Welcome to a brand new week on TremendArse. I suppose the first thing to say with an hour or so until kickoff between Rafa Benitez’s Newcastle United and league leaders Leicester City is: COME ON YOU GEORDIES!

Before Rafa’s appointment, most football followers would quite understandably have given the Magpies next to no chance of getting anything from tonight’s game at the King Power stadium – and they might still feel the same way now.

But Newcastle’s new boss is undoubtedly a brilliant tactician, whatever your overall views on him as a manager are, so personally I’m clinging to the hope he can hit the ground running, benefit from the fabled ‘new manager bounce’, and do Arsenal a huge favour by at least taking a point off the Foxes.

Throw in the fact that Newcastle, and their Dutch midfielder Georginio Wijnaldum in particular, have played well in front of live cameras so far this season, the case for the Magpies getting something from the game is strengthened. Orrrrrrrrrrrr, maybe I’m clutching at straws because THAT’S WHAT ARSENAL’S FORM HAS DONE TO ME …

Speaking of the mis-firing Gunners, thoughts now begin to turn away from yesterday FA Cup defeat and towards Wednesday’s Champions League defeat game. We play Barcelona, in Barcelona, trying to overturn a two-nil first-leg defeat, missing key players in Petr Cech and Santi Cazorla, and looking to pull off what would be the biggest surprise result in recent footballing history. By recent, mean entire. Because the Catalans are pretty much footballing perfection personified, whilst on current form, we’re a bit, well, sh*t.

Thank God then, that Per Mertesacker has the answer for how we beat Barcelona! Also discussing our loss to Watford, he said:

You have to give us credit because we kept going against Watford and created chance after chance. But at the moment we lack that killer instinct. We need to work on that if we want to be successful in the Premier League and the Champions League. We were not relaxed against Watford. Even in the box we played and always found good positions, with the man in the right position but we lacked that relaxation even to hit the target. We did not do that sometimes. We missed it too often. We cannot afford to concede against Barcelona. We have to go there and try to attack, no matter what, that is the only possibility we have. We can be fortunate to have such big game in front of us. They are the ultimate team at the minute, so we are straight away under pressure and we have to go away from home. I think the confidence is there, we are just missing something. The season is not over. We play in a confident way, we maybe lack that bit at the end. The desire to play together and to be good as a team is there, you can feel that.

Although Per’s completely right about us needing to up our game in terms of scoring goals, some would point out that if he’d defended the throw-in that led to Watford’s opener a little better (or at all), we might still be in the Cup.

Meanwhile, Arsene Wenger also spoke about our upcoming Champions League clash and highlighted the tough schedule we’re in the middle of, with Everton away to come on Saturday, so soon after our midweek game in Spain. The boss told Arsenal Player:

We want to now focus on the Champions League and then we go to Everton and that schedule is very tight. It is very difficult playing on Sunday afternoon, Wednesday night and then Saturday morning. It is important that we respond very quickly. We play a big game and players want to play in the big games. When you have a big game in front of you, you want to prepare well and show how good you are. I think that is natural.

He’s quite right of course, we have a daunting few days coming up, away in two grounds we’ve struggled at in recent times, but it’s Arsene’s job to manage his squad and get us winning again and he’ll be judged on how well he does it.

Even the most optimistic of Arsenal fans out there will no doubt be fearing the worst on Wednesday but we quite simply have to win at Goodison Park, if not for the sake of an increasingly unlikely title challenge, then at least to arrest our dismal form and avoid a three defeats in a row.

Back tomorrow.