Do you know what I love? A good ol’ fashioned story about how shirt sales have paid for a transfer. Nothing beats it. It reminds me of the early 2ks when you hear stories like how Beckham’s fee that Real Madrid paid to United was paid for overnight. It does make me chuckle. So when I saw this article from James in the Athletic it made me smile and dropped some nostalgia into my brain on a Tuesday night coming home from meeting friends after work for dinner.

Of course the article is more about the demand for his number given the club was giving away free printing for a limited time if you bought the Arsenal shirt, but the very fact that we’ve had such demand and there is this direct purchase, meaning more money going to the club if you buy directly from them. At least, that’s what I think happens, although this article from a couple of years ago shows that in fact, football clubs don’t get a big chunk of the money. I think that’s fair enough though; it’s thee club’s IP for sure, but if they are essentially subbing out everything – shirt design, production, distribution and shipping, etc – then why should they get the bulk of sales? The likes of Adidas also pay them a sponsorship fee too, so there’s ample cash going to the club. But if they’ve sold 100,000 Gyokere’s shirts since he signed and they get 10% of every sale, for example, that’s around £7.50 and around £750,000 – no small change indeed!

But it ain’t paying for Big Vik’s fee I’m afraid. That’s going to take 733,333 shirts to get to that £55million number. With the age of the internet and access to information that we have, we all know that the whole ‘it’s paid for his transfer’ is a myth, but it’s still fun to trot out little stories like this I think.

In the meantime, we’ve got our first pictures of the big man in training and whilst that’s also good to see, my favourite picture was the one of Zubimendi and Norgaard tussling for a ball and Zubi holding on to his shirt. Given they both play in the same position, I couldn’t help but feel like there was some kind of symbolism or metaphor in there somewhere…

I also liked picture 36 from 36, in which Merino looks like he’s holding court and telling the others around him “so I told her, I am not putting chia seed on my polenta, it’ll ruin the dynamics of my lunch”…

They are, of course, gearing up to a ‘North London Derby’ tomorrow in Hong Kong and I have to say I’m not a fan. Those are the worst games of the season for me and I get so nervous beforehand. Tomorrow won’t be anywhere near as worrying, but even thinking about it I find myself saying “we can’t lose to that scummy lot – they’ll be proclaiming Frank as the new Messiah if we do”, which is silly because it’s a friendly and there will be yet more mass rotation at varying intervals. But what we don’t need is a game full of clatterings. I hope – but will not expect – that Frank will talk to Arteta beforehand and both will agree that players need to go easy on the gas tomorrow – both teams had their injury problems and so neither needs to have players going down with injuries that will impact the respective starts to their season’s. Let’s just have a game of football without any crunching tackles please. Oh, and keep Calafiori away from the pitch! The last thing we need is him going down again like he did against Newcastle.

There’s some tenuously-linked Arsenal news that Ramsdale could be on his way to Newcastle to compete with Nick Pope, but I can’t help but find that one a little odd. If Pope is the defacto number one, doesn’t that just mean that Ramsdale is back to where he was at The Arsenal? In which case, why didn’t he just stay with us? I guess being a number one and then effectively being demoted forces you to seek a move elsewhere, but surely there are better options than being Newcastle’s backup? A quick look at the number one’s in the Premier League tells me I think he could go to any of the following clubs and be better than what they have:

  • Chelsea (they buy anyone for any fee, so finding money will be no problem for them)
  • Crystal Palace (price might be an issue but I think Ramsdale is better than Henderson)
  • Man United (In money troubles but they’re looking at a striker so surely they should have a go at a ‘keeper first)
  • The Scum (he’s not doing that though)
  • Fulham (he’s already dislodged Leno once)
  • Brighton (might be a money issue)
  • Wolves (same again re: money)

That’s just a few but it feels to me like there should be more options for him. Hopefully that’s just a rumour in which will die. We don’t really want him going to that Orcky lot in the North East, do we?

There’s still some rumours about Eze knocking around but I suspect that one bubbles along a bit for a few more weeks if I’m honest. Feels like one in which Arsenal need to keep him sweet by telling him “we’re coming”, but I suspect there has to be some people going out the door first to free up space, so I’m not expecting anything any time soon on that one. And as a result I don’t really feel like talking much about it. The ITK stuff can be a bit weary with the whole ‘edging closer’ nonsense; we’ve just gone through that with Big Vik, so I’m a little reluctant to invest more time and energy in another saga. We’re in a good shape right now and there’s a ‘friendly’ tomorrow to focus on.

So I’ll catch you all tomorrow for some more thoughts ahead of that game. See you then.