Been a little too busy with work and family stuff over the last 48 hours, so haven’t had much time to compose some morning thoughts post the Madueke signing, but it’s done, we’ve picked up the player and I think now that it’s all in black and white – or should I say red and white – I think we’ll see a fairly sizable chunk of the Arsenal fanbase doubling down on the support for the player. We had it with Kai, if you remember; a lot of us were sceptical, but when he took to the field, we were behind him and after two games – I think the Bournemouth away one comes to mind where he was given the penalty to get off the mark – everything changed. He got the slightly ironic chant and now he’s pretty much (well, amongst the Arsenal fans I know) universally loved.

Sixty million down the drain…

And that’s exactly how it should be. I didn’t want this deal, I am sceptical on the player, I think we’ve paid about £10million more than we should, but I am absolutely going to be singing his name loudly and proudly if he gets on to the pitch for that first home game against Leeds in August. He will need it and he will want it and I think as fans it is our job to now do our bit.

Welcome Noni.

The initial noises are good too. He’s said he wanted to join the tour as they jetted off yesterday for the pre season tour of Singapore yesterday, but the club have told him to take some rest, so he’s clearly eager to get started. I thought the announcement message was cleverly crafted actually. The statement made by Berta and Arteta talked about his ability, his pace, but also his ‘professionalism’, which is something that we’ve actually heard the opposite about in recent years. He’s been dropped from match day squads, we saw the fighting on the pitch with Jackson over a penalty and clearly there’s something in this player that has a bit of spice to him. I listen to the Arsenal Opinion podcast and Johnny and Pete talk about this on their pod so I’d urge you to go have a listen if you want another couple of perspectives on the player. Here’s a link to the show – you can get the free version wherever you get your pods.

But I do think the club have been very careful in the wording of their announcement on Friday. They know that this deal hasn’t gone down amazingly with the fanbase, like Kai two year’s ago and like Ramsdale four years ago, but they also know that the Arsenal fans – because of those two deals as examples – know that they have tended to get behind these deals and that the club has tended to get these signings right. So I think a lot of us are willing to sit back and let this play out with the hopeful positive consequences.

There was also the accidental Mosquera video release and supposedly there’s some technical stuff around the medical which is just delaying the formal announcement, but given the player has already done his interviews and been pictured, that deal clearly is just going to get over the line. And it’s a good deal that brings that depth we need at centre half, but as a result of it, I’m convinced the club will try to move Kiwior on for decent money this summer. We brought him for around the £22million mark and if a club comes in and offers £35 – £40million, you have to take it, after he showed his capabilities at the end of last season deputising for big Gabby. I think given Mosquera can play left or right centre-half, the reason he was dead set on signing for Arsenal is that he’s basically been told he’s getting any centre-half minutes that our two main men at the back don’t take. That means Kiwior doesn’t get them and I think flipping him for a profit also means that we recoup back some of the cash we’ve outlayed on players already this summer.

And we still have to get that striker in, which has all gone weirdly quiet given that it was a week ago that we saw that Arsenal and Lisbon had finally agreed the fee. I liked Arseblog’s work this morning in giving us the amusing comments from the A Bola article about the deal potentially being off because it’s stalled. Have a read if you want a little light-heartedness on your Sunday morning. The reality is that both clubs are just driving a hard bargain. Everyone expects this deal to happen and it’s so far along right now, that nobody is going to want it to collapse:

  1. Sporting want their money so they can move on. They also don’t want an unhappy player and I don’t think given how much they’ve messed around on this deal, Gyokeres is just going to shrug his shoulders and say “oh well, never mind, it’s back to training in Lisbon for me” is he?
  2. Arsenal want their player. They have set their stall out and starting all over again for another player is probably just not something that they want to entertain at this late stage in the transfer saga.
  3. Gyokeres wants his move. He’s packed up his house and has already said his goodbyes. The last thing he wants is to have to do a full U-turn and move himself back in.

So this deal is happening, it’s just a matter of when, as well as somebody finally blinking and I suspect both clubs will move a little more towards each other to get this over the line.

Other than that, we play the waiting game, as Arsenal will be playing during next week and we’ll start to get things like press conferences ahead of the next pre season friendly. What will be exciting is to see whether some of the (really) young players who have joined the tour get any minutes. I think most of us are looking at Downman and thinking he might be the one to watch, but sometimes on these tours another player comes from nowhere and has really good pre season. We saw what pre season did for Lewis-Skelly last year and here we are one year later with him as our starting left back. So it will be good to see if we have another one of those waiting in the wings.

Right, that’ll do for today I think – have yourselves a good Sunday and I’ll catch you all tomorrow.