33 min: Buendia crosses from the left. Jackson can’t meet it ahead of Raya, who claims. That move was started by another flawless Suzuki long pass, creamed down the right channel this time towards McGinn. The Japan keeper, excellent at the World Cup, looks the business.

31 min: Kamara skittles Lewis-Skelly 40 yards out. Odegaard loops the free kick into a crowded box. A game of head tennis breaks out before Villa clear. Arsenal’s set pieces haven’t been up to their usual standard. So far.

29 min: Following his early flap, Suzuki has made a couple of impressive saves, and now he pings a spectacular 60-yard searcher towards Hemmings on the left. Nothing comes of the move, but what a pass that was. Suzuki has already earned a couple of loud and appreciative rounds of applause, and that was met by the loudest and most appreciative of them all.

28 min: Saka is clipped out on the right and it’s another opportunity for Arsenal to do their set-piece thing. They load the box. Rice takes … and hits a peculiar flat free kick that’s easily cleared by first-man Maatsen. Tzolis tries to get something going again down the left, but is dispossessed by Cash. He hauls him back and goes into the book.

27 min: Maatsen slaloms in from the left, enters the box, opens his body, and slices what was supposed to be a curler into the bottom right wide of the target.

25 min: Saka wins a corner down the right. Saka hoicks it to the near post. Rice flicks a fine header towards the top right; Suzuki tips over acrobatically, with fine reactions. The whistle goes, because Gabriel stupidly yanked McGinn to the floor at the far post, nowhere near the action, and Rice doesn’t win the corner his header deserved.

24 min: “Champions of Europe, you’ll never sing that,” sing the fans of the 1982 European Cup winners to their 2006 and 2026 Champions League runners-up supporting counterparts. The tune bounced along rhythmically, unlike that last sentence.

22 min: Our first sweet taste of that xG sauce: Villa 0.05 to Arsenal’s whopping 0.34. It’s been more engaging than those numbers suggest.

20 min: Cash throws in long from the right. McGinn and Calafiori compete in the Arsenal box. The former kicks the latter in the face, but it wasn’t a high kick, and Calafiori was stooping low. Gabriel isn’t happy about it, but nobody else, not least the injured party himself, complains. Happily, the defender is quickly back up and about with no damage done.

19 min: Villa go up the other end, McGinn winning the home side’s first corner of the evening … then wasting it by failing to beat the first man.

18 min: Space for Tzolis out on the left. He wins a corner off Cash. Rice slings it in. Calafiori flicks a header over the bar, though Mosquera had fouled someone amid a melee, and the whistle goes anyway.

16 min: Arsenal are beginning to impose themselves on this match, enjoying the larger portion of possession. “The North Stand work won’t help the PSR ledger this year, either,” writes Pete Mumola. “Villa are rated pretty low in the table on matchday revenue. A season of reduced capacity isn’t going to help them amid this much changed side. Emery has worked wonders at this club. Even this season may be beyond his powers.”

14 min: … and that should have been the first one, as Odegaard releases Havertz into the Villa box down the right with a cute dink. Havertz opens his body and … slices wildly across the face of goal and away from danger. Ah, hold on, his blushes have been saved by the offside flag, but even so. Blush away; the net should have billowed nevertheless.

13 min: Saka cuts in from the right and blazes over. A sense that there could be goals in this. It’s been open and fun so far.

11 min: Kamara and Tzolis tussle down the Villa inside-right. Tzolis falls, and has maybe been tugged back, but the referee waves play on, and the ball breaks to Buendia, who takes a first-time whack from distance. It pings off the top of the crossbar, Raya beaten all ends up. Arsenal would have been fuming had that gone in, because Kamara’s challenge wasn’t so obvious or egregious that VAR would have definitely stepped in.

10 min: Saka bothers Maatsen with a dribble down the right, but just as he’s about to enter the box, Hemmings arrives to help his team-mate, and strips Saka of possession. My goodness, Hemmings is tenacious.

8 min: It’s not been a banner two-minute period for McGinn, who passes out from near his own corner flag, straight to Tzoils. He shuttles the ball infield from the left to Lewis-Skelly, whose shot from the edge of the box is deflected over the bar for a corner … from which Suzuki flaps alarmingly. Villa’s new keeper is very fortunate that Gabriel, who wins an easy header, sends it well wide left, then the flag pops up for offside.

7 min: Hemmings chases what appears to be a lost cause down the left, but White dithers and allows the 19-year-old Villa midfielder to wrest the ball from him. Hemmings lays back to McGinn, who wastes all that good work by leaning back and hoisting a wild shot miles over the bar and into the building site.

5 min: Odegaard passes down the inside-right channel to … nobody. As the ball dribbles out for a goal kick, the Holte End – which is very much still there, and still populated – whoops and cheers ironically. All good knockabout fun. “Viktor Gyökeres has been left out of the Arsenal XI again,” observes Charles Antaki. “Early days, of course, but there is a lurking feeling that this might be the beginning of the dimming of Gyokeres’ star, not that it ever shone particularly brightly. Even if no out-and-out striker is recruited, the preference for Kai Havertz upfront, deputised occasionally perhaps by Mikel Merino, might prove sufficiently fruitful to keep Gyokeres on the subs’ bench. Of course, this is all laughably premature and will be overturned when the man comes on and scores a hat-trick, while displaying the combined gifts of Eusebio, DiStefano and Pele. We shall see.”

3 min: Some space for Cash down the right. He’s got options in the middle but can’t beat the first man.

2 min: A noisy but nondescript first couple of minutes. All three sides of Villa Park bouncing.

Unai Emery embraces his Arsenal successor Mikel Arteta warmly … presumably congratulating him on his 250th Premier League match in charge. And then the warmest of ovations to remember the recently passed Jimmy Rimmer, who won the league and European Cup for Villa, and also played for Arsenal during the 1970s, winning their player of the season award in 1974-75. Finally Arsenal get the ball rolling.

The teams are out! You know what everyone’s wearing. A reduced capacity of around 37,000 at Villa Park, with the North Stand closed for the season to facilitate its expansion. We’ll be off in a couple of minutes.

Pre-match postbag. “Poor Villa. They were so great last year. Then management sells off the heart of their team. Today they will get embarrassed by the Gunners. What a present to their ever loyal fans” – Mary Waltz

“In all the fuss about Ollie Watkins refusing to play and then leaving, i’d forgotten that Tammy Abraham was on Villa’s books. What must he be thinking that they were so desperate to get Nicolas Jackson into the club (and first team) despite underwhelming at Chelsea and doing nothing at Bayern? Didn’t Abraham do pretty well last year for Villa and was a reliable goalscorer during his time in Italy before signing?” – David Wall

“Three Arsenal goals against Coventry stemmed from the opposing centre-back positions. Aston Villa need good quality centre-backs. The current centre-back crop is no good” – AnhTuan Nguyen Huynh

“Drake’s seven is still the record for most goals in a top-flight game. I wonder if even Haaland could equal that” – Andrew Goudie

“My goodness, Scott, I thought that the Americans were overdoing it with the obscure stats during the World Cup with their recanting of how Paraguay had very rarely scored from outside the box at their nine tournament appearances since 1930. And there you are Ted Drakeing us back to the same era in an MBM. You’ll have a fine career as a Soccer TV color^* commentator here in the USA USA USA should you ever wish to leave Old Blighty (^*leave the U behind you at Heathrow)” – Justin Kavanagh

Arsenal are also wearing new duds tonight. Their third-choice kit is gorgeous too, and will whisk everyone of a certain vintage straight back to this …

… which should kickstart a campaign to reinstate the little pyramid of AFC cannonballs that used to rest beside the cannon on the crest. Someone, somewhere, make it happen.

Aston Villa will be debuting their new kit tonight. Any old excuse to revisit this wonderfully realised nonsense …

Unai Emery’s double-breasted sports coat is obviously the standout piece in that film, but the Villa shirt itself is retro glam of the highest order. There is a problem though. As far as I can make out, Villa have ditched the blue sleeves on four previous occasions in their history, with results that can be best described as mixed. They won promotion to the Premier League with an all-claret top (trim doesn’t count) in 2018-19. However when they first ditched the blue sleeves, in 1969-70, they fell to the bottom of the old Second Division in short order, and though they got permission from the powers that be to whack the blue back on, halfway through the season, they still went down to the third tier for the first (and as yet only) time in their history. So why they tried it again for a period during the mid-Eighties is anyone’s guess, because predictably enough, the club were relegated to the old Second Division wearing it, having been European champions just five years previously. Let’s see how this one pans out, then.

_{The fourth occasion? A totally nondescript campaign in 2001-02 which completely ruins the rhythm of this entry. So I’m not mentioning it.}

Unai Emery’s turn to talk to Sky. “Good evening … the first match was not as planned but we must keep going forward … today we are playing at home, the first match, the second day of the Premier League … we are looking forward to how we are going to respond … we need to do that as soon as possible … today is a good match for us … it is the best team, Arsenal, so it is difficult … but with our supporters here we are always feeling confident … we need to transmit our positive energy to our supporters … they can come back with the same positive energy we need … we have experienced players … they know how we want to play … today is a challenge … we are changing things, but there are no excuses … we must perform today and adapt as soon as possible … the new players … the priority is the Premier League … I am positive … optimistic … I want to play against the best teams.”

Mikel Arteta speaks to Sky Sports. “We will have time to make changes throughout the game … Villa are a super well-coached team … we know how tough it is to come and win here … we are very conscious of that … but we are very ambitious … we want to be dominant … to suffocate the opponent … to be better than them.”

Tonight’s game has implications at both ends of the Premier League table (and yes it is far too early to be taking these sorts of things totally seriously, but then try telling that to supporters of Hull City). Arsenal can go top if they win by two clear goals, while Aston Villa would drop to the bottom should that happen. But if Villa win, they are guaranteed to rise to 13th place, and could theoretically go as high as eighth, though they’d have to beat Arsenal by seven goals to do that, and they’ve never run up seven against them in 122 years of trying. (Arsenal have scored seven in this fixture, mind, and one man got them all: Ted Drake, in a 7-1 rout in 1935. Drake took nine shots that day; of the other two, one hit the bar and the other, the striker insisted, crossed the line but wasn’t given. But we’re going well off piste here.)

Aston Villa make two changes to the team who found themselves four goals down after 31 minutes at Brighton last weekend. In come two debutants: goalkeeper Zion Suzuki and striker Nicolas Jackson. Marco Bizot drops to the bench, while João Gomes, sent off in that aforementioned debacle-by-the-sea, is suspended. Villa have three other potential debutants on their bench in Alejandro Garnacho, Matteo Ruggeri and Aaron Wan-Bissaka.

Arsenal, coming off the back of their three-goal win over Coventry, are unsurprisingly unchanged. Bruno Guimarães is back from injury and on the bench, waiting to make his first Premier League appearance for the Gunners … as is Ezri Konsa, a Villa player just ten days ago.