Another day, another comment on Alexis, from both media and Arsène and now it’s starting to get really tedious isn’t it?

First up we had news that PSG were interested in the Chilean. It comes to something that as an option I felt glad when reading those stories coming out of the French press. A move to Ligue Un means we don’t have to watch him banging in goals every weekend for a supposed rival, it means we’re not making our selves as weak as we are making another English team strong, whilst also meaning that the worst case scenario for him returning to the Emirates to play against us will only happen if we’re in the Champions League, which wouldn’t be for at least another year anyway.

I could handle that. And unlike some, that is infinitely more palatable than losing him for free next summer. Dare I say it, I almost got excited at that prospect. 

But the other day I mentioned in a blog that this felt very similar to the RvP situation, and even the spurious rumours are sounding similar too, because it was about at this stage during that summer that Juve were the team interested in signing him. But they didn’t put any serious bids in and come the end of the window there was just a club from Manchester left as the only option to sell.

Sound familiar?

We cannot have that scenario now. We simply must find a buyer for him abroad. I just pray that is what the club are working on. This stance of ‘not sold this summer’ is admirable and as a fan I almost want to get in touch with Arsène and the club somehow and tell them “ok, you’ve made your point, we won’t chastise the club, just get him sold abroad, now. Then reinvest the cash”, so they know that there are some of us who would rather ship him abroad now than any other option (except of course a new deal). But it sounds like Arsène is going full “eff you” to the world on this one. I just hope he knows what he’s doing.

The only sucky thing about the rumours to PSG were that we didn’t even get a full 12 hours of speculating on it when we heard that PSG could have triggered Neymar’s buyout of €220million. That is an eye-wateringly large fee and would pretty much rule out any Alexis movement there. So my hope is that Neymar stays at Barca and PSG go after Alexis as a plan B. 

What worries me though is that Arsène is going back in to reactive mode when it comes to player sales and additions. He said yesterday we’re ‘open’ to new signings, but cut a familiar shape in the same interview, talking about not doing it for the sake of it and not destabilising the team. Of course you’d expect that from him and he’s not going to show the reporter a notebook full of names with smiley faces penned next to them, but my worry is that we play the ‘Alexis stays’ card and then end up losing him towards the end of the window with little opportunity for him to make any decent additions other than to scrabble around for bodies come late August. 

We’ve done that before and it’s not inconceivable that we’d do it again.

We’re in an incredibly delicate situation right now where we don’t know whether we’ll be stared down by another club for Alexis, or we’ll have somebody actually make a move for him which in one sense, would at least give us an indication of what’s happening out in the public eye. Unsurprisingly we’ve heard nothing from the bigger clubs, but that’s because they are waiting for a player to force the issue, which I’m not sure or not whether the Chilean will. 

And the most frustrating thing of all is that Alexis won’t be back at Arsenal and in England for at least another week or so. Which means we’ve probably got at least 10 days of everything feeling like it’s up in the air.

I’m getting too old to worry about this sh*t. 

Anyhoo, that’s it I think, because even though I’m only halfway through my Met Line journey in to London for today, I can’t be bothered to ponder on footballer movements. It does my brain in enough as it is.

Laters people.