Tuesday Cannon Fodder: friendly

Continuing the “random Arsenal things” that happened yesterday, it was announced that the Gunners friendly against MK Dons today would be streamed on ESPN3. The match starts at 1 PM ET, and I plan to do a bit of tweeting from the TSF account about the goings-on. I expect the squad to have a healthy dose of U23 players, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see William Saliba and a handful of other first-teamers who didn’t participate in the FA Cup final.

Just as a reminder, Arsenal play Liverpool in the Community Shield on Saturday, and the Premier League season kicks off in 18 days. I’m guessing that between the Community Shield and the season open, the Gunners will have additional friendlies, but as far as I can tell, there aren’t details about who and when they might play.

The biggest thing about the quick turnaround is that it doesn’t give new transfers much time to acclimate to North London and to learn Mikel Arteta’s scheme. They’ll have to learn on the fly, which I guess was part of the reasoning behind the decision to start closing the transfer window when the season started. But this year, COVID happened and the calendar was blown to smithereens. FYI - the window will be open through October 5th and will be followed by a domestic only window in which PL teams can conduct business with teams in the lower tiers through October 16th.