I missed what appeared to be quite an entertaining game yesterday, as England and France duked out a pointless Bronze Trophy game 6-4, but the headlines certainly have Arsenal interest for sure.

For starters, most of the Arsenal boys got on to the pitch, with Rice, Saka, and Eze all starting. And lo and behold, each of them had an impact on the match; Rice bagging a good goal for the first, Eze providing an assist to Saka, who also netted a hat-trick and promptly declared afterwards that he was fit and wish he’d have played more.

Great stuff. Now go spend two weeks on a beach somewhere, mate. Get those Achilles rested and ease yourself back into pre-season with The Arsenal. Same goes with Rice, Eze and Madueke. You’re all going to be needed.

Saka’s performance won’t help Tuchel’s cause, though, I don’t expect. He decided to drop Saka for Rogers, and let’s be honest, aside from a good ball in for the Gordon goal, he was hardly sparkling against Argentina. I guess the counterpoint to that was that nobody was, but this was still a good example of showing why you put Saka in your team. He is a game changer. Hopefully, he can continue to be for us next season, too. He even said that Arsenal fans have nothing to worry about. Super duper stuff.

What’s not super duper, however, was the Ornbomb we got, in which David declared that once again, Chelsea have gazumped Arsenal for a player, and Morgan Rogers would be a Chelsea man next week. Chelsea fans will be delighted. Villa will be delighted. There are some Arsenal fans on social media who are a bit miffed at this.

I am not one of them.

I have said it a couple of times over the last week, but the price matters, especially when you are operating in these PSR times. Chelsea are gamers of the system. They will pay £117million – probably about £30million more than what he’s worth – just to get this guy in. Their fans will laugh at how they’ve poached him from us, but the reality is, they have to make some kind of statement after a season in which they finished 10th, have no European football, and still have a squad that is so packed to the rafters with other players they over-paid for, that they’ll have to offload this summer, I’d expect. I call them gamers to the system, because I have no doubt that they’ll have paid Villa this fee because Villa need it for PSR and accounting ‘creativity’, whilst Chelsea will probably need the same in reverse, so Villa will probably ‘pay’ them £50million for Nicholas Jackson. We’ve seen Newcastle and Villa do things like that, and Chelsea and Villa are also in the same boat.

For Arsenal, I’m pleased they stood firm, because frankly I was a little confused as to where he was going to play. If it was as a wide-forward, then I’m looking at this and saying that perhaps this will allow Arsenal to focus on somebody like a Barcola? He’s spent more time playing wide-left, so why not have a proper go for him now?

I do think that Berta might be under a bit of pressure now, because whilst the fans are a bit restless, I suspect the manager will be too. Arteta said after the Champions League final that we have to be ambitious and we have to be fast, and here we are on 19th July and our main target (or so it seemed) is heading elsewhere. That won’t be a good look for Andrea, so I suspect he and Arteta will be having some choice words about what happens next.

Chelsea did this to us before with Mudryk, so we pivoted for Trossard and that worked out very well indeed. We have to hope at this stage, that the club have an alternative target in mind and are going to pull the trigger sooner rather than later. Could that be a Barcola? Maybe. Could that be a left-of-field option like a Nusa, Lookman, or Nico Williams? We know Arteta loves the latter, so I don’t see why we couldn’t have a punt at one of these names.

I do wonder if Arsenal will want to make a ‘statement’ this summer, but the challenge they have, a bit like the striker market last summer, is that there just doesn’t seem to be the profile of elite wingers who have been burning it up in mainland Europe this summer. And what of the Premier League? I’d certainly be having a look at Kroupi, and if Mitoma was a bit younger, I’d have a go for him, but his age and some injury problems in the last couple of seasons preclude us from going for him, surely.

The challenge Arsenal are going to have, if they don’t strike soon, however, is that targets are going to start moving elsewhere. There was talk about the Scum making moves for Kroupi, Liverpool are also interested in Barcola, whilst Barca have already moved for Arteta’s other favoured player Anthony Gordon. If we hold on to our playing cards too long, there might not be too many great options left.

This is where Berta earns his coing now – and we need to see Arsenal starting to flash theirs at clubs with players we want.

Back tomorrow with more news, as we contemplate where to go next with all of the players having done the World Cup and the transfer merry-go-round gets into full force. See you then.