It’s Saturday The Arsenal have still not kicked off matches yet, so my hope is that they are using the time effectively to “Spend some faaaakin’ money!”. A bit of a blast-from-the-past phrase to bust out, I know, but you’d hope Andrea Berta is somewhere doing something to augment the squad soon. Tzolis was a replacement, not an addition, so I’m not counting that.

I do wonder if, certainly from a winger perspective, something big needs to shake loose for all of the dominoes to start falling though. The reason I’m thinking that this morning is that I saw that Diomande is the subject of a bid from Real Madrid, for which Leipzig have rejected around £85million. A couple of days ago Fabrizio Romano was saying that we had enquired about the Ivorian, but given he wants to go to PSG, Liverpool have previously made a bid and I’m sure I’ve seen that City had a look, that one feels like it is going to be a little beyond The Arsenal. I saw some stuff saying the players’ representatives have been a bit of a pain in the arse, and when you’ve got the likes of PSG and Real Madrid involved, you’re getting in to a bidding war that I think Arsenal just need to steer clear of.

What we know about The Arsenal and Arteta is that he wants a level of commitment from any joining player. We’ve heard on countless occasions that “Play X only wanted Arsenal” and that is not something you’d say would be obvious from Diomande. We also know that Arsenal won’t get drawn into overpaying on the valuation. The Morgan Rogers situation showed that. But going back to my original point, it feels like there needs to be one big move for a player, to shake other players out. If Diomande goes to PSG, then surely Barcola gets clearance to move. If he decides that actually he fancies a bit of Real Madrid, then does a Vini Junior become available? Possibly not, but does Rodrygo become available? It’s funny because we were all looking at him last summer, but there’s been little noise about him this summer, which is strange because he played just over 1,100 minutes. For a player of his quality he won’t like that. But if Madrid get Diomande, then you’d think that somebody like Rodrygo would be on the market for a move. He did his ACL in March, which of course ruled him out for three months, but even before then, he was hardly a regular. If he’s still not fit then that might be a problem if any club is interested, but I’ve seen some suggestions that he’s stepping up his rehab, so perhaps something could happen there. Madrid have Mbappe, Vini Jr, Endrick, Rodrygo – could they afford to have Diomande as well and have enough minutes for them all?

What we need to be careful of, however, is not making our move at the right time. It seems to me like the big clubs are all after left wingers this summer. That’s problematic for us because it means competition. It means bidding wars. But it also means that if you don’t get your deals done, you run the risk of being left behind and searching round the back at the bins for players. We’re the champions, Champions League finalists, semi-finalists the year before, so there’s no way we should be doing that; players should be banging down our door.

That means making your decision, making your move and going for it. Come on Arsenal, let’s move. Now.

The one I haven’t heard of for a while, is that fella Yildaz from Juventus. He’s rated by TransferMarkt as one of the most valuable left wingers in the world, and they put him at €75million. That’s a tidy sum, and I’ll confess not to know tons about the player, as I don’t watch Italian football. He got 10 goals and 11 assists in 47 games and 3,600 minutes. That’s a modest return in a worse league than the Premier League; Martinelli got 11 goals and seven assists for us last season, so whilst I think we all know we need an upgrade, is Yildaz the man to be that upgrade?

What he does have in his favour is that he’s just 21. That means he’s still building his game. If we’re going to go young, however, why not try somebody like Said El Mala, who has been doing numbers at my German club FC Koln. He’s 19, has just bagged 13 goals and five assists in the Bundesliga, and I suspect he wouldn’t cost the earth. TransferMarkt has him at €45million. The German Bundesliga isn’t the Prem, but it is still one of the top three or four leagues in world football, and if he’s doing those numbers at 19, could it be worth a punt?

I guess with that one he probably needs another season to show his consistency, and that he hasn’t just run hot for one season. We had that one season from Martinelli in 2022/23 in which he bagged lots of goals and assists, but he’s now not been able to replicate it for three subsequent seasons – the same could be true of this kid.

But it does feel like we need to see some names popping up now that aren’t just Barcola or Diomande. I feel like the Barcola stuff is just going to rumble on, so why not just start looking elsewhere? We all hear the stories of how many plates Berta likes to spin, how many fingers he likes to put in different pies, but it all seems a little quiet on the winger front, so what’s going on, Andrea?

Maybe something will shake loose this week, but it does seem alarmingly quiet. Then again, perhaps that’s just what Arsenal want.

Back tomorrow. Maybe we’ll get something exciting today.

Laters kids.