Arsène has apparently jetted off to France to ‘consider his future’, if you believe the noises by the gutter press, from yesterday. Apparently he wants to see if fans will tolerate another two years, so is assessing the gauge of sentiment, I read somewhere. I do love a bit of media revisionism you know. When he heads over to France to do commentary on the French national team every other occasion, nobody bats an eyelid, but such is the focus of attention right now that he literally cannot fart without somebody assessing whether it was a disgruntled piece of flatulence that signals his exit, or merely a silent and stealth-like breaking, to symbolise the quiet signing of a new deal that has already happened. It’s all a little bit too Australian soap opera for me I’m afraid.

But hey, if that’s what the media, club and manager want (it’s hard to assume otherwise given the lack of announcement) then there really is little we can do about it, other than wait for that moment of clarity.

But in the meantime, Arsenal are putting the season ticket PR in to full swing, ahead of the latest set of letters to land on welcome mate like mine at home. Apparently Arsène is planning a rebuilding job and will be given the funds to do so. I’m not going to link to the articles I’ve seen because I don’t believe that they deserve the clicks that the journos and their masters are so hungry to get from you. Put simply, there is talk of players like Jack Butland, Alexandre Lacazette, Kylian Mbappe, Marco Reus and Moussa Dembele from Celtic. Not only is it the same narrative we’ve heard season after season but it’s also, in some respects, the same bloody names as well! 

We’re all so sick of the Groundhog Day rubbish on the pitch, but just to complete this car crash of a season, the club are determined to release the same drivel to the press around transfer war chests too.

It is embarrassing and farcical and my only hope is that people treat the rumours with the same level of disdain as I am doing. It’s an insult to our intelligence to think that we’ll all suddenly stop and say “hey, maybe this time, they’re actually going to go hard in the summer”. Even some of the bigger Arsenal Twitter accounts have been burned by the club playing them. Sorry, Arsène playing them, I mean. After all, when it comes to recruitment on the playing side, he is the Grand High Dictator.

What I’d rather see is nothing. Absolutely nothing. Silence. Media lockdown. Not articles on the official site talking about ‘How the dressing room works’. You can insert your own jokes about it really not working right now. I don’t want to see rumours. I don’t want to see stories of Hector talking up Arsène either because they are just being used to spin in to an ‘Arsène goes, I go’ narrative that is designed purely to wind up the fans.

The only piece of news I’d be able to stomach right now is something about new contracts being signed by key players. But that won’t happen. It won’t happen because Alexis and Özil are as good as gone. They are just running down the next few months, before approaching the club in the hope that they can get the heck out of the club a year earlier than their contract. And if the club have any sense, they’ll move them on and try to reinvest. But with Arsène in charge what you do know will happen is that he’ll not go for the obvious option. He’ll go for a lesser known ‘project player’, a player who he can try to mould in to his style, that decaying approach that has seen this current Arsenal team once again fall short. That’s what’ll happen and that’s what we’ll have to deal with for another two years before hopefully, we can get some freedom.

It’s not just Interlulls that feel so long and tedious these days, it’s everything to do with this season and specifically, with Arsenal itself.

Laters.