Morning folks, hope you’re all feeling fine and dandy. How is it Thursday already? Madness. Not as mad as I was feeling yesterday, or more accurately, incredibly hungover after an all-day offsite meeting with some people in my business and then an all night drinking session afterwards. Oh how I have missed those times, but soon they will come, so that’s good.

What is also good is that the transfer window is now officially open, having swung its doors wide yesterday for all of the floods of players, teams and agents to walk through and feed on the nonsense that happens every summer. Rumours and counter rumours now in full swing and so will the rage no doubt as it becomes clear that:

  • Buendia will join Villa and Arsenal fans will get mad again
  • Xhaka will join Roma and (some) Arsenal fans will get mad again
  • Guendouzi will end up at Marseille for peanuts and some Arsenal fans will get mad again
  • Willian will come back from his holiday in the US and post pictures of himself in London and because he hasn’t stayed out in the States, Arsenal fans will of courose, get mad again.

Hey, I’m as guilty as the next Gooner. I read stuff on the internet and take it as fact. I have emotional moments in which I think to myself “I bet they don’t sign anyone and hardly sell anyone and we end up in a relegation dogfight and Saka puts in a transfer request to leave because he thinks we’re sh*t and next season we’ll be playing Barnsley with Willian at False Nine”. It’s irrational, it probably won’t be happening, but that doesn’t mean that seed of doubt won’t be planted in my mind and then balloon in to a completely irrational scenario that for a few split seconds become fact.

The important thing to do is to try to quickly get back to the reality of life and our reality is this:

  • We have some very good young players with whom we should all be expecting upside in the 2021/22 season
  • We have less games and more rest time in between matches which means those players should be better prepared than ever
  • We will have matches in which the better teams might play us having travelled across Europe, again meaning we should be better prepared than them for matches
  • We will have fans back in the stadium – I am therefore hoping that the shocking  home form from last season does not remain.

The main news that came out from yesterday though was the second Daniel Ek bid. I find this interesting because it seems to have massively divided fans. I think almost all fans want Stan Kroenke out of our club and the news that another potential buyer making a second bid is a welcome one. But where people become divided is that this second potential owner isn’t a man with tens of billions sitting in a bank account and one day he woke up and said “wait a second, I’M an ARSENAL FAN! I could buy the club!” so is now forking out £2billion. From what I understand it his value is not in liquid capital but in a mixture including the value of Spotify, so that sounds to me like he’s got multiple people to form a consortium or he’s going to leverage debt against the value of the club. That wouldn’t exactly be the best way of starting off and if another global event happened and suddenly an injection of capital was needed to keep Arsenal going, would he be able to support it?

The counter argument there is that KSE have done nothing but take money out of the club or help the club pay off its debts and then – although we don’t know for sure – getting the club to pay them back. KSE does nothing for Arsenal and do not put money in to the club. We all know this, even those that are saying that they will invest this summer, deep down they know there will be no such investment. Arsenal will need to raise cash by selling off a shedload of assets and perhaps that’s why some people are losing their sh*t when we don’t get the best possible price for our players. We know that every penny we make is our transfer kitty and if we don’t make those pennies then that ‘war chest’ starts to look a little small.

There is some irony in the fact that because of the super league fine, KSE – who have promised to pay any fines – are going to actually give money too the club for a change, but let’s not expect them to drop £150million into the bank account so that the £3.5million fine from the Premier League for Arsenal’s part in the Super League, because it simply won’t happen, and every Arsenal fan should come to terms with that.

So we need to make our own cash and maybe that is through the sale of the likes of Bellerin, who is apparently being touted around as a £20million option. That sounds about right to me. Good player, great ambassador, but he needs a change, we need a change and again as long as we get a half decent price and he moves abroad I’m kind of ok with that. If/when it happens he’ll go with my blessing and thanks for his 10+ year’s of service at the club.

Right, that’s about all I got time for today, so I’ll take my leave and wish you all a happy Thursday.

Laters people.