Saturday round-up: Odegaard – Las Vegas or Dubai – PL yellow cards

Morning all, here’s a quick Saturday round-up for you.

Team news etc ahead of Chelsea can wait until we preview the game in tomorrow’s blog, but there was a brief update on some of the players in Mikel Arteta’s press conference yesterday. There was also a bit in the presser about Martin Odegaard potentially joining up with Norway for the Interlull.

At first, I interpreted this as the captain of his country just going along with his teammates, but the reporting appears to be based around the idea that he might play. Arteta said yesterday:

Let’s see how he goes, how he trains tomorrow. He’s available, he’s fit, if he does play it’s about how he’s feeling after that, and then we’ll make the decision between the three parties.

On the one hand, you could see how it might be useful for us in terms of him regaining some match fitness. On the other, I can’t help feel it’s a bit mad that after such a long time out, he’d be allowed go. Perhaps, as we did with Thomas Partey in the past, we send one of our physios along with him to ensure that he’s looked after properly (no disrespect to any of Norway’s medical staff btw).

My gut feeling says it’s a bad idea really. Maybe that’s entirely fear-based on my part. He could just as easily pick up a knock in training, but unless there’s a very strict agreement on how many minutes he can play, I’d be very wary about letting this happen. But when it comes right down to it, if there needs to be an edict from a player’s club about restricting his involvement for his country, then he’s probably not ready.

After a poor run of form last season, the team headed for some warm weather training in Dubai, after which we won 16 of 18 in the Premier League, losing just once in what was an extraordinary run of form. There’s no scope for doing that now, of course, but the manager was asked if there was anything he could do to shift the atmosphere. His response:

Yeah, we don’t know where that clicked. Because if instead of going to Dubai, we’re giving a week off and you see the team in Las Vegas for one week, smashing the night, we come back the following week and we lose two games in a row, I’m in my house. I’m sacked.

If they go to Las Vegas, they do that and we win three in a row, you’re telling me now, send the boys to Las Vegas because they’re going to kill it afterwards. I don’t know!

But on a more serious note, he continued:

We will do something different. Ever day, I think it’s trying to do something that helps the mood, the energy, the belief on that team, on that players to be the best version of ourselves. That’s what we try every single day without exception.

Let’s hope whatever antics he’s up to this weekend at the training ground, whether it’s pickpockets, lemons, music blaring from speakers, three small children standing on each others shoulders wearing an overcoat to disguise themselves as a very tall and weirdly shaped man, it helps the team get a result at Stamford Bridge on Sunday.

Elsewhere, there’s some interesting stuff from Opta about the amount of yellow cards being shown in the Premier League this season:

We are seeing an average of 5.1 yellow cards dished out per game. Again, it might not sound like lots more on a single-game basis, but it’s an increase of 21.1% on the previous all-time high. Extrapolate that over a full season and last term’s total of 1,602 yellow cards becomes 1,940.

A yellow cards total of 1,940 would also mark a 41.2% increase on the 2022-23 season, and yet, it still only requires a player to get five yellow cards in the first 19 matchdays.

There is so much discussion of referees, and much of it revolves around the quality and consistency of the decisions they make. As Arsenal fans our senses are particularly heightened, because without going down any road of conspiracy or anything like that, I think we can genuinely point to decisions made against us that have never been seen again. The two red cards this season, for example; Takehiro Tomiyasu’s red card against Crystal Palace; Gabriel Martinelli’s double-yellow inside 7 seconds; Granit Xhaka being sent off for a deliberate trip, but nothing more than that.

We have been scarred, no question. The wider point for me is that I can’t escape the feeling that Howard Webb has made a conscious decision to make officials stars of the Premier League soap-opera. Not a single weekend goes by without one of his referees being front and centre, and if it doesn’t happen on the pitch, you can be sure VAR will intervene, for often spurious reasons, to ensure we’re all talking about PGMOL.

He has his own TV show now; he appears on The Overlap on Sky Sports described as ‘legendary’; broadcast cameras cut to him in the stands when a contentious decision happens at a game he’s attending. This is very deliberate. The man charged with the responsibility of a fundamental part of football sees it as an opportunity to make himself more visible. I can’t say for sure if he’s hungry, even greedy, for fame, but it sure looks like it.

As for the stat about yellow cards, if this was making the game better, you could have no complaints. Instead, we see players continue to get away with acts of dangerous, violent conduct, while red cards are issued for trivialities – and all the while they try and gaslight us with nonsense about decisions being the ‘letter of the law’. On a weekend when it’s Michael Oliver in charge of us again, I’d suggest Arsenal fans buckle up for what feels like the inevitable, but hopefully we can play well enough to make whatever nonsense he gets up a side-issue tomorrow.

Finally, Arsenal Women beat Brighton 5-0 last night, and you can find all the action, goal clips, post-match reaction and so on, over on Arseblog News. You can also sign up for Tim’s weekly newsletter here.

We have our Chelsea preview podcast over on Patreon now if you’re looking for something to listen to. You can sign up just $6 per month, and there’s an annual subscription option too which gives you instant access to everything with a 10% discount. Have a great Saturday folks.

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