Arsène Wenger must be a man with a sense of humour. It’s the only real reason I can think of as to why he thinks this summer has been a good one so far, following an interview in some random Swedish media outlet.

He’s been quoted as saying that he is very pleased with our market so far and whilst from a signings perspective you can say that they two players appear to be settling in quite well, it does come across as if he’s happy and pretty content to let these last few days of the window play out without any signings.

If that is the case Arsène may say that he’s happy, but whether that’s true or not I’m not sure, because he’ll be one of the few who actually are happy with what’s happened. Let’s not forget that this summer was supposed to be a summer of answers. It’s not just about signing players, but about getting answers on existing players, yet here we are a couple of weeks in to the new season and:

  • A host of players who have been frozen out of the club are yet to be moved on
  • Some key positions – like midfield – have yet to be addressed
  • Some key contracts – like Özil, Alexis and The Ox – have yet to be sorted out

We were promised changed and yet we have been delivered the same. This has not been a good summer at all. Even if we’d have moved people on and tied down a couple of players to new deals without signing any more players on top of what we already have, Arsène could argue that it’s been somewhat of a successful summer, but as it stands he’s fooling nobody.

And now the noises from multiple media sources – which usually mean there’s no smoke without fire – are saying that the Ox won’t sign a new deal, which if true, surely means that a swift sale has to be made. Wenger can probably get away with holding on to Alexis and losing on a free, but keeping ansquad player of other clubs are offering big cash, is just a pointless exercise when you can take the money and reinvest the cash. So I hope that if that’s true, Arsenal move quickly – lightning quickly – to move the player on. 

But I’m not holding out much hope. Simply because I’ve been on this earth 34 summers and the last six or seven of them have seen Arsenal to the same sh*t every year and just fall short of a proper title-winning looking team. So I expect more of the same come this time next week. I expect Arsenal to do the bare minimum to strengthen to try to just about scrape the Champions League. Because that’s all that Arsène is really looking at; getting back in to a competition we have no chance of winning. Whoop-de-f*cking-doo. 

It’s the only explanation I have when I see other teams saying “eff this, we’re gonna try to have a proper go by strengthening our team”, by improving their numbers, yet we stand still. I don’t want Arsenal to spend beyond its means, just use the money we do have to get stronger. Everyone in the Premier League now has cash, yet we’re still holding on to our reserves, for what reason I have no idea.

There aren’t even little rumours here or there either at the moment. No snippets of info leaking out and much like I said with the Ox situation, usually this is a case of no smoke without fire. Well, when it comes to incomings at the moment there isn’t even a puff right now. 

We have a week. Things can still happen. But I’m beginning to lose any remaining belief I had that things would happen. 

Catch you all tomorrow.