First things first: The Ballon d’Or.

Not for me. Sorry, but in a team sport, individual awards are just a bit pointless. And ever since Thierry Henry was passed over for Pavel Nedved, I’ve always scoffed at these a bit, so congrats to Harry Kane but ‘meh’.

And I’m also not that fussed about the positions of some of our players in the ‘Top 100’ list. Like, who cares? We won the Premier League. We got to the Champions League final. Who gives a shit whether Rice finishes 99th, 40th or 15th? We all know the reality, which is that we have one of the best teams in Europe, an elite manager who has proved his credentials by lifting a big trophy last season, and one who has the hunger and desire and relentlessness to try to see us win some more this season. That’s all that matters to me.

Which is why today it is more interesting to talk about Fleetwood Town at Highbury (feels nice saying that) in the League Cup tonight. I was reminded by the official site that the last time we went to a fourth-tier side was 2012, when peak Wenger Banter Era was in full flow, and we drew 1-1 with Bradford and went out on penalties. That game sticks in my mind for nothing else other than the infamous Gervinho open goal miss that he had. I didn’t even remember their goal or our goal on the night, but that miss feels like it’s etched in my memory. It’s funny though, because having re-watched it, it isn’t as easy a chance as I remember. I mean yes, it was an open goal, and yes he was inside the six yard box, but it is fizzed across goal rather quickly. It’s no excuse, because he’s still a professional footballer who should have buried it, but I guess time and fading memory amplifies the emotion of what I felt in the moment, which was that he was an absolute clown for missing it.

Anyway, let’s move on to that unpleasantness, and focus instead on tonight’s game, in which Arteta has been quoted as saying that the team tonight needs to respect everything about this game. The ‘foggin estandards’ need to be as they always are, even though Fleetwood are a patchy side in League Two and should be a side that a rotated Arsenal team can overcome. The difference between Fleetwood and Ipswich, I think, will be that this will be a strong Fleetwood side that regularly play together. Gary O’Neil chose the last round to rotate his Ipswich side, and that meant that they didn’t quite have the connections with each other that a side that plays together does, so I am expecting the Fleetwood players to give a different and maybe more difficult game to us than Ipswich B gave us. It’ll be a bit of an old-school cup tie I reckon; it’ll be a bit cold, a bit wet, and this will be a Fleetwood Town who will be feeling like this is their cup final in front of their own fans, under the lights, with the world watching as it’s on Sky Sports this evening. So they will be up for it and putting themselves about.

Which is exactly why I’m hoping a bunch of players don’t even get on the bus. For me, the team I’d go with tonight is:

Kepa

Julienne – Salmon – Mosequera – Hincapie

Zubimendi

Eze – Merino

Dowman – Gyokeres – Harriman-Annous

I’ve gone for Hincapie because he hasn’t played, so if we can give him 60 minutes, with maybe the idea that Myles comes in for 30 or so, I think that works well. Eze I’ve chosen centrally because I’d like to see what he can offer through the middle, but I realise that this might be a bit of a gamble given that Tzolis still doesn’t seem fit. But if needed, we could play Madueke on the left and Dowman on the right at Anfield, and I just feel like Eze is the sort of player that when in his groove through back-to-back good matches and building a head of steam, he and we all benefit. So give him tonight; hope he does well, then we move on to Anfield on Sunday.

That’s why I’ve gone for Gyokeres too. He needs a goal. He needs a performance that has some end product. He’s got two assists, but most of the heavy lifting on those goals was done by the goalscorer rather than the Swede, so he will know that he needs to get on the scoresheet somehow. And doing it tonight will help. The other questions that remain is how deep Arteta rotates. Does he give the above young players all a go? I hope so. With all due respect to Fleetwood, we should be geared up with a rotated team like this to dominate possession, the chances, the territory, and the field tilt. So let’s go out there and do the business.

If we win, then there’s a place in the quarter-final, whereby we’ll probably get another bloody away game, probably to Liverpool, Chelsea, or Man City, but we’ll need to do what we gotta do this evening; then we can look at the draw if we’ve earned the right through doing ‘the basics’, as Arteta put it on his interview on the official site yesterday.

That’s pretty much it from me for today, but despite besmirching individual awards as I did at the top of today’s blog, I am going to ‘hat-tip’ Bukayo Saka for picking up a gong for his humanitarian work that he does. This for his work with BigShoe to fund operations for children in Nigeria. Lovely to see when people in a position of power and privilege can use that to help those less fortunate than many of us. Great work Starboy!

Right – I really am off this time – laters kids.