Mikel Arteta has claimed that he has no good news on Arsenal pair Ben White or Gabriel Magalhaes ahead of our clash with Newcastle on Monday, but he hopes there is better news tomorrow.

The English defender has been missing since we took on West Ham, but things got worse on Thursday when Rob Holding saw red to mean that he will be suspended for our upcoming fixture, while the Brazilian limped off and needs to be assessed.

With Thomas Partey already missing in midfield, the thought of having to drop one of Granit Xhaka or Mo Elneny into defence means weakening us further up the field, and news that both of our two centre-backs could remain sidelined is certainly worrying. Arteta claims we will have a better understanding of their condition in the coming days however.

The manager told Arsenal Media: “We will know probably more tomorrow, so we wanted to extend this period as much as possible to understand how they are recovering, how they are feeling, assess them and tomorrow probably we will know more about how they are.”

Arteta went onto claim that it would be unlikely that he will be calling on young and inexperienced players, adding: “We will have to modify certain positions to try to make it work, because we don’t have more defenders and even though we have academy players, they haven’t experienced a lot of those positions because they’re not specified central defenders, so it’s something that we will try to find a way.”

Carlo Ancelotti has claimed that Eden Hazard will not be leaving Real Madrid this summer, despite reported interest from Newcastle and Arsenal.

The Belgian international has failed to find his best form since moving to La Liga from Chelsea in 2019, and could well have got the chance to return to the Premier League this summer.

Carlo Ancelotti has poured cold water on such reports however, by claiming that he will be staying to prove himself in the Spanish division instead.

Carlo Ancelotti announces: “Eden Hazard will stay here at Real Madrid next season”. #RealMadrid @SQuirante

“Hazard’s plan is very clear, he wants to show his quality next season”. pic.twitter.com/X1YDKbZAGo

Marcus, Luke and Jim are here to pick through the good, the bad and the Rob Holding of last night’s North London Derby. Their two-horse race might be the league’s last interesting one, especially if the Seagulls nab Jesse Marsch’s chips on Sunday. 

We also look ahead to Carabao Cup II: And This Time It’s Personal - and it’s the start of the Championship play-offs! Plenty to get through on today's Preview Show, sponsored by Betway!

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The bizarre 16th Century 'dance plague' that gripped French city Strasbourg

Top Gun: Maverick is better than the original

3 min read

The smellier side of the Stuarts in Oxford

A former Oxfam employee recalls a visit by the queen to the charity’s Summertown offices in the late 1990s. ‘We had to have a brand new toilet and washbasin installed,’ he says, ‘in case she needed to go. The queen can’t use a toilet someone else has sat on.’

Royal visitors in previous centuries were less squeamish. During the plague year in London (1665) the court of Charles II decamped to Oxford for the summer. The king and his ministers lived at Christ Church College, the queen and her entourage at Merton. Anthony à Wood, a local historian of the time, complained in his diary: ‘Though they were neat and gay in their apparell, yet they were very nasty and beastly, leaving at their departure their excrements in every corner, in chimneys, studies, colehouses, cellers. Rude, rough whoremongers; vaine, empty, careless.’ Horrible Histories puts it even more graphically. The court was filthy not only in its habits, but also in its morals. Later that year Charles’ mistress, the Countess of Castlemaine, gave birth to the king’s illegitimate son. The countess was part of the queen’s court at Merton, where an outraged Fellow pinned an obscene poem (in Latin and English) to her door.

To be fair, disposal of human waste was not easy in the seventeenth century. Poorer households threw it into the street while more affluent ones might have a cesspit in the cellar, but the contents still had to be removed, often through the house. In royal palaces, human excrement piled up in underground chambers until it could be taken away. This accumulation of rubbish and sewage was one of the reasons why the Tudor courts went ‘on progress’ from one palace to another in the summer months.

Charles II was not the first Stuart king to live at Christ Church. In 1642, during the Civil War against Oliver Cromwell and the Parliamentarians, Charles I made Oxford his capital. This turned the city into a garrison town, filled with troops and preparations for battle. The university supported the king, and New College was made into a munitions workshop. But local people, who mainly favoured the Parliamentarians, were not happy. They were taxed for funds, required to recycle their metal possessions for manufacture of weapons and coins, and had to provide lodgings for the king’s followers. The presence of the court and the military meant that the town was overpopulated. Human and animal waste piled up in the streets and in 1643 this led to a typhus epidemic in the city. You can find out more about the Oxford court of Charles I, and typhus outbreaks in the city, from short videos and displays in the Museum of Oxford.

Written by volunteer Jane Buekett. 

Kate, Andy and Vish are here to watch the jeopardy seep out from both ends of the league table, as Man City tighten their title grip and Leeds shoot themselves in each other’s feet yet again.

Elsewhere, Watford remind Forest Green that sour grapes are indeed vegan and - drumroll - we look ahead to the North London Derby! All from the comfort of Kate’s lonely living room.

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Is it possible to reboot our minds by living a more feral existence?

Careful, them ghosts are real

Liverpool kept their title hopes alive, but Man City have already taken a huge step towards next season’s crown by picking up Area 51’s Erling Haaland in Vincent Kompany’s disused ambulance. Yikes.

Jules, Andy and Pete round-up the action from Villa Park and plenty more big stories, as day one of Wagatha Christie brings some startling revelations and there are accusations that Marcelo got the boot at Lyon for farting too much. Plus, make sure you stick around for Pete's interpretation of Jonathan Woodgate's first LSD experience.

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How the death of Paris student Malik Oussekine changed France forever