Questions, new rules, and lots of stuff

Morning.

This is gonna be quite a short Friday morning blog, but don’t worry, there’s loads to come today. I’ll give you the rundown shortly. Mikel Arteta’s first pre-game press conference of the new season takes place later on, so we’ll get his thoughts on his team and its readiness for the trip to Old Trafford on Sunday and beyond.

Question predictions

• One about Viktor Gyokeres versus Benjamin Sesko, who obviously ended up at Man Utd
• The captaincy thing after Tony Adams’ comments this week
• Further transfer business and whether we’re going to actually sell anyone
• One about the pressure to win something this season – probably asked by that man from Sky who will come dressed as the number 5, because it’s 5 years since we won a trophy, and he’ll sing the question to the song ‘5 years’ by David Bowie and everyone will stare at their feet to watch their toes involuntary curl up. One reporter may even be rushed to hospital due to a cringe overdose.

Anyway, I’m interested to hear what he has to say and what kind of a message he’s going to send as we start a brand new campaign. There should be hope and optimism after the summer we’ve had and the way we’ve strengthened the squad, but those new pieces have to fit together quickly because we have a tough start to the season.

Speaking of the start of the season, there’s always a new rule or regulation introduced by PGMOL which gets hard focus from the officials in the opening weeks/months – ask Declan Rice and Leandro Trossard. It looked as if this season’s was going to be the fact referees can now award the opposition a corner if the goalkeeper has the ball in his hands for longer than 8 seconds, but yesterday The Times reported there’s going to be a crack down on grappling in penalty areas from set-pieces.

Here’s a paywall bypassing link to the article (Rupert Murdoch is one of the most evil men alive, or dead, so don’t feel bad), which says:

Incidents in which players hold opponents with both arms, are focused on their opponent instead of challenging for the ball, and where holding affects the attacker’s movement can expect to result in the awarding of fouls, leading to a penalty for offences inside the area.

The tough new line on holding follows feedback from Premier League clubs who believe that referees have been too lenient in this area in recent seasons. Players have been informed about the new approach.

I don’t want to think this is just about Arsenal, because every team is at this from corners and free kicks, but we’ve been renowned for our set-piece prowess in recent seasons so it might have an outsized impact on us. Speaking more generally though, I can’t help but think this is going to open a Pandora’s Box of incredible inconsistency as it’s so difficult to properly assess 8 or 9 players holding and wrestling with 8 or 9 others. What will be a free kick for the defence in one game could be a penalty to the attacking team in an another, and I really fear this is going to be an officiating minefield this season.

On the plus side, there’s an ESPN columnist sitting at home right now, licking his lips at all the extra content he’s going to have at his disposal. His personal PGMOL Intranet (would it be called Howard’s Web?) will be busy, busy, busy. Let’s see how it goes, but I predict some early season mayhem with this.

Right, I’m gonna leave it there for now, but for some extra reading this morning here’s Tim’s column this week looking at three players for whom this is going to be a big season. A bit later we’ve got our traditional season preview post in which Tim, Andrew Allen and I assess the squad from front to back, and our readiness for the new season. There’ll also be a Tactics Column from Lewis focusing on how Viktor Gyokeres can make an impact on this Arsenal team.

And then after the press conference, we’ll have our first preview podcast of the new season looking ahead to the game at Old Trafford on Sunday and lots more besides. If you’re not already subscribed, there’s a whole season of bonus content available to you for just $6 a month (+VAT where applicable), which is cheaper than a single pint of cool, delicious beer which you’re going to enjoy at the end of the working week. If you fancy it, patreon.com/arseblog – and we thank you all for your incredible support which allows us to do the work we do here at Arseblog.

Ok, this was a bit longer than I thought, but gotta run. Catch you a bit later for all of that stuff, and there’s an Arsecast from yesterday below – season preview vibes. Get stuck in!

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