Morning Gooners, we all good?

I drank far too much wine yesterday to be able to rouse myself from bed and so yesterday became a bit of a blogging write off. But today is a new week and I’m ready and raring to go, starting off with the Ornstein news that broke yesterday afternoon that we were interested in signing David Raya from Brentford and, apparently, he’s keen on the move instead of going Bayern.

I don’t know about you guys, but that one came a little left of field to me and, if I’m honest, has left me scratching my head ever since.

It’s not that I don’t like or rate David Raya, but more that I’m confused as to why all parties ant this deal happening. Let’s look at it from Brentford’s position first. They’ve got a ‘keeper who apparently has just one year left on his deal. With that in mind they need to make some decisions, because he’s supposedly turned down two contract offers. They therefore need to maximise the value they are going to get from him. In an ideal world Bayern moving in for him would be their preferred choice I suspect; he’s out of the league they play in, they don’t line up against Bayern so I’m sure they’d probably be happy for that deal to be done above all else. However if they can’t get close to the £40million valuation they have, then a move to Arsenal is probably something they’d be fine with too. If they get the money.

But this is where I start to find it weird, when I look at it from Arsenal’s perspective, because I’m not sure we are really going to spend £40million on a backup ‘keeper, are we? There are some that will argue that Raya is an upgrade on Ramsdale, but I personally don’t think that’s the case. Ramsdale is two years younger than Raya, he has shown himself to be a top ‘keeper and Arteta loves him as well. I get that you want to have lots of competition across your whole squad, but goalkeeper is kind of a weird position because you don’t really get that as much as an outfield player. Goalkeepers by their very nature don’t get injured as much as outfield players and once you your main ‘keeper it becomes very difficult for the reserve ‘keeper to dislodge him. I just don’t see it as a thing where you can keep two number ones and if we went for Raya I think that is what we would be faced with.

Ramsdale has the starting jersey and Raya would have to contend with the Champions League games (six to start), the League Cup games (two or three this side of Christmas I think), then the FA Cups in January. For a player who plays every week, wouldn’t that be his preference?

Which is also then to the player’s side, for which I’m not sure why he would prefer us over Bayern Munich. I mean sure, the money might be better and sure, the Premier League is a harder and more competitive league. But Bayern Munich are perennial winners and he’d almost be guaranteed trophy success if he joined the German champions. He’d also be more than likely to become the number one there too; they have Manuel Neuer who is 37, then Yan Sommer who is 34. This move for him at his age surely means they are going to offload one of their older ‘keepers and that would give him the opportunity to be the number one at Munich. Wouldn’t that be more palatable than duking it out with an incumbent who is already younger than you and in Ramsdale – I think – possibly better and with a higher ceiling?

It is a strange one on all sides. We also have Turner who only joined the club a year or so ago and as a back up he seems like a perfectly fine option to me. Don’t get me wrong, I want us to always improve our squad and that would happen if you swapped Turner for Raya, but we also have other areas of the pitch that I think we need to think about strengthening, like a rotation option for Saka, for example. We also have the need to sell before we buy. Mikel has been quoted recently re-iterating that and I don’t see why we would spend another £40million on a player before we sell. There have been some noises about Nottingham Forest being interested in Turner and if a quick deal gets done there then maybe Arsenal do make that move, but it still feels like a strange one to me. Arsenal and Edu in particular need to focus on those outgoings so that we have our core squad together for the start of the season and that should be meaning that we’re doing the exits sooner rather than later.

One of those exits could be Austen Trusty though and if some of the social media reports are true that I read earlier this morning, we’re looking at around £5million. That sounds like a pretty fair deal to be honest with you; we bought him for around £1.5million I think, he had a good season at Birmingham and apparently Sheffield United are sniffing around. He hasn’t made an appearance for Arsenal, or in the Premier League, so if that deal can be done then it is a mini gamble that Sheffield United can make, we get a good bit of change for a player who has never played a competitive game for us, he gets a Premier League move where he will get game time. Seems logical on all fronts.

More needs to be done though and it needs to be done sooner rather than later. Lokonga, Tavares, Pepe, Cedric – all just to name a few- as I’ve said previously so won’t labour the point too much today.

Time to step away from the BBQ and in to your office Edu.

Right, that’ll do me for today I think, so you have yourselves a good one and I’ll catch you all in the morrow.