff starting to feel like that these interlulls were looking around looking look i i love you man and i'm gonna be honest with you no matter how bored i get international i did you a solid literally three minutes ago and laughed at your crappy pangia joke that's fair i just i just want you to know that there's no amount of international football that makes me go cannibal so you know i'm just okay just letting you know um okay but but the thing with with the odegaard injury is you first i'm delicious i will tell you slather on some some salted butter i'd be tasty uh yeah okay anyway uh so martin odegaard that guy he's out we have to build a midfield and i'm wondering if you think that this will just be a sort of natural like for like with as a staying in midfield and it'll be rice zubamendi and as a paul or or you know if we'll see more of marino is it as simple as as a will just play instead of odegaard could could ethan see more of his minutes climb i i am more disappointed in this than most people i feel like people are taking this in their stride and we've sort of gone all the way around the bend now, guys, where we used to freak out about injuries.

15:25Now we're so convinced of our depth that we're like, oh, it doesn't matter that our captain is out. Like, it actually does matter. He looked great when he was playing. We've hardly played with him for 18 months. I think he is an important part of unlocking things we want to be able to do in attack and getting players into the positions we envisioned for them. But people seem pretty sanguine about it. And so I'm curious if you are equally sanguine about it and what you expect will be the sort of first, most obvious solution that mikhail will turn to you see that's how i use the word sanguine but i've been tackled on it and sanguine has a slightly different meaning to the one we all use it for which is we're kind of cool about things you know i thought well let's see sanguine optimistic or positive especially in an apparently bad or difficult situation so that's what i'm saying people are pretty sanguine yeah optimistic that's how i use it somebody else found a definition that i found it hard to argue that i don't anyway yeah i'm feeling pretty sanguine about it and i haven't put a lot of cycles screw that person yeah uh whatever i'm feeling pretty uh yeah okay so um i am feeling pretty sanguine about martin odegaard and i'm not even trying to so fair play to arsenal and the business they've done so far of course we now analyze that and second guess ourselves and we'll time will tell on that one but but besides time telling like it i was just thinking like yesterday that isn't it kind of cool that it doesn't freak me out that martin odegaard and havertz aren't there and i'm okay about it of course it wouldn't take much you know don't don't want to tempt the injury guys but it wouldn't take much an injury here or there and suddenly you're with back-to-back fixtures it's different but putting that to one side um what i've seen of this team which has had to do play the last few games with bits of martin odegaard or martin odegaard coming back to form or without martin odegaard our football has been at a level where i'm like these guys are feeling it across a squad and your question was, you know, is it going to be Zubimendi, Rice, and Eze?

17:43I think there'll be some of that. Maybe that'll be the most popular combination, but I don't think it'll be the only combination. And we'll see different looks, different ways of playing, which I'm really starting to enjoy. I think more than anything, what I've started to enjoy is a freedom in our football. And I think it starts, in some ways, we make a lot of time and space for ourselves with our confidence that we're now displaying, playing out from the back, which I would say is the first time in Arteta's tenure where we've not only tried to play from the back, but we're good at it and we're comfortable at it.

18:24And I think Zubimendi buys you a lot. And my only concern earlier in the season was that our attack wasn't joined up, not just between the three guys, between the rest of the team and playing through the lines and finding those guys up front. And it has now joined up. It's a joined-up attack. Everything's stitched together. And like early days, right, you're asking for opinions. I'd like to say, oh, let's give it another three. But based on what we've seen over the last few games, which I always expected to happen, it was just a question of when, I feel very comfortable that this team now knows how to play it around the pitch, find the space, make the space, play through the center, play around the edges, that we have a left-hand side, which we haven't had for two, three years.

19:14We have an actual left-hand side. It doesn't really matter at the moment who plays there. and I'm really starting to enjoy the football. Wenger-ish, not exactly Wenger's way of doing it, but Wenger-ish vibes of, hey, we're playing fun football and anybody can do anything, even if that's not, it's the illusion that anybody could pop up anywhere probably. Yeah, I hear you. I mean, Tim, I think though that there are some interesting challenges this poses that aren't as simple as just, well, you just play Eze instead of Odegaard because I think Eze is a left-sided player. I think that is where he's more comfortable, left half-space, left wing.

19:57I think Declan Rice is a left half-space player. So, I mean, whether you want to move Rice to the right or Eze to the right, I don't think it's as natural. Now, look, do I think Eze can't figure out how to combine with the likes of Bikai Osaka and Urien Timber on the right? He'll suffer through it somehow. But the more natural option is Ethan Warneri, who is the right-sided number eight, who is a left pocket. I think he also really helps give back some of the ball progression that we lose without Odegaard. Now he does it more with carrying than passing, but it is something that he does really effectively.

20:29And I don't think as he does that as much, I think he wants to get away from the ball a bit and go stand between the lines. Whereas Odegaard, as we've seen, he's so good at coming for the ball and bringing it between the lines, whether through passing or carrying. So I do think it changes what we do quite a bit in midfield to not have Odegaard. And I realized we haven't had much for the last 18 months so we've all sort of forgotten that but i think the idea that we're just going to play as a in the right eight it could work it could be great of course you know i rate the player highly but i think it is a change and i think it is a change of dynamic in terms of style and and these strongest qualities of those players so i'm not trying to concern troll right or invoke reasons for worry because i still think we'll be very good but i think the presumption that that's just what we'll do and that that is a natural fit might be slightly off base and i wonder if you see it similarly or i'm just doing what i do which is worrying i think the really boring answer is we'll see everyone we'll see maybe a bit of non-airie we'll see marino we'll see as a there i think there's a few things that go into this though about how our midfield has changed anyway this year so had i been on the post west hand pod i I thought you guys had a really good discussion about the Ezra and Odegaard thing.

21:45I'm more with Clive on this. It's too much to say I don't think that works. I don't think it works as well. I think it's a bit like, forgive me if this is a tortured analogy, but it's a bit like… I mean, you heard the plane crash Andy's analogy earlier, right? You're fine. Carry on. It's a bit like you can't just have McDonald's for dinner every day. you know it's a bit like that like there's weights and balances i did a documentary over that well you know yeah and he or did he well he did but he seemed to admit apparently um the amount of alcohol he was drinking um as well which might have explained some of the things that happened to his liver anyway that that that that to one side your midfield kind of needs those weights and balances right and i think what really became apparent from the west ham game is very very quickly we're going to realize that like Zubomendi is going to become another one of those players like yeah we can't play without this guy more or less you know and because and and obviously he's not as attacking as Ezra and Odegaard but like when you're building attacks and things like that there's a reason you don't just play five center forwards you need people to build that gradually you need that kind of valve and I think Zubomendi is very very important for that and I'm kind of not that convinced by the idea of having, well, actually, Odegaard isn't super attacking.

23:12I think if Jimenez play together, Odegaard kind of drops back a little bit and goes into the build-up phase a bit more. But I kind of think that that's kitchen sink football. To me, that's something maybe we do when it's like there's 10 minutes left and we need a goal. What I think has really been happening this season, one thing actually of note during the international break was there was a good interview with Declan Rice and he talked about how his role had changed at Arsenal this year and he said like I've gone to much more of like a proper box-to-box role and I think what we're seeing from him is less of that almost the Xhaka role right which was like there's a straight tram line up the left half space of the pitch and I go up and down that almost like I'm on wheels you know and there's a track there and I cover the left back and I go forward and I come back and he was saying he's been given a bit more freedom to be like much more of a box to box because i think what we're seeing essentially is a bit of a move to more of like a double pivot and a 10 but obviously the second player in that pivot is is on a on a bit of a hinge and moves backwards and forwards between the phases so i i think that's kind of what we're seeing it'll be like it would be like zubimendi and rice kind of a double pivot but rice can run everywhere um i forget the rules of chess so does that make you a pawn if you can just go anywhere um no that would be like the queen i think would be a good analogy like i said i don't know the rules of chess but whereas as a like when he plays that would be much more of a number 10 and i think we saw that in pre-season with nwani as well it was much more double pivot and 10 and nwani wasn't really playing like a right eight it was a bit more like at the point of an arrow And I'd really point people towards one of the best articles I think I've read about Arsenal this year from Art de Rocher in The Athletic.

25:05He was talking about the bounce passes and he was talking about how the 10 would come out back to goal and just almost provide like a sounding board, like a platform to, you know, build out of pressure. And I think we're just seeing the midfields becoming much more of a kind of, let's call it a virtuous triangle. Yeah, and I guess this is a really good point, right? Is if we are doing the double pivot kind of thing with Rice and Zubomendi combining more in the first phase of buildup, Eze isn't necessarily playing on the right with Rice on the left. All three of those behind the striker get closer to the center, especially if it's Leo.

25:46And then you have Leo, Eze, and Saka kind of, let's say, inside the width of the box. and that maybe there's some overlapping from a Calafiore or even in Capier if we see him, Miles. There's different things you can do and Jokras becomes almost more like a solo center forward who's running him behind. And I think we saw that, that when Leo pulls himself more inside, Jokras has room to run that left channel behind the center back. So lots of interesting things we can do with that group. Is that kind of how you see it, Paul? Is that don't think about... So I can hear Clav's words in my head a little bit that Odegaard kind of plays on the piston on the right-hand side, right?

26:26Drops in, gets the ball, goes forward, gets to the top of the box. And that's the space he slides between, kind of like what Tim was saying on a rail. Whereas Eze's rail is going to be more a horizontal rail right at the D almost, right? Where he can go left and right up there. If this were like a foosball table, he'd be on a rail over there. And then Rice and Zubomendi are more on the piston together on the left and right side of a double pivot. That was a long way to go to try to explain what I meant why don't you rescue me here um yeah so when you were first talking about him playing off the right i'm like well he's kind of like a 10 um now more right than left with the three you mentioned in midfield but only marginally more right than left he'll go where the space is and that space keeps opening up and closing because as you said rice's role uh is kind of like second pivot like i know he's talking about being box to box but that's almost like a situation state in the game he feels he's he's starting from the second pivot spot yeah um and traveling where he needs to go and i think the big piece you you mentioned him and it's like the the pregnant pause but the thing you can't leave out in this whole approach that's so different is the califiori role i mean we've seen it before but like we're totally leaning into it where he's our left eight uh for big chunks of games or you know as they draw it up i mean it's it's very decidedly not something he sometimes end up ends up doing uh for good or bad you know uh to inflict some pain on ourselves you know it's califiori who does the cutback to man's in the man city game that you and i watched together in Kansas City that Erling Haaland cleverly flicks through yada yada yada but like he's going to get into those areas he's the guy who like it was from the left wing but he came up through the center of the pitch he's got to track up the middle and depending on where he's going and what he's doing and he doesn't hang about he moves around as a free midfielder he'll be on the right he'll go wherever he'll end up in the attacking line and I think everybody else in some ways is keying off that rice is working out which of three pocket three areas of pitch he should stand in depending on califiori and eza and so he's just that gives him a lot of space to travel which brings out the best in his game um you know the left eight is always a in our structure was you might argue is a bit limiting for Declan Rice's all over the pitch using his his ability to cover cover huge amounts of space and close things down which gives everybody else a platform to do their thing and we're leaning into Calafiore which means leading uh leaning into Rice's great strengths even though I was totally warming to him as a left eight which I wasn't always convinced about last season i thought he got stronger and stronger the more he played there so he's talking about box to box um i guess that's a tag i don't know that that quite describes what i see with my eyes but he's certainly second pivot uh running from deep wherever he needs to be and i think those three players as a califiori and and rice are part of the reason this seems such a fluid dynamic way of playing that's kind of a little bit more has vibes of wenger ball even though it's i think underlying it uh has a lot of structure for if we lose the ball we're in shape and uh we quickly snap to our our uh covering the center part which is always you know when we were undone under wenger ball it was people running down the middle of us and and doing us in so yeah yeah tim I think the reality is that there's one player we really want to try to platform with everything we do.

30:29And there's been this talk as though that player is Yokozakas. And that isn't the player. It's Bakayosaka. And so there's this thought of like, oh, well, Eze is the player that can unlock Yokozakas. Or Odegaard would have been the player that can unlock Yokozakas. Or this player or that player. But actually, it's Bakayosaka because he's our best player. And as we saw against England, he can do some incredible things if you give him the tiniest bit of space. So that's really the thing I wonder about. You know, we have a Saka now who's back and looks like he's in really good form and really ready to hit his best level again.

30:58I've said this before. I think it is easy to forget the level he was at right before he got his injury last season when he was on pace to shatter the assist record. And I do think that he could strike up quite an interesting partnership with SS. So do you think that we will see more of an effort now to integrate him and get him into some interesting spaces? Was it against West Ham that he scored an offside goal? Yeah. Where it was chipped over the top? I mean, I think we're going to see him making those early runs. A big feature of preseason was long early balls to Saka. So is that something? That was Rice, right?

31:33Rice, Curl, that one over the top to him. Yep. And he's fantastic with those big switches and those quick sort of laser-fired balls out to the wing to sack. Do you think that's something that we'll see with Eze being in there? Or could we see, Ethan, I mean, that's the part for me that I find very interesting. And we're going to get to a section. The thrust of the second half of this pod is going to be, do we know anything about this arsenal yet? But it may be the case that Mikel would like to use Eze off the left. And if he wants to do that, then it's Marino or Ethan coming in. And I don't think we're going to see Marino, Rice, and Zubamendi midfield as much against the likes of Fulham and Burnley and Sunderland.

32:12But we, you know, we may see Ethan in those games. There is a point at which Mikel probably owes him a little bit of trust in the position for which he was told he'd be the backup. You're not Odegaard, you're Odegaard's backup. So what do you think about that hierarchy and the possibility that Mikel would like to get as a out to the left-hand side where he may have been envisioned when he was bought? I think we'll see it all at some point. Definitely. Like Nguaneri as well. Yeah, it could be like your next man up. And he, oh, look, another conclusion from the international break. He played there for England under-21s, didn't he?

32:48They played him in the number 10 position, which, by the way, is like really good in terms of like them responding to his club role, you know, because he was playing on the right for England and now he's moved Central England under-21s and started playing him there, which a developmental team should do, don't get me wrong, but you don't always get that kind of joined-up thinking. So I still think probably the way forward for Ethan with that is his cameos and building his way in and then give him the Brighton game for sure. I think we've literally, by the way, just had an update from Sammy Mockbell that Martin Erdegaard is expected out until the next international break.

33:28So they're aiming for the North London derby, which to be honest, probably on the good end of what it could have been. And I know Clive said this on Friday Night Clive, but like the fact that he went away with Norway did feel like it wasn't like the really serious end of the scale. It's still four weeks longer than I'd like him to be out for. But, you know, all told, it probably could have been worse. And actually, we're going to, as it stands, have quite a weird situation where Madueke, Havertz and Odegaard are all kind of expected back at a very, very similar time, which is going to be interesting in terms of reintegrating them, what that will do to our bench as well.

34:13but definitely we'll see Nguyen Neri there there's the Carabao Cup tie I'm absolutely certain he'll start that game but it's crowded even with Odegaard out it's a big squad and I'm speculating that with Nguyen Neri it was kind of his decision that he wanted to be a more central player and if I have to say if I were him I'd have kept my options open because I know Saka's on the right wing, but I still might have thought, do you know what? If one of Erdegaard or Saka are out, I'll get a game. And that does feel like limiting your options a little bit and that might have to have a consequence as well.

34:57But also, good sub to bring on if we're chasing a game as well, for example. And yes, I think we'll want to play Eze-wide at some point. So the message for the whole season basically is there's, well I say there's going to be enough minutes for everybody if we have a clean bill of health I'm not sure there will be I think there'll be a couple of guys for whom there'll be very very few minutes but I don't think Nguyen Nair is going to be one of them I think there will be enough situations to bring him into and not just when we're chasing games maybe if we're 3-0 up with 20 minutes to go as well that's a good time to to kind of bring him in we've shown a greater proclivity to bring him into home games rather than away games and that's probably about right at this stage so I I think we'll see them all I think we'll see all of the above in terms of combinations and that's one of the things because that's not always easy as well by the way in terms of coaching you guys talked about it with the substitutions at the moment getting so many early injuries and your game model goes out the window but I think Arteta's handled that part pretty well so far yeah and i think you're right everyone will play but i i think that there will be cover your ears clive a sort of first 11 that mikhail settles on for this run without odegaard without nani and i i am really interested to see where ethan fits into that mix i will say that i don't care as long as we're winning games and playing well i think it is a very first world problem to get concerned about whether your future superstar academy player is getting enough minutes right now like there'll be enough minutes for him in the future he's signed on he's going to be here i'm not going to worry too much about that but my hypothesis that we're going to interrogate is that we actually know nothing about this arsenal i like this hypothesis we know nothing do we really know this arsenal yet i submit that we do not and i'm going to defend that position and ask you to give me your take on it and how that could evolve over the season after I tell you about brands that are going to change your life because that is fundamentally why you come here.

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