Is it me, or does it feel like we’re in a bit of a transfer washing machine at the moment? Going round and round and round with little changing…

All I keep seeing when I log in to sports sites is:

Gyokeres’ agent and Arsenal still talking

or

Sesko bid is imminent

or

Arsenal still waiting on Zubimendi announcement

Or, like yesterday, we got:

Nico Williams speaking to Barcelona – Arsenal still interested.

We’re now getting to the halfway point in the month and whilst we’re still early in the window, it is starting to feel a little like we’re messing around a bit. Make your decision, pull the trigger, move on. I get what David Ornstein was saying recently (reported by those aggregator sites on social media) with regards to there being so many different factors involved in a transfer (he cited off the pitch, on the pitch, football style, financial package to the club, to the player, etc) but it’s not like transfers haven’t always happened. It’s not like we haven’t turned around deals within 24 – 48 hours before, is it?

It just strikes me that we just need to get on with making official moves now. I have already stated my preference, but in reality I just want us to get one of the previously mentioned players in so we can start looking forward and planning for life with them in the squad and for pre season. I am, of course, talking about the striker situation, but the big noises from yesterday were for Nico Williams. Those noises were all around him wanting to join Barcelona from Atletico Bilbao, that Barca had opened talks with his representatives and Bilbao, that they are looking at how they can make this deal happen.

There are so many things to say about this development. Firstly, let’s start with Barca, who even at January this year were not able to play their own signing Dani Olmo, because of their financial troubles. They’ve had to sell box rights, they’ve whacked Spotify over everything to get some money in and are constantly having to pull some kind of financial ‘lever’ to do some kind of deal. How on earth are they going to justify another signing like this one?

I guess the fee isn’t that big – £49million – it’s the wages that are an issue. But frustratingly for that club, they always seem to be able to get players to drop their kecks and join them on reduced wages, so I suspect that’s how they’ll get that deal done. Supposedly his current deal at Bilbao is £170k-per-week (can’t always trust these sources as salary data is always hard to find) and the noises from some corners are that he’s looking at Bayern too if they pay him between £322k-to-£400k-per week. I’m sorry, but even if that is half true and he wants even £250k-per-week, I’d have to question it as a deal in its own right. Again, if you think that there is a rough estimation that Saka is on £195k-per-week, paying this guy anything more than Starboy is just batshit mental. Saka bagged 12 goals and 14 assists last season, having spent a third of it injured, in our league and he’s a proven star in England and the world. Williams has looked amazing for Spain, sure, but last season for Bilbao with an extra 500+ minutes of playing time than Saka, he managed 11 goals and 7 games. He’s a good player is Williams, I’d like it if we signed him but there’s no way we should be held to ransom on wages for this guy. I get that Arteta supposedly loves him, but this deal to me has always felt a little fishy and I hope that our eyes are more focused elsewhere.

I like the look of Rodrygo and I think that sounds like an interesting one. I like the look of Leao of AC Milan. I like Anthony Gordon from Newcastle, although they’d probably want a princely sum. It’s a shame we’re not in for Gittens, because that might be a decent punt to compete with Martinelli. Or how about Semenyo from Bournemouth? We could look at Morgan Rogers, who is a pretty decent dribbler, although that again might prove to be costly, because Villa aren’t going to let him go on the cheap. I guess my point is that there are other options out there and that Arsenal shouldn’t really be focusing their efforts on somebody who clearly is going to end up at that crazy football club Barcelona.

To be fair to Arsenal, I think they’ve seen this Rodrygo situation begin to unfold and I think they’re playing the waiting game on him. He’s a guy who clearly there are question marks over because he’s openly said he wants to play on the left and, as we all know, his path is most certainly blocked in that regard so Arsenal can offer him what he wants. The numbers might be a little beyond what we ideally want – TransferMarkt has him valued at €90million – but we’ve been able to do deals with Madrid before and not pay full market price, so maybe if this becomes a goer we can look at getting him for closer to €80million, which would be £68million and certainly a very decent deal for us. Again, he’d probably want mega cash and is currently on just over £200k-per-week, so we’d probs have to bump him up to £250k-per-week, but if this is a special talent that you think is going to move the needle in attack, then you do the deal.

But we shouldn’t get hung up on just him. As I’ve already shown with some names off the top of my head, there are other options out there. We just need to be decisive and go for it. As I said when I started today’s blog, we should just make our decisions and go for it. Don’t fanny around Arsenal, we want to give ourselves the best possible start by having that good pre season with our players all bedded in.

Hopefully this weekend brings some breakthrough news. Fingers crossed.

Catch you all tomorrow.