Having had a long weekend of over-endulgence, coupled with going in to mourning over the now barren spell in which the Euro’s finished and I find myself with no more football to watch for at least another month, I’ve decided to get back on to the blog and compile some thoughts on a Tuesday morn. 

So, Portugal are winners, eh? Perhaps that is a fitting champion, given the state of some of the football we’ve seen, with the eventual winners only managing to muster one victory in normal time during the whole competition. I’ve been glad for the volume of matches we’ve been able to watch, but not so much when it comes to the quality, because it hasn’t exactly been a footballing spectacle at times, has it? 

I guess that was always going to be the case with the extended teams format, but one can only hope that this is not a regular approach from UEFA (having not bothered to actually Google at this stage), because the old format I think worked much better. Four groups of four which gets you in to the quarter finals if you actually win football matches in the group stages.

Anyway, enough of that, because now the “fun” really starts. With the Euro’s done and dusted, we have the inevitable flood of utter garbage that is transfer speculation, with media site after media site now sure to try to out-stupid one-another with the most unrealistic and improbable stories of players potentially joining the Arsenal.

Last night it was stories across my timeline that Arsenal were after Julian Draxler for €50million. This then spirals in to endless chatter about the player, the ‘team mock ups’ using apps like Lineup11, with the player’s name added in to an existing squad. But by morning, that’s all died down and like the hydra, when metaphorical head of that story has been cut off, another couple appear in it’s place, with stories linking us to a swap deal for Higuain with Giroud going on the opposite direction.

Now, I’m no Giroud fan club chairman, as you may know. But to make such a suggestion (which came from the Daily Star who I don’t think I’ll give the pleasure of linking to) just goes to show how desperate these “journalists” are for clicks and hits. Arsenal are looking to add to their striking line, not replace, so that’s one reason why it is not going to happen as reported. Why would we blow half our transfer budget and then still have to go out and buy another striker to support the squad? It’s bizarre logic. I haven’t even mentioned the fact that big name player swap deals almost never happen. Just look at Bale & Özil. The Spuds wanted Özil initially as part of a swap deal. Real and Özil refused. So Madrid bought Bale as we signed Mesut Özil, as the song says. 

This transfer doesn’t even plant itself into the ‘spurious’ category. I’d place it firmly into the ‘utter tosh’ ballpark. It’s almost as if now the Euro’s are done, the press have to come up with even more fantastical ways of making us roll our eyes. Well, as long as we’re all still seeing this for the utter tripe it is, then I guess at least we’re not all getting our hopes up.

The real stuff that actually did happen yesterday, was Isaac Hayden signing for Newcastle in a move which I think suited all parties to be fair. Hayden is a decent player, but was never going to make it at Arsenal sadly, so he joins a Newcastle team where I think he will do well and who hopefully are challenging for the league. Benitez has turned that place into a more positive part of the world to be in, so I think we might just be seeing Hayden line up against his boyhood club in no time at all. 

I suspect there will be a few more outgoings at the club over the next few weeks too actually. Joel Campbell, for example, surely can’t be happy with the fact he was pretty much relegated to bench warmer at times and as a full international for Costa Rica, he’s surely at an age in which he wants to be star man at a club. I remain yet to be convinced he’ll make it as a regular at Arsenal, so it wouldn’t surprise me to see him on his way, as well as the expected exiters of Debuchy and Szczesny. There’s talk of the aid also being told he can go, but I think that only happens if there’s a really good deal on the table for him, so it wouldn’t surprise me to see him stay at the club. 

I think the wheels start turning now. I just hope it is the ‘incoming’, as well as the ‘outgoing’, that keeps turning.

Catch y’all tomorrow.