Morning folks – a happy Thursday to thee. Hope we’re all good?

There was a good interview by Arteta on the official site yesterday that is worth a check in on. He’s clearly gearing up on a big summer and called on the club to do a ‘reset’ before we go again next season. I know the season hasn’t officially ended, but let’s all be honest here, I think a lot of us probably started to turn our attention to the summer before this week. For me it was after the Brighton game. I had a faint flickering of hope after Newcastle, but all it was, was a flicker, and then Brighton essentially put me in to full ‘meh, end the season’ mode.

That happened to the players in Nottingham and I think on Sunday there will be a mini response against a Wolves team just as much on the beach with little to play for. It’ll have a feel of a testimonial / pre season match and I can see why Arteta has therefore had this message delivered before the game itself rather than once the season has ended. The narrative needs to be delivered that we know as a club we need to do more if we want the biggest prize, we know that the jump from second to first is massive, which is why talk of a ‘reset’ sounds good to me.

Players need to go away with their families after this weekend, recharge the batteries, but then everything needs to be reset. The mindset when they come back cannot be to feel sorry for themselves. Right now it must feel like “we’ve worked our arses off all season, and for what?” and Arteta even referenced that we were top for like 240+ days but it wasn’t enough. Mentally when you hear things like that you wonder whether the players will be of a mindset that they can’t win, but after a holiday and a bit of time has elapsed, that ‘reset’ in their brains needs to happen just like it did last season.

And let’s not forget that, because I think if you are thinking about the mentality of this squad, you need to recall that they were dealt a massive blow at the end of last season. We went in to the last four games four points clear of The Scum, but with four really tough games. They ended up pipping us to fourth and I seem to recall writing a couple of blogs about how I worried about how this might dent the squad mentally ahead of the following season. It didn’t. Far to the contrary in fact, as they returned with a new drive, a new passion, with a couple of new additions who managed to up the mentality of the team and pump fresh vigour in to our squad. That is what we need this summer; we will need a few players to come in to the squad that add to the existing mentality and you can understand why all the chatter is around Rice, because not only is he a great player, but he’s also a fighter, a captain, a man with incredible drive and we’ve seen this season how he can drag West Ham over the line in games. Adding that on top of what we have sounds good to me.

So what else is going on then, eh? Well there’s chatter about James Maddison to Arsenal that seems to be emanating from the gutter press red tops. I like Maddison, he’s a fine player and has just come off of a very good season with Leicester, but in the list of positions and playing styles that we need to focus on as a priority, he doesn’t feel like he should be top of the list. Where would we play him? As a left eight? That’s a position that is most likely where we’ll have to look at given the impending Xhaka departure this summer, but I’m not sure that having Odegaard and Maddison in the same line up would give us much defensive solidity. The talk so far has been whether we’re after Caicedo as the versatile energetic midfielder who could take over from Partey in the six, then maybe Rice as the eight, or how both could do either of those jobs, and I can see that both of those players have more of a defensive as well as offensive mindset about them, but Maddison feels like he’d be that creative player that gets forward rather than as a defensive player we could also rely on.

It’s the same with Mason Mount, although I have to say I was quite glad to read stories from Ornstein yesterday that he favours United over anyone else. I’d take that. They can have him. If the reported £85million figure is to be believed, let United spunk that kind of cash. Mount is a player who I’ve watched for Chelsea and England and thought “yeah, he’s alright, but he’s no world beater”. I think I even prefer Smith Rowe over him. So why on earth would we be mental enough to fork out £85million and then give him similar sort of money to what Saka is already on?

No thank you. Let United overpay for a player just because he goes away to see Gareth Southgate once every few months. Let us focus on getting in players that would better fit our system and not have the wool pulled over our eyes on the transfer fee.

There’s going to be a lot of posturing in the early stages of the window I suspect. But Arsenal need to stand firm like we have done with a few of the deals that are out there. Unless of course we can go in for a cheeky Mbappe bid. Apparently he used to have a soft spot for The Arsenal when he was a kid and Wenger went to go and see him. His contract runs out next year, Arsenal, go and offer PSG a cheeky £85million and see if PSG bite 😉

Anyway, that final paragraph has probably lost you all anyway so I think I’ll call it a day today. You have yourself a good’un and I’ll catch you all tomorrow.

Laters.