A Sunday morning update – we’re back

This was originally posted to our Patreon here after some overnight technical issues: https://www.patreon.com/posts/sunday-morning-142077616

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Morning folks.

This is a bit unusual because as many of you know, the first thing I do every day is get up and write a blog on arseblog.com

Today would have been a Crystal Palace preview, but some planned maintenance on the servers hit a major road-block yesterday evening, and Tom is still trying to figure out a way around it. So, I can’t just sit here and write nothing in the morning, and this is the other platform at our disposal.

I can make this post free so our non-Patreon members can read it, and at least have some kind of blog for their Sunday morning coffee.

CRYSTAL PALACE STUFF

The team news in the build-up to this one was the fact that Gabriel was a doubt after being taken off during the 4-0 win over Atletico Madrid on Tuesday evening. Mikel Arteta said on Friday:

“Big Gabi had to leave the pitch with an issue and he hasn’t been able to train yet, so let’s see how he evolves in the next 24 hours to see whether he’s available or not for the weekend. “

I don’t think anyone can doubt his importance at both ends of the pitch, but if there’s any risk, we’re now in such a strong position in terms of squad depth that the manager can feel confident using those options. Riccardo Calafiori can play at left centre-half, so too Cristhian Mosquera – who has been very impressive since his arrival. There’s also Piero Hincapié who we haven’t seen much of. It’s probably too much to throw him in from the start against a team as good as Palace, but the fact he’s even there illustrates our depth.

I don’t see much else in the way of change from the team that won on Tuesday. The midfield worked really well, and there’s the Eberechi Eze factor as he faces his old club for the first time. Up front, Viktor Gyokeres’ two goals against Atleti will hopefully be the start of more regular scoring, and with the threat posed by Palace’s overlapping wing-back Daniel Munoz, you might think Gabriel Martinelli is the best pick on the left. He scored the other night too, but his defensive work might just give him the edge over Leandro Trossard for this one.

Although their unbeaten run came to an end recently, Palace are still so impressive under Oliver Glasner. Jean-Philippe Mateta is a real presence up front, and they have quality in the players behind him too. If you watched their game against Liverpool a few weeks back, you’ll understand how they can hurt you if you let them get any kind of wind in their sails, so I’m pretty sure denying them that will be part of the Arteta plan today.

They also have a decent record at our place in recent seasons, we’ve won just two of the last seven home Premier League games against them, so perhaps this is another one of those fixtures the manager will be looking to ‘put right’. We drew 2-2 with them in April, so this is another game where – if we take all three points – we’ll be up on last season’s points tally. And with Liverpool losing again yesterday, it’s a chance to extend the gap on them too.

A big one, fingers crossed we can do the business.

THE TECH STUFF

I wish I could give you a definite timeline to get everything working, but as ever with tech stuff there are complications. Suffice to say, Tom will be doing his absolute best to get things back up and running as soon as possible.

Apologies for the inconvenience, and for the disruption to your morning routines, but hopefully this will fill the gap for a little bit. We’ll provide any updates on BlueSky as and when we have them – https://bsky.app/profile/arseblog.com

Thanks for your patience

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UPDATE

As you can see, the blog is now back, as is news and we’re hoping to have everything else restored shortly. The Arses are working, but the number of Arses is not, that’s something to fix at a later date.

All going well, we should have live blog coverage, and all the usual post-game stuff on Arseblog News.

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