There’s little over 36 hours from the time of me writing this until the slamming shut of the summer transfer window and yesterday felt like there was more happening on a single day since the ‘The Great Arsenal Trolley Dash’ of 2011. That was sparked by a failure of epic proportions, but yesterday’s movements were more outward than inward, and what has unfolded is symptomatic of the mess that this summer and this club are in.

Alexis asked permission to leave Chile’s training ground, confirmed in Chile, where City promptly made a £50million bid. It was rumoured that Sterling would be involved in the deal but when City told Arsenal that they would have to give them Alexis and cough up cash, clearly the milk turned sour.

I think Raheem Sterling is a decent player. I think he would certainly have a place at Arsenal. But why would he want to join the absolute shambles that we are right now? And even if he did, who believes that he is the right sort of mentality to help to be part of the solution to all of this mess that the manager and club have gotten us in to. Talk of halftime fights, players telling other players they’re not fit to be captain, but most culpable of all is a coaching staff who are too weak to sort things out. 

What on earth do you think will become of someone like Sterling if we signed hi, with his well documented character flaws? I can assure you he won’t be the sort of player who will be looking to band together this rag-tag-bunch of overpaid and underperforming misfits.

It gets more comical though, because we also hear this morning that Chelski bid for Ox, it was accepted, the player has then turned his nose up at the deal because he wants to go and play in Liverpool. 

A question: why is it that it feels like it’s only Arsenal who have players who are in bidding wars involving just one club? Why does this constantly happen? Cesc, RvP, Alexis, Ox. It seems like we’re the only club stupid enough not to tour players around to all and sundry to drum up some interest?

Unless of course our players are viewed by the rest of the world as such damaged goods that they are doing us a favour by taking them off our hands. After all they probably need a complete tactical reprogramming job if they’ve been managed by Wenger for too long.

So we now find ourselves in a position where we have Liverpool knowing they’re the only bidders in a race for a player they can get for free next summer anyway. They will lowball us all day and if Arsenal get anywhere near the £40million they’re asking for I’d be stunned.

What’s a bit odd though is that he wants to go there to play central midfield. But who’s he going to displace? Can? Henderson? Even if he did, they’ve just announced that they’re signing Keita next summer, so that would be even more of a challenge for a central midfield spot. So quite why Ox wants to go there is a bit beyond me. 

With such a short period of time to sort things out though, things are starting to get desperate, and Arsenal are in the weakest position in terms of holding a strong hand that you can imagine. We haven’t done what basically every other big football club does and bring in players before we sell. We’ve done what we always do, which is ponce around talking to the odd club but never really firm up anything. 

If Wenger wanted Lemar he should have put the money down at the beginning of the summer. If he wanted Seri he should have done the same. If he wanted to ship out Mustafi then that should have happened earlier in the summer instead of playing him in one game, keeping him in the squad the whole summer and then changing his mind about him at the end of the window, suddenly looking for a loan deal to offload. It is rank amateurism from one of the top ten biggest clubs – in terms of earnings – in the world and it shows how shocking our planning is. 

There is no strategy at Arsenal. We are a multi-million pound game of chance. We’re like a very expensive game of snap. Chuck all the cards in the air, shuffle them around a bit, then see if we get lucky. 

I would say it’s painful to watch, but it’s become so farcical I’m starting to develop some sort of dark humour amusement to all of this. Players played out of position, big money signings not used, fighting amongst the team, a manager who appears to not think there’s anything wrong, it’s all a bit ludicrous. 

Let’s not forget that Arsène has talked about ending the transfer window before the season starts, but the funniest thing of all is that he’s become more of a Harry Redknapp at doing business at the end of the window, than the man himself! If he wanted to he could just do his stuff and get it sorted before the first game, but instead this stuff happens every season at the same time! Somebody get the man a car window to stick his head out of. C’mon, let’s go the whole hog on this, we all want to see it!

Honestly folks, just see our club as the joke it is, so that you can just start to find this all a little too funny. 

Until the football starts up again. Then it’ll get rather grim.

Catch you tomorrow.