🕟 Kick Off: 19:00 BST

🏟️ Venue: Estadi de Montilivi

📺 UK Broadcaster: Arsenal.com

🙎🏻‍♂️ Referee: Maurizio Mariani

📹 VAR: N/A

🔴 Arsenal Team News:

• Merino, Zubimendi, Raya, Rice, Saka, Eze, Madueke: Yet to return to training following deep runs in the World Cup.
• Norgaard: Ruled Out. The Dane picked up an injury in training and will be unavailable for this game.
• Jurriën Timber (Fitness): Ruled Out. Timber returned to London to continue rehabilitation following minor surgery in the summer.
• William Saliba: Long term injury. Saliba is set for months on the sideline following a back issue he has been dealing with for a while.

⚽ Arsenal Form: 🟧🟩🟩🟩🟩

🇪🇸 Girona Team News:

• Portu: Ruled out with an ACL injury.

⚽ Girona Form: 🟧🟧🟥🟧🟧

⚔️ Head-to-Head:

• Girona 1–2 Arsenal (Jan 29, 2025, UCL League Phase)

✍🏼 Pre-Match Ramblings

Our 26/27 Pre-Season starts tomorrow as we take on Girona at their home stadium in Catalonia on a lovely sunny day with temperatures reaching over 30 degrees.

This will be our first chance to see new boys Illan Meslier and Christos Tzolis in action. Tzolis played in a behind closed doors friendly against MK Dons last week, in which he registered an assist. We can also expect to see a lot of academy kids get minutes here with the likes of Salmon and Dowman featuring against MK Dons, as well as less known names such as Copley, Ogunnaike, and more. You can read the match report on the Arsenal website for a full rundown of how that match went.

I won’t go in to transfers here, as no one wants to read the thoughts of another guy on the internet, but I will talk about some players that may feature tomorrow that I don’t think have a future here.

First and foremost is Reiss Nelson, now 26. His Arsenal career has been dwindling for years now after he failed to really break into the first team, and now he finds himself coming off the back of two seasons out on loan at Fulham and Brentford respectively. There haven’t been any links with an exit, but I don’t see any room in the squad for him. A more contentious conversation is the one regarding Ethan Nwaneri. Once heralded as the next English star to come out of Hale End, he finds himself leapfrogged by the next English star to come out of Hale End in Max Dowman. He failed to have an impact on loan in France in the second half of last season, and in recent days has been linked with a move to Germany.

Then there’s the Norgaard shaped elephant in the room. The Dane was brought in to add top flight experience to our squad as Jorginho left last summer. He only saw 101 minutes of action in the Premier League which included just 1 start. Toward the end of the season when Zubimendi ran out of steam, Arteta turned to the unproven in midfield Lewis Skelly who nailed down the position. For me, this tells us everything about Arteta’s opinion on the player. With Bruno G likely coming in, Norgaard won’t even make the matchday squad.

Whatever the result of this game, remember that Spurs beat us last Pre-Season, and we went on to beat them 8-2 on aggregate last season. Oh, we also went on to win the league.