I’ll be dammed if the cat didn’t decide to sit on my chest at 4am this morning and aggressively purr into my face for about 45 minutes. So I’m up at 6.20 to let the little bugger out and I thought I might as well start typing some Arsenal related waffle a little earlier than usual on a Saturday.

It’s Community Shield Eve and the first real taste of footie tomorrow for me for the upcoming season and, I have to say, I’m rather excited. I was apprehensive last season because I didn’t know if the fifth placed position and missing out on the Champions League would have a detrimental effect on us, but it didn’t and we all know what transpired for the vast bulk of the season: we were good.

This season I think the squad is deeper; we have bought in Timber who will ensure that we should see less Rob Holding. We have replaced Xhaka with Havertz who, whilst not as good defensively and I think we will initially see a bit of instability with the lack of the Swiss in the side, will give us hopefully more attacking threat and hopefully can contribute at the sharp end of the pitch. Plus we have added Declan Rice who makes us stronger because if Partey breaks down he can fill in and we’ll also be able to potentially play him in at the left eight (as evidenced in the first half against Monaco). So I think the squad is in a good shape, even if I’m not sure we’ll get close to the heights of last season.

Mikel Arteta I think will know this too. He was in London Colney yesterday to deliver his pre match press conference and he was asked a number of different things, including the Ramsdale article that I spoke about yesterday, talking up how brave he was and how good the article was. I liked the question he was asked about how people need to recognise that first and foremost we are all human and perhaps there is not enough attention paid to that because ultimately these guys get on TV because they are entertainers. By that very nature it de-humanises them in some people’s eyes so it is good to get these kinds of insights in to people working in football to just remind everyone that they are humans just like everyone else.

He then moved on to talk about the Community Shield and how excited he was for it. I think the Monaco game was designed with this match in mind you know; Arteta admitted after the Emirates Cup that they had trained the boys a little harder than usual after a long flight back from the States and I think that was designed to flush any cobwebs out of the system. It will have meant that they could have gone in to London Colney yesterday all feel a little more prepared for what will – despite how much Pep plays the world’s smallest violin with regards to preparation – be a really tough encounter.

On Pep – I saw this from somebody on Twitter and they are absolutely right – I do love that he and Man City are STILL playing the ‘plucky underdogs’ card despite the fact they’ve just won the treble, they’ve just dropped £77million on a centre half and I am absolutely sure that they are not done in the market. “Oh woe is me, we’ve had less time to prepare for this because our season finished later than Arsenal’s”. I’m not having it sir; we all know you will have your team more than prepared well enough for tomorrow and it is going to be a tough ask for Arsenal to beat the treble winners.

But back to The Arsenal, in which Arteta also confirmed that there is still work to do to trim the squad ahead of the new season. Trusty has gone, it sounds like Inter are back in for Balogun and with Gabriel Jesus picking up a knee injury, I do hope it gives Arsenal more ammunition to go back to Inter and say that £37million is pretty embarrassing given what Rasmus Hjoland (or however you say his name) cost Man United for far less productivity. If we accept £37million then it needs to be with a 75% sell on clause and a buy back clause for £40million thank you very much. He is a talented guy, I think his ceiling is higher than Eddie’s and if he goes to Italy and smashes it up for two seasons, I want us to have first refusal on bringing him back and not with Inter telling us that he’s now worth £100million. Mind you, if we have a 75% sell on clause then maybe we should pay the £100million and get £75million back in return! Now that WOULD be thinking smart -and the most perfect ‘clause’ we could ever imagine! 😉

I won’t go in to forensic details of the rest of what Arteta talked about, but what I did think was interesting was when he was talking about how we convinced Rice to sign for us instead of City. Pep mentioned that they knew that Rice wanted Arsenal and so despite what some of the noises were from the City hierarchy at the time about having a valuation and being sensible not to go over it, his comments show that they just weren’t ‘shown enough leg’ by Rice for them to pursue. And Arteta – whilst not directly referencing City – did allude to this a little in his presser, talking about how it is important that we can convince big players to join us. It shows that people see the Arteta Arsenal project as an exciting one and one that inspires. We have all talked about it amongst ourselves for a couple of season’s now (“there’s something about this group of players”) and last season it felt like a huge stride forward in that sense. Now we are seeing that it hasn’t just been us getting overly excited because of our overwhelming desire to see Arsenal do well; other players from other teams are looking at Arsenal and thinking it’ll be a great place to be. And that brings a warmth to my soul that I cannot properly describe in mere words on a page.

And that is also – as I said at the top of today’s blog – why we should be really excited for the immediate and longer term future at The Arsenal. It feels like a great place to be right now.

Right, that’s me done for today. I have eight of my old schoolmates coming over later to try to do a BBQ in the pouring rain. The tarp is out and the pizza over will be a makeshift grill. So it’s time to get the cable ties locked in so I can get those bangers on later.

Catch you tomorrow for a match preview.