Poor ol’ Pierro Hincapie, eh? His national team gets knocked out of the World Cup, plus he gets his marching orders in Mexico in the early hours of this morning, for covering his mouth and saying something to a Mexico player. I didn’t watch the game, but I have seen the incident, and the Mexico player is a proper grass there. “Sir! Sir! He covered his mouth! And he drew a penis on the blackboard!”

It’s all a bit silly, really, but I guess that is the rule; all of the players will have been told it, and you could see when Hincapie walked off laughing, he kind of knew it was silly to be sent off for that. I guess the game was over by then, so it didn’t really matter, but he’ll miss some qualifying games next.

Which, actually, from an Arsenal perspective, is a good thing. It means that he’ll have a one-game ban for a competitive match, of which I’m not sure when it’ll be, but it means he, perhaps, a) won’t be called up by his national team, and b) he at least won’t have to travel. I know they usually do these matches in groups, so perhaps he’ll play one of two games, but it’s still less of a chance of him picking up a knock. Whoever the next Ecuador manager is (Sebastian Beccacece has already stepped down), let’s just hope he tells Pierro he’s allowed to stay at home during the mid-season next set of internationals.

Like Kai, he’ll now be able to go away on holiday, and you’d expect him to be back with The Arsenal mid-July, so that’s another one who should get a full pre-season, which is great! The same is true for Gyokeres as well, as he makes his way back after Sweden was knocked out by France quite comprehensively. Again, didn’t watch it, but it doesn’t sound like they put up much of a fight, and Big Vik will find himself heading to London Colney now after a bit of rest. Bradley Barcola was on the score sheet, which will only add another zero to his price if a club does indeed get encouragement from him.

As I said yesterday, it all feels a little too inflated right now, so perhaps Arsenal need to start looking elsewhere and away from the high-profile names. I get it – we all love a big name arrival, but the transfer team and Arteta know what they are doing, and I hope he and Berta have some ‘left-of-field’ moves in the market that will surprise some people.

One of them, which we were debating on one of my WhatsApp groups last night, could be Illan Meslier from Leeds. They’ve just signed a new goalie, plus he’s out of contract and leaves the club this summer. We’ve got Kepa, who has been a bit ok/meh this last season, but he has a £5million release clause, so if any club pays what we got for him, then he’s off. I suspect that might happen; he got plenty of game time at Bournemouth two seasons ago, left to be back up to Raya and collect a winners’ medal last month, so he’s probably hankering for a bit more game time. If that happens, then I personally don’t mind a free transfer backup keeper. He’ll basically never play other than the League Cup, and if we have any dead rubbers in the Champions League. The counterargument in the GC was that IF Raya got injured, it could mean we have a ‘keeper in between the sticks who let himself get robbed by Eddie Nketiah at the Emirates a few seasons back, and looked really rather silly. I’ve seen a couple of ricks in him, so he’d be one of those ‘keepers you’d want to barely ever see. But when you look at what Kepa did in the League Cup final, could it be much worse?

A freebie backup ‘keeper does, to my mind, mean that more money can be invested where we need it, which is in the wide left, midfield, probably right back, and centre forward positions. And because we’re not looking for floor-raisers, but ceiling raisers, the spend is going to be a bit more. So getting a perfectly capable ‘keeper on a free feels like sensible stuff to me.

Right, I think that’s pretty much it for today, as there’s England later on and that will involve some of the Arsenal boys, no doubt. I noticed that Saka seems to be getting some heat for his performances, which is interesting because seeing Gordon put in 2 out of 10 stinkers, then also having Rashford dispossessed every five minutes, yet it is Bukayo who is the one with the microscope, shows how Arsenal and their players get looked on and treated differently from everyone else. We knew that, anyway.

Right – catch you all tomorrow. Have a good’un.