So we finally have confirmation that a new technical director has joined the club and in Edu, we have a former invincible squad member who joins us to try to get us moving in the right direction.

Raul Sanllehi has called it the ‘final jigsaw’ piece that the clubs senior back room staff need to make and whilst I still remain yet to be convinced that we are going in the right direction, this appointment at least looks like a good guy who has an affinity with the club but more importantly, also appears to have earned his stars in Brazil and is ready for a European challenge like us.

Quite how that challenge will pan out given our summer so far is anyones guess. I am currently in the process of starting a new job when I get back from my holidays in Portugal. I’ve been talking a lot to the new business I’m going to be working with but won’t be able to get my feet under the table until next Monday. From there I need to understand processes, how the business is run, the culture, etc, before I will start to feel like I’m making more of an impact. All of this is just to say that it is going to take me time to make my mark and I think the same has to be said of Edu. We may well have found us the Arsenal Monchi, but we won’t know that for at least another year and so much of what happens this summer still falls on Raul, Unai and the rest of the teams’ shoulders. And whilst the Saliba stuff appears to be nearing conclusion, let’s not pretend it’s looked like we have some kind of master plan this summer.

Nope, instead, much like many summers before it, we look like we aren’t really planning too far ahead, we haven’t been too successful in our targets that we should have already identified in March this year and as a result we have a team going on a US tour that is weaker than the one that finished the season last season. Edu will most likely be playing an observation game this summer and season but more than anything else he’ll have a good chance to see what Stan is all about as apparently all of the bigwigs at Arsenal are meeting together for this summer tour.

And let’s not be fooled about talk of Stran suddenly opening up his purse strings and riding in like a white knight to up our summer budget from £40m million to £120million. Let’s not forget that this is a guy who has had significant ownership of a decline Arsenal team for ten years and we haven’t seen him put a bean of his own money in. What makes us think he’s going to start dipping in now? And I tell you what, if he does – by some unlikely miracle – decide to drop a few extra pennies in to the transfer pot, then you can bet your aunt sally that he’ll want that back. So you can certainly see him take it out of the club in the near future somehow. But we’ll never know that because it won’t be disclosed. IF some more cash is dropped in to the club this summer then what we’ll get is PR spin from KSE, with a view to snaffling it all back – probably over a number of years. Remember the ‘management advisory services’ payment of £3m million that the Kroenke’s took out? Well let’s just imagine that they suddenly decide that it needs an extra zero on the end each season. You can bet they’ll do that. They are not ‘speculate to accumulate’ers, they are money-orientated, parasitic owners who will ulterior motives to take money out of the club somewhere else. You can be sure of that.

So don’t be fooled of this talk of a £120million war chest. It isn’t there to do anything other than make the Kroenke’s more money and it wouldn’t surprise me if it actually ends up being a loan with interest that is saddled on to the club.

Sorry, went off on a bit of a rant there but much like Ivan i’ve never felt anything other than animosity towards the Kroenke’s and i don’t believe there is much they can do to change that, not in the short term. The leopard needs to seriously change its spots and do so over a prolonged period of time before you can convince me that the Kroenke’s are anything other than leeches, leveraging us as one of their prime assets for other means because, frankly, they couldn’t give a monkeys about ‘soccer’.

Right, I think i’ll leave it there for another day. Have a good one folks.