Happy Monday all and if you’re in the South East of the UK you’ll be feeling the same way I’ve been feeling this weekend and this morning:

It’s about effing time the summer decided to show up, especially warmth-wise.

Of course for The Arsenal it feels like our summer, this summer of supposed team strengthening, hasn’t even started yet. We’ve started to get glimpses though, in the shape of a David Ornstein tweet, which is the Arsenal equivalent of a starters gun and TV commentator shouting “aaaaaaand they’re off!” At the horse racing.

Kieran Tierney is the subject of the interest so far and as Orny said although there was a rejection from Celtic for the player, there is a general acceptance that a deal can be agreed, so now it’s just about the fine details of negotiation.

Arsenal need a centre half desperately. They need a wide forward desperately. They also need a right back as Hector is injured for the start of the season.

So of course they go out and look to make a left back their first move!

It’d be a good signing though so clearly you won’t hear me complaining and perhaps the reason this is being focused on so much is that the powers that be at Arsenal know this deal can get done and probably done quickly. If this is a position they’ve identified and think that they can get it over the line to focus on other deals then I’m all for it. I’ve already spoken about my relative lack of knowledge on Tierney but he seems to fit all of the boxes and when you see that Emery placed such high importance on full backs providing width last season, this doesn’t really surprise me in the slightest.

Get it done Arsenal, then move on and let’s see if we can’t get our business sorted within the next three weeks or so. That would certainly please all of us fans that’s for sure.

I do also wonder if Arsenal will spend first and recoup after. This supposed budget of £40million clearly doesn’t include sales and for some reason I have a feeling Arsenal will spend around the £70million+ mark first, then look to get in circa £30million from other sales. I’d hope that would be some fees for players like Elneny, Jenkinson, Mustafi, but not the likes of Chambers, Kolasinac and Aubameyang. And certainly not Lucas Torreira who, after one season and a comment in the press, is supposedly peaked the interest of Ivan Gazidis’ AC Milan.

And in true Gazidis’ style the rumoured bid of a two-year loan deal with £38million compulsory purchase is beyond derisory. We paid £25million for him last summer. He’s had a good year. We clearly have him on a long contract and don’t want to sell, so the idea that we’d let him go out on loan for that sort of money makes you wonder just what planet Gazidis is on.

Heck, every player has his price, but given what Torreira could grow in to at Arsenal I’d be telling Milan to come back to us when they’re closer to £80million. That’s what every other club seems to do – including to us – so it’s time we started negotiating properly.

Milan won’t come back though if Arsenal did that, mainly because they’re skint, so this kind of move needs to die on its arse before it’s even started. I just hope that Torreira’s camp aren’t the one pushing for it. If they are and if Milan have been given the eyes from Torreira’s “people” then we could have a problem on our hands.

I think we’ll be ok though. Torreira did say he wasn’t the biggest fan of the weather and he admitted he missed Italy, but he also said he’s looking forward to next year and with his first under his belt already we should expect big things from our diminutive Uruguayan in the new season. I for one can’t wait to see what he can do next year.

That’s that for another day from me. I’ll be back tomorrow to pour over the latest Tierney rejection of £25million because they want a bazillion dollars in unmarked, non-sequential, bills.

Laters.