Morning folks, hope we’re all good?

I’ve woken up this morning feeling mega fatigued. It’s probably wine-induced, coupled with doing very little this weekend other than sitting in the paddling pool, so my body feels as though it has been set a precedent where anything else other than horizontal living in the sun is acceptable, but there you go. Need to wake myself up for a day of work and probably more meetings than I can shake a stick at. Such is life.

In the Arsenal world, there’s still little to speak of. Arsenal confirmed that Marcelo Flores has joined Tigres in Mexico and given the fact that they aren’t exactly a club you can imagine are flushed with cash, I doubt it’s one that will ensure London Colney can line the hallways with solid gold statues of former staff of bygone days. I know TransferMarkt has it down as circa €815, which is around £700k, but I suspect there is a significant sell on fee for him has been negotiated. He’s 19-years-old and has played three times for Mexico so far, so I suspect this is one of those where the club has inserted some clauses in, just in case he ‘bangs’ in Mexico and clubs in Europe come calling for his services in the next few years.

It’s another one from the academy helping to drop a little bit of cash in to the club – albeit a small amount – but I think the most important thing Arsenal are doing with these players is adding in those sell on fees. We’ve seen that as a growing trend and already this summer I think we’ve received a bit of cash for Guendouzi heading off to Italy and Mavropanos coming back to England with West Ham. When players walk out the door at The Arsenal there is still plenty for us to be expecting from Edu and the club in terms of selling players and recouping cash, but what they do seem to be getting right is these sell on clauses for each player. Let’s hope that this continues because I guess every little helps.

The only other bit of news that I read yesterday that I thought was worth touching on was that Fabrizio Romano has suggested that the Odegaard contract extension that we’ve heard some noises about is going to get done with little concerns. He said:

This is music to my ears. If you are a regular reader of my waffle you’ll know how much I love him as a player. The way he glides across the surface, his intensity in the press as well as his passing vision, all contribute towards what make him our talismanic captain. We’ve had captains who are blood and thunder like Tony Adams, we’ve had captains who are the best player’s on the pitch and lead by example (Cesc, Henry, etc), but for me I do love the captain that Odegaard is. He is a role model, he works hard, everyone you hear who has spoken to him says he comes across really well and as I joked about on the Same old Arsenal pod last night he even does pretty decent captains notes in the match day programme!

When Arsenal are purring, it is usually when Odegaard is at the heart of it pulling the strings and that is why I love it when he is doing what he does best on the pitch. He’s also added goals to his game last season and has two to his name already. He’s a star for us and to hear news that the contract situation shouldn’t be a problem is vital. Even if we hadn’t have gotten this kind of news, however, I still think that few of us would be panicking just yet. We may all disagree on what level of success the club has in making money for our players, but what we can probably all agree on is that they have been pretty good at ensuring the contract extensions for our top players have been successful in reaching the right conclusion. Deadls for Ramsdale, Saliba, Gabriel, Martinelli, Saka have all been completed, as we work hard to keep this nucleus of young players together. Then we have the news like this with the likes of Odegaard and it just feels right and proper that it’ll get sorted at some stage during the season.

And with that I think the core of the team is pretty much all tied down I think. I think Ben White might be another one but again, I just feel like we won’t have too many problems with that when it comes round to renegotiation time. White seems engaged with the club, there are plenty of his teammates who I think he gets on with and with Arsenal being quite a good feel-good place to be right now, you look at what options are around and it seems as though there isn’t any better place to be for these young players who we’ve all taken to our hearts.

Right, that’s me done for today. A slightly shorter one than normal on account of the lack of proper football going on, but I’m back tomorrow with the usual guff so I’ll catch you all then.