All jokes aside, whilst I have no problem with them bringing in elder statesmen like Henderson, we all love a bit of Welbz. Seeing him in the shirt of that reprehensible football club might sting a bit.

What we need is a bit of that good ol’fashioned transfer dopamine, but it doesn’t sound like it’s on the immediate horizon. And when it does come – possibly in the shape of Bruno G – we’ll have all been so saturated by the news and how it has rumbled on, that it doesn’t really ‘hit’ when it actually happens. I’m pretty sure every summer for the last five, maybe even ten, years I’ve written a blog like this. But that’s because every summer at some point it just feels like it. That time is now, and it’s with the Bruno G transfer, although I suspect the Vini Junior stuff might be the same if we don’t get some kind of black-and-white answer soon.

Supposedly that will happen this week. I think Arsenal just ned a call which goes something like “oh, ok, so you’re signing a new deal. Cool, we’ll move on”, or a Real Madrid WhatsApp sent to Berta saying “let’s start talking, because Vini Jr ain’t to us” type thing. Yesterday the news was that Real Madrid are looking at getting an answer one way or another this week. We all know how this works with these Spanish clubs; they set a deadline, the deadline is missed, they end up getting what they want anyway. I’m pretty sure it’s happened with a few of the Barca transfers, which is why I suspect Alvarez will end up there. Atleti say “no”, Barca set deadlines, but come August 31st, they’ll go back in and pay the money. It’s what just tends to happen.

John Stones was another one speculated on as a possible makeshift incoming whilst Saliba is out injured, but it looks like he’s off to Inter Milan, which makes a fair bit of sense. Slower league, less intensity, plus he’ll be more of a first-choice option than he would have at The Arsenal. The pitch to him from our side would have basically been “you’ve got until October mate, then it’s dead rubber Champions League, League Cup, or early-stages FA Cup games” – so I kind of get it.

It probably would have been higher wages anyway than we’d want to pay for a veteran England international who spends half the time on the treatment table. No, as I’ve said all along, we should not be looking at taking minutes off Mosquera. It’s time to give him the keys.

I do hope they are properly stress-testing both Timber and White’s robustness too. If both of those players even give us two-thirds or three-quarters of a season each, as long as they both aren’t out injured for the same period, then we have enough to cover. And besides, why not think Marli Salmon for some of those dead-rubber games, or League Cup, etc? He’ll be a year older; we all heard last season how the club rate him highly, so let’s have him in there as the third-choice understudy. I’d be cool with that.

I did read one rumour this morning which left a bit of sick in my mouth. Step forward, The Metro, with this abomination of a link to Christian Romero. Can you imagine? A complete nutcase, who isn’t even a great defender, is a walking yellow card, plays for ‘The Bad Guys’ of international football in Argentina, plus he has a really shit nickname – “Cuti”. Bleugh. Last night’s linguine feels like it’s coming back up to say hello.

Please – Richard Garlick, Mikel, Stan, Josh, and anyone who has anything to do with transfers – I beg you to not even countenance such a move. I can’t think of one Arsenal fan who would want this – even if he’s a third-choice option. The Scum probably wouldn’t sell to us anyway, but for £42million+? Give over.

I need a palate-cleanser after that. How about this interview with Szczesny saying that he’s still an Arsenal fan and loves The Arsenal. I know it’s in Polish, but you still get the gist. Why can’t we buy him off Barca for a couple of mil? They can have Kepa, then we can bring Moj back home to understudy Raya? That would be a wholesome move that, in an inverse of the Romero links, would have the nostalgia gland activated for any Arsenal fan.

Look at me, 800 words in and all I can talk about it a reserve keeper at Barcelona saying he loves The Arsenal. Shows how slow the news is.

Tomorrow I might do a book review I’ve been sent. Will come back to you on that. Until then, stay awesome.

1. Mbappe
2. Vinicius Junior
3. Rodrygo
4. Endrick
5. Diomande
6. Brahim Dias
7. Franco Mastantuano
8. Gonzalo Garcia

They’ll let the latter two go out on loan/sale, but you’re still talking six players for three positions. Now, you can understand those numbers, because it’s two players for each position, but when you look at the top of the above list, they don’t seem like names that are going to be fully up for bench time, do they? You could do Mbappe up top, have Endrick as the understudy, then Diomande wide right, Vinicius Junior wide left, then give Rodrygo those understudy minutes. But would he be happy with that?

Of course I’m still riffing off the Ornbomba from Saturday, hoping that this arrival instigates a bidding process for Vini Junior, but I still think we’re a long way off that yet. But maybe the Diomande news starts to chivvy along some of the other moves this summer. PSG are having a laugh if they think they’re getting €170million for Barcola; that’d be a British record fee, for a guy who is second fiddle in the PSG team and won’t sign a new deal, so I think that saga will be dragging on too.# It’s not getting solved this week, although it does sound as though Liverpool are the hottest contenders for that one to get done. If they move, it probably puts Barcola off our radar, and whilst the plan to try and get Vini Junior out of Madrid doesn’t come off, we’re suddenly looking at the options coming off the table and we’re gambling on dislodging a guy who a lot of people think will just sign a new deal.

I hope you know what you’re doing, Arsenal, because the stories about him wanting to sign a new deal are already starting to pop up. If they gather pace, all this weekend’s noise would basically have been a fun bit of chatter for the weekend, and that’s it.

Our attention needs to therefore turn to alternatives, once again, and I suspect we’ll find ourselves back to square one at that point. Perhaps the Bruno G stuff hots up, and that can be a bit of a distraction, but it does feel interesting that we got this ‘Arsenal are exploring a Vini Jr’ deal from David and James, who are very respected, and then very quickly it could turn to people wondering whether or not both were played a bit.

I think Arsenal probably were looking at this. They probably would like to explore a deal. They probably have done the finances and started to reach out to a few intermediaries. But I also think, given how restless the fanbase is starting to get, it kind of suits the club for everyone to spend the weekend being excited and talking about the ambition they are showing this summer. It’s an adrenaline shot for the fanbase, so who better to deliver that adrenaline shot than two respected journalists? Normally, David doesn’t drop messages like he did at such an early stage in the transfer process. So to me, it feels a little strange, almost pre-planned from the club to let this news get out. But the problem with that, is that if we now start getting news about him about to sign a new deal, or it all goes quiet for a week and then he signs on to stay at Real Madrid, then people are going to be doubly angry.

It suits Vini Junior to have this news too. His agents and ‘people’ confirming that they’d maybe have a talk to Arsenal if needed sends a message to Real Madrid that he wants what he wants. They don’t want to lose him for nothing, but he doesn’t want them to just assume he’s going to accept any deal, so having Arsenal sniffing around is good for all parties. Arsenal get a fanbase who are starting to get restless back onside; Vini Junior shows a little leg in order to force Real Madrid to get what they want; Madrid do a deal for Diomande and then have him sign a new deal, which keeps their fans happy too. Everyone wins in the end. Except the Arsenal fans, who got a taste of something special, only to have it taken away.

Heck, what do I know? I’m just a simple blogger who drops whatever thoughts I get every morning down on virtual paper. But if it plays out as I have suggested here, Arsenal won’t be winning any kudos points from the fanbase for ‘exploring’ stuff. We need to start hearing noises about a left winger. And soon. It’s been over a week since the World Cup. That’s plenty of time for rumours to start coming through, and given Berta is meant to be a plate-spinner, I was hoping that we’d see a few more names linked than just this one.

The Arsenal squad are in Spain at the moment as we prepare for Girona on Saturday. My hope is that we can start to see some training pics, hear from Arteta, etc, because I’m getting a little bored of the speculation and the repetitive nature of it. Let’s see what happens today though. Eddie Howe has spoken over the weekend about Bruno and how he doesn’t know the future of their captain, so perhaps that means that Arsenal and Newcastle can finally get around the transfer table and get to talking.

Back tomorrow.

Did you see that coming? I certainly didn’t, but Messrs Ornstein and McNicholas dropped an Athletic Bomba on our social media feeds, and yesterday was spent with Arsenal fans recalibrating their ‘dream starting XI’ for next season, with the Brazilian superstar firmly placed in it on that left wing.

It’s exciting, isn’t it?

There seems to be two schools of thought here. Two ways in which Arsenal fans are reacting to the news that Arsenal are ‘exploring the possibility’ of a deal. The first group – of which I’m choosing to be in for a change – is just excited at the prospect of this happening. The second group, of which I have a few mates whose feet are firmly in that camp, are saying that it’s never happening in a million years.

That may well be true. It will be a very difficult deal to pull off. Real Madrid do not want to sell one of their prized assets. We’re used – as Arsenal fans – to seeing players join Real Madrid or Barcelona, not exit them. The only time players leave those clubs is when they are surplus to requirements. The Ozil deal was amazing; we all couldn’t believe it, and it was a very exciting transfer, but ultimately he was being moved on because Real Madrid wanted to find room for Gareth Bale. This time it would be different. This time it is Madrid not wanting to lose Vini Junior for free. We’d have a statement signing that would blow anything else out of the water. I’d go as far as to say that it might be the biggest transfer the whole of the Premier League has ever seen.

And that’s probably why so many are sceptical, which I totally understand, because the financial numbers behind it would probably be eye-watering. The rumours are that he’s currently on €400k-per-week at Madrid, or that he’s turned that down. Arsenal would have to make that a pound instead of a euro, for sure. But then you’re getting a higher tax rate in England than Spain, so the Brazilian would end up being worse off with take-home pay. But does that matter to these players? I read something a while ago that talked about the way players use weekly wage as a benchmark of their own value. They all meet up with their international teams, and those who are on the highest weekly wage are the big dogs in the team. They are already multi-millionaires; they don’t need the money, but they do need the kudos from their fellow pro’s. So perhaps that would be something for Vini Junior? Perhaps what this situation is, is not about money, but status?

If that is the case, maybe Arsenal’s interest does mean that it is possible, because coming to the Premier League – the biggest and best in world football – and being ‘the guy’ is his aim. As has been pointed out on social media by a few people on my timeline, at Real Madrid he is in the shadow of Mbappe. The Frenchman is the superstar, with Vini Jr the wingman, so a move to The Arsenal will put him in a top team, but as the guy. He’d be joining a team that made the semi-final of the Champions League two seasons ago, the final last season, only losing out on penalties, having just won the Premier League. He will have watched that Champions League final. He might have even seen over a million people line the streets of London for the parade. He’ll be looking at The Arsenal as one of the most exciting teams in Europe to be in, and he’ll have had a few Brazilian’s named Gabriel who would be talking to him about what it is like at The Arsenal.

He might even be looking at the fact that a certain Brazilian could be about to sign next week. If he and his representatives are speaking to Arsenal about the possibilities of a signature to play in red and white, he’ll be well aware of the talent at the club, plus he’ll be well aware of how strong we will look with both him and Bruno Guimaraes joining the team. This is a good time to be joining The Arsenal, and with Mikel Arteta just having won the Premier League title, there’s proof of concept that Arsenal can go the distance and win trophies.

Real Madrid must be thinking about this too. As already mentioned, they don’t want to lose him for free. They want him to be at their club and so will no doubt offer a new deal on better terms. They’ve also entered the race for Diomande. As I speculated yesterday, that deal is supposedly a message to Vini Jr, or so some have suggested. But Madrid do have a surplus of attacking players if Diomande signs. I don’t think the two are related, personally, because Diomande plays on the right and Vini Jr on the left, but if that deal gets done, then there will certainly need to be movement out of the club, and that could give Arsenal some opportunities – even if it isn’t with the Ballon d’Or runner-up.

And with all that said, suddenly it does seem like this could be an achievable deal, albeit one that I doubt gets moving any time soon. It feels like there needs to be some more moving parts for this to start to actually move along. What Arsenal can’t afford to do, however, is chase this deal all summer and then find out he signs a new deal and we have left ourselves without that left-wing position being solved. So I hope there are some clear plans around ‘Plan B’ or ‘Plan C’ if we find ourselves with a week before the transfer closes and we are still nowhere with the signing. Aim for the moon, Arsenal, but if you can’t get there, have yourselves something else lined up, please.

That’s it from me today. Back tomorrow as usual, as we start another week, hoping for some big Arsenal news. Catch you then.

I do wonder if, certainly from a winger perspective, something big needs to shake loose for all of the dominoes to start falling though. The reason I’m thinking that this morning is that I saw that Diomande is the subject of a bid from Real Madrid, for which Leipzig have rejected around £85million. A couple of days ago Fabrizio Romano was saying that we had enquired about the Ivorian, but given he wants to go to PSG, Liverpool have previously made a bid and I’m sure I’ve seen that City had a look, that one feels like it is going to be a little beyond The Arsenal. I saw some stuff saying the players’ representatives have been a bit of a pain in the arse, and when you’ve got the likes of PSG and Real Madrid involved, you’re getting in to a bidding war that I think Arsenal just need to steer clear of.

What we know about The Arsenal and Arteta is that he wants a level of commitment from any joining player. We’ve heard on countless occasions that “Play X only wanted Arsenal” and that is not something you’d say would be obvious from Diomande. We also know that Arsenal won’t get drawn into overpaying on the valuation. The Morgan Rogers situation showed that. But going back to my original point, it feels like there needs to be one big move for a player, to shake other players out. If Diomande goes to PSG, then surely Barcola gets clearance to move. If he decides that actually he fancies a bit of Real Madrid, then does a Vini Junior become available? Possibly not, but does Rodrygo become available? It’s funny because we were all looking at him last summer, but there’s been little noise about him this summer, which is strange because he played just over 1,100 minutes. For a player of his quality he won’t like that. But if Madrid get Diomande, then you’d think that somebody like Rodrygo would be on the market for a move. He did his ACL in March, which of course ruled him out for three months, but even before then, he was hardly a regular. If he’s still not fit then that might be a problem if any club is interested, but I’ve seen some suggestions that he’s stepping up his rehab, so perhaps something could happen there. Madrid have Mbappe, Vini Jr, Endrick, Rodrygo – could they afford to have Diomande as well and have enough minutes for them all?

What we need to be careful of, however, is not making our move at the right time. It seems to me like the big clubs are all after left wingers this summer. That’s problematic for us because it means competition. It means bidding wars. But it also means that if you don’t get your deals done, you run the risk of being left behind and searching round the back at the bins for players. We’re the champions, Champions League finalists, semi-finalists the year before, so there’s no way we should be doing that; players should be banging down our door.

That means making your decision, making your move and going for it. Come on Arsenal, let’s move. Now.

The one I haven’t heard of for a while, is that fella Yildaz from Juventus. He’s rated by TransferMarkt as one of the most valuable left wingers in the world, and they put him at €75million. That’s a tidy sum, and I’ll confess not to know tons about the player, as I don’t watch Italian football. He got 10 goals and 11 assists in 47 games and 3,600 minutes. That’s a modest return in a worse league than the Premier League; Martinelli got 11 goals and seven assists for us last season, so whilst I think we all know we need an upgrade, is Yildaz the man to be that upgrade?

What he does have in his favour is that he’s just 21. That means he’s still building his game. If we’re going to go young, however, why not try somebody like Said El Mala, who has been doing numbers at my German club FC Koln. He’s 19, has just bagged 13 goals and five assists in the Bundesliga, and I suspect he wouldn’t cost the earth. TransferMarkt has him at €45million. The German Bundesliga isn’t the Prem, but it is still one of the top three or four leagues in world football, and if he’s doing those numbers at 19, could it be worth a punt?

I guess with that one he probably needs another season to show his consistency, and that he hasn’t just run hot for one season. We had that one season from Martinelli in 2022/23 in which he bagged lots of goals and assists, but he’s now not been able to replicate it for three subsequent seasons – the same could be true of this kid.

But it does feel like we need to see some names popping up now that aren’t just Barcola or Diomande. I feel like the Barcola stuff is just going to rumble on, so why not just start looking elsewhere? We all hear the stories of how many plates Berta likes to spin, how many fingers he likes to put in different pies, but it all seems a little quiet on the winger front, so what’s going on, Andrea?

Maybe something will shake loose this week, but it does seem alarmingly quiet. Then again, perhaps that’s just what Arsenal want.

Back tomorrow. Maybe we’ll get something exciting today.

Laters kids.

It’s a good move. It’s a sensible move. Only time will tell if it’s an upgrade, but at £34million – and it still feels crazy to say this – it’s not a bank-breaker. In a summer in which fees seem to have gone mental, on account of the financially doped/shady clubs inflating prices, this represents the kind of value that you hope will turn into an Eduardo.

We’ve known about this one for a while, so of course it doesn’t come out of the blue, but there’s been enough scouting reports of the player over the last few weeks to knoiw what we are getting, which is a young lad, at perfect age for a winger, who is both-footed and looks like he has an eye for goal. I’m not going to get too over-hyped on this though; he looks like a good player, he’s said all the right things, but let’s not forget that the Belgian league is very different to the Prem. It’s regularly seen as the sixth or seventh most difficult league in Europe and, having seen Big Vik arrive last summer from the Portuguese league, qwe need to be mindful that Tzolis is not going to find himself bagging goals and assists with the frequency he did on the mainland.

That’s ok though, because I don’t think any of us believe he will, but I guess our expectations need to be that he delivers enough end product to match Leo last season, at a bare minimum. In 50 appearances and just under 3,000 minutes, Trossard bagged eight goals and 11 assists, which I think most of us would think that Tzolis should be able to do depending on how much time he gets on the pitch. If he matches Leo’s minutes from last season, I’d be hopeful that he could get into both double figures on goals and assists, and I think that’s certainly an achievable target to set.

The good news is that he is fit and ready to hit the ground running. He said as much in his interviews with the club when the announcement was made yesterday, and given that we have a number of players not back from their extended leave due to the World Cup, having this guy ready for Girona next week can only be a positive thing. I liked the player profile on Arseblog from Phil Costa that went up yesterday. I particularly like the idea of him being a ‘shift and shoot’ player, and with that being something we often saw Trossard do, you can see why the club have moved quickly to secure Tzolis’ services. I like the sound of his two-footedness too. I don’t want to put unfair expectations on him, but I hear ‘two-footed,’ and I immediately think of our former magician Santi Cazorla, so if Tzolis had a similar level of output to the little Spaniard, we’ll be absolutely laughing.

The squad augmentation can’t stop there though, and the noises of Guimaraes continue to rumble on. We’re now at the ‘set to bid‘ part of any big transfer. At some stage we’ll make a bid, which will of course be rejected by Newcastle, as they try to hold on to their captain. It’s a funny one because you just know that whatever Arsenal go in at, it will be rejected, but equally you don’t want to piss off the selling club with the old class ‘derisory’ bid. The noises are that between £70 – £80million gets this done, so I suspect we’ll get wind of some kind of opening salvo over the weekend. Ideally, if Arsenal are going to get this over the line, you want it done this week, so he has a few games to bed in during pre-season. He’ll still be on holiday following the World Cup, but these players these days spend most of their holiday staying fit and training anyway, so I suspect getting him up to speed won’t take that long.

In the meantime, we can watch all the videos of Tzolis and what he will bring, whilst also trying to work out whether we should all part with our hard-earned cash to buy that new away shirt. I can’t work out just yet whether I like it or not. I’m not really that fussed about the new home shirt, but the bruised banana always taps in to the nostalgia gene, so I can’t say I won’t be swinging by the local sports store to pick one up at some stage in the near future.

Right, that’s me done for today, I think. I’m nursing a bit of a hangover so I need to go and find some paracetamol. Back tomorrow with more rambling. see you then.

We all already knew, in reality, because we’ve been hearing the stories from the French press. But as an Arsenal fan, you still await to hear about it via the official site, which is as expected in its vagueness. I get it though; they’re hardly going to say “we have no real idea of an exact timeline, but we’re saying around three months”, because if it’s more than that then the club will just get a pasting for misleading people.

The frustrating thing above everything else is that back injuries are notoriously difficult to predict. We all remember how his injury derailed any hope we had of winning the league in 2022/23. That injury sustained at home to Sporting Lisbon had him out from 16th March 2023 until 20th June – a solid 97 days – and had him missing 15 games in total. Now, I guess the good news out of this is that surgery is not needed, because if it was, I would be guessing that we wouldn’t be seeing him until February next year. Heck, it could potentially derail his whole season, so we have to look at some small measures of positivity here. But it is still a massive blow. He’s one of the world’s best defenders, and there is no way to replace him. But, much like with Kai last season, the club has to find a way to augment the squad so we can mitigate that loss somehow. Last season the club moved quickly to switch their thoughts towards Eze and getting the job done, when it was clear Kai would be out for an extended period too, so if we can do the same again here that would be useful. If Saliba’s back injury is similar to 2022/23, circa 100 days puts us at 31st October from today. So we’ll be needing somebody for the first nine games of the season the Premier League, plus League Cup and Champions League games.

I’m still a fan of giving Mosquera a go. And, as I said on Tuesday, if Timber and White are fully fit then I still believe we have the numbers. I also think that for some games last season – admittedly only one or two – Norgaard was an able third-choice centre half. So we have numbers. But many Arsenal fans will ask about quality. Personally, I can’t be having a 28-year-old Ezri Konsa for circa £40million. That sort of money needs to be reserved for the big purchase if you ask me. But what I could get behind is a deal for free-transfer John Stones. James from Gunnerblog reported that Arsenal would be looking at somebody like that, and the Standard has backed that up with words Arteta has talked previously about the centre-back here. If Stones can be persuaded – and I say that only because he’ll know that he isn’t first choice here – to join us, I think it would make perfect sense.

For Stones, he joins the Champions, reunited with somebody he knows well, playing right at the top level having left Man City.

For The Arsenal, they get a Premier League-ready centre-half, good ball distribution, a very accomplished player with plenty of experience of winning things, who can provide decent cover.

The questions that stop this from being a ‘no-brainer’, however, are:

• Will Stones get more game time at somewhere like Chelsea, with whom he is also linked?
• What does that mean for Mosquera’s pathway?
• What sort of shape is his body in at 32, given that last season he missed 24 games through injury, the season before it was 34, and the season before that it was 14 again.

That final bullet is the big one for me. It’s all fine and dandy if Stones starts the season and is fit for the first 15 or so matches, because that takes us into around October/November and hopefully a returning Saliba, but if he plays two or three games at the start and breaks down, we’re lumbered with another player on the treatment table and the same situation we are in now.

It’s a tricky one for The Arsenal, but I’d still be tempted to do it. If it’s low wages, he plays backup to Mosquera or he’s used in the ‘smaller’ games, then I’m kind of ok with it.

The other news was the leaked image of Christos Tzolis from HandOfArsenal, so I expect we’ll get something either today or tomorrow, because he appears to have done his medical and pictures, so we just need the announcement now. Will be interesting to see what he says about joining the actual biggest club in London.

There’s some stuff from yesterday about Newcastle being ‘frustrated‘ with the Guimaraes situation, which I understand if Arsenal still haven’t opened talks, to be honest. Last summer we loved a bit of Berta plate-spinning, but we’re at the stage now where he has to pick a plate and grab it. It cheeses all parties off by the sounds of it, not just the Arsenal fans. If the deal’s there to be done at £75million, just do it I say. Then let’s focus on that wide-left forward position to complete our summer stuff (after the centre-half replacement.

Right, I’m going to leave it there for today, as I have a busy one in the City. I may or may not blog tomorrow, depending on how sore my head is – if you know what I mean…

So catch you either tomorrow or Saturday. Have a grand one, peeps.

Mate, pull the other one, it’s got bells on. The club you just joined finished 10th, you act more like a trading platform than a football club, and this “we’re bigger than you” nonsense is exactly what you  do when you know it isn’t actually true. You crack on. Everyone knows it isn’t true.

What I will say, is that Arsenal need to ‘crack on’, because even I’m starting to get a bit ‘hmm…’ with our lack of movement. I’m in a few WhatsApp GCs and it does feel like a few groups are starting to get restless. I get it, we’re champions, and we don’t want to just over-pay for players. Arsenal tend to do things ‘the right way’ when it comes to how our club is run; we don’t set up dodgy deals between other sides in financial trouble so we can cook the books. So we have to do it the right way, and that means we cut our cloth accordingly, but it does feel as though the cloth we’re cutting is a little dated. Sure, we’ve got Tzolis to be announced, which will be great, but there needs to be more, because everyone is starting to make their moves.

Or are they?

Let’s have a look at which teams are stronger or weaker at this point – Wednesday 22nd July 2026 – in the transfer Window. I’ll go from top to bottom, based on the Premier League. The biggest club in London will be towards the bottom of this list, for that reason, plus I won’t include every club, as it’ll take me ages.

Arsenal

Trossard out. Let’s say Tzolis is in, because it could get announced any day now. Meslier in. I would call that at best ‘on par’, assume Meslier isn’t replacing Kepa. So we haven’t really shifted the needle there.

Man City

Elliot Anderson in for a crazy fee. Mathys Detourbet (yeha, me either)  in from Troyes. Jeremy Monga in from Leicester. Out has gone John Stones, Nathan Ake and Bernardo Silva. I’d say City are actually weaker at this point.

Man United

Tielemens, Andrey Santos and Karl Darlow. Out has gone Casemiro (who I believe had a decent finish to the season), Rasmus Hjoland and Jadon Sancho. I would say they’ve bumped their midfield up for sure, so you have to say they look a little stronger. But not a ton in my opinion. Plus they won’t be playing one game a week this season I doubt.

Aston Villa

The other club gaming the system, have lost Rogers, Tielemens, but have gained an impressive-looking Manzambi, Joao Gomes from Wolves, as well as Modou Kéba Cissé, who is clearly one for the future. We know we have Saliba out for the start of the season, but they’re missing Amadou Onana after an ACL, so I wouldn’t say they are stronger. Gomes replaces him, does Manzambi replace Tielemens? That’s a tough one. There’s noise about Villa getting Garnacho (of course there is), or even Nicholas Jackson. I don’t think that makes them stronger.

Liverpool

Jeremy Jacquet joins to replace Konate, so there’s a question mark there. Victor Munoz joins from Osasuna as a left winger, but the fee suggests that’s a bit like Tzolis from Genk for us. They’ve lost Konate, Salah and Robertson, so I’d say they’re hardly massively improved.

You then have to go all the way down to 10th to find Chelsea, then 17th to find the Scum. So let’s give them a little sentence or two. Chelsea have signed Rogers (see what self-confessed Chelsea fan Paul Merson feels about that here), Palestri to replace Cucurella, a right winger Geovany Quenda from Sporting for €50million, then a young Brazilian from Corinthians for €10million. They’ve lost Santos to United and Cucurella to Real Madrid. I’m not really sure if, having spent nearly £170 million this summer, they’re even better than the 10th-place finish last season. Xabi Alonso might be a good factor; not being in Europe might help, but to have them as Arsenal’s ‘main’ rivals is, well… a bit weird if you ask me.

Then there’s the Tiny Totts, who have spunked £200million and I would say certainly have improved their team, but then again they nearly got relegated, so that was going to be hard not to.

So having looked at those other six clubs and where we are, whilst we’re all not happy about the lack of movement, I personally am not completely losing my sh*t. However, I think by the end of next week, when we’re knocking on the door of August, if we’re talking about only seeing Tzolis in pre-season training so far, I think it’s fair for some serious questions to be asked. Our kick-off to the season is not an easy one, we will be without key players who went deep into the World Cup, so the club needs to arm Arteta with the tools needed to succeed.

Right, I’ll leave it there, because I need to get out for a run before the day starts to hot up too much and I melt. See you all tomorrow. Be good.

It has been a really tough time for him over the last two seasons, and when you look at his injury record for 2024/25 and 2025/26, you can sort of understand why we’re being linked with somebody like Ezri Konsa. The Villa man is the same age as White, yet look at his record compared to Benny Blanco’s. It’s night and day. I am still not a fan of the move, if I’m honest, but that’s mainly because of his age and the cost it would take to prize him out of Villa. Given what they’ve just got for Rogers, they’ll probably want north of £ 40- £ 50 million, and you just can’t pay that for a player who looked a little shaky at times during the World Cup, plus who probably only has about four years of top-flight football left in him.

But the challenge Arsenal have, is putting all the eggs in the ‘Ben White fitness‘ basket. Four injuries in 2025/26 amounting to 13 games missed, and they’re all the types of injuries that have you worried – a couple of knocks, a knee injury and a hamstring injury. In 2024/25 it was three knee injuries (including one surgery) and one ‘unknown injury’ that kept him out for a game. But all that said, he’s a fantastic footballer; he offers so much to us in terms of the way he plays that right back slot differently to Timber, and personally, even with all of those injury problems, I’d still think we should be rolling the dice and having him for another season.

The big question will be over Timber. And those questions exist purely because I personally got Tomas Rosicky/Thomas Vermaelen vibes from the noises that came out at the end of last season. You remember, right? When they just couldn’t work out fully what was wrong with Rosicky, so he was meant to be out for a few weeks, then it was months, then it was like a whole season. That’s the worry with Timber, but I guess the good news is that what we saw yesterday is him in training with the team. We have to hope that basically the decision for him not to go to the World Cup was about sensible management and telling him, “you could risk it, but without rest, you might not play much next season”. The World Cup is the dream for any professional footballer, but if you are telling him he could miss another whole season, he’s clearly got to take the sensible option for the long-term health of his body. He’s already lost a season with an ACL when he first signed for us; he missed 11 games last season, plus 10 games in 2024/25 for both Arsenal and the Netherlands, and at 25 he still has a few more Euros and World Cups he could go to, so I’m hoping that he’s good to go come the start of the season. What we need to see, however, is a good pre-season from both him and White, because we need to know that they are ok to kick us off. Then, we need Arteta to rotate the two as well, because if Saliba is out for three to four months (although apparently not as bad as first feared, which is good), then it’s more than likely to be Mosquera in that right centre-half role.

Here’s the thing though, when you look at it, we kind of ‘do’ have cover. I get the John Stones links, I really do, but we could have, come the start of the season, the following players who could play the following positions:

• Right back: Timber, White, Mosquera
• Right centre-half: Mosquera, White, (Maybe Big Gabi or Calafiori at a push – Norgaard too if he stays)
• Left centre-half: Gabriel, Calafiori, Hincapie
• Left back: Hincapie, Calafiori, MLS

So we have seven players for four positions. That’s not too bad, right? So if we’re keeping Norgaard, for example, then it also gives us eight players. So I’m less stressed about our situation. I get it, none of those right centre-back positions are coming close to Saliba, but you aren’t dropping £ 75 million on an alternative, so until Big Bill is back, we have to make-do-and-mend. Mosquera is a guy who probably deserves a run of matches to see just how well he can do, so I’d be keen to give him a shot in that position, for sure. He may have wobbled a little at the end of last season, and he’ll not want to re-watch that Champions League final, I’d suspect, but that was him in at right back. My memories of him at centre half are impressing against Liverpool at Anfield, for example.

So I put us in a pretty decent spot in defence, all things considered, and so for me it is more about working out how to improve our attack that we need to focus on more. The good news is that Kai’s Germany were knocked out early against Paraguay, so hopefully he’ll be back within the next week or so. If we can get a fully fit season out of him, that would be massive too. And we shouldn’t forget the impact he has on the way we play and our style. Might do a little more on that tomorrow. For now though, I’ll leave it there, and catch you all tomorrow. Be good, be safe, enjoy your Tuesday.

Argentina – you should be pretty disappointed with your national team players. They let you down. However, after some of the pictures and videos I’ve seen of Argentinian fans, perhaps some of them are not?

I’ll be honest, though, I was definitely thinking “bad guys do often win” when the game went to extra time. Spain had dominated possession; they’d had all the chances (Argentina didn’t even muster a shot until extra time – pathetic), they’d had a perfectly good goal ruled out for an invisible foul on Mikel Merino, and after Enzo Fernandez was sent off for doing Enzo Fernandez things, you just knew it would make Argentina retreat even further into their own box. England and Tuchel rightly got pilloried for the tactical disasterclass in the second half of the second half of the semi final, but Scaloni and team should also receive the same treatment, because it was clear even before Enzo was sent off in stoppage time, that they had no intention of having a go at Spain. It was all about trying to fein injury, fall to the floor, kick players, then if touched, fall to the floor and try to buy free kicks. To be fair to the referee, I think ultimately he managed to keep a bit of a handle on the game, although he probably could have dished out a few yellows a little earlier.

This was meant to be Messi’s last hurrah. The Argentinians all thought it was destiny; they were pre-ordained to win this competition. But you have to actually play football to win, and they did nothing of the sort, with the whole world watching. And as a result of their antics, I think everyone was a Spain supporter for last night. They certainly were after the game had finished and the shameful scenes that unfolded. I’ll come to that in a second. Because first, we should talk about how Argentina have basically sh*thoused their way to this final, they’ve ridden the coat-tails of some VERY favourable decisions, and as I’ve already said on this blog, have a team of very unlikeable players – bar Messi.

But even Messi was at it yesterday. I think Cucurella is a little rat bag, but asking for him to be sent off because he put his hand to his mouth to explain to Messi where the Spanish player was hurt…man, Leo, that’s low mate.

But don’t worry, others could stoop lower in that team. Simeone Junior was his usual twattish self, Enzo was ridiculous with his foul for his second (deserved) yellow to send him for an early bath, then Paredes…wow…what a Class A wrong’un you showed yourself to be. Grabbing people’s throats, throwing punches, plus you should have been sent off during the game anyway! The Argentinians will have made no friends based on their World Cup showing, and I couldn’t have been happier to see their team crying. You thoroughly got what you deserved.

As for Spain, you have to say congrats, as they’ve shown they are clearly the best team in the tournament, and we even got to see a bit of Zubimendi get on the pitch too. I watched a little bit of the trophy celebrations afterwards, but didn’t get to the end of the lift, because giving Unai Simon the ‘best goalkeeper’ award, when he’s not even the best one in the Spanish team, was laughable. Still, there’s a nice picture of Raya, Zubi and Merino all together, which I had to steal for today’s blog image. Nice stuff.

Now it is time for rest, and time for transfer pre season stress to kick in, in earnest. Because once the dust settles after today, I think globally there will be plenty of consternation on the faces and in the minds of Arsenal fans. We find ourselves just under two weeks from the first pre-season game away to Girona, and there still isn’t a new signing in (Hincapie doesn’t count, neither does Meslier – not really). Tzolis will probably provide a little transfer window injection when he arrives this week, but having listened to a number of the regular Arsenal pods that are out there yesterday on my run, there’s a lot of concern about the Morgan Rogers stuff. I still stand by the fact that I’m pretty calm about it, but we do need to start hearing noises about names that we’ve looked to pivot towards. I saw Fabrizio Romano talk about Diomande at Leipzig, which sounds cool, but all the noises so far are that PSG wants him. And that is apparently true in return, which all makes it seem a little Julian Alvarez to Barca-like; if we’re playing second-fiddle to these teams by players, it hardly sends that great message about how we only pick players who are 100% hot on Arsenal and Arteta’s project. Players who view us as a second choice? That’s something we haven’t had since the Wenger ‘Top Four is a trophy’ days, and I think we all thought we were beyond that?

Let’s see what starts to shake out now. Players will all be on holiday, but I suspect they’ve all kept their phones on in case they get calls from agents, so I expect we’ll start to see a concentrated period of noise as the ITKs go into overdrive with the season about a month away.

Back tomorrow. Enjoy your Monday, whatever you’re doing.

For starters, most of the Arsenal boys got on to the pitch, with Rice, Saka, and Eze all starting. And lo and behold, each of them had an impact on the match; Rice bagging a good goal for the first, Eze providing an assist to Saka, who also netted a hat-trick and promptly declared afterwards that he was fit and wish he’d have played more.

Great stuff. Now go spend two weeks on a beach somewhere, mate. Get those Achilles rested and ease yourself back into pre-season with The Arsenal. Same goes with Rice, Eze and Madueke. You’re all going to be needed.

Saka’s performance won’t help Tuchel’s cause, though, I don’t expect. He decided to drop Saka for Rogers, and let’s be honest, aside from a good ball in for the Gordon goal, he was hardly sparkling against Argentina. I guess the counterpoint to that was that nobody was, but this was still a good example of showing why you put Saka in your team. He is a game changer. Hopefully, he can continue to be for us next season, too. He even said that Arsenal fans have nothing to worry about. Super duper stuff.

What’s not super duper, however, was the Ornbomb we got, in which David declared that once again, Chelsea have gazumped Arsenal for a player, and Morgan Rogers would be a Chelsea man next week. Chelsea fans will be delighted. Villa will be delighted. There are some Arsenal fans on social media who are a bit miffed at this.

I am not one of them.

I have said it a couple of times over the last week, but the price matters, especially when you are operating in these PSR times. Chelsea are gamers of the system. They will pay £117million – probably about £30million more than what he’s worth – just to get this guy in. Their fans will laugh at how they’ve poached him from us, but the reality is, they have to make some kind of statement after a season in which they finished 10th, have no European football, and still have a squad that is so packed to the rafters with other players they over-paid for, that they’ll have to offload this summer, I’d expect. I call them gamers to the system, because I have no doubt that they’ll have paid Villa this fee because Villa need it for PSR and accounting ‘creativity’, whilst Chelsea will probably need the same in reverse, so Villa will probably ‘pay’ them £50million for Nicholas Jackson. We’ve seen Newcastle and Villa do things like that, and Chelsea and Villa are also in the same boat.

For Arsenal, I’m pleased they stood firm, because frankly I was a little confused as to where he was going to play. If it was as a wide-forward, then I’m looking at this and saying that perhaps this will allow Arsenal to focus on somebody like a Barcola? He’s spent more time playing wide-left, so why not have a proper go for him now?

I do think that Berta might be under a bit of pressure now, because whilst the fans are a bit restless, I suspect the manager will be too. Arteta said after the Champions League final that we have to be ambitious and we have to be fast, and here we are on 19th July and our main target (or so it seemed) is heading elsewhere. That won’t be a good look for Andrea, so I suspect he and Arteta will be having some choice words about what happens next.

Chelsea did this to us before with Mudryk, so we pivoted for Trossard and that worked out very well indeed. We have to hope at this stage, that the club have an alternative target in mind and are going to pull the trigger sooner rather than later. Could that be a Barcola? Maybe. Could that be a left-of-field option like a Nusa, Lookman, or Nico Williams? We know Arteta loves the latter, so I don’t see why we couldn’t have a punt at one of these names.

I do wonder if Arsenal will want to make a ‘statement’ this summer, but the challenge they have, a bit like the striker market last summer, is that there just doesn’t seem to be the profile of elite wingers who have been burning it up in mainland Europe this summer. And what of the Premier League? I’d certainly be having a look at Kroupi, and if Mitoma was a bit younger, I’d have a go for him, but his age and some injury problems in the last couple of seasons preclude us from going for him, surely.

The challenge Arsenal are going to have, if they don’t strike soon, however, is that targets are going to start moving elsewhere. There was talk about the Scum making moves for Kroupi, Liverpool are also interested in Barcola, whilst Barca have already moved for Arteta’s other favoured player Anthony Gordon. If we hold on to our playing cards too long, there might not be too many great options left.

This is where Berta earns his coing now – and we need to see Arsenal starting to flash theirs at clubs with players we want.

Back tomorrow with more news, as we contemplate where to go next with all of the players having done the World Cup and the transfer merry-go-round gets into full force. See you then.

Last night’s ‘HandBomb’ was that Morgan Rogers is advancing, and talks aren’t expected to be a problem. Apparently, the two clubs are in discussion, as I was speculating about yesterday, it looks like Villa is making moves to get their replacements going, too. My view on it remains that how ‘good’ this deal is, is dependent on the fee we pay. There are people out there who will say, “Well, it isn’t your money so what do you care?”, but my contention that is that it should matter to Arsenal fans. We don’t have a bottomless pit of cash, the PSR rules are such that we can’t just blow £500million on players anyway, so if you go hard and heavy on one player, it could mean you aren’t able to secure a player on a certain fee in another position. The difference between a Rogers at £100million and a Rogers at £130million could be a young prospect we miss out on.

So yeah, the fees does matter, in my opinion.

There’s also the whole “£72million Nicholas Pepe” curse that we are all very familiar with. That fee we paid for the Ivorian was a millstone around his neck. If Elliot Anderson isn’t essentially Rodri 2.0, he’ll be deemed a ‘waste of money’ at £116million, rival clubs to City will ‘banter’ City for the figure they paid, and it heaps more pressure on a player. We all thought with Declan Rice that he might suffer from the £105million price tag, but that quickly was kicked into touch, with us now even mocking the fact we got him ‘half price’. So if the rumoured fee of £130million is true, then personally I’d hope Arsenal start to look elsewhere. Transfermarkt has his value at €90million, which is about £76.5million. If Villa were to get £100million for him, that’s more than a fair deal, I’d think.

I like Rogers as a player, I really do. I remember in the last two seasons against us, he’s looked particularly dangerous on several fronts. He’s somebody who will have a shot from distance, he’s a guy who can take on a player or two, and, I think, two seasons ago in particular at Villa Park, every time he picked up the ball, he looked like he could hurt us. But I am still a bit bemused as to how he’s being deployed if he signs. Centrally? If so, where? Left eight? Left wing? Last season, to be fair, he started 14 times on the left wing, and got five goals, so as opposed to Eze, where we thought he was going to be the left-wing choice and then nothing of the sort happened, perhaps you could see this as something he is deployed as?

He also got five assists there, and played left wing in Villa’s home win against us, although I must confess I don’t 100% remember how he played last season. He bagged two goals against both West Ham and Man United over Christmas as a left winger, and when Villa were running crazily hot last season over their xG, I’m pretty sure it was he who was a big reason for that.

I like his athleticism too, something called out in this video, which I watched earlier. I can see why Mikel would want somebody with the physical profile that he has; the Premier League is a very physical league, full of battles and duels that have to be won all over the pitch, so if you have somebody like Rogers, you know you’re getting a dual monster and battler.

I still can’t help but think about how this works with the team at the moment, though. Does this mean Martinelli goes? If that’s the case, then we don’t really have any touchline wingers anymore. Tzolis is about to arrive, he’s right-footed, but players on the left are going to be somebody who wants to come into the field more, but I guess the counter to this point is that Martinelli was never really massively impressive as a touchline winger as it is. He found his best form coming in from the left, and I think Arteta has tried to push that out of him when he’s played, so if we get both Rogers and Tzolis, it will be interesting to see what job Arteta asks both of them to do on the left.

The other final bit of news is that apparently Barca have set a deadline of the end of this month for their offer for Alvarez to join them. Honestly, that club are a bunch of pr*cks, with their ultimatum. If you want the player so bad, pay the money, instead of constantly trying to low ball teams. They did it for years with us, now they’re doing it with Atleti. I hope the Spanish capital side stay firm. Or better, sell him to us foir cheaper than barca offered. That would really piss them off.

But for now it just feels like that one is probably one in which Arsenal need to just have a ‘watching brief’ on. There’s no point in moving for him whilst the circus is in town and ringmaster Laporta is playing his games in the press. Just leave it be and see if Barca do indeed walk away.

Right, that’s me done for today. I’ll be back tomorrow with more thoughts. There’s that pointless ‘Bronze place’ trophy this evening. I just hope no Arsenal players see a single minute. Play all those that haven’t played much, except The Arsenal boys, thanks.

Catch you all tomorrow. Have a good one.

Sure, he faltered in Norwich, but given that he was 19 when he moved to Norwich, you can hardly blame him for not quite hitting the mark. It happens. What I do have faith in, however, is that Arsenal and Arteta have done a fair bit of work to make sure that he’s going to be given the best chance to succeed. Sure, there have been a few that haven’t worked out, like Fabio Vieira, but even he had some moments. Hopefully, Christos can hit the ground running, and we start to see some positive sparks in pre-season.

I think for him, too, having that pre-season with the team by virtue of the fact that he’s in through the door ‘relatively’ early, is a big plus point. He can get himself settled in, have a full Arsenal pre-season, then try to hit the ground running from day one of the proper kick-off to the season. I read somewhere that he’d already started his pre-season with Genk, so the fact that he’s maybe already into some form of training now can only stand him in good stead.

And if you believe what Fabrizio Romano says about Morgan Rogers, then Arsenal are going to chivvy that move along now too, with noises that Villa are lining up replacements for the England international as well. I guess that’s what needs to happen if this particular domino needs to fall, but I hope that if Villa do get their replacements in, that we can see Arsenal suddenly have a bit more of a position of strength in the bidding process. £130million – which is what I saw quoted as what Villa want a month or so ago – is ludicrous. If they’ve already made their signings and replacements, then Arsenal don’t have to pay that amount. They got a relatively modest fee for Tielemens, which won’t massively help their attempts at whatever they call PSR these days, if this article is to be believed, as well as this article too. Villa have apparently had an offer accepted (or will be) for £38million for Joao Gomes. They’re about to sign Manzanbi for £50million+, so if they do that and then they want to try and hardball Arsenal, they could just walk away and leave Villa with a conundrum to solve.

That won’t happen, I don’t think, but if we’re talking about a deal around the £100million mark, then Arsenal will probably do it. The transfers have gone crazy this summer, so it wouldn’t surprise me at all, and when Mikel Arteta is hot on a player, we know he usually gets him.

The questions will still remain where the hell he’ll play. He’s not a left winger. He played against Argentina as a right winger, but I haven’t seen that too often from him to suggest that wide forward is where he can take it to the next level. There’s no doubt he’s a quality addition to the squad, but I’m still doing a little bit of mental gymnastics on how this is going to work.

It feels to me like his arrival all but secures an exit from a central player. That ain’t gonna be the captain, I doubt it’ll be Eze after just one season, and Mikel Merino has shown this World Cup how he can be valued as a rotation option. All eyes are on Ethan then, unfortunately, and I suspect that when Rogers arrives, we all might have to face some hard facts about a player with whom we all had so many hopes would break into the first team.

I don’t know about you guys, but it does feel to me as though the wheels are now turning with regard to transfers. It was always going to be that case with the World Cup getting in the way, but all of a sudden the transfer window is springing to life and, with pre-season and friendlies still a few weeks’ away, that’s positive to hear. There was plenty of hand-wringing going on a week ago over our lack of signings, but personally, I always felt that we’d see movement once we get to this part of the summer. That’s how it’s played out and as long as we start rolling along in the next week or two, I suspect most Gooners will calm down a bit.

Right, that’s me done for the day – I’ve got a bunch of household chores and a weekend of golf to think about with the family, so better get myself prepped – I’ll be swinging like a rusty door when I pick those clubs up later.

Catch you all tomorrow.

I think I speak for us all when I say:

Help us Mikel Merino, you are our only hope.

I had this in the game they played against Egypt. Even before a ball was kicked, the management asked why we want Egypt to win ahead of Argentina, to which I said “Messi aside, just look at the roll call of absolutely horrible footballers they have in their team. Emi Martinez, Lisandro Martinez, Romero, Simeone, Enzo Fernandez – they’re just snidey and horrible little SOBs”

And that sort of played out at the start. snidey fouls, falling to the floor, the worst kind of gamesmanship. Horrible team. I have no love for Spain, but they are most certainly, surely, going to be most neutrals hope for the final. Sorry Leo Messi, but you’re surrounded by dickheads.

England themselves kind of have themselves to blame too. After they scored it was proper retreat into your own box and the managers reaction – to literally go “ALL DEFENDERS ASSEMBLE” was the sbolute worst thing that he could have done.

But hey, it’s only England, so whilst I wanted them to win, I certainly didn’t lose sleep. In fact, as I as on my run this morning, I was reflecting on how I felt after England went out in late, dramatic fashion, and how we drew away to Wolves in February earlier this year. That night I was apoplectic with rage, I got about two hours sleep and I think it took me two days to recover. This situation I find myself in, I’m basically a bit ‘meh’ less than 24 hours after the event.

The only thing that has got me frustrated today, is the news that William Saliba is expected to be out for between four to five months. We’re at the end of July nearly. That means we aren’t seeing him until between November and December. Then he’ll need to get up to speed. So that’s January before we could get Big Bill back on the pitch. And THIS is why I f*cking hate international football. He’s had that problem, everyone has known about it, he’s never not going to want to play for France. but Deschamps and his bunch of twat coaches and medical staff were probably like “f*ck it, we’re all off after this tournament, let’s just use him until he breaks”. Wankers.

If you add to that the fact that Rice is clearly knackered, plus we saw no sign of Saka last night, which is a worry in itself. He’s clearly in a bit of pain too, because there’s no way Tuchel doesn’t use Saka if he’s not fit. I think we’re all just waiting for the inevitable from Mikel as he’s interviewed ahead of the first set of friendlies “Yeah, Bukayo will be out for a while we think. We need to manage his Achilles problem”.

Yes, it will mean an opportunity for others, and maybe Madueke can see this as a chance for a regular run of games at the beginning of the season, but we’ve got to see more from him than he’s delivered in this World Cup. Which hasn’t been much.

Who knows, maybe Max Dowman has the opportunity to knock on the door. Or maybe there’s a chance for Ethan to step up? I know Arteta seems reluctant to play him wide, but we’ve already seen he can do damage, so why not have him doing the role during pre-season, as you get to have a look at him and see if he can evolve his game. My reading on that situation was always that the club thought he was better centrally, but also that he’s not as switched on to play out wide. If you think about how Arteta likes his forwards to operate, they can effectively become auxiliary full-backs when we’re out of possession; dropping in to the defensive shape and helping the actual full-backs to either double up, or tuck in. Why can’t that sort of thinking be trained into somebody like Ethan?

There is going to need to be some work done for the start of the season though, because very quickly it’s going to feel like we’re going to go into this one without some of our best players. If you look at those first five games, it ain’t exactly easy, is it? After Coventry it is Villa away, Chelsea at home, Sunderland away and then Brighton away. That takes us to the first international break (FFS) and that is a really tricky run that could very easily see you drop points and already playing catch up if you want a proper title charge.

It also means that the need to strengthen the squad is even more acute. We can’t afford to be waiting around until 31st August. We’re now at the point where most players are not at the World Cup. So there needs to be some movement, and we need to see it now. The club are going to have to think about a centre half, I think. Sure, we have Mosquera, but if he breaks down? It hits home even more that we simply can’t afford to let Ben White go. He knows the club, he knows the way the manager wants to play, he looks fit and frankly, we are going to need him.

All of a sudden, the distration of the World Cup matches has now hit home how we need to be moving in the market. And quickly. We play Girona in just over two weeks. Yeah, it’s a friendly, but you need to give your new players a bedding in period. Arsenal need to move. And move now.

Vack tomorrow for some more thoughts.

I was pretty hot on Mudryk, despite only doing the usual thing of ‘the comps’ on YouTube. We were getting a rapid winger, who De Zerbi (former manager at Shaktar) said could be a Ballon d’Or winner one day, or something like that. Chelsea thought they’d outsmarted us by a bit of the ol’ ‘gazumping’, and we had to pivot.

And what a pivot.

£27million, 174 games, 36 goals, 34 games later, and we say goodbye to a guy who has had a massive impact in the upturn of this Arsenal team ever since he arrived.

When he did arrive, I was fine with it. I’d seen one or two Brighton games in the previous couple of seasons. He’d looked alright, nothing special, good with the ball at his feet, but I’d also seen him miss a few sitters too. What I didn’t realise was that in that season, when we would go on to sign him in January, he was hitting what you’d call a true ‘in his prime’ moment. He contributed both with his own goal tally, but in that first season, he became an assist monster. 10 in total in the Premier League and although the season ended up with us narrowly missing out, we’d found a ready-made wide forward who had end product for our future title charges.

And in that first full season in 2023/24, he really came into his own in the new year, with Havertz and the little Belgian forging quite the connection as we battered team after team as we ran City close. I remember a really impressive performance up at Burnley in particular. His constant will to win was epitomised by his grumpy demeanour, and I remember Arteta even referencing that he gets an earful when Leo didn’t start. That’s exactly the kind of mentality Arteta loves, and I bet he personally loved Leo’s mindset.

It comes as no surprise that the goal that had one of the most profound impacts on last season was scored by Leo at West Ham.

Sure, he could be frustrating at times, but he had patches of form that saw him really frustrate. But when he was on it, it seemed like it was a crucial point in our season over the years.

The challenge for Arsenal becomes replacing him. Martinelli’s form domestically last season wasn’t that great. He barely contributed from an output perspective, so if Arsenal do pull the trigger on Tzolis, he’s going to have to, at a minimum, deliver what Leo did last season. That’s eight goals and 11 assists as a minimum, and in an Arsenal team that struggled to score goals last season, it does put pressure on this Greek lad. He’s going to have to hit the ground running if he really is Trossard’s replacement.

For Besiktas, they’re getting a guy who has just come off the back of an impressive summer World Cup, and who will probably absolutely smash it in that league. He gets a three-plus-one-year deal, and that means he’s securing a decent contract into his mid-thirties.

And, as I’ve kind of already mentioned in previous blogs, the money Arsenal gets is pretty decent, too. £17million in total for a guy who is 31 and with one year left on his deal is a pretty decent fee. Arsenal were never going to get all the money back due to his age, but this is a fine return, and everyone involved in this move gets what they want, ultimately.

If you’d have asked me two years ago, or one year ago, what I would prefer in terms of an exit, it would have been this one. But after Martinelli’s indifferent season just gone, I have sort of changed my mind. Martinelli’s sell value is probably going to be bigger than Trossard’s, and Leo could be understudy to a new big name coming in – if we ever get a deal done there – so this does feel like it was a tighter call than it could have been a year ago. But that’s just how the chips fall, I guess. There was demand for Leo; I guess there hasn’t been that much demand for Gabby Martinelli.

And that might cause a little bit of a problem for Arsenal, if they can’t move on Martinelli (assuming they do). Because if Tolis is the Trossard replacement, is that left-wing position really stocked enough to be seen as an upgrade from what we had last season? Don’t get me wrong, Tzolis might bang, but it’s asking a lot for a guy who was plying his trade in the Belgian League to make the big jump to the Premier League without a bedding-in period and being asked to be ‘The Guy’. Unfortunately, I think we’ve seen enough of Martinelli to know that he is a good player, loves the club, we love him, he’ll definitely contribute, but not enough in my eyes to be given the keys on the left-hand side and told he is the undisputed number one left winger for The Arsenal. He’s had enough seasons to do that, and hasn’t quite made it.

Could Arsenal be looking at two incomings? Maybe. But you’d think they’d have to find a buyer for Martinelli first. Perhaps now the market is open, we’ll see a bit more movement, because other clubs are starting to make moves, and we’re still relatively quiet, respectively.

There’s still time, there’s no need to panic yet, but we probably need to start hearing some noises now. You know that Arteta will certainly be thinking the same.

But for now, to finish today’s musings, let’s tip our hat to Leo and say ‘thanks’.

Or maybe, they were talking about where they’re going on their holidays. For Martin, that is obviously a priority closer to now than Declan, as the Norwegian team will probably be on their way home today I’d imagine. For Declan, that won’t happen until at least coming up to the weekend, which also made me wonder about the Community Shield and the first Premier League game of the season at home to Coventry.

Who could we realistically see, based on their participation at the World Cup?

In my mind, depending on the player, you have to give them at least two weeks’ holiday. Then, they’ll need at least two weeks of pre-season training. For some players, I suspect an extended holiday is needed, then perhaps an easing back into action. Somebody like Declan Rice, for example, needs to be getting a minimum of three weeks on a beach. With that in mind, I thought I’d spend today mapping out a team for the first Premier League game. I could do the Community Shield, but let’s be honest, it’s just a glorified friendly, so I thought I’d focus on the more important stuff.

So, who could realistically start for us on that first game on 21st August? Here’s me doing what me mammy always said re: showing my workings (A-Level maths teacher). And, because I’m a traditionalist, I’ve gone one to 11, thinking of traditional numbers for each player. For example, the full backs are 2 and 3, the wingers are seven and 11, we have a four and five at centre-back, a six at the base, an eight and 10 in the middle and a nine up front.

1. David Raya – Fairly easy one to kick us off. He’s basically been given a first-class seat for Spain’s games on the bench in this World Cup. Quite how he isn’t the number one is bizarre, because he’s clearly lightyears ahead of Unai Simon, but hey, he’s got less chance of being injured and that’s an easy one to start me off today.
2. Ben White – Ben is training already, he’s looking ripped, he’ll have had a full pre-season in him, plus he has a new friend to make him extra happy in Illan Meslier. We thought we’d lost him at the end of last season, but I can see him having a very important early impact for you. And that couldn’t make me happier.
3. Riccardo Calafiori – I had to have a think about this one, because originally I thought that he might play as the left-centre back, with Hincapie at full back. But I saw Hincapie limping once or twice during the World Cup, so I’m going to play it safe by having Ricy in there, having had the summer off to party and hopefully a pre season which see’s him take out his non-World Cup summer on Coventry City when he crops up in between the left winger and centre forward to smash the ball home for the opener and our first goal of the season – just like he did last season.
4. Gabriel – yes, he’s been at the World Cup, yes, he’s played a load of games, but my thinking here is that continuity at the back is key. With the suspicions about Big Bill Saliba remaining (which is a hint as to my next pick), I think you have to tell big Gabi to get himself out there for the season opener. Brazil were knocked out to Norway on Sunday, 5th July. Big Gabi was probably back in England by 8th July, then off on holiday this past weekend. Give him two weeks from then, you’re talking about getting him back on 25th July. That gives him a solid month to get his head back into the Arsenal game, which feels like ample time to me.
5. Christian Mosquera – He’s not gone to the World Cup, he’s Big Bill’s understudy, he had a great breakthrough first season, this feels like a bit of a no-brainer to me.
6. Martin Zubimendi – a little like Raya, he’s been a virtual spectator this World Cup. Yes, he’ll have had to train, so he’ll need to be given a bit of a holiday, but given he lost his place towards the end of last season, I think he’ll be chomping at the bit. I think we also need to all remember what a revelation he was for us in the first half of the season. Why couldn’t he be that again?
7. Noni Madueke – he’s actually played more football than I thought he would this World Cup, but his injury problems aren’t the same and, regardless, I think he’ll now find himself as a cameo appearance guy for the semi final and final if England get there.
8. Martin Odegaard – was getting back to his old self for Norway, is the reason I’ve written this piece today, because I think he’ll get enough time off and will be ready for the big kick off. Get the skipper back in the side and let’s see if he can continue the form from the World Cup, but in Arsenal colours instead.
9. Kai Havertz – Went home even earlier than the Brazilians. Even if he was given a month off, he’d still be back by the beginning of August, which gives him three week’s to get ready for the new season. Came back towards the end of last season haing had an injury-hit one, so I think he’ll be absolutely desperate to get back on the pitch for The Arsenal. Plus, he’s our best centre forward.
10. Eberechi Eze – come on, let’s see the Odegaard and Eze combination for the Coventry game, can we? Ebs is another one that hasn’t racked up a ton of game time for England, so he’ll be ready and raring to go, plus I think against a newly promoted side that might employ a low block, this is the kind of player you want in your side.
11. Gabriel Martinelli – Trossard’s impending exit kind of makes this a default position, and given Gabby Martinelli didn’t start every minute, didn’t play a ton of minutes for Brazil, plus has the same situation as Big Gabi, it feels natural that he’ll be the one to be given the nod. Of course, depending on when they get the Tzolis deal done, Arteta could go for the new guy, but as of right now, it feels a little silly to put in a player who hasn’t actually signed. Even if we do have him, however, I’m guessing Arteta eases him in, rather than chucks him in.

So that’s my starting XI, as well as justification on why they start. But here’s the good thing; that’s a good side. It’s a side which I’d be excited about. And barring no injuries to any of those players, it’s a side that I think can see us through the first few games. I didn’t even put MLS in there. For sure, he could be given the nod over Zubi, but just for now, I’m trying to remove recency bias and remember what a difference the Spaniard made for us when he first joined. But regardless, I haven’t talked about Gyokeres, we still don’t know about Timber, we have Max Dowman who is a year older, plus there’s even Gabby Jesus who hasn’t left the club yet. For a team with which we’re all worried about the players not being in the right shape to return, I’m pretty happy with that squad kicking us off the new season – even before we’ve signed anyone.

But what do you think? Let me know in the comments.

Are we still calling them that these days?

Regardless, his two goals were enough, on a night in which two teams duked it out who were clearly on equal footing to each other. In fact, if I’m honest, I thought Norway were slightly the better team. After England dominated the first part of the game, Norway gre back into it, got a flukey goal, but after that goal it felt like they deserved it and probably should have gone on and got at least one. The Robot will be FEWMIN’ with Sorloth for not squaring to him when Norway had a counter.

The Arsenal boys were, I thought, a bit ‘meh’. Maybe I’m being harsh on Saka, who I thought showed some sparkles of the real Saka, but I’m still putting it down to him not being fully fit. How can he be? There’s no way Tuchel benches one of his best players in a quarter-final, unless he knows that he can’t get a full 90 out of him. And if a player can’t do the full 90, well, he ain’t fit, is he?

Rice, like Saka, clearly was off the pace, and the fact he couldn’t beat the first man was all the evidence Tommy T needed to hook him. Hopefully, that illness bug is all it is. If that is the case, maybe it is to England’s benefit that he came off, because it saves his legs, because if he’d have played the full 120, you never know what might have happened in terms of him breaking down. At this stage now, as with some of the noises around Saliba, it’s feeling like it’s a case of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’ with Rice, which I’ll be honest and tell you, I’m very nervous about for next season. I was born in England, I live in England, I (loosely) support England and want them to win the World Cup, obviously, but there was a little part of me watching last night who was calculating when the English lads would be back home and resting up for the new season, should they have gone out to the Norwegians.

Noni was Noni, and you have to say he hardly set the world alight with his overhit crosses and general absentness, but then again that was a classic Harry-Kane-In-Latter-Rounds-Of-International-Tournaments too, so it wasn’t just Madueke who was off colour. I also thought that Rice for Eze wasn’t the right move, a decision that I think Tuchel realised after he then brought James on at 71 minutes for Gordon, shifted Ebs wide left and then had James in the middle of the park. I get why he did it – Eze is a ‘moments’ player; so you wouldn’t be surprised if he cropped up on the edge of the box and leathered one in from 25 yards, but he struggled to influence the game. We’ve seen that ourselves last season. I feel like sometimes you can just tell if this “is going to be an Eze game” or not; the two NLDs, the Palace home game, the Newcastle home and away games last season – we was great in all of them. But there will be games that it just don’t seem to be ‘his’ game, and that felt like one last night.

It was more of an ‘intriguing’ game last night, rather than an exciting or interesting one. Norway was disciplined; they moved the ball well, and I thought Odegaard looked quite lively in the first half. He looked ok in the second, but despite Norway being more dominant and playing better than England in the second half, it didn’t feel like he influenced the match as much. He’s played well for Norway in this tournament so far, looking much like the old Odegaard, and weirdly if you’re looking at it from an Arsenal perspective, we probably could have done with him going further and the Arsenal boys resting up, but hey, he’ll now head home and let’s see if we can have him ready for the start of the new season.

And that’s pretty much it from the game. Oh, actually, one more thing – Thomas Tuchel. I kind of like the spikiness of his post match interviews. It shows the exacting demands he puts on the team, and it’s why he’s been a winner where he’s been. I think Neville said in his post-match commentary that he likes it too, so aside from the fact I’m agreeing with Gary Neville, I do agree that the mentality of continous improvement from the German is exactly what this England team need.

And that’s because they’re up against Argentina on wednesday night, which is a game that, if I’m honest, I don’t think England can consider themselves heavy favourites. Yeah, Argentina have the Messi factor, but I also look at that England back line and I remain to be convinced in the slightest. Very shaky indeed.

Right, got to head off, as I’m off to watch my niece in a play this afternoon.

Have a good one peeps.

Catch you all tomorrow.

I remember him scoring a headed goal at Euro 2024 against the Germans in the July of that summer. He would go on to sign for us about six weeks later, but by then we sort of half-knew that he was of interest to the club. What we didn’t know, is what a big game player he is.

I’ve already spoken about it just four days ago, after he got a late winner for the Spanish against the Portuguese, but last night he was at it again. And I think at this stage, people like me need to sack off statements like ‘underrated’, because he’s a bloody superstar. I bet back home in his native Spain, he’s already a hero after the Euro’s, so now he’s just cemented his greatness in their eyes.

What we need, is a full season of Mikel being fit and contributing, because unfortunately for him, he’s had two significant injuries in both season’s that he’s played for us. Because if he is, I think he’s getting A LOT of game time next season. And given how clutch he comes up when he plays for Spain or us, you wonder whether Mikel Arteta might be thinking that in reality, Merino could dislodge somebody like Gyokeres for the second striker role. I am, of course, suggesting that Kai Havertz is our main striker, but I do think it’s a tough call between Gyokeres and Merino. And I think Merino would edge it.

Think about it; last season, according to TransferMarkt, Merino played 11 times as a centre forward. He scored four goals, got three assists. That’s a ratio of 0.64 g+a per match. Gyokeres, by comparison, got 24 g+a in 54 games, which is a ratio of 0.44. If Merino played 54 games as a central striker, by those maths, we’re talking 35 goals and assists in total. He’s probably a 25 goal and 10 assist striker we’ve got, playing in central midfield.

You could counter-argument that and say “small sample size”, but we have two data points, because last season he also got a stint as a centre forward. He got nine goals and three assists in 12 games. that’s a 0.75 contribution per 90. Over two separate date periods. If you even put those together, you get 10 goals and siz assists in 23 games.

This guy is an output monster.

And when you look at the fact he’s done it for Spain at multiple competitions, and in qualifying too, suddenly you start to realise that this isn’t a hot streak like Joe Willock had when he first went to Newcastle on loan, this just is who Mikel Merino is.

Guys, I’m thinking he might even be our best striker next season, although I’m still probably edging towards Kai. But Mikel Merino is massively in the conversation now. We can’t deny that. His goal yesterday was classic strikers instinct. Even before the goal, he makes an intelligent run in between the Belgian centre halves. What’s that phrase that Neytiri says in Avatar?

I SEE YOU…

Mikel Merino, I SEE YOU…

Now I/we just need to see him fit.

The other good news, is because he has only just come back to fitness for this World Cup, and didn’t play much for the last few months of the season, he should be good to go come the beginning of our season. And given all the question marks about some of our players like Rice, Saka, Saliba, etc, all the good news stories about players like Merino being fit and ready to go, is a warming sight.

Tonight it’ll be England versus Norway, and the good news is that at least one Arsenal player is coming home. That means, come 13th July, you’d hope that player(s) is back with their family and getting a few weeks off. If it’s the England lads, I suspect they might get a bigger break, but hey, it will at least mean one week less at the competition.

Elsewhere there’s still the Bruno G stuff rumbling along, and I had a few chats with some Geordies on social media last night, who are leaning in to the ‘burned bridges’ vibes. I get it, Ornstein drops an Ornbomb and you pretty much take it as read that it’s fact. David doesn’t do spurious. He’s pretty black and white (pardon the pun) with his messaging, so it’s clear Bruno wants The Arsenal. Newcastle are briefing their journos that they are a bit puzzled because there hasn’t been an offer, but I suspect Arsenal will make one soon. The problem might be, that Newcastle ask for a crazy figure. If they go in at £100million as what they want, it wouldn’t surprise me to see Arsenal walk away. This isn’t the same as Rice; Rice was four years younger, a solid eight years at the top ahead of him, plus there was a bit of a bidding war. Like Isak last summer, this doesn’t seem to feel like much of a bidding war. That doesn’t mean to say other clubs won’t have a sniff, but I can’t see too many dropping a ton on Bruno Guimaraes at 28-going-on-29. It just doesn’t feel realistic. Even in this market.

I still also feel like this could be a big bumper payday for Bruno at the end of it though. And by staying at Newcastle. HandOfArsenal put an update out, and the final bullet on the update said that Bruno doesn’t want this being protracted; he wants it sorted before pre season and won’t do an Isak. So that means Newcastle can dig in, insist on an over-the-top price, because they know Bruno will go on pre season, he’ll just carry on, then stay at Newcastle if Arsenal don’t mean Newcastle’s demands.

I have no intel, I have no idea, but I’m just going on gut feel, having seen this sort of situation play out before. Remember Morgan Gibbs-White going to the Scum? If I’m right, I seem to recall there being talk of handing in a transfer request, before suddenly he signs a new deal and does that weird “Mr Marinakis” video after the new contract was announced. That could very well happen here. Obviously I hope it doesn’t because he’s a very talented player, but I just have that feeling, you know?

Anyway, we’ll see what shakes out, because if Bruno is true to what he apparently said about the pre season stuff, this should all be sorted out within the next two weeks.

Right – I’m off to buy some masonry paint. outdoor wall painting awaits me.

have a great Saturday.

Plenty of discussion on this one inline, on socials and in the GCs on WhatsApp. I think the discourse on this is predicated on his role. I still maintain I suspect he’ll be number three, and if that bears out, then I’m quite ‘meh’ on this one. I’m not angry, I’m not excited, it’s a body coming in and I’m sure he’ll be a good cheerleader for the team. He’s played 107 times in the Premier League, 265 career appearances, he has experience and he won’t be on mega money at Leeds United. I heard somebody say that it was a two-year deal, which very much therefore feels like a “come be with us for a couple of years, train with the team, pick up a wage, get Arsenal on your CV and you can move on after that”. I don’t think anybody should read anything else into it. We move on.

Who to, next, then?

Seems like this Greek lad Christos Tzolis is the one most likely to go through, with a £35million move being mooted across a few channels yesterday, and I have to say I don’t mind this deal. In a summer where Premier League clubs are looking to charge farcial amounts for their tlent, perhaps looking to mainland Europe to unearth the next gem isn’t a bad idea. I listened to the Arsenal opinion pod earlier this morning on my run and the lads were talking about how City picked up Doku from Rennes, he had a ‘bedding in’ season, then this season and last season he was making a real impact. They picked Doku up at 21-years-old from Rennes for £55million in 2023. This guy is a little older at 24, plays in obviously a weaker league in Belgium, but his numbers are pretty good. If you take the idea that Gyokeres’ target that I set was basically to just be half of the output machine that he was in Lisbon, and he achieved that, if Tzolis is the one replacing Trossard for £35million, having scored 22 goals and got 29 assists in 52 games. If he can translate that into even 10 goals and 10 assists for the first team at Arsenal next season, then that’s absolutely fine.

He’s apparently rapid, he’s got Champions League experience and two goals and an assist, so he’s been playing in the elite competition. He actually played against us in our 3-0 win in December. WhoScored put him down as a 6.5 out of 10 score on the day, which was second best in the team, on a day in which they really were second best, as Noni had arguably his best game for Arsenal that day, bagged two goals, and I wonder if this potential arrival really does signal the end of any chance that we see Noni on that left hand side.

Mind you, given Saka can’t seem to do 90-minutes for England at the moment, Noni is probably looking likely to be starting the season off on that right-hand side anyway, at this rate. That goes the same for a few Arsenal players for the start of this season, methinks. Saliba’s rumoured back problems won’t go away, so if you’re Christian Mosquera you’re looking at the start of the season as an opportunity to rack up some minutes. And whilst a doubt remains over Timber, and Ben White back in training (and having a lovely ol’ catch up with Meslier as the club showed on a video yesterday), he’s probably looking at the start of the season as an opportunity to get himself minutes too. I think a few of us thought that his Arsenal race was run, but I don’t see how Arsenal sanction any move for White whilst we still don’t have full knowledge on the Timber situation. It’s a bit of a worry, I have to say, because what was thought to be only a few weeks, has turned into him missing a World Cup. And even if he is fit for the start of pre-season training, if I was Arteta, there’s no way I’d sanction a White exit right now. He’s experienced, he knows the first team, the Premier League, he is looking fit and he can slot right back into that role and know exactly what Arteta wants. Keeping Ben White, whilst there are so many other questions around fitness of players for the start of the season, is feeling kind of important now.

It’s why the Bruno Guimaraes move now – if it happens (and I still remain sceptical, as I wonder whether it’s an agent play for a mega-deal from Newcastle) – makes sense. Rice is playing with pain and spends half the time with an ice pack strapped to his leg. If Bruno comes in, Rice can be eased in for the new season. Zubi has hardly played this World Cup, so you’d hope he’d be ready and raring to go, whilst Myles will also be in contention. So there are options there for Arteta for the start of the season, even if he decides to give the World Cup lads extra time off to recover. I saw talk that Rice, Saka and Saliba will basically not be seen until October. I suspect that’s a little hyperbolic, but if you give them three weeks off after the World Cup, that takes you to the second week of August. Then they have to pick up as pre-season training again, so they’ll be a month behind the other lads – that takes you to the middle of September, so that October timeline suddenly doesn’t look as unrealistic, right?

If we get the right cover and quality in, then I’m all up for it. We don’t want to see Rice and Saka in particular breaking down and then not being seen until 2027. The club will have all the data and medical records they need, however, so I personally am feeling quite relaxed. Again, as I’ve said once or twice already this summer, that’s the benefit you get when you are champions.

Right – catch you all tomorrow. Hey! I even managed to get through 1000 words without talking the World Cup – great stuff!

The Egyptians went nuclear afterwards, with their boss hinting at corruption by saying that the game was stacked for Argentina to win, and with a couple of those decisions, I do think they have a bit of a point. But I doubt it’s a conspiracy. The problem is, after the stuff with Balogun, Trump and the USMNT, you’re going to get that with this competition now. There’s an easy direction in which you can point your fingers because of FIFA’s actions, so this game and the situations that unfolded were always going to draw some attention.

For Zico’s disallowed goal, I think you probably do have to give it as a foul. There’s a shirt pull, and if the Argentinian player doesn’t have that, he probably wins the ball back. It’s slightly soft, but it is foul. But this is where it gets murky, because there was at least that level of foul that happened by Mac Allister just before Argentina scored the winner. What should probably have happened is that the goal was disallowed and a penalty was given to Egypt in stoppage time. What a dramatic end of a dramatic game that would have been!

Sadly not, however, and we find ourselves with our quarter finals now decided. It’ll be France against Morocco, England versus Norway, Spain against Belgium, and Argentina against Switzerland, after they zeroed each other out in what I’m assuming was a bit of a snooze-fest.

If I’m picking a route from here, I’d probably say the bookies’ choice for a pathway would be France, England, Spain, and Argentina in the semi-final, then I’d probably go with France and Argentina getting to the final to duke it out. France still feel like outright winners to me.

Champions, if you will. Which reminds me to remind you that the Premier League Champions – The Arsenal – are about six week’s away from kicking off the defence of their title at home to Coventry. And what shiny new players do we have to ready ourselves for that defence?

None. Nada. Zip. Zilch, Zero.

We can argue the toss over HIncapie if we want, but he was with us last season, so it isn’t a new face. And it seems like the only new face on the horizon right now is Illian Meslier, who is joining us on a free, which will apparently enable Tommy Setford to go out on loan. This is a weird one, because Meslier has tasted first-team football, and Premier League first-team football at that, so why would he want to come in as a potential number three? It’s so far removed from actual playing time, that it really only makes sense to give a guy the third-choice ‘keeper role the gig because he wants to train with the first team and be given a Champions League seat on the bench, owing to that weird rule where you have to have two back-up ‘keepers in each matchday squad.

He never made it on to the pitch for last season, and for a lot of it he wasn’t even in the match-day squad, so Leeds didn’t think him good enough to be a number two, so why should The Arsenal?

I suspect we don’t. I suspect he’s the ‘in case of emergency’ offer if a club comes in on deadline day and activates Kepa’s £5million release clause. I’d expect that to be fair; Kepa did make a high-profile error in the League Cup final last season, but in the season before that, he did well for Bournemouth, so I’d expect him to be able to find a club interested in his services this summer. And at just £5million for a guy with his experience, for the right club, it’s going to be a no-brainer.

So I guess my question is whether Arsenal has a backup contingency in place, in case of the Kepa situation, seeing his clause triggered. I would hope that part of the agreement would have some kind of failsafe; imagine a club like Wolves, or Ipswich, deciding on deadline day that they wanted to trigger the clause, leaving Arsenal without a recognised and experienced number two? We can’t have that happen. We simply shouldn’t. So I hope those failsafes are in place. I personally would be fine seeing Kepa as the backup next season. He’s going to get early rounds of the FA Cup if it’s against lesser opposition, a few League Cup games, maybe a Champions League dead rubber. I get it – if Raya gets injured, we have a challenge – but given how he’s generally been plenty fit for us so far, I don’t see that not continuing for next season.

All of this ‘keeper talk, and yet we still have less news about outfield players. There will be more and more heading home now that we’re in the quarter finals of the World Cup, and whilst some will take a little holiday now, my gut feeling is that we’ll start to get more and more movement now. We kind of need it. We’re playing Girona in three weeks, as the pre-season friendlies kick off. Let’s hope we have a shiny new outfield toy for then.

Catch you all tomorrow.

Or did it?

Because let’s face it, because of FIFA, because of Trump, because of the circus that followed the ‘bending’ of the rules for the USA, a lot of the post-match discourse was whether the US actually performed below par. You can see why. What’s that Mitchell and Webb sketch where both are German Naxi officers and they say “wait…are we…the bad guys?” – well, that’s probably how the USMNT felt yesterday. The media storm that had been whipped up because of Infantino and Trump’s actions meant that people like me were behind Belgium to win, not the US, which I think is a real shame. That USA team would have been underdogs anyway against the Belgians, I would have thought, but it flipped some of that narrative, and what ended up happening – by the sounds of it and reading the reports – was that it hampered the US players and empowered and emboldened the Belgium players.

I think I’ve said this before, but having a host nation go deep into a tournament is a good thing, because it keeps the vibes in the country still so pumped. I wonder if now we’ll see the US public revert back to more of their national sports and the World Cup takes a back seat, as US sports fans find comfort in defeat, but watching another one of the 12-million baseball games that seem to be on a season.

I said it yesterday, too, but I also feel sorry for Flo. He was the poster boy for this USMNT. He’d already bagged goals; his ex-Arsenal connection meant that all of us Gooners have a soft spot for him, and I wanted him to do well. But he found himself in the middle of a political storm that should never have existed.

It’s done now, though, and the Belgians advance to play Spain next, which I just can’t really see them getting past. They made it hard work for themselves against Portugal, until Luis de la Fuente realised that he had an international cheat code available to him:

Mikel Merino

Honestly, that man is a force of international football nature. Do you remember when Welbeck was with us? And every time he seemed to go away with the England team, he’d have a blinding game, and because super prolific? I was going to say the same about Merino this morning, but I’ve realised the error of my ways, because Merino IS a clutch player for us, just like he is for Spain. He doesn’t exactly have the same goal ratio for us as he does for his home nation, but if you think about the impact he makes for The Arsenal, you start to realise just what a player he is. The first goal that comes to mind is his equaliser against Newcastle last season, but I also have Liverpool at home from the season before in my mind. 11 goals in 48 appearances for Spain is a record that most strikers might be ok with, so the fact he gets goals from midfield is really something. All whilst being criminally underrated.

I think it’s probably because he doesn’t ‘stand out’ at anything in particular. He’s not the fastest; he’s a very good passer, but you don’t think of those eye-of-a-needle passes when you think about Merino. He’s not a dribbler that can beat a man. His key traits are things like duel-winning, or ground duel/tackles from midfield. So when I think about a player who is good at those attributes, my mind instantly goes to a more industrious style of footballer who is better suited to sit in front of a back four and break up play to redistribute. But Merino is not that guy. He’s kind of good at everything, but his intelligence in the final third shines through, and the run he made for the goal last night shows it. You can see why he works as a centre forward; that was a centre forward’s run and finish to win the game in stoppage time for Spain. After the end of the season and the injury he suffered, it was lovely to see our lad come out and bag a winner for his country. Fair play, lad.

Because he isn’t a speed merchant, or a winger, I could see him being very valuable to us well into his 30s too, I reckon. He is an expert at positioning himself in the right places in the final third, and I bet we see him coming up with more important goals for us next season as well. One of my new season’s resolutions needs to be to appreciate him more. He will deliver for us.

From an Arsenal transfer perspective…well…there really isn’t anything. Certainly, nothing we should be entertaining. When the BBC is reporting that we’re monitoring Wan Bissaka as an option should Ben White leave, you know it’s time to put down the gossip column reading and just stay away.

And so I shall. Got a couple of meetings in the City to attend to, so heading off there and I’ll be back tomorrow with more of the usual waffle. Catch up then.

To be fair, I missed a cracker, so I re-watched it this morning, and although it’s not the same jeopardy when you know the score, it was still an entertaining watch. Those England players really did everything to put their bodies on the line. Also, that first England goal had Arsenal DNA all over it:

1. Declan Rice’s lung-busting run
2. Bukayo Saka’s perfect cross

Superb stuff. Then, for Bellingham to score so soon afterwards, I bet all the people locked in the pubs at that time were having a whale of it. Me, I was fast asleep. It’ll be Norway in the next round, and that’ll be an interesting match too, I reckon. They’ve proven themselves to be a good side, they have our skipper skippering them, plus the best goalscorer in world football up top, so I think England are going to find it hard going.

That is, of course, unless they can get some kind of hotline to Gianni Infantino. Apparently, if you have his ear, you can just change the rules to suit your own agenda. I am, of course, talking about the decision to rescind Balogun’s red card, so he’s able to play against Belgium in the early hours of the morning tonight. Honestly, at this point, I think we all have to just give up and go home. The hydration breaks have been a joke; a fiscally-driven attempt to line the coffers of the broadcasters in the US and FIFA, too. Infantino has long been a horrendously corrupt individual, and he showed his contempt for everything and everyone football-related back in Qatar. Now he’s just doing it in plain sight. The absolute cajones of the man to essentially rewrite the rules because he’s chummying up to world leaders like Donald Trump. It’s beyond scandalous at this point – it’s morally bankrupt. Blatter was a disgrace, and we all have seen the documentaries about how corrupt FIFA was. They don’t even hide it anymore.

The Norwegian boss Solbakken had some good words to say, and I agree with him. Tuchel also made a good point in his post-match press conference about appealing for everything now. Infantino’s actions (he got a call from the White House about this decision) have effectively napalmed any level of sporting integrity of this competition. It’s not enough that they have expanded this tournament to too many teams. It’s not enough that they’ve changed it with these ‘hydration breaks’. It’s not enough that they have got their greedy mitts into the club-level side of football by creating that pathetic Club World Cup expanded tournament last summer. Now they are just rewriting the rules for those with the most power.

I just googled the definition of the word ‘corruption’:

Corruption is the abuse of entrusted power or authority for personal or private gain.

That is it. That is Infantino. It stinks. On a day in which we’ve watched arguably the best football match in this horrible tournament with the England v Mexico game, the competition itself feels like it’s a bit pointless, when rules can be re-writen favouring those Infantino is looking to curry favour with. I saw somebody put a message out on social media saying “Has FIFA told us what the score of the USA v Belgium game is yet?” and whilst that Gallow’s Humour is setting in online, there is no doubt a sad reality to how people are feeling.

I feel a bit sorry for Balogun in this. He just wants to play. He picked up a red, he said afterwards he has to accept it, and yet now he’s at the centre of some of the most murky football-related goings on that I personally think I’ve ever witnessed in the 43 years I’ve been on this planet watching football. Even if the decision was a bit of a dodgy one, the VAR also corroborated the decision of the referee. You cannot change the outcome after the dust has settled like this. It also makes a mockery of the referees. They will probably all be feeling undermined as a result of this action. What’s the point in having a person in the middle officiating when it can all just be overruled like this? It stinks.

I’m going to leave it there for today, I think. I really don’t think I want to talk much more about football for now.

Back tomorrow.

I’ve got no love for France, from an England perspective you probably want them out, but not to Paraguay. Football like that can’t be winning out.

In the other game we have ourselves our first hosts who are heading home and, with Morocco looking like they gave a proper schooling to Canada, you have to say they look like a good side. They’ll give France a proper match when the two teams meet next week.

The other final set of round of 16 games is tonight and, with a lot being made of the altitude stuff, I think we’re going to see Mexico progress against an England team who haven’t really impressed at all during this competition. There was one half against Croatia that looked alright, but that’s been about it. We talked about the World Cup and the altitude stuff yesterday morning on the Same Old Arsenal pod, amongst other things, and my assertion along with Amanda’s was that it will definitely have a material impact, coupled with England’s unimpressive form. Last night I had a dream that Stuart Pearce was sitting on a park bench round the corner from me, and I asked him if he thought the altitude would make a difference. He basically told me that England had ‘no chance’.

So there you go. Cheese dream Stuart Pearce has spoken, and so I’m debating whether it’s even worth watching the game to be honest with you.

In the Arsenal world, the big talking point is Leo Trossard potentially heading off to Turkey for £17million. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, for a guy who turns 32 in December and with one year left on his contract, that’s not a terrible fee. His profiling at the World Cup will inevitably help, because he’s been the Belgians best player, but that in itself has me pausing for reflection. He finished the season really strongly for Arsenal, he got the all important goal against West Ham, and the next day we were crowned champions as City drew with Bournemouth. Crossers has his place in history as a Premier League winner and he’ll have that forever in the history books.

His profile is going to be a tough one to replace too. Very good in small spaces, a guy who can turn a man on a sixpence, plus he’s come up with big goals against big rivals. He will definitely be missed for sure.

It’s a real conundrum because you can make the case either way.

This exit does at least confirm that the club are going hard for a replacement. I suspect it also probably means that Martinelli is the one to stay and duke it out. Given his age, his contract length, that probably makes sense to be fair, but his contribution in the Premier League was pitiful last season, so we 100% need to see more.

I wonder if – when this deal is confirmed (probably after the World Cup) – we’ll see clubs doubling down on their asking price for their players when Arsenal come knocking. It does feel as though we’re being given inflated numbers in this market, but when clubs also know we have a need, there’s suddenly an opportunity to try to get an extra couple of mil out of us because they know we have to pull the trigger on a wide player. Who that player is, beats me, because the only big link we’ve had is Morgan Rogers. He’s a good player, he has played on the left for Villa before, but to my mind that’s always been as an auxiliary option, rather than his best position. Maybe Andrea Berta has a left-of:field (pun intended) option that nobody has heard the details of yet?

I’d take that Kroupi lad, and not just because it appears Spurs are courting him, and it would be funny. No, I’d take him because he’s rapid, he’s good on the ball and he showed twice against us across two games, that he knows where the goal is. He even made a joke about winning us the league after his goal against City, so I suspect that he might have a soft spot for The Arsenal.

If Arsenal want to move, however, you do wonder if they’ll have to do it relatively quickly. There’s a few reports out there suggesting The Scum have already held some preliminary talks with the player and his representatives. Whether that’s true or not is kind of irrelevant; if Arsenal want a player, they showed last season with Eze that they can move quickly to get him. But I wonder if they’re looking at that fee and thinking they can get somebody like Barcola for similar, and given that Barcola has played at the highest level already, and is part of the current French World Cup squad, Arsenal might be waiting for the dominoes to fall with other players coming in to PSG first.

All a lot of “ifs” and “buts” though, and having drunk a shedload yesterday at a bbq, I don’t think I want my brain having to work through those kind of permutations on a Sunday morning. So I’ll put a pin in thinking about Arsenal speculation for today, and I’ll come back tomorrow with some more thoughts.

Catch you all then.

From an Arsenal perspective, the Women announced the signing of Georgia Stanway, which is a pretty big coup, and, given there have been a few high-profile exits this season already from the ladies’ team, this will be a boost to the squad.

On the men’s side, all is still quiet on the western front, although I think the natives (Arsenal fans) are starting to get restless on social media. It doesn’t help when you hear that the young lad from Leicester – Monga – is now going to Man City. By all accounts, he looks like a wonderkid, but Arsenal weren’t willing to go the £10million+ for him to sign, which I think is fair enough. Yes, he’s a very good talent (so I hear), yes, he plays in a position we are all looking at as needing a pathway and evolution, but the reality is that he’s 16 and there’s no way he’s impacting this Arsenal team for the immediate future.

And that’s what we have to be looking at now. We need to make proverbial hay while the sun is shining. We are the champions, we have a bunch of teams around us who all have uncertainty and new managers, and there is a lot of change and transformation happening. Chelsea is having to reshape their team under Alonso. Iraloa needs to work out how to turn Liverpool back into a title-challenging side. City doesn’t have Pep, Bernardo Silva, and there are questions over Rodri. Villa looks like they might need to sell before they buy. Bournemouth have a new manager and another bunch of players who have exited. Then, at the bottom, you have The Scum, who have picked up some decent signings that will probably help to lift them above mid-table. We are in a ‘now’ moment, and so we probably need players for ‘now’. It’s why the Guimaraes signing makes sense, although I suspect it is incredibly unlikely. With Tonali and Gordon both gone, their fans will have the pitchforks out if they let the Brazilian go, so I suspect that one will be dead in the water. But going back to the original point, Monga from Leicester isn’t going to be a player whom we need to bring in to strengthen. He’s for when this particular project reaches its natural conclusion.

I did see the Telegraph linking us to Ezri Konsa from Villa, but I think that feels like a Berta “casting the net wide” jobby to me. He’s just turned 28, he’s a right-sided centre back that can also play right back, and he’s got a deal that runs until 2028. Villa might be tempted to cash in on him, but given how much they’re asking for Rogers, they’d also probably want the earth and the moon for him, too. Plus, there’s the English premium to take into account. Add to that the fact that he’s not overtaking William Saliba for that position. We have Mosquera as the deputy to Saliba, who can also do that, and besides, isn’t that just who Ben White is for us? He’s converted to a right back who can play centre half, whereas Konsa is the other way around, so this one doesn’t really feel like a deal that has any real value in it from an Arsenal perspective.

And yet…we know Arteta loves a defensive signing…so I guess we can’t really rule it out.

Other than that, there’s not a lot really going on, unless you count Marcel Desailly’s words about Saliba moving to Real Madrid. To be fair, he did say that it would happen ‘one day’, but with the way Madrid are right now, and having just got Mourinho on board, I couldn’t think of any club worse to join. When you also factor in the point Desailly made about Gabriel only being the player he is because of Saliba, I guess I probably shouldn’t have even brought this conversation up! But, when it’s all quiet, we’ve got to talk about something together, right?

Ok, that’ll do for me for today. We’re gonna do a bit of a ‘check in’ pod tomorrow morning on the Same Old Arsenal pod at 9.30 am UK time, so if you fancy coming along and saying ‘hello’ – pop in here.

Firstly – and quickly, as I didn’t watch the US game last night – you’ve got to feel for Flo Balogun this morning. The man has been building up to this as his World Cup ever since he declared for the USMNT back when he was an Arsenal player, so to have it (probably) cut short is a bit of a kick in the balls. It’s a difficult one, that one, because in real time it doesn’t look like anything. Then it looks clumsy on the replays, but you can’t be raking your studs down an opponent’s legs and not expect there to be any repercussions. The US went through and now plays a Belgium team, who I wonder if they’ve used all their ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ cards in one go based on last night’s game. They were, frankly, a bit crap. But Senegal’s keeper had a mare for the second goal they conceded, and within five minutes the Belgian’s had been gifted an extra 30 minutes of this competition. Even then, they got a contentious pen to see them through. I have no skin in the game for either side, but it feels like karma and justice didn’t quite go the way you’d want with that Tielemans late penalty.

As for England, well, that wasn’t too impressive at all, I have to say. The Management asked me if England stood a chance of winning the whole thing, before a ball had been kicked last night, and my response was “probably not – France look too good”. My response has changed a little this morning; it’s not that France, Spain, or Brazil look so good that they will thwart England, it is that England looks so crap that they might thwart themselves. At first, for that first goal of the game for Congo, I thought that Spence was at fault. I’ve softened that stance a little bit, but the fact that Spence is playing right back at the World Cup is kind of bonkers. He’s just been part of a terrible Tottenham defence that nearly got relegated last season. He’s good going forward, but can’t defend for his life, and was part of an England back line that was all over the place.

The fact that Harry Kane bailed them out leaves a very bad taste in my mouth, but as I said to my brother after he’d hammered in the winning goal, maybe it is time for me to admit that he actually is a bit good. I’ve spent a very long time convincing myself that, for England at least, he is a master stat-padder with all the penalties he gets, but both of his goals last night were those of an elite marksman, so fair play there.

As for the Arsenal boys on display:

1. Rice – Thought he was decent enough when playing in midfield. Against an opponent like that, though, I would have liked to have seen either him OR Elliot Anderson, not really both on the pitch. Congo surprised a lot of people by not just sitting in a low block and showing no adventure. They were impressive going forward and could/should have buried the game with Wissa’s shot off the post. That’s a real sliding doors moment that I suspect he’ll be having a few nightmares about for some time to come yet. When Rice moved to right back, he actually looked good. Having Saka in front of him and Eze playing in the right eight position probably helped that, because the Arsenal connection was enabling those players to build on the relationship they already have, but whilst the press are now speculating whether that is the answer, I doubt Tuchel will see it as a viable long-term solution. It didn’t really get the best out of Rice on the couple of occasions he played there previously, so I’m not sure it should be considered now.
2. Madueke – A very Noni game, that one. In patches looked good; in patches, he just ran down blind alleys. He’s one of these guys that you think, “If he can just do x, he’ll be an elite superstar,” but, as I think Arsenal fans found out last season, I wonder if this is just him. His inconsistency drove Chelsea fans nuts; it had a little impact for us last season, and I suspect England fans who don’t watch enough of Arsenal will probably be feeling it too.
3. Saka – On for Noni, and you can just tell that a not-fully-fit Bukayo Saka is still better than Madueke, even if it is just 30 minutes that he can do. He just does the simple things so well, or he at least makes complicated things look simple, and although he won’t be credited with the assist for the first goal, it was his involvement to dig the ball out to Gordon that made a key impact yesterday. His jobsharing situation with Noni probably works well for both England and Arsenal, but it is a shame that Saka can’t play the full 90. I think we’d have seen a lot more joy on that right-hand side if he did.
4. Eze – Not a ton of things you can say. He came on, got a few touches on the ball, but other than a nice little interchange with the Arsenal boys on that right-hand side for Kane’s first goal, I can’t remember too much. I’d probably have to re-watch the part where he came on. Which I have very little intention of doing!

And that’s about it, really. England go through, but I can’t see them making it past Mexico at the Azteca stadium, where they play at altitude, and Mexio have lost like two games in something crazy like 50 years. But there you go.

So, to wrap up, a little on the transfer stuff, as Tonali is on the verge of joining the Scum for £100million. Decent player, would have been good at The Arsenal, but I just cannot fathom that price tag. It;s an overpayment of around £30million. I’ve seen a few Arsenal fans getting antsy because they’ve spent over £200million already, and there’s rumours they’re after Kroupi too, but I don’t think any Arsenal fan should be looking over the garden fence at that lot. If you are, then just remind yourself that this Scum team finished a point above relegation last season. They have bought some decent players, but we are talking about the need to be elite to challenge for the Champions League spots, and I just don’t see that from what they’ve purchased. And if they go after Kroupi, I suspect Arsenal will go and have a chat to Bournemouth as well, so we’ll just have to see how that tree shakes out. It’s early days yet.

Right, I’ll be offski. Have a good Thursday and I’ll be back tomorrow with some more musings.

It’s all a bit silly, really, but I guess that is the rule; all of the players will have been told it, and you could see when Hincapie walked off laughing, he kind of knew it was silly to be sent off for that. I guess the game was over by then, so it didn’t really matter, but he’ll miss some qualifying games next.

Which, actually, from an Arsenal perspective, is a good thing. It means that he’ll have a one-game ban for a competitive match, of which I’m not sure when it’ll be, but it means he, perhaps, a) won’t be called up by his national team, and b) he at least won’t have to travel. I know they usually do these matches in groups, so perhaps he’ll play one of two games, but it’s still less of a chance of him picking up a knock. Whoever the next Ecuador manager is (Sebastian Beccacece has already stepped down), let’s just hope he tells Pierro he’s allowed to stay at home during the mid-season next set of internationals.

Like Kai, he’ll now be able to go away on holiday, and you’d expect him to be back with The Arsenal mid-July, so that’s another one who should get a full pre-season, which is great! The same is true for Gyokeres as well, as he makes his way back after Sweden was knocked out by France quite comprehensively. Again, didn’t watch it, but it doesn’t sound like they put up much of a fight, and Big Vik will find himself heading to London Colney now after a bit of rest. Bradley Barcola was on the score sheet, which will only add another zero to his price if a club does indeed get encouragement from him.

As I said yesterday, it all feels a little too inflated right now, so perhaps Arsenal need to start looking elsewhere and away from the high-profile names. I get it – we all love a big name arrival, but the transfer team and Arteta know what they are doing, and I hope he and Berta have some ‘left-of-field’ moves in the market that will surprise some people.

One of them, which we were debating on one of my WhatsApp groups last night, could be Illan Meslier from Leeds. They’ve just signed a new goalie, plus he’s out of contract and leaves the club this summer. We’ve got Kepa, who has been a bit ok/meh this last season, but he has a £5million release clause, so if any club pays what we got for him, then he’s off. I suspect that might happen; he got plenty of game time at Bournemouth two seasons ago, left to be back up to Raya and collect a winners’ medal last month, so he’s probably hankering for a bit more game time. If that happens, then I personally don’t mind a free transfer backup keeper. He’ll basically never play other than the League Cup, and if we have any dead rubbers in the Champions League. The counterargument in the GC was that IF Raya got injured, it could mean we have a ‘keeper in between the sticks who let himself get robbed by Eddie Nketiah at the Emirates a few seasons back, and looked really rather silly. I’ve seen a couple of ricks in him, so he’d be one of those ‘keepers you’d want to barely ever see. But when you look at what Kepa did in the League Cup final, could it be much worse?

A freebie backup ‘keeper does, to my mind, mean that more money can be invested where we need it, which is in the wide left, midfield, probably right back, and centre forward positions. And because we’re not looking for floor-raisers, but ceiling raisers, the spend is going to be a bit more. So getting a perfectly capable ‘keeper on a free feels like sensible stuff to me.

Right, I think that’s pretty much it for today, as there’s England later on and that will involve some of the Arsenal boys, no doubt. I noticed that Saka seems to be getting some heat for his performances, which is interesting because seeing Gordon put in 2 out of 10 stinkers, then also having Rashford dispossessed every five minutes, yet it is Bukayo who is the one with the microscope, shows how Arsenal and their players get looked on and treated differently from everyone else. We knew that, anyway.

Right – catch you all tomorrow. Have a good’un.

Yesterday, we got Matt Law telling us that Villa view Rogers at £130million, whereas the French outlets are also signalling that they want similar monies to the Elliot Anderson fee, as the tax for being an English club starts to kick in following City’s move.

It’s a funny one, because part of me thinks in conspiracy theory, and thinks that the reason City have gone this early and this high on Anderson, is because they want to over-inflate the market and make it difficult for other clubs. It is not outside the realms of possibility; they approach legal situations like the CAS stuff a few years back, as well as the 115 charges situation, by throwing as much lawyer money to jam up the system as possible, so why not try to hike up the transfer market?

It feels a little like the summer of the Neymar transfer to PSG in 2017. That was around £200million then, and the knock-on effect was that everyone benchmarked transfers against that fee. Barca used that money – albeit a year later – to sign the overrated Philippe Coutinho for a staggering £108million – a price he was never worth in a million years. But that is what we are seeing unfold right now in the early stages of this transfer window. PSG are briefing that they want mega money for a guy who is not a regular in their side, won’t sign a new deal, plus has question marks over his ability and physicality for the Premier League. There’s no doubt he’s a talent, but is he a sure-fire hit? That’s what Declan Rice was, which is why we paid £105million for him. I don’t think you can say the same about Barcola.

Equally, Villa briefing to the press that they want £130million for Rogers is an example of another player who is very talented, but never worth that kind of cash. I do find it amusing, though; clubs say “he’s not for sale” one week, then the next week they’re briefing a price. Hang on a minute…wasn’t he ‘not for sale’ a second ago? So you’re now saying there IS a price?

It’s all just postering, as we all know, and it’s always just clubs trying to save face. The reality is that if Rogers wants Arsenal, if Arsenal wants Rogers, then a deal can be made to happen, and at a fee that suits both parties. Villa have the control on paper, but we all know that players can make life difficult if they need to, so we’ll just have to see how that shakes out. Personally, I’m still not convinced, because I just don’t think his style and where he plays is right for us. We need a better left-winger option than what we have right now (despite Gabi Martinelli being the hero and scoring last night for Brazil in injury time).

That goal that Martinelli got might help inflate his price a bit, but whether or not we have a buyer remains to be seen. I’ve always thought that one day he might head over to Spain and to Real madrid – just a hunch I had – but ith Vinicius Junior and Mbappe playing on that left-hand side of the attacking positions, that clear isn’t going to happen. But that doesn’t mean that there might not be a fair bit of interest from other clubs. Maybe Atleti fancy it? Or one of the German or Italian clubs? Martinelli could be a very good player in a team that has more space to counter attack in to, so maybe a Premier League side like Newcastle, or dare I say it, Aston Villa? I bet he’d be brilliant at Everton, for example. The question would then come down to fee and wages.

Elsewhere in the World Cup yesterday, both of my surrogate teams (due to family connections), The Netherlands and Germany, went out on penalties last night. I don’t get it, as somebody who was born in England, I’m used to penalties being the exit stage. But to happen to my second team Germany? They LITERALLY never go out on penalties! Honestly, with this, plus these ad breaks turning football into quarterly games, I’m about getting done with this bloody competition

The Germans were crap too. misplaced passes, overhit crosses, Muisiala losing his mind in extra time. The only good thing about it was Kai getting on the scoresheet, then getting to go home and prep himself for the new season. The German team will get back to Germany probably today/tomorrow, then it’ll probably be a ‘get your heads down for a bit, lads’ for a few days, then he probably gets two weeks off. If you think that by mid-July, he’s probably ready to get back into the swing of pre-season training with The Arsenal, that timing works quite well. And although Jurrien won’t be happy that his country went out, and that his brother missed a pen, maybe at the back of his mind he’ll be thinking “well, I wouldn’t have been in the tournament that long anyway!”

That’s about it for today I think. Ivory Coast against Norway could be an interesting one to watch later this evening, whilst the winner of Ecuador and Mexico will have some interest for England fans, because if we beat DR Congo (I keep calling them ‘Doctor Congo’ in my head every time I see it, like some kind of evil Bond villain), then that’s who the England team will be up against next.

Back tomorrow with some more World Cup / transfer window musings.

This morning, I had a look, and it seems Brazil versus Japan is the first game on, which actually kicks off at a very reasonable 6pm. That’s being played in Houston, Texas, which means it’s five hours behind and a 1pm kick off, so I will definitely whack that on tonight as I’m prepping dinner. Feels like it could be a fun one. Big Gabi, future Arsenal star Bruno Guimaraes ( ) and maybe even a sprinkling of Gabriel Martinelli too, perhaps? Of course, we’d have to deal with Cunha, Alisson and Casemiro, but at least there’s no Richarlison at this competition. That frigging chicken dance is too much for one man to take.

Japan impressed a lot of people when they came to England and tidied up a bit after themselves, but their football is pretty good too. I suspect they’re probably going home tonight, but you never know. An upset could be on the cards.

Actually, how often are there ‘upsets’ these days, when it comes to the finals? I just had a look at the 2022 finals to see, and low and behold, the Japanese dumped out the Germans in the group stages of the last competition. Belgium were also yanked from the competition at the expense of Croatia and Morocco, whilst in the knockouts, Croatia did over Brazil and Morocco overcame Portugal. So I guess there are upsets to be had. I just assumed that in the World Cup, a bit like the Champions League, the bookies are usually spot on.

At the moment, the bookies are saying France, Argentina, Spain, England, Brazil and Germany (in that order) are expected to go the distance, and when you look at the French side, you can see why. Big Bill Saliba at the back, Mbappe, Olise and Dembele up top…sheesh, that’s a good side. I don’t like Haaland one bit – I think he’s an incredibly arrogant twat – but his candour when he said “they’re probably gonna win the whole thing” was appreciated. Most of the players at this tournament know that they’re probably not making it to the latter stages.

As for England, I’d be surprised if they get to a semi-final again. I just don’t see it. They should have enough for Congo, and to be fair, also Mexico, despite the home advantage they will have. I don’t see them getting beyond what will probably be Brazil in the quarter finals, though.

All of this World Cup waffle, and I’m nearly 500-words in without a drop of Arsenal goodness. That’s probably because I’ve not seen much going on, to be honest with you. The Bruno G stuff has a slight angle to it, which is that his agent has been using Arsenal’s interest to secure a new £200k-per-week, which I think is fair enough. A few peeps are speculating that the Diomande stuff to PSG will set the chain-reaction for a Barcola exit, but I think it’s probably a little too soon to be going into the weeds of that one. Both players are still at the World Cup, although the Ivory Coast play Norway tomorrow, so if Odegaard et al progress, perhaps Diomande’s future gets sorted and he does head towards PSG. I remember Liverpool’s pursuit of Zubimendi, though, which ended up with him joining us a year later, so despite what’s being read right now, it does feel like that deal could have a few swings to it.

If it does swing that way, I expect Barcola to probably have a look at his situation, but what’s interesting is that Diomande spent most of his time last season as a right-winger fro Leipzig. He played 25 times on the right and 10 on the left. PSG have Doue on the right, who played 24 times on the right last season – so would those two be sharing positions? Both players can play on both sides, but you tend to find players have a side that they are preferred in, or that they perform better in. Just look at Martinelli. He’s better on the left, but he has had some games for us on the right wing. If a side wanted to buy Martinelli, but they already had the left-hand side sewn up, so they wanted him on the right, do you think that would be a good move for the player and the buying club? I don’t. So I wonder if the same needs to be said about the Diomande/Barcola potential exit. Just because Diomande could arrive, I don’t think it necessarily drives an exit for the Frenchman.

If it does mean Brcola wants to move on, the good news about Arsenal is that we have shown that we are willing to move if the player is right. Just look at the Eze situation; that shifted almost overnight from him joining the Scum to joining us, as a result of the Havertz injury. Five uears ago I’d have been concerned that if somebody like Barcola came on the market, a club like Liverpool could steal a march by just acting quickly. Now, I’d back our boys at Highbury House and London Colney to act if they needed to act. So let’s see how this one shakes out.

Right – that’ll do me for today. I’ll be back tomorrow with some more musings – be interesting to see if any Japanese players stand out tonight.

Catch you all tomorrow.

Tuchel said that as the opponents get better,  so will England, which I suspect will happen. But I still doubt they’ll be better than a Spain, Argentine, Brazil or France.

The next game they’ll have will be the Democratic Republic of Congo, for which England will of course be favourites, but I suspect what we’re also going to see is a game akin to the Ghana and Panama matches; England will dominate territory, possession, attempts and field tilt, but Congo will get one or two chances and if they take those it could be an uncomfortable evening for the Three Lions.

My family background also enables me to claim a stake in Germany and, loosely, the Netherlands. For the Germans it’s Paraguay in the next round, which I suspect they’ll overcome quite quickly, before probably playing France in the Round of 16. The Netherlands have a tricky time of it next, with a game against Morocco, but if they overcome them, I think they’ll get through one of Canada or South Africa quite easily.

As for the Arsenal news, I didn’t get the chance to pen any thoughts yesterday as we were busy for most of the day, but the big talking point is Bruno Guimaraes, as I’m sure you already know and have been thinking about like I have. At 28, going on 29, he’s at the upper end fo the age bracket, and I keep flip-flopping on how I feel about this. I think ultimately I’ve landed on this being a good deal, but probably based on the fee. You can’t be paying north of £80 million for a guy of his age. He’s a very good footballer, very talented, but that represents a hefty ol’ outlay for a player who will soon be knocking on the door of 30.

There is another way of looking at it though, and that’s when you think about the lifespan of this current ‘Project’. Arteta has been manager for six-and-a-half years now. He’s done a great stint, I hope we get a few more years and a few more trophies, but if he has the longevity of Pep at City, that’s ten hyears, which means he only has another three or four seasons before he probably starts to think about doing something else. If we have one more trophies in three years time with Arteta at the helm, I think it is almost inevitable. But he’ll have a bunch of his players who have grown up with him, all getting to the age in which renewal will be needed. Rice will be 30 in three years, Odegaard too. Saka will be 27, if we kept Martinelli he’d be 28, Big Gabi will be 31 and Saliba will be 28 as well. So for me that ‘feels’ like the duration of ‘The Process’ will reach it’s natural conclusion.

So, that being the case, Arteta and Berta might be thinking “do you know what? This guy is good for three seasons, so let’s have him”. It feels like it would very much be a signing to ‘top off’ this current project, rather than build for the next five to ten years. It would certainly make our midfield more imperious, and if you think that Rice has just spent some time for England with a big strapping on his calf, this Bruno potential signing is perhaps an acknowledgement from the manager and the club that we can’t keep flogging Dec with 4,000+ minutes each season. Sooner or later, he’s gonna break.

Do I think if you’re looking at this potential deal through the lens of ‘great player who adds to the ‘win now’ attempt at getting another Premier League or two, in addition to perhaps getting us over the line in the Champions League, you’re probably taking that.

A lot of this is conjecture though, because it is Newcastle we’re dealing with here, who will want to play hard ball despite note being able to offer Champions League – or any kind of European football, actually – to their players. But I doubt they’ll allow their team to be purged, and with Tonali probably off to The Scum, I don’t see the Mags letting us have their captain as well. They’ve lost Gordon too, so there’s no way they offload both of those midfielders.

But it’s a good start in terms of the vibes of the players we are after. Of course, we need to start seeing things go a little more concrete, but we can’t complain too much with the calibre of player we are after.

Right, that’ll do for today I think, as I’ve got a fair bit of gardening to be getting on with. have yourself a lovely Sunday, and I’ll catch you tomorrow – might be later in the day as I have a few more bits and bobs to be getting on with.

Ciao folks.

So we have both Kai and newly confirmed Arsenal signing Pierro Hincapie both happy. Which is nice. On Hincapie, the club announced the deal for around £ 34.5 million. I think when you think about his impact last season, that sort of money is a real bargain. The reality is probably that we paid a chunky loan fee to Leverkusen first, so both parties will be happy; Arsenal get to (through back channels) parade this as a bit of a steal, but Leverkusen still get a decent fee and what they wanted for a player who helped them to win the Bundesliga two seasons ago.

The other games in the World Cup really haven’t piqued my interest enough to talk about in any great depth. But then again, that’s the problem with this expanded format. There are just too many ‘meh’ games, and the number of people that I’ve spoken to who have just said they aren’t bothering to watch until it gets to the knockouts really does show you just what a farce this competition has been. I’d love to think that it will force FIFA and that odious cretin Infantino to change their ways, but he/they have probably made so much money by ad breaks and more teams and games, that he really doesn’t care.

So instead, let’s turn our attention back to the Premier League, in which the big news was Elliot Anderson to Man City for £130million. Wow. That is just a mental figure. I bet Newcastle are kicking themselves, because two years ago Forest paid them around £35million, and they’ve just made a £95million profit. That weirdo Maranakis will be delighted.

As for the player, that’s a big move, a huge move in fact. And for mega money. And I have mixed feelings about it. That sort of money is Balon d’Or-level money; you should be getting a player who is going to completely change their world. When Rice signed for us, people questioned the deal, said the pressure was a lot, but Rice was a year older than Anderson when he signed, had been established in the West Ham team for about five years, had played multiple positions, was an England regular, and I think everybody knew what a leader he was. Anderson has some similarities; he’s seldom injured (picked up a big back injury for Newcastle in 2023/24, which kept him out for many months, but that’s it), but I’m not sure whether he’s as good as that price tag suggests. Sky Sports are running some articles showing how he was first in the Premier League last season for ball recoveries, duels won, fouls won, etc, but in a Nottingham Forest side who sit deeper and has to do a lot more defending than Arsenal, those numbers are obviously going to favour him a little more.

Man City have gone big, they’re clearly after a Rodri replacement, and he’s the best one out there to be fair. But that price is still a little mental to me. What it will do as well, which is the frustrating thing, is mean that every other deal this summer is going to be compared against this one. It wouldn’t surprise me if Morgan Rogers’ supposed circa £80million transfer now becomes Villa saying they want over £100million for the guy. There are also rumours about Bruno Guimaraes from Newcastle, who don’t want to sell, so they’ll also want that sort of money too. One of the things that Arsenal have been good at in recent years is finding Premier League-proven talent and bringing them on in the team. Ben White, David Raya, Declan Rice, and Leandro Trossard – all have been bought from within the league and have done really well. But whilst Arsenal aren’t against forking out big cash on players if they think they are the right fit, I don’t think we will be ‘had’.

It’s why I wonder if this Anderson move might have a knock-on effect for getting in talent from overseas. There’s no doubt not going to be the same premium that is paid for a Premier League player, and an English-taxed one too, so I can understand why there is plenty of noise about Berta putting his fingers in lots of pies over land and sea right now.

The good news for us is that we are in the market from a position of strength. We have a deep squad, we have a quality squad, we are the champions. We aren’t in a position like some of the times over the years where we’ve felt like we had to get a move on with massive upgrades in the squad to compete; that’s what everyone else is saying about us. That’s comforting to know. It’s also comforting to have trust in the manager and the whole club to make the right choices. The title win has now meant they have officially earned it. I think most of us trusted them before, going back the last couple of summers, but now it has been rubber-stamped. And that’s nice.

Right, I’m done for now, so I’ll catch you tomorrow – let’s see what comes out of another day of heat in the UK.

Laters.

The truth is, I just haven’t had time in the last week or so, because I’ve been getting up early each morning to sample the delights of what the Canadian Rockies had to offer, before spending a bit of time in New York at the beginning of this week, before arriving back in Blighty yesterday mid-morning. So for me, normal service resumes from today, although admittedly I’m a little later than usual on my ramblings, on account of a bit of a lie-in related to jet lag.

So, what’s been going on since I last spoke to you, my friends?

Well, we all know the World Cup is now well underway, and I have to say it’s been rather handy having the games on during normal times for me over the last 12 days or so. matches basically on from around 1 pm each day and, because of the fact that this competition is happening over different time zones, you never quite know when there might be a kick off. But what I have noticed is that both Canada and New York have actually embraced this more than I thought. There’s advertising everywhere, there’s plenty of attention being paid by the people of the cities I’ve been in, but there’s also been plenty of interest in the press. I thought they’d be a bit ‘meh’ about it all, but no, it appears “soccer ball” is having a positive effect.

I do think the volume of games is a bit ludicrous, though. This competition should never have had an expanded format, and as for those intolerable ‘hydration breaks’, I mean, come on, let’s just admit what they are: An opportunity for US TV to cram in more adverts. I’m absolutely loving the booing of the breaks that is going on. Please do more of that, fans at the games, not that it’ll make much difference to that horrendous human being, Infantino.

I’ve, of course, focused on Arsenal-related involvement, most of which has happened with England, although I was in New York for the Ghana game and decided that a wine bar was a better option. I think I got that one right, because looking at the highlights, it was hardly what you’d describe as a ‘cracker’. I also managed to catch the Ecuador game against Curacao to see our boy Hincapie play, but it was hardly one for the ages. The Canada vs Qatar game was better, although mainly just to see goals, because up until that point, my short bursts of watching games (normally 20 minutes here or there whilst The Management has been getting changed) haven’t exactly borne much fruit for me.

I don’t think the quality of this World Cup has been great, and I think a lot of that can be put down to the fact that a lot of these players are knackered. Especially the ones that play in England and go deep in competitions, so seeing the likes of Rice in a heavy strapping is not surprising at all. Last season he played 55 matches and had just under 4,500 minutes of football in those legs. He got just over a week off and is now expected to do 90 minutes for England twice in a row. It’s not ideal. Tuchel appears to be somebody who is very mindful of the fitness of his players, with Saka being used sparingly so far, so my hope for the game at the weekend is that we don’t see Rice take to the field at all. England can’t afford to break him, and if it means he gets a rest and can recover from any knock, then it’s just as good for them as it is for us. Having done a very basic online search, it appears as though the next England game – if they beat Panama – would be on 1st July, with Sky Sports suggesting it could be Cape Verde. If that plays out and England win the group, then we’ll be talking about a solid 8 days between England’s game against Ghana and their round of 32 game. That’s a fair bit of time for recovery so let’s hope Tuchel is sensible with Rice and his rehab.

As for the other players, Kai seems to be doing alright, Brazil dented Scotland’s hopes of qualifying so Big Gabi and Martinelli progress, whilst I enjoyed seeing Martin Odegaard bang a big drum for Norway the other day. Leo was the best player on the pitch for Belgium when they drew with Iran, but that doesn’t really say a lot to be fair. I managed to catch a lot of that game and the Iranians will be kicking themselves for not making more of the man advantage that they did. Belgium are one of those weird teams; I look at the stars they have and think that they might go far, but I guess when you look at the age profile of those stars, it’s probably not going to be a team that goes too deep in this competition, I don’t think. They’ll probably go through in second place after they beat New Zealand, but I think that’s probably as far as they’ll get – just the gut feel I have.

And that’s about it for me for a bit of a re-introduction into the blogging stuff for today I think. I’ll get back into more Arsenal-centric stuff tomorrow as I get back into the swing of things, but for now, have a great day and if you’re in the UK – STAY HYDRATED PEOPLE!