Arsenal rounded off their 2024 Pre-Season campaign with a comfortable 2-0 win against Lyon. Two first half goals from William Saliba and Gabriel, both from set pieces with assists from Declan Rice, sealed the victory early for The Gunners. These were goals that we have seen over and over again from set pieces as Nicolas Jover continues to get his flowers.

A stand out for me was the performance of Zinchenko, wearing his newly donned #17 shirt, which suits him far better than the old #35 he was wearing. To me, his performance today shows that he is here to stay and has an awful lot to offer this team in their hunt for silverware. Is he suited for every game? Absolutely not. Does that mean he has no place in this team? Again, absolutely not. He was up and down the pitch as you would expect from him

On the surface of it, this was very much a performance you would have expeceted to see from Arsenal last season. There were no surprises; it was a polished and mature showing. It seems that Arteta has got his team playing how he wants, and its now about adding quality and depth over the pitch. This can be seen in the signing of Calafiori.

The Italian made his debut mid-way through the second half, and he didn’t have much to do, but it was interesting to watch what positions he took up. Immediately after being subbed on for Zinchenko, he took his place to the left of Gabriel. In possession, he inverted. Out of it, he resumed back to the left of Gabriel. This is pretty much what you’d expect from whoever plays at left back for Arsenal nowadays. But the physical presense of the Italian is almost second to none in our team. Previously, an opposition team would have an easy weak link to target in our backline in Zinchenko. Now, should they attack down the left, they will encounter a 6 foot 2 machine.

Many Arsenal fans and pundits alike noticed the imbalance of our team last season, and no one noticed it better than Bayern Munich. They pretty much vacated our left hand side and trippled up on the likes of Saka, Odegaard, and Benny Blanco. One would hope the inclusion of Calafiori may start to balance this out, but for this to work, we need Martinelli back to his best.

Last season Martinelli had a poor season, there is no getting around it. By the final months of the season, he had all but lost his starting place to Leandro Trossard, and deservedly so. We know what the young Brazillian can do, but his progress seems to have completely stalled. We can all see this, and clearly the manager can too. His performance yesterday was ok. He clearly has some way to go before he is back to his best. Personally? I back him to get back to where we know he can be.

Looking ahead to Wolves, I would expect an unchanged 11 to take on Gary O’Neils men, with lots of flexibility available in the form of substitutions. I expect Calafiori to make his competetive debut in the second half; it’s probably too soon to see him starting, but it’s only a matter of time until his inclusion in the starting 11 is of no debate.

This is hopefully the first of many Day-After Debrief posts, and if you’ve read the whole thing – I thank you. I want to start taking this blog more seriously this season and expand it beyond just the Pre-Match posts. On deadline day I’m planning on trying to aggregate news and rumours, which may prove difficult, but we’ll see. A Pre-Match post for Wolves will be up in the coming days.