Excuse me whilst I take a breath to sarcastically laugh at the UEFA statement in response to Arsenal’s statement about the cup final in a week and a half’s time.

Hahahahahaha…..hahahaha….haha…ha….sigh…

What an absolute joke that organisation are. “For UEFA, fans are a priority”.

No, they’re really not. Perhaps that should have read slightly different:

“For UEFA, pricing out fans and lining the pockets of our own executives, is a priority”.

The result will no doubt be a cup final that will probably feel like a pre season friendly. And you’d like to think that UEFA will learn, but they won’t, and this will keep happening because fans are a cash cow that keeps on coming.

Anyway, let’s focus on more positive stuff, which is the Shkodran Mustafi May be on his way to Milan, which would be the least that Ivan can do given the mess he left us in. So I’m hoping for a £35million bid and suddenly our meagre transfer budget has no doubled in size. Except of course if Stan wants to pocket a percentage of the fee as a ‘management cost’ which at this stage, would probably surprise nobody.

Mustafi has been ok in patches but like Xhaka, when he brain farts, he really brain farts. Mistakes can happen in games – we’re all human after all – but his always seem to be more calamitous than others and because of that I think people dig him out more than others. But I think his time at the club is probably done and that Crystal Palace game feels like it was a real watershed moment in fan sentiment. He’s a sellable asset who is of an age that will command a decent fee and so if Milan are serious then we simply have to let him go. Then we have to find an upgrade for less.

Whether Raul – and potentially Edu if you believe all the noises – can find somebody then that remains to be seen, but this Walter Kannemann rumour seems to be gathering pace so I suspect there might be something in it. He’ll be a cheaper signing that Mustafi and if we can get half decent money for the German then we need to cash in because there are other areas of the pitch where we’ll need to strengthen this summer.

I know nothing of him but the fact that he’s in the Argentinian national team should hopefully mean that he’s got something about him. At this stage the Mustafi project feels a little dead so we need to try something new and I’d be game for it.

The other outgoing that has been mentioned is Lacazette and after Griezmann’s public acknowledgement that he’s offski from Atletico this summer, it doesn’t surprise me that they are interested in Lacazette. But if they’re making mega money from the sale to Barcelona for Griezmann, surely the only way Arsenal part company is with a fat bid too? North of £70million would, I reckon, tempt Arsenal. But replacing Lacazette’s goal and overall play would mean a structural change in our team. Perhaps that is needed for us to look less unbalanced next season. We’ve said all along that we have no width and that causes us problems with with reliance on the overlapping wing backs, so if we were to get a couple of fast and direct wingers, could that see us shift our emphasis in the final third a little bit?

Possibly. But I think it would be a sad state of affairs to see Lacazette go. As a football fan you want to keep your best players and add to the squad. Selling Lacazette to balance the books and fund other players doesn’t feel very progressive as a club I don’t think.

But I guess that’s where we are right now. We are very far away from the top of the league, we have a team with some very bloated wages for some players who haven’t performed, whilst our owner couldn’t give a rats arse cheek about moving us in a positive direction. We are very much a ‘make do and mend’ club at the moment and I suspect that will be the case for the foreseeable future.

Still, there’s at least a European Cup final on the horizon, so that’s something to look forward to.

Catch you all tomorrow for some more random musings.