Well now, it seems to be some movement going on at London Colney, as we reach the ‘one week and counting’ part of the summer transfer window.
It is the curse – or gift depending on how you see it – of this blogger that I spent half an hour yesterday writing about how we need to shift this ‘bad seller’ look and low and behold we’re making some moves. Albeit not exactly the big volume and big cash we’d have hoped for.
There was some pictures earlier in the week about players training away from the normal squad and I queried why you would do that, but for Balogun and Tierney you can understand why that might be the case. For the Scotland international, Real Sociedad have agreed a loan deal which pays his wages and also gives us a small fee, but ultimately we’re kicking the can down the road because nobody wanted to buy him this summer. I find that surprising and a little sad because he’s a really good footballer, but you just have to hope that this move is an overwhelming success. He admitted in the All or Nothing video that he got homesick living in London, so lord knows what he’s going to make of moving to Basque country and having everyone speak a different language. Hey, the pintxos are good and on the outer skirts of town the brilliant Casa Julian is well worth a visit. But the football will be very different and if it doesn’t work for KT then we’re going to find ourselves with a player who has a year left on his deal and whose value has dropped even more.
I guess if that’s the only club willing to put down an offer serious enough for Arsenal to consider, it is what it is, but I will be sad when it happens. KT has been nothing but the model professional.
The other news which is expected to go through this weekend is Balogun to Monaco for around £38.5million. That in itself is an ok deal, but if the player was coming the other way we’d be paying double that, so I really hope the ‘final details’ that all of the journo’s have been reporting is about sell on or buy back clauses. Because if he kills it in Monaco this season, I’d bet you a steak dinner that Monaco will be selling him back to an English club for £75million in a year’s time.
In that event, knowing that Arsenal have a ‘first dibs’ and a buy back for say, £50million, I’d be more than happy to see. But I would be stunned if Flo doesn’t make his way back to England before the end of his career.
Go out there Flo, make a name for yourself, then come back home in a few years.
On to more positive news, which was that pictures have been emerging of Gabriel Jesus back in full training, which is very good to see. Eddie has done well to deputise; he scored on opening weekend and despite me having my frustrations in the Palace game with him, he still created the chance that led to our penalty, ran the channels well and was unlucky not to score when his shot cannoned off the post. He’ll play this weekend I suspect and I’m good with that. Hopefully he scores and gives Mikel some thinking time, because after the international break it’ll be United at home and I would imagine that Gabriel Jesus will be ready and waiting for that game.
We’ll get an update on player availability at some stage in the day today and hopefully we’ll get an update on Zinchenko, because with Timber and Tomiyasu both unavailable, we really need confirmation that he can play 90 minutes tomorrow against the Cottagers. He did come on against Palace and he supposedly got 60 minutes in the friendly against Luton that was behind closed doors just over a week go so you’d hope there are no issues, but we do need that confirmation from the boss and I hope we get it today.
The other thing on the official site that I quite liked reading was Trossard’s interview about how he’s settled in since January. We’ve heard this a few times, but isn’t it still nice to see players come in and talk about how the culture that Arteta is built is a ‘family’ feel about it, eh? I mean, we have a dog, they all go out for meals together, they probably all get told to come in and have their dinners and stop playing football on the common at 6pm together too. It’s nice. It warms the cockles of one’s heart and the fact that even players like him have helped the new recruits like Declan Rice settle in, it’s really good to see.
That kind of mindset and “we’re all together” approach is what helps to foster that unity. That culture within the dressing room is essential if you want to get maximum productivity from your players and that is why it is important that any new player coming in embraces this approach. Some players are in competition with each other, but the mentality still has to be “for the good of the club”.
We also got another player talking about how Arteta is on another tactical plane to anyone they know before. We’ve had Rice talk about re-learning football, this Trossard interview and even if you go right back to when Arteta arrived, David Luiz did an interview saying “this guy will be one of the greats in world football” or something similar. And he’s ours. There are still people who want to dig out every opportunity to have a pop at him, but those people are, thankfully now in the minority and hopefully can just be consigned to a corner of YouTube or some other social media platform in which real fans kind of ignore them. Yes he gets stuff wrong, yes he makes some decisions that some of us might not like, but you can hardly argue that in the last couple of year’s we haven’t been going in the right direction and Arteta is a massive part of that.
And on that positive and happy note I’m going to call time on today’s Arsenal thought proceedings. For a bit of bonus content have a look at James’ Same old Arsenal preview podcast, in which he and JJ talk all things Fulham tomorrow.
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