Welcome to a brand new week and welcome to another Interlull. Yes, another one. Ahead of our game against Southampton on Saturday, Mikel Arteta was asked for his thoughts on his players going away to play for their countries, and said:
I prefer not to watch the games! I pray that everybody is going to be fine, because the last one was a really difficult one to handle in many ways.
I’m not a praying man, I’ll leave that to Arteta, but there’s already an issue in that Kai Havertz has withdrawn from the Germany squad for their games against Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Netherlands with a knee injury. Right now, there’s no information about how serious it is, or isn’t. The optimistic side of me hopes it’s just a small niggle, and after losing Martin Odegaard in the last break, common sense has been applied and he’ll use the next couple of weeks to recover. You can’t help but worry though, because this season has already thrown up some challenges, and part of me expects to hear that it’s an ex-knee, it’s no more, it’s kicked the bucket, shuffled off this mortal coil etc etc.
We will await further updates on Kai, and I will keep everything crossed it’s not serious, because his importance to this team right now is just so obvious. It’s quite funny to think that after 7 games last season, he had just scored his first Premier League goal for Arsenal – that penalty against Bournemouth. I went back to have a look at what I wrote after that game:
“A penalty against Bournemouth at 2-0 isn’t quite like the final one in a world cup final or anything, but it was a big moment for him. And he delivered, tucking the spot kick away very well. He did score one in the Community Shield too, and both penalties he’s put away have been done so with a conviction that is perhaps missing from other aspects of his play. You could see how much it meant to him, and to his teammates.
There’s still plenty to do, but this felt very much like a step in the right direction.”
Look at the finish for the equaliser on Saturday. The first word that came to my mind was conviction. A year ago he would have overthought that chance; on Saturday a Kai Havertz full of confidence and belief just instinctively just twatted it beyond Aaron Ramsdale and in. Confidence is the great intangible in football. You know when someone has it in spades, you know when someone is missing it, and right now Havertz is full of it.
