For the second time, Mikel Arteta will have to leave out some of his best players when his Arsenal team goes to Tottenham on Sunday. The Gunners are getting close to having a group that is fully ready.

Aside from Jurrien Timber, who hasn’t played with the first team since hurting his knee on the first game, Arteta doesn’t have to worry about anything else. “Yeah, availability was something we talked about before, it was important,” he said before the game.

“Everyone is going to be available except Jurrien, so it will be very close.” And that’s a huge boost that makes training sessions, competition, and the choices players have to make about how to play the game better. It’s going to be really important.”

“We will have to make that choice tomorrow after the training session [on Timber],” he said. It’s almost there. That one might come a little too early, but I don’t know. It’s pretty close, I’d say.”

That means Arsenal is in great shape going into their toughest league game left. They have three games left and can move five points ahead of Liverpool. A win would also make the gap to Manchester City four points, even if it’s only for a short time.

Tottenham, on the other hand, will be a tough opponent as they try to keep the pressure on Aston Villa, who is currently in fourth place and still needs to win to qualify for the Champions League. Ange Postecolgou’s team can also bring back some important players for the game, which is sure to have a lot of different kinds of people.

The job is still easy for Arteta. He needs to keep up the good form that has led to two straight wins against Wolves and Chelsea after two disappointing losses to Aston Villa and Bayern Munich.

For the North London Derby, though, he will have to cut his team down because they can only have 20 players. It looks like the team is almost fully fit now that Timber might be involved, Gabriel Magalhaes is back to full health after a short scare, Takehiro Tomiyasu is back, and other players have become more available recently.