Morning all and welcome to another lockdown Monday. There’s one thing I do kind of like about the working from home part of lockdown instead of being on a tube hurtling towards the city, which is that I can wear pretty much what I like, so my suits haven’t seen the light of day for a few months and today i’m rocking the away kit from this season during the week. I don’t usually bust out the kits for any reason other than to go to The Arsenal but this home and away kit have had so little use this season that I’ve decided I need to get my money’s worth.

Which is probably what Arsenal are trying to do with David Luiz by the possibility of him signing on again for another season because, as Amy Lawrence broke down in The Athletic, we dropped £24million just for him to play for us this season and it has hardly been a stellar season for the Brazilian, let alone the Arsenal team, has it?

Remember when we used to be the self-funding, financially prudent, football club? That wasn’t long ago but it appears that Raul and his plan of agents and ‘contacts’ involves us haemorrhaging cash to those blood suckers of the game on a frequent basis. To spend £24million on Luiz and then let him disappear off so that Kia Joorabchian can net himself some more ‘fees’ would be mad, but it is the agent himself who is saying Luiz is more likely to stay at Arsenal for next season too. I penned most of my thoughts on Luiz earlier in the week and from a footballing sense it would be silly to let him go, especially now that Arteta seems to be getting a better tune from him, but those wages are quite large and if Kia wants yet more cash from the club just so he can point out where on the paper David needs to sign, you could see why Arsenal have to think twice. But I’m no expert. £24million for a season is farcical, but if there’s no fee (which there wouldn’t be), if the agent already took their cut at the beginning of the deal (which I hope would be the case), then hopefully we’re just looking at the wages and if it’s on that basis then you could probably justify it for another season.

But Joorabchian has said that Arsenal had an ‘option’ to extend the contract and that it is since expired, so that to me sounds like worrying narrative coming from the agent, because it sounds to me like he’s seeing pound signs at the prospect of getting involved again. It’s like he hasn’t had enough of the Arsenal cake, despite already having gone back for a load more servings. He’ll end up being the Arsenal equivalent of Bruce Bogtrotter at this rate. Has a similar hairstyle.

I’d love to think the option just means a contract on the same wages and that Arsenal are going to ask Luiz to reduce his a little given that we’ve hardly had value for money this season, but I’d be stunned if that was the case, because the player still has a global reputation and there would be clubs happy to have a punt knowing that there’s no fee involved from Arsenal.

We do need to lighten the load in terms of those defensive numbers and I suspect a lot rides on interest from Sokratis and Mustafi. If both of those are offloaded and then maybe Mavropanos is moved on, then you’re talking about Luiz, Holding, Chambers and Saliba who are the defensive four. Perhaps five centre halves is what we need given Chambers’ injury, but he’s back on the pitch running now so I guess that means that he should be ready and raring to go when the start of next season comes around.

There isn’t really a lot else going on at the moment though. Some more pictures popped up at the weekend of the Arsenal squad back in training and prepping for our first ‘friendly’ game away to City on 17th June, but that didn’t really tell us anything we don’t already know, and apparently in the fourth round of testing of players nobody tested positive for the virus so it sounds like everything is proceeding as planned.

So it really is a short one from me today I’m afraid. Off to do some work and hopefully get to finish a little earlier later today to take advantage of what’s left of the sun.

Catch you wonderful human beings later.