So we have our first adrenaline shot of transfer morphine, as Christos Tzolis signs for The Arsenal to replace the departing ‘Mr Clutch’ Leo Trossard.

It’s a good move. It’s a sensible move. Only time will tell if it’s an upgrade, but at £34million – and it still feels crazy to say this – it’s not a bank-breaker. In a summer in which fees seem to have gone mental, on account of the financially doped/shady clubs inflating prices, this represents the kind of value that you hope will turn into an Eduardo.

We’ve known about this one for a while, so of course it doesn’t come out of the blue, but there’s been enough scouting reports of the player over the last few weeks to knoiw what we are getting, which is a young lad, at perfect age for a winger, who is both-footed and looks like he has an eye for goal. I’m not going to get too over-hyped on this though; he looks like a good player, he’s said all the right things, but let’s not forget that the Belgian league is very different to the Prem. It’s regularly seen as the sixth or seventh most difficult league in Europe and, having seen Big Vik arrive last summer from the Portuguese league, qwe need to be mindful that Tzolis is not going to find himself bagging goals and assists with the frequency he did on the mainland.

That’s ok though, because I don’t think any of us believe he will, but I guess our expectations need to be that he delivers enough end product to match Leo last season, at a bare minimum. In 50 appearances and just under 3,000 minutes, Trossard bagged eight goals and 11 assists, which I think most of us would think that Tzolis should be able to do depending on how much time he gets on the pitch. If he matches Leo’s minutes from last season, I’d be hopeful that he could get into both double figures on goals and assists, and I think that’s certainly an achievable target to set.

The good news is that he is fit and ready to hit the ground running. He said as much in his interviews with the club when the announcement was made yesterday, and given that we have a number of players not back from their extended leave due to the World Cup, having this guy ready for Girona next week can only be a positive thing. I liked the player profile on Arseblog from Phil Costa that went up yesterday. I particularly like the idea of him being a ‘shift and shoot’ player, and with that being something we often saw Trossard do, you can see why the club have moved quickly to secure Tzolis’ services. I like the sound of his two-footedness too. I don’t want to put unfair expectations on him, but I hear ‘two-footed,’ and I immediately think of our former magician Santi Cazorla, so if Tzolis had a similar level of output to the little Spaniard, we’ll be absolutely laughing.

The squad augmentation can’t stop there though, and the noises of Guimaraes continue to rumble on. We’re now at the ‘set to bid‘ part of any big transfer. At some stage we’ll make a bid, which will of course be rejected by Newcastle, as they try to hold on to their captain. It’s a funny one because you just know that whatever Arsenal go in at, it will be rejected, but equally you don’t want to piss off the selling club with the old class ‘derisory’ bid. The noises are that between £70 – £80million gets this done, so I suspect we’ll get wind of some kind of opening salvo over the weekend. Ideally, if Arsenal are going to get this over the line, you want it done this week, so he has a few games to bed in during pre-season. He’ll still be on holiday following the World Cup, but these players these days spend most of their holiday staying fit and training anyway, so I suspect getting him up to speed won’t take that long.

In the meantime, we can watch all the videos of Tzolis and what he will bring, whilst also trying to work out whether we should all part with our hard-earned cash to buy that new away shirt. I can’t work out just yet whether I like it or not. I’m not really that fussed about the new home shirt, but the bruised banana always taps in to the nostalgia gene, so I can’t say I won’t be swinging by the local sports store to pick one up at some stage in the near future.

Right, that’s me done for today, I think. I’m nursing a bit of a hangover so I need to go and find some paracetamol. Back tomorrow with more rambling. see you then.