Can Saka get back to his best?
Handbrake Off: The Athletic FC's Arsenal show
The Athletic
4.6 • 731 Ratings
🗓️ 1 April 2026
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Art de Roché and Adrian Clarke join Ian Stone to discuss all things Arsenal and look ahead to the match against Southampton in the FA Cup this weekend.
The panel reflect on 11 Arsenal players withdrawing from international duty, the outside noise around this, Ben White being booed on his England return, contributing factors to Saka’s less impactful season so far, and what Odegaard can bring to the team as he nears a return from injury.
Plus, they look ahead to the run-in, Southampton in the FA Cup on Saturday, we hear from Phoebe in Hong Kong in this week’s instalment of ‘Up Your Arsenal’ and they pay tribute to David Rocastle on the 25th anniversary of his passing.
If you like the panel’s song choices, check out the ‘Now that’s what I call Handbrake’ playlist on both Spotify and Apple Music and listen to them all there:
Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/gb/playlist/now-thats-what-i-call-handbrake/pl.u-d2b00jZuDxWk6P
Producer: Robby Williams
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Athletic FC |
| 0:03.3 | The only way to score is of course to play |
| 0:10.0 | with a handbreak-off. |
| 0:14.8 | Hello, I'm Ian Stone. |
| 0:16.0 | This is Hand-Break-Off, the Arsenal podcast, |
| 0:17.7 | brought to you by The Athletic, |
| 0:19.6 | the final international break of the season. |
| 0:22.9 | Until the big one in the summer, it's over, yeah. |
| 0:25.3 | That was Adrian Clark, by the way. |
| 0:26.8 | Hello, Adrian. |
| 0:28.2 | Hello, you're right. |
| 0:29.5 | Hello. |
| 0:29.8 | Yeah, thank goodness is over. |
| 0:31.4 | And it is over, yeah. |
| 0:33.4 | Adrian fell asleep watching the England Uruguay game. |
| 0:36.7 | I don't think you're the only one, really. |
| 0:39.4 | The only ones who are awake were the ones booing Ben White, I think, by the way. |
| 0:43.9 | And we'll talk about that in a bit. |
| 0:46.8 | Before we do, because obviously we're talking ahead of the FA Cup quarterfinal against Southampton, |
| 0:52.5 | when it all starts again again and there's no stopping |
| 0:54.7 | from now to the end of the season. |
| 0:56.5 | A clip surface this week of a fan asking Ricky Califioric to sign a cut out of the Premier |
... |
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