Let’s do some ‘real talk’ here, shall we? Because it looks like – if Fabrizio Romano is to be believed – that the Scum are advancing talks ahead of us to get Eze out of Palace.

The ‘real talk’ bit is that as much as many of us would like to, there’ll be no rowing back if he goes to that lot, in terms of the quality of the player. Many of us have twerked for him all summer in addition to some of the big moves we’ve done, yet him ending up at the wrong end of North London is going to end up stinging quite a bit, I reckon. Sure, they’ll claim the whole ‘we beat you to his signature’, they’ll drop a couple of “biggest club in London” nonsense when we all know the reality there. But if this moves in the way it appears to be advancing, then we’ll be feeling the sting a bit when everything becomes official.

Of course, things could change, but we’ve known all along that Arsenal needed to make sales before anything else gets done. That we simply haven’t been able to shift players on probably has the biggest impact on what is happening right now, as I’ve spoken about before and even as much as yesterday where I talked about how we need to offload before we can reload. The Scum clearly know this because if the player wanted Arsenal, he’s most likely telling them to back down, but I think these moves show that the player wants Champions League football too. He’ll settle for them and he’ll easily be able to displace Maddison if he joined them, so if I’m taking my red-tinted spectacles off for a second, I can see why he’d be open to this move coming about if Arsenal can’t do the deal. If you’re player like Eze you can’t hang around all summer in the hope that Arsenal offload a bunch of players now so that you can join them. What happens if they don’t make enough money? What happens if they aren’t able to offload those players and then Palace reject the offer that is made? Eze still has two years left to run on his deal and if he decided to ‘do a Gyokeres’ and reject any other advance of any other club in the hope of Arsenal coming, he could end up missing a big chance for a big move this summer when he is ready to go.

I suspect he see’s the cautionary tale of Wilfred Zaha to Arsenal as a prime Exhibit A in that regard. We had Zaha at the training ground, Emery wanted him, Arsenal bid something in the region of £40million but Palace were asking for silly money at the time at around £100million, it put Arsenal off and we went for Pepe. Three years later and Zaha is leaving on a free transfer to Galatasaray, followed by a loan to Lyon and then a loan to Charlotte in the States. Eze will be very aware of this and that’s why I think if you’re in his shoes you need to have multiple options open and you need to be able to have a good relationship with Parish and hope he grants your wish if you get a bid in from a club playing in the Champions League. Perfect if it’s Arsenal, but Tottenham would also fulfil those wishes.

So I get it, but it’ll sting, because we want that final piece and with the likes of Reiss Nelson supposedly not wanting to leave permanently to Fulham, or the Zinchenko and Fabio Vieira moves seemingly not really progressing, this is a perfect ‘market opportunity for the Scum to take advantage of the fact we went in early for other targets.

One discussion that I do think will need to be had when the window closes and we see where the chips have fallen, however, is the timing of the deals. I have a WhatsApp group of lads I go to the football with and there was a few really interesting things that I think are worth pointing out. Firstly, we all know Chelsea needed to sell, right? So with that in mind, I’m a little confused as to why we decided to go for Madueke so early and basically pay almost what Chelsea were asking for. If we wanted Madueke and Eze, why not go for the player probably a little more in demand (Eze) than the one in which we probably could be chatting to Chelsea about right now? That’s the bit that doesn’t sound too clever to me. If we’d have gone for Eze first and then gone for Madueke, I think we’d have not only have had the fans a little more excited about the move (not that it matters too much on that from the clubs’ perspective), but I think we might have been able to even drive down the price from Chelsea a little bit.

It all feels a little strange.

Now, if you tell me the sales will facilitate an actual wide forward coming in, with the likes of Rodrygo back on the table if we sell one or two players, then I guess you could understand how the market is playing out. We’d all want an Eze, it will give us great rotation and different options for Odegaard, but if we’re getting in a top left winger to compete with, say, a Martinelli, then I’m starting to get excited. That’s because the balance of the team suddenly feels good. The challenge we’ve got, which Luke in our WhatsApp group pointed out, is that if you can get the Madueke deal done then do it early so you don’t hang around and miss out on both Eze and Madueke. Or a Rodrygo in this instance, because if Man City sell Savinho and get Rodrygo, then we’ll have been left with fewer options out there for that wide forward and maybe Chelsea go even further on their asking price.

It’s all “ifs” and “buts” at this stage. We’re not on the inside to understand the machinations of the Arsenal transfer team. But because of that, we have to just sit on and watch a player many of us coveted for a lot of the summer, go to our local ‘rivals’. That just leaves a bit of a sour taste in the mouth.

Know what I mean?