Arsenal will be close to full strength for their first European away day of the season but Mikel Arteta may see Lens as a chance to start working out his plan B.
All of a sudden, it’s a four-way title race in the Premier League, on paper at least, even if few who predicted Manchester City would run away with it when they were still six from six have revised that opinion in the face of defeat to Wolves.
Combined with Liverpool’s late, controversy-laden defeat to Spurs, and just two points separate the top four sides and in such multi-way battles it is so often depth rather than strength that bears out.
That has been one of the hallmarks of the Pep Guardiola era at City, who have always striven to have two world-class players in every position, and highlighted a potential problem for the champions on Saturday when Mateo Kovacic looked a poor imitation of the suspended Rodri.
Arteta thought he would also have to be dealing with the absence of a key player when Bukayo Saka picked up “a pretty bad knock” in the 4-0 win over Bournemouth, but he was a full participant in training on Monday and travelled with the squad to France afterwards.
“He’s fine,” Arteta said. “He’s much better. It was a big knock but he has recovered well.”
He also picked up a knock in the north London derby against Spurs last weekend and had barely trained ahead of the Bournemouth clash, but still started. In fact, since the beginning of the 2021-22 season, Saka has started 80 of Arsenal’s 83 Premier League games, and in the three that he didn’t, he came off the bench.
Similarly Declan Rice has missed just three Premier League games since summer 2019, but it is Saka who now holds the record for most consecutive league appearances for the Gunners: if he plays against Man City on Sunday, it will be 88 in a row.
As such, Arteta may be tempted to rest the 22-year-old against Lens, who have been well beaten by PSG and Monaco this season and were outplayed in a 1-1 draw at Sevilla, who have already lost four times in La Liga so far this campaign. Bookmakers give the French side just a 20 per cent chance of victory.
Arteta of course will not underestimate them – he is too punctilious for that – and he may hope that Saka is afforded at least some time off during the international break, when England play a friendly against Australia before a qualifier against Italy. But if he cannot trust his team to win without Saka, then he needs to find a way.
Right place, right time
— Arsenal (@Arsenal) October 1, 2023pic.twitter.com/GTzrG3wyhg
The handing of the second penalty against Bournemouth to Kai Havertz so he could get off the mark following his £60m move from Chelsea might indicate that Arsenal see him as one of those to fill the void. He will not start on the right wing – although his best position is such a point of debate that he might as well – but he could at least offer a point of difference to Arsenal if and when they are deprived of Saka’s creativity.
The next two months are a real grind for any club with serious ambitions: by the end of November the Champions League group stages will be all but over, the EFL Cup quartered its numbers, the league season will be a third through and in Arsenal’s case, they will have been through gut checks against Man City, Newcastle and, to a lesser extent, Chelsea.
So when they host Wolves on 2 December, Arteta will be a lot closer to knowing if they really can live without Saka. And if he decides they can’t, he won’t have to look far. Wolves winger Pedro Neto has reportedly been on their shortlist for the last 18 months and a move for him has not been ruled out mid-season, although you imagine his tormenting of Nathan Ake on Saturday has inflated his price tag at a club that has made selling high their business.
Neto’s pace in attack and ability to play on either side of a three make him an ideal signing who might not start on Arsenal’s biggest days but could rotate in for the likes of Saka and Gabriel Martinelli and play a role from the subs bench.
In the short term though, even the endlessly hungry Saka must fancy the odd day off.
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