Looks like Bruno G is on his way. The last horses are crossing the finish line – Newcastle-based journos – and they’re now starting to report that he’s met new manager Matthias Jaissle, and told him that he wants to make this move, which means it’ll be sanctioned for around the £75million mark.

So for all of that posturing about figures well north of £80million, that it’s going to have to be close to the near £100million the Scum paid for Tonali, it appears as though the fee is ‘relatively’ more reasonable for the player. It’s probably more than Arsenal would want to pay; the original links that came out made it sound more like £60million, and if you go by TransferMarkt, that’s his realistic value. But we know that in this window, this summer, those two utterly wretched clubs Man City and Chelsea have inflated the market with their grossly overpaid fees for players. And so I guess we were always going to overpay a little for this one.

It feels like – as Ornstein reported yesterday – we’re nearing ‘end game’ here and, frankly, I’m sure we’re all glad. Get it done, let’s have some pics by the weekend, maybe have him paraded at the Emirates for our friendly against Dortmund on Sunday, then let’s start to look seriously at what we do on that left wing position. Because by then, we should have an indication on the Vini Junior situation, for which I suspect it’ll end up being a renewal on better terms.

Certainly, if you listen to a few of the Madrista vloggers, like this John Terry-looking guy, they’re starting to get twitchy. The Madrid official social media accounts are doing their best to put their fans at ease though; Vini Junior interviews, “day in the life of training” clips, interviews on him talking about the new season, etc, etc. There’s two ways you can look at it; one is that they’re confident he will sign, or two is that they’re pumping out this content so that if it comes out he won’t sign a new deal, they can turn to their fans and give it the ol’ “we tried” narrative. That’s fair enough, although I suspect he will ultimately bow to the pressure no doubt being exerted on him and take the deal.

For Arsenal, that means getting the Bruno G deal over the line should result in Berta focusing the mind on who we can get instead of Vini Junior. Where’s plan B, C and D? That’s what I want to start hearing rumours of the second we hear that Vini Junior is staying. Let’s not have any protracted chase of him all summer. Madrid have supposedly said they want an answer this week, and I think Arsenal should push for that too. No deadline day shenanigans, please.

Speaking of shenanigans, how about those RB Leipzig jokers, eh? Just offloading Diomande for £100million, now they supposedly want Ethan Nwaneri for €40million. That article i’ve linked to also references the possibility of a buyback clause, which I’m sure we’d be fine with, but if Arsenal countenance selling him for €40million/£34million, I’d be pretty cheesed off, I have to say. Let’s remind ourselves that we had to pivot away from Sesko last summer because RB wanted too much. Well, this time the boot is on the other foot, motherf*****s, so pay up. And pay well. Or you can get in the bin.

As can, it appears, the Arsenal IT technical team, as the club has announced they are refunding everyone who bought a pre-season pass, following the technical difficulties on the website at the weekend. Eek. And in a move that may well cheese a lot of fans off, it doesn’t look like the Betis game in Dublin tonight will be televised either. man, I’d hate to be in the team that is trying to fix that mess. I suspect they’ll record the match and make it free to everyone tomorrow if they can’t get it working today, but if you’re going to the game tonight, you might be in one of those rare privileged positions to be watching a game that very few people can see live in the flesh. I guess that’s a little like how we used to feel when we had a 3pm kick-off on a Saturday. Very novel indeed.

I’ll be plenty of people are annoyed, but I can’t get too wound up about it, if I’m honest, because I don’t really watch these friendly games. I mean, I will if it’s on one of the many TV platforms I already pay for, but with a season ticket that also sets me back a grand, I’m not forking out over a tenner (or whatever it is) to watch pre-season matches. Sorry, that’s a ‘hard no’ from me.

The club has released some images of the players training, and I suspect we’ll get a bit more of a smattering of involvement from more of the first team regulars. I’m interested to find out how many minutes Ethan and Max get, but I also want to see (probably in hindsight after the game) what Kai’s looking like. Let’s not forget that he spent most of last season injured, plus half of the season before that out, so having him fit and firing for the new season is something I have everything crossed for.

Right, that’ll do me for today. I’ll be back tomorrow, hopefully having been able to watch the highlights of the Betis game, for which we can all completely over-index the significance of. You have yourselves a good one.