Happy Saturday Gooners. It’s a saturday in which we know our fate with regards to the Europa League, so it’s trips to Red Star Belgrade and BATE Borisov, as well as Cologne. The final of those teams is one that I myself and particularly excited about, as I have family in Cologne and so will most certainly be looking to make the trip there.

It’s a group that we should 100% be playing the development team in and given that one of the games in the competition is just before the North London Derby, I just hope Wenger doesn’t lose his mind and play any first teamers in the competition so we can focus on trying to somehow beat the Totts.

Speaking of losing ones mind, I wonder if the rumours of the Ox rejecting a mega deal are driving the manager to distraction, because if true it hardly looks great that less than 24 hours after he talked about building a team around the youngster. In fact it is a pretty clear indication of a two fingers being stuck up to the club if the rumours are true and I suspect Wenger will feel personally quite aggrieved at losing The Ox. But this is all of his and the clubs making, because if they’d have been making these overtures this time last year they’d probably have already tied him down to a long term contract.

Instead we’ve got another car crash from a football club that from an administrative side (and a football one of you look at last weekend’s performance) are an absolute M4 pile up. 

We seem to be incoherent in our approach to transfers, contract negotiations and these days even the squad selection from the manager looks random and sporadic. It is, quite frankly, a mess.

Which leads me in to the Alexis Sanchez debacle, in which Arsène is now saying that if he does in fact get sold, it will be because the board and Kroenke have got an offer too good to turn down. So let’s get this straight: all summer we’ve had him being steadfast in his resolution to keep Alexis. We’ve had him talking about how he is the one with the final decision, that sometimes you have to ignore the financial side of things, that we will keep him until next summer and risk losing him on a free. That’s been his line for the best part of three months. But now he’s a player who has a price if the board say so?

It’s a flip-flop of epic proportions if Alexis goes and says to me once again that we don’t know what we’re doing between manager and board and particularly Gazidis. 

The tail isn’t wagging the dog. The dog is just mental. Probably has rabies or something. Yet it’s a dog that we all love too much and it’s heartbreaking to see it looking so all over the place, especially as we’ve always seemed to be a club that seems to know exactly where it’s going and what it wants to achieve, even when we went through our self imposed austerity.

So here we are, two games in to the season, still unsure of the squad and should it remain as it is right now, we’ll have no chance whatsoever of getting close to the league. It’s depressingly familiar. 

So familiar that I think I’ll just put an abrupt end to today’s blog, because I’ve got better things to do than mess around thinking about this mess of a club; I’m off to play some golf. 

Laters peeps!