When it comes to selling players, there’s one thing everyone loves:

A BIDDING WAR!

So waking up this morning to noises that Bayern – and maybe even Dortmund – have sat up and taken a bit of notice of the fact that Granit Xhaka is available, is music to mine ears, that’s for sure.

I’m sure Leverkusen were more than happy to have a lovely ol’ chat with the player, Arsenal, agree the details and get this done quickly. But if there’s a few more interested parties then that’s a-ok with me, because it might chuck a couple of extra mil on the price tag and that can be dumped on the ‘transfer war chest’ pile we need to get our incomings done this season. If Leverkusen want to follow this through then let’s move the goalposts like so many teams have done to us over the years. Unless of course they want to flash a Moussa Diaby in front of us for a decent price.

I’m not sure how realistic this interest is, or maybe it is just newspapers trying to fill column inches, but from an Arsenal fan perspective if Xhaka can give us one final parting gift of having his price driven up as a result of the great season he’s just had and we can get closer to £18 – £20million, that would be lovely.

And this is what should be happening with our players now. We’ve just come off the back of a very good season in which we’ve finished second in the Premier League with the second youngest team in the league. We are – at this moment in time – an employer of choice and whereas a year ago if you’d have said Declan Rice is interested in Arsenal, for example, I’d have told you that there’s no way that’s happening, that he’s an ex-Chelsea academy kid, that they throw money at signings like him and we simply do not. But here we are this summer and every day there is more talk about him being an Arsenal player by 1st September. But I digress away from my original point, which was that we have had the kind of season where teams look at the Arsenal squad players and say “they’re good. Let’s see if Arsenal are interested in selling” and I am a-ok with that.

Let’s drive up the prices and bulk out those Arsenal coffers.

So when you hear stories about how Newcastle are confident in getting Kieran Tierney for £30million, let’s turn those tables:

“You can have KT, sure, but you come back to us when your offer is more serious, guys. Try getting close to £50million and we’ll talk”. That’s what I’m hoping we’ll do.

Whether or not that actually happens remains to be seen, however, so we just have to wait and see what the deal is with the rumoured interest.

I do wonder if we’ll make some under-the-radar moves first though. There’s all the talk about Rice and Caicedo but these moves tend to be a little more complex given the money involved, so I have a feeling that we might a move or two for a player that nobody is expecting. I doubt anything will happen in June as I suspect most members of the club are taking a well-earned holiday. There isn’t much in the press about where anybody is but I suspect it’s only a matter of time before there’s a BBQ-cigar-smoking image of Edu with a big pair of tongs!

There’s not a lot else going on to be fair. Yesterday was the FA Cup final so that’s taking most of the column inches and I suppose the only interesting thing about the result from an Arsenal perspective was that we’ll get a day out at Wembley for the Community Shield on 6th August. I know it is a glorified friendly, I know it doesn’t really mean much, but it’ll be nice to have a day out and hopefully in the sun so that’s cool. I’ve not been to many of them since we won the FA Cups a few years back, so getting along to wembley for that is probably one I’ll have a go at and see if some of the lads I go to football with are interested in getting along. It’s always a nice day out and unlike getting to the Emirates, it’s over my side of the world so will only take me about 15 minutes to get there on the tube – bonza!

Right, that’s it from me today, on account of there being little else on. You have yourself a good one and I’ll see thee in the morrow.