Or does it? I’ve seen times at which we’ve had an extended period in between matches because we’ve been knocked out of the FA Cup earlish like they were to Villa, but then you lose a bit of the rhythm and cadence of regular football.

I think for us it’s probably better that we’re playing later in the week. I mean, the whole ‘City could be just three points off Arsenal by the time they kick off’ adds a little bit of a psychological edge to proceedings, but given the narrative and way in which Arteta has addressed the talk of the title race up until this point, I think those Arsenal players will also be set up with the right conditions to block out a lot of the noise. The media manifesting this as if it is neck-and-neck is one thing, but those players need to be looking at the cold, hard facts and see where they have come and where they are at.

As fans, we have the licence to fret – of which we do – but those players are professionals, and they need to just cut it all out. I have to admit that I thought they were being burdened by the weight of expectation and worry after that United game, but since then, the focus appears to have returned. Of course, that means nothing if you slip up at these stages, but I have hope that this Arsenal team will do what the manager says and go into these games with a view to ‘enjoying it’.

If that is the case, then I think a tough and physical game against Brentford should be something they relish, because we know that Brentford are going to give us a run for our money on Thursday. We talked a bit about them at the end of the Same Old Arsenal pod we recorded last night, and I reeled off a few stats to try to work out what’s ahead of us for Brentford. Interestingly, they are the most efficient in front of the goal of any team in the league when you compare the number of shots they have compared to the number of goals they’ve scored. They don’t take many chances, but when they do, they have been scoring them, and we know that they are a good set-piece side. They are a clever side; they know just as well as we that the percentages when you get the ball into certain positions with corners, free-kicks, and throw-ins (of which they have a guy who has a bullet throw, as we know), then your probability of unsettling defences increases massively.

They also make some of the fewest final-third passes in the league, in the bottom half, and only Wolves, Leeds and West Ham make fewer. So this side goes back to front quickly; they are very efficient when they do, and they are very good with set pieces. I don’t know about you, but a pattern in how this game is potentially unfolding is really starting to become clear to me. They also make some of the most average blocks per game – this is a side who will be compact defensively, then look to spring traps with pacey wide-forwards and an in-form striker in Igor Thiago.

So what Arsenal needs to do is control some of the controllables. Winning the first few big battles in our box will be key, but we need to acknowledge that when Brentford are in their defensive shape, we’ll have possession and territory and we’ll need to – at times – show levels of patience. And I need to remind myself as well that we’ve started scoring more goals, whilst also keeping shut-outs, so maybe the team will lean more into their own form, rather than looking at what City will be doing.

I’m saying all of this as if we’re playing tonight, maybe because of the staggered match week. The interest tonight would be more ‘funny’ than anything else, because it would be funny to see Chelsea, the Scum and Man United all lose. Then tomorrow, the hopes are pinned on Brighton doing something at Villa, but I hold nothing in terms of hopes for Fulham at City. I watched Sky Sports last night, and the stats are shocking. Fulham have lost all of their last 19 games to City in all competitions. That includes 16 in a row in the Premier League and Marcos Silva for all the clubs he’s been in charge of in England? Zero wins from the last 13. They aren’t even picking up a point tomorrow night, so let’s forget about that and focus on the fact that The Arsenal need to do what they need to do on Thursday.

I might take some time tomorrow to start looking at how the Brentford fans are feeling ahead of this one, as well as what some of the other pundits are saying about how this one will unfold. But until then, I shall bid you a fine Tuesday and catch you all tomorrow for some more ramblings. Speak then.

What great news this is to finish a working week!

It was announced yesterday via David Ornstein and a few others that pen had been put to paper on a new deal and that means we’ll get our Staboy – on paper at least – until he is 29-years-old, which will mean he is committing the best part of his career – his peak years – to our club. We know he loves the club, supported the club as a kid, has given everything for the club and is our best player, but this commitment shows a few things which we can all be really pleased about:

1. Saka feels like his ambitions can be met at The Arsenal
2. Arsenal know they have a generational player and will not make the mistakes of the past (Cashley Cole, RVP, etc)

This Arsenal is very different from the one I grew up with. There is ambition, there has been clear evolution, there is a unity from top to bottom and an alignment in the fanbase (mostly – take what the online factions argue about with a pinch of salt, because when I go to games, I do not see the same discourse and vitriol that I do on social media). Arsenal has been a good environment to be in for some years now, and whilst Mikel Arteta is the driving force behind that, players like Bukayo Saka help him massively, because they set the ‘foggin estandards’.

And our standards and the desire this season is high. This team is in a ‘win now’ mode, and Saka knows this, senses this, which is probably why getting this deal done has felt a little easier than the previous one. He’s ready to be, as Sam Dean in the Telegraph says, the ‘franchise player‘ at The Arsenal. Sure, there are the trappings of being the best-paid player at the club, but he’s of an age where he also wants – and needs – to take some of the biggest burdens too. And I think we need him to for sure. Especially in the short term.

That means stepping up on the end-product, too. I spoke about this in the general context of the team a week or so ago, but the team spreading the goals has been great n’a ll, however, I think on an individual basis some players in there will expect more for their second half of the season, and I think Saka is defo one of them. He’s played 27 times in all competitions this season, 1,800+ minutes and has seven goals and six assists. I think somebody with the talent he has in his boots, with the ability we know he’s got for finishing and assisting, as well as his previous outputs in the last couple of seasons, would probably have set himself the target of 35+ goals and assists as a minimum. We’re over halfway, and he’s on seven goals and six assists. I think if we are going to win the league, his output needs to certainly be upped significantly in the second half of the season.

And I back him to do it, by the way, because he’s so supremely talented, as well as being a guy who has already proved it over several seasons previously. Heck, last season he spent a third of the season out injured and still got 12 goals and 14 assists, so him getting to…say…18 goals, plus 17 assists in circa 30 games (if he stays fit) feels like something that could certainly be achievable this season. He probably needs to get his shooting boots back on (has anybody else noticed that his radar has been a little off of late? He seems to have been ballooning a few of those trademark ‘cut inside and curl it’ finishes – or is that just me?), but if there’s one player in this Arsenal team you’d back to do that, it is Bukayo Saka.

As a quick aside, I do find it amusing that the club are always so late in announcing these things, in comparison to when the news breaks. I’m sure there’s not a lot they can do to control that. I’m sure what they wanted to do is do a nice video and announce it to make everyone feel warma nd fuzzy inside, but it always feels a little ‘after the Lord Mayor’s party’ vibe when they do these videos because a journo has leaked the announcement first. But there you go. That’s modern football, I guess.

Will Saka play tomorrow? I doubt it. I’d be really surprised if he starts, anyway. There might be a place for him on the bench if things start to go a little tit’s-up, but looking ahead to that Portsmouth game, it really feels like the manager needs to be flexing the squad muscles a little more. Portsmouth are currently in a relly scrap at the bottom of the Cham,pionship, lost their last game 5-0 away to Bristol City and whilst they have picked up a couple wins at home recently against Charlton and Blackburn and are unbeaten at home since a 1-0 defeat to Bristol City in November, you’d have to think that a rotated Arsenal team has enough to overcome them. I had a little look on Fbref to see what sort of side Portsmouth are and this is what the data told me:

• Second-lowest xG in the Championship
• Mid-table for xG allowed
• Mid-table for shots against them and shots on target against them
• Third-highest number of launched balls in the Championship from their keeper
• Second-highest number of long passes over 40 yards in the league

So I look at those ‘top line’ metrics and think this is a team that will a) go long at every opportunity, b) let Arsenal have the ball, and c) try to maintain compact and defensive in their shape. But, interestingly, they are in the top five teams in the Championship who have won the most tackles in the attacking third. So clearly they adopt an aggressive ‘defend from the front’ approach, but that doesn’t strike me as a side that just sits in a low block. They also don’t have a high number of blocks either, which is what you tend to see from a team that sits in a low block with plenty of bodies in midfield. So I do think this will be an interesting encounter and certainly the home crowd will be up for it, but will we see Portsmouth forced into a low block by the sheer weight of possession and territory we are likely to try to command? We’ll have to wait and see.

I’ll leave it there for today ,I think. I’ve got a mountain of Saturday chores to do, so I should probably get out of me PJs and on with it.

Catch you all tomorrow for a match preview.

It’s a fascinating case because I think most of us have sadly moved on from him, but as Simon Collings’ article points out, it’s easy to forget that before he did his knee in that United FA Cup game last January, he was on a run of six goals in seven games. I’d completely forgotten that and I think i’d even mentioned on here and on social media that my feeling was a move back to Brazil was probably what he should be angling for this season. After all, he’s most likely fallen down the pecking order with Kai and Big Vik duking it out for that central spot and Merino knocking on the background with his goal output. Gabriel Jesus can play across the front three, for sure, but he’s not getting in ahead of Saka, Martinelli, Trossard, Madueke and probably even Eze at this stage. But at 28 he isn’t a busted flush and that goal return before he was injured is worth considering before we think that he’s done. He doesn’t think he is at Arsenal and good work to the lads at Arseblog for doing the translation on an article in which he says he still wants to win things at Arsenal. nice words, the right words, but I suspect if there’s an offer in January to be had, Arsenal would consider it. We’ve got a big squad as it is, but having players already not making the match day squad and with his wages as it is, I suspect Arsenal might look to cash in on an asset – as nice a guy as he might be.

Until we get a deal though, he’ll be re-integrated and it shows just more strength-in-depth that we have at the club and I wonder if that is something that Palace will be wary of on Sunday. They were defeated to Larnaca last night and whilst I didn’t watch the game, I had a look at the result and stats and it seems they had a lot of dominance in the game and played a pretty full-strength team. Henderson, Guehi, Lacrooix, Munoz, Mitchell, Sarr and Mateta are all regulars for the Eagles and whilst subs were made by Glasner from 71 minutes onwards, it’s still guys getting games on a Thursday night before playing on Sunday. That’s something our squad is used to and our depth has been able to handle, but I wonder how Palace react to that? Hopefully they feel the fatigue whilst we’ve had two extra night’s rest and with Bernardo Silva bitching about it in the game we played against City (they had no issue the season before when we were in Italy two days after they were playing at home before going to Manchester, but there you go) , you know that this impacts these finely tuned athletes. Even if it’s just a 5% difference in our favour, that works for me.

As for their fans, a quick check of a couple of message boards reveals a little discrepancy between fans. Based on the 30-odd predictions that I read, there’s a blend of “We’ll get a scrappy score draw” and “this isn’t a good time for us to play them given our form”, with more leaning towards a score draw than a defeat. I can kind of understand this. We have to remember that Palace were on a mad-crazy undefeated spell before they got beat up at Everton, but that defeat last night is now being spun into a “three without a win” jibe at the FA Cup holders. As usual from the Palace fans I’ve seen there is a little bit of the ol’ “as long as we’re good on corners they can’t hurt us” and whilst I’d hope the Palace coaching staff apply the same principle, I’m not naïve enough to believe so.

We all know this is a good Palace side, a well-coached Palace side, who do create a lot of chances with their mid-block approach that gets plenty of chances when they spring rapidly from front to back. Heck, they’re the current xG leaders in the table by some distance:

Hopefully that screen grab comes through and you can see it from FBref.com, but what it shows you is that Arsenal are coming up against a team who know where the goal is and I suspect we’re going to give away a few chances on Sunday in search for the goals. What it might do is turn this game into a transitional one and create more chances for us, but I’ll park any further tactical analysis for the weekend.

For now we’ll wait until we hear from Mikel and Oliver on team news and whilst ours is hopefully positive, it’ll be interesting to see what Glasner hints he might do given the fact that Palace have – unusually for them – a disadvantage playing a European-playing side this time around, because of their own involvement in midweek competition.

So I’ll leave it there and be back to you tomorrow with some more thoughts following the press conferences. Have a good one.

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I don’t think I’m the only one who was surprised – pleasantly so – about the Ornbomb that dropped yesterday. William Saliba has agreed a new deal at The Arsenal. Five years, all done but the official announcement, the club get to keep a player who has proven himself to be one of the best players in the world in his position. I have to say, I am thoroughly delighted with this one, more so than many of the other recent contract announcements that have been made. Don’t get me wrong, signing up Ethan, MLS, Big Gabi – all very important. But I think the reason why this one is the most pleasing for me personally is that it was the one that I have – for some time now – haboured genuine concerns that this would end up with him exiting next summer.

Why? Well, I think it is because of some PTSD from other players, both at our club and elsewhere. The most recent example is Trent at Liverpool. He was a Liverpool lad, he’d made it sound (I believe) as though it was just negitation time with two years to go. With one year to go that was still ongoing but there were no major concerns. Then as the clock ticked down on that final year, it became more and more clear that he was going to exit to Real Madrid. We’d heard the rumours, the Madrid press, some of the hierarchy, had all started making those noises and I think most football fans know there is no smoke without fire. Well, those noises had started to surround Saliba. We were getting it from Marca, we had it from the odd podcast like one I saw with Rudiger in which he’s said he’d love to play with Saliba and then when he was asked about that he just smiled and shrugged his shoulders. There had been fears about a little bit of Agent Mbappe work for the French national team, as I believe the two players had gotten on well.

Then, from an Arsenal side, there was a bit of paranoia given how his Arsenal career started and let’s be honest here, was a little mismanaged by the club. The loans and failed loans were a worry. Then, when he did sign, it was only a four year deal with no ‘plus one’ option on it. Even back then I remember thinking to myself (and I’m not sure if I vocalised that on here or not) that “in two year’s time we’re going to be back in this same position re: his contract”. Sure enough we were, but this seems to have never really developed into the saga that it could have been this season.

And I think real credit has to go to Arsenal, to Mikel Arteta and to Andrea Berta on this. For Arsenal as a club, it is about being in a position in which the players feel competitive and though they can realise their dreams. There was a quote doing the rounds from 2024 in which Saliba says rather confidently that he thinks he is already one of the best defenders in the world, but now all he needs is to win trophies. He ain’t signing on the dotted line if he thinks he’s the best defender in the world and he can’t do that at The Arsenal, I tell you that much. And I think one of the other massive factors about us being that competitive is Mikel Arteta too. There are people who are anti him and his approach, there are some that have grown a little more frustrated (particularly this season) with how we have set up at times (let’s not forget the injuries here guys),  but the reason we are so competitive is because Mikel Arteta has been able to (with ample finances from the club) build a very competitive Arsenal side that these players feel like success is within touching distance. I want to invoke a name not well liked in Arsenal circles, but doing it as an example of how times have changed, and that name is Robin van Persie. He did his ‘open letter’ to us and cited the lack of ambition by the club as a reason he wouldn’t renew. He’d apparently wanted reassurances of the investment the club would make in surrounding him with good players. Well, this summer, the club invested significantly and as much as the deal is about Saliba and his situation, I wonder if the signing of some of the players we have made to make us even stronger in the wake of our mounting injuries, might also have helped to convince him that Arsenal are set up for success?

This deal enables Arsenal security too. We may yet see Real Madrid come in for him, it could be in two years time even and perhaps he wants to give it a go, but rather than us losing him for nothing, or having already sold him a year earlier because he didn’t sign a deal, this would ensure that any club that comes knocking will have to pay for what could be the best defender in the world. Josko Gvardiol moved from RB Leipzig to Man City in 2023 for £77 million. Harry Maguire went to United for £80million. van Dijk moved to Liverpool in 2018 for £75million. Take inflation, take the fact Saliba will already be at a big club and on a decent contract, and if you are someone like Real Madrid that wants to come knocking for Saliba in two years time (assuming he stays fit) then his market value is going to be more than £100million easily. This contract retains the value of a valued player and I think everyone associated with The Arsenal will be delighted with that.

We’ve got Arteta’s press conference today ahead of this really tough trip to Newcastle and I’ll be back tomorrow to have a look at what he said and start looking ahead of this tricky trip to the North East on Sunday.

See you then.

His statement with all of the top players at the PFA Player of the Year awards last night was certainly explosive enough, with his silence broken and shots most certainly being fired in Newcastle’s direction, citing ‘broken promises’ by somebody at the club. Is that Eddie Howe? Is it the Chairman of Newcastle – Yasir Al-Rumayyan – who has supposedly broken his promise? Is it the former Sporting Director Paul Mitchell who left the club in May? My guess is that it might be the latter, because Newcastle’s comment that ‘no club official’ had ever made such a statement feels like it could be one of those cleverly worded pieces given that Paul Mitchell isn’t a club official any more.

Whoever it was, whatever was said, Isak has properly doubled down on his issue and despite the fact Newcastle’s statement said that they will welcome him back to his teammates, this feels like there’s possibly a point of no return that might have been crossed. Certainly from the player’s eyes I think. There’s talk of him possibly going as far as leveraging FIFA’s Article 17 which will mean that Newcastle would be forced to let him join any club for free from 1st July 2026 if he officially triggers this rule. I don’t know all of the detail, but he can invoke it within 15 days of the final match of the season (early June 2026 at the latest) and all Newcastle would get would be compensation, which would probably equate to about half of what they are asking, apparently.

I think this means Liverpool go back in. Holier than thou Liverpool who have clearly had some kind of wrangling’s in this and who have been briefing the press that they want to ‘respect’ teams, when in reality they have no intention of doing that and are clearly working the back channels. There’s no way a player like Isak goes this hard unless he’s been given assurances from his potential destination. It is grubby and for a club who were burning effigies and talking down Trent Alexander Arnold’s move to Real Madrid this summer just gone (in which they got £10million when they really should have got nothing), it is slightly ironic that those very same supporters are cheering and celebrating this move by Isak to force Newcastle’s hands.

From an Arsenal point of view, our closest would be RvP or Nasri, with RvP probably the closest, but we were more forced in to this with the fact that he only had one year left on his deal. Isak has three, so whether Newcastle play hardball or not remains to be seen. In a way I’m glad that it’s not involving us, this saga, but I’m also very wary about just how good Liverpool will be with the Swede in their team.

Arsenal’s challenges aren’t in attack or wantaway players, but seemingly the reverse of that, as it was reported by multiple sources last night that Leo Trossard has agreed a wage increase on his current contract. The bizarre thing about this story, however, is that it isn’t a contract extension. I don’t know about you, but I have never heard of something like this before, when a player gets more money without having at least an extra year added to his deal? It is strange to say the least. The reaction on social media last night was obviously quite extreme from some corners, but I don’t think that was because of a hatred of Trossard, per say, but I think more because it probably represents a decision by the club to stick with what they have on left wing, possibly because they aren’t able to make the required sales to bring in a replacement.

We’ve heard all summer that they were looking at a left winger as somebody to come in, but I don’t think most Arsenal fans wanted to believe that the guy was Madueke. I think most thought he was the squad depth rotation option on both flanks. Clearly, if the window shuts in 11 days time and there’s no additional incomings, that might not have been the case, or it is simply the case that we haven’t been able to make the sales needed. There’s rumours that Nelson doesn’t want to go which is, frankly, ludicrous given that he isn’t getting anywhere near the first team at this stage. There’s rumours that we can’t offload Zinchenko, at a time in which – as one lad put it in one of my WhatsApp groups – “Liverpool have just sold a player who’s never played in the Premier League for £15million” and when you think about how clubs like Liverpool, City and Chelsea are able to offload players nowhere near the first team, it does seem bizarre. I get that Zinchenko’s wages might be a stumbling block, maybe he too doesn’t want to move if his kids are settled and he fancies leaving on a free next year and being a bit-part player, but I would be surprised given it is a World Cup year and Ukraine will probably fancy their chances of getting to the finals (at least via the playoffs) and so he will want to be playing.

Then there’s Lokonga, Fabio Vieira and Karl Hein, whose futures have all not been sorted and you do start to wonder why that is. Are Arsenal asking for too much? It doesn’t sound like it to me. Apparently we’re asking for £20million for a guy we paid £35million for only a few short season’s ago. Vieira is wanted by Stuttgart for £17million and I wonder if Arsenal will just do that deal if they have to, perhaps with a decent and chunky sell on fee of 33 – 50% to recoup some money maybe? Whatever they do, they really should be acting now. Berta was given praise earlier in the window, but it appears now as if that praise is on the turn a little bit with the fans. It appears the same affliction that impacted Edu – the inability to move on players not from Hale End (and in Reiss’ case, he is!) – has been passed on to the current incumbent.

On the Trossard thing, I suspect (without knowing) that promises have been made by the club previously, maybe by people who are no longer at the club, of a pay rise. Arsenal now feel they have to honour that. I also suspect the fan response is that we are possibly going to miss out on the shiny new thing and with Eze on his way to the Scum whilst Rodrygo doesn’t even get on the pitch for Real Madrid last night, there is some projection happening in the fanbase. We all think that our left wing could do with some work and Martinelli’s average pre season hasn’t helped, coupled with the fact that it looks like Trossard will stick around another year and he was good but not great last season, and I think some people are thinking this doesn’t really move the needle with the players that already between them had 20 goals (ten for Martinelli, ten for Trossard) and 15 assists (five for Martinelli, ten for Trossard) in all competitions. But here’s the thing – I don’t particularly hate our left hand side. You look at those numbers and if Madueke chips in with 10 goals and five assists and both Trossard and Martinelli can match that figure albeit with less game time because the minutes will be shared, I think you’d have to say the left hand side is doing it’s job. If we’re expecting Saka to bang around 35 goals and assists on the right, Trossard and Martinelli to get 35 between them on the left, then Madueke to get 15 goals and assists from both flanks, with Gyokeres also adding to what we expect of Kay, we’re probaby talking about the extra 15 – 20 goals this season that is needed to get closer to a title challenge.

What we have to see is more from Martinelli and Trossard with less game time though. The new contract is there and out in the open, much like how many of us weren’t keen on the Madueke deal, we have to hope that the players get their heads down and just start delivering. And that has to start from this Saturday.

That’s enough from me for now I think. I’ll be back tomorrow with some more thoughts as we head into the weekend.

I can only assume he’s been told that he’ll be a squad player next season rather than a first team regular and maybe he’s thought that, at 32 year’s of age, he needs more regular game time whilst he’s still at a physical best. It’s still weird though. I thought one of the reasons he went back to Germany was that his wife was also interested in heading back there (so I heard). Of course there was the challenge of working with Xavi Alonso and what he was doing in Leverkusen, but I would have thought Xhaka would have a few more glamorous places he could go and play football in than the North East. And having The Management with family from that part of the world, I can tell you know, there ain’t much glamour in Sunderland, that’s for sure. Mind you, I also have family in Cologne and Leverkusen is right next to it and I can also confirm there is bugger all in Leverkusen other than the Bayer factory.

But it is what it is, Granit will get a great reception at The Emirates next season and hopefully he has a good time up there in the upcoming season.

As for us, well, with all of the transfers done and one more Asia Tour game left to go, the in between time we have is filled with interviews. It’s full of people wanting soundbites, little snippets, the tiniest of ‘scoops’ to report back on and the one that is doing the rounds at the moment appears to be William Saliba saying positive things about a new contract. Needless to say, I think every Arsenal fan knows that he is a guy who we need to try to tie down to a longer term deal. The worry for me has always been that you just know that Real Madrid will come sniffing eventually and whilst that has only been a tentative noise so far, with two year’s left on his deal, efforts simply must be stepped up this summer.

On his part he’s been positive; he’s said to people that he’s happy and hopefully a deal can get done, that he wants to leave that to his agent, etc, etc. Arteta also said during last season that all of the noises are positive from him. There appears to be a happy camp on all parts, but as we know, that doesn’t necessarily always lead to a deal. The money will have to be right and Arsenal will need to be offering top dollar here, because if Real Madrid want him, they’ll be laying down the foundations for a Trent-style snaffling for free (or near free) in a couple of year’s time. If Arsenal can propose the right deal, that is good for him and gives him top billing (or close to) on the earnings list at The Arsenal, I have hope he will sign. He’s 24, he turns 25 in March next year and if you look at how he plays and how he reads the game, I don’t think he’s a centre half who starts to look old when his pace starts to depart him. He’s always been a strong and physical player with the ability to read the game well and whilst he’s not the same as Vin Dijk (he certainly doesn’t get the same level of preferential treatment from referees as the Dutchman does), I do think his ability to remain at the top of the game for longer is there.

So if you’re talking about him as a centre half who could – injury permitting – stay at the top for another ten years, then he still has time for that Madrid move if he signs another deal this summer. If Arsenal time him down to a four-plus-one deal, they have him covered until his 29-year-old season and it’ll probably mean that Madrid can come knocking in three or four years, with us getting a nice fee for him and being able to move on.

Of course that’s not what I want to happen; I want him to stick around for another 10 years and become an Arsenal legend, winning trophies and writing himself into Arsenal folklore. But the older you get, the more more you realise the transient nature of football and their careers (just look at Granit), you realise that it rarely works out that way. But Arsenal do need to move heaven and earth to get this one extended for a few years I feel. It appears as though a deal is there to be done and that’s where we need to see that Berta can deliver on all facets of his job. He’s done it with MLS and Big Gabby, but to me it has always felt as though the more difficult contract renewals will be Saka and Saliba. Get those over the line this summer and we’re talking.

Of course the other side to the transfer coins is also something we need to sort out is the outgoings – and doing it for decent money. Chelsea seem to cheat their way through big deal after big deal (although I suspect the letters ‘P’, ‘I’ and ‘F’ have something to do with it..), Liverpool can command decent money for back up centre halves, so the final piece of the Berta puzzle this summer will be those outgoings. If I was to put a number on it as a target, it would be:

Can you get us £75million in sales this summer?

I think that is achievable given some of the assets we have. If I break it down, I would see it as:

• Reiss Nelson = loan with obligation to buy at £15million
• Oleksandr Zinchenko = £15million
• Fabio Vieira = £15million (West Ham supposedly sniffing)
• Sambi Lokonga = £10million
• Gabriel Jesus = loan with a £10million obligation to buy

We’ve already got £7million (ish – I think it’s just under that with the Euro conversion) for Tavares too, which brings us to £72million and then you’d hope that sales of players like Hein, etc, could net a few million here and there to bring that over the line. And I don’t think those fees above are over-valued. In fact in some instances I might be under valuing some of those experienced players. But if we’re netting £75million having spent around £200million in the summer, I suspect from a PSR point of view it leaves us in good shape.

I like these kind of signings, because it has rivals going “who’s he? Arsenal have bought poorly again” and because they don’t know the player or haven’t become invested in him like us since the deals of a potential move surfaced, they sleep on him a bit. But when you start reading into him, his profile and also the bloody size of him – he’s six foot three at 20 years old! – you see that he feels like a very impressive acquisition. Although I  have to lay my cards on the table here; I don’t really know much about him and don’t really watch much Spanish football other than the odd game if it’s on in the background as I’m cooking. So I read up on this article from Phil Costa on Arseblog and I have to say, that ticks all the boxes for me. Comparisons to Rudiger, a player who has the kind of minutes under your belt that you’d expect from a 23-year-old, can play either side of the defence, good ball retention and I love it when I get the ‘Gandalf’ feeling from reading about a player. You know what I’m talking about – that “YOU SHALL NOT PASS” kind of vibe. Super stuff.

We of course need to let him get settled in, he needs time to adapt to the English game and its physicality, but he looks like he’s got all of the tools to be a very good signing for us and it’s the first one that I think most of us know is a true ‘Berta’ signing. Even in the video itself Mosquera references ‘the sporting director’ along with Mikel as the reasons he wanted so desperately to sign. And it’s another one that ‘desperately’ wanted to sign, which has become a feature of the signings this summer. Players moving heaven and earth to get to your club is a sure sign that when they put on that shirt, they are walking an inch or two taller, are going to try that little bit more, which is all we ever ask of as fans. But yes, this one is for sure a Berta one. There’s lots of talk about the great summer he’s had, but I do think that does a little bit of injustice to the groundwork that was already done. I think Zubimendi, for example, was already sorted. And I’m not sure (but happy to be told otherwise) whether he had too much impact on the Big Gabi signing, because that seemed to happen pretty quickly after he’d walked through the door, if my memory serves me right. The rumours of Gyokeres or Sesko have persisted for most of this season gone by and although Berta clearly had his preference and maybe that’s what has led us to the Swede, I wouldn’t think he’s ‘instrumental’ on the deal, but maybe just did his bit to push it over the line.

I dunno, perhaps I’m doing Andrea a disservice, but for this one I think it feels to me 100% like this is ‘his guy’. Apparently according to Phil’s article there were rumours that Berta wanted him at Atleti, so that shows you how much of an influence he’s clearly had here. It’s proper pissed Valencia off too by the looks of it. That statement is as cold as you’re gonna get from his selling club. Eek.

But he’ll move on, they’ll move on, hopefully it works well for him and we have a guy who will compete for a starting spot within a few seasons.

The other article I wanted to give you a heads up on was an Athletic article written by Gunnerblog that was released yesterday (behind a paywall here). What I loved about it was the way in which Rice spoke about Madueke, saying how driven he is to prove everyone wrong and be a success. Again, a response from one of our pseudo captains along the lines of “wait and see guys, you’re going to be excited” is the sort of thing you want to read as a fan. We’ve all had our say on the transfer, but now it’s time to see what he can actually do with a red and white shirt on and I hope Rice is right about him surprising people.

I also hope he’s right about his own ambitions. We all wondered about Rice last season at the start and he himself said that the Euro’s and basically having two week’s to ‘get over it’ before being pushed back out on the Premier League stage meant that he didn’t quite feel with it. We all saw that play out. But we saw the real Rice towards the final third of the season and if we think about how he’s had plenty of rest, a full pre season under his belt and now is ready and raring to go, it’s exciting. To me it feels exciting that we could get the Declan Rice that finished the season, starting this season, so when you couple that with the hope that Odegaard is over his struggles, Kai has beefed up, Ethan and Myles are a year older (and Ethan looks like he’s been taking his vitamins!), we’ve got an upgrade at six in Zubimendi and a lot of depth options have been solved – something else Rice mentioned.

It makes me really hope we get to make some rival fans chow down on some humble pie next season. I’ve seen plenty saying we’ve bought bang average players, we will finish between fourth to sixth, that there’s no chance we’re competing and I’m absolutely fine with that. I just hope we can kick on early on and show them that we mean business this season, because I think we really do, and I hope Rice is right with what he was saying.

Catch you tomorrow – maybe – I’m doing a cheeky weekend in Cologne to see family so may or may not get time for writing stuff.

He also spoke about those already in the door and you can tell he’s super pumped about Zubimendi above all. That was the one that we know he coveted and he talked about how it was a long process to get him, how the club did a great job of convincing him, but this signing feels like it has all the hallmarks of it being an Arteta deal. Sometimes you never know how much involvement Arteta has. Take Gyokeres, for example, who most people pretty much universally accept that it’s one of Berta’s guys. I’ve heard multiple journalists and podcasters talk about how Arsenal were hot on Sesko, Arteta was desperate for the Slovenian, that was ‘his guy’, yet Gyokeres is the one we’ve landed on, mainly because Berta is backing him big time and I think Arteta is like “ok cool”. Madueke feels like he’s Arteta going “you get Gyokeres, I get Madueke as my pick” in that forward line, but the Zubimendi deal was one that was really clear that everyone wants and Arteta clearly feels that he’s a guy who is going to take us to the next level.

The exit of Partey meant a hole needed to be filled and I think Arteta feels like he’s definitely got an upgrade in that respect. He was asked about the Partey situation and of course he said that he felt the club acted 100% correct and he can’t talk about it for legal reasons, but I suspect even Arteta is glad that sorry mess is behind him and now he can focus on Zubimendi, who he mentioned he was very excited about. It’s easy to see why – he himself adopted that position when he arrived at The Arsenal and I suspect Arteta see’s a lot to like from the way Martin plays and his style. He intimated that by saying that after 10 days of training now he’s been very impressed. He doesn’t have to say that; he could just say he’s very happy, glad he’s in, happy to have signed somebody with that level of experience. But he chose his words very carefully and when he’s talking about Zubimendi’s character and personality, you can tell he’s got a guy who is a perfect fit for the environment and culture that Arteta has built over these years.

He spoke positively too about Madueke and that one was more general soundbites I think. I think Arteta and the club know full well how it went down amongst the fanbase pre the announcement. They know there’s a bit of work to do and I don’t think talking too much will do anything any more. So what everyone needs to see is him on the pitch and making an impact – which I think is fair enough.

Apart from that there’s a little bit from Gabriel talking about how he wants to win things at The Arsenal, how he’s happy to have signed a new deal, etc. It’s nothing majorly ground-breaking in terms of what he said, but it’s nice to hear that he’s bought in for the long term. We need that energy from Bill Saliba now, as the second part of that double act, which will need to be the next thing Berta and his team get sorted once the transfers are done. In a way, you want us to get the Mosquera and Gyokeres sorted ASAP this week, because it will mean that he can focus attention on outgoings and also contracts, so hopefully that’s the second half of the summer that gets sorted for us. We need to hear that positive news on contracts as much as we need to hear the new signing news. Let’s hope Berta is on it. The initial signs have been positive though. MLS and Big Gabby seemed to be done with little fuss. The Nwaneri deal is – if all is to be believed – done and dusted too. So we need Saka and Saliba the focus of attention next and if that can be done by the time the summer is over, that will be hugely positive for all of us and the club too.

Hopefully we see a little movement this week, whilst the team get on with the process of bonding on the pitch with the upcoming friendlies.

Catch you all tomorrow.

1. Kepa to Arsenal
2. Sesko to Arsenal
3. Rodrygo to Arsenal
4. Gabriel new deal.

Sadly the first three weren’t really anything new, but I guess we can take comfort in the fact there appears to be plenty of movement happening as Arsenal start to get their ducks lined up for signings. Whether that happens before this first window shuts on Tuesday remains to be seen, but it doesn’t really impact us I suspect, as the club will carry on with deals regardless of this window closing. They’ll just delay formal announcements until the window reopens, that’s all. Although I suspect the Rodrygo one will be one Arsenal have to have patience on this summer.

One bit of good news that was confirmed yesterday was the confirmation that big Gabby has signed a new deal that will take him to 2029 with The Arsenal. I don’t know the details but I’d be shocked if it doesn’t have a ‘plus one’ added on to the end and if he see’s out that contract, he’ll have been at the club for 10 years and will have certainly have become one of the greats at The Arsenal.

He’s already established himself as one of the best defenders in the Premier League arguably the world and his comments after the club made the announcement warmed the cockles of me ‘eart, I tells ya. He did the usual soundbites you’d expect, then also talking about the next step, which is about getting over the line with trophies. I think this signing is an important early statement to make by the club too; signings are great, but contracts like this one show that we have players within the squad who want to be signed up for the long term. Gabriel is showing that he believes that he can win things with The Arsenal and you only have to look at the videos of him celebrating when we beat Madrid to show that he and his family are massively invested.

I wonder what this does for other players whose future we still need to sort out? Does it help the likes of Saliba and Saka to pen new deals, as they see that another player is bought in to “the project”? I think it probably helps. Of course there will be negotiations, of course we will need to make sure we make each player feel independently valued, but this deal can serve as notice that Arsenal are committed to keeping their current crop together and my hope is that Gabriel’s signing is the domino effect of more deals getting announced.

As for the player himself, we’re getting another five years of a rock at the back. Big Gabi is one of those guys who loves a tackle, he lives for those big blocks, but he’s also a massive threat in the air. I read something yesterday which said that I think he’s only six goals off equalling Laurent Koscielny’s record of 23 from a centre half. He got three last season in the Premier League, four the season before that and three the season before that. So if he’s with us for the duration of his contract, on trend, he’s bound to beat that target of 23.

We could see it ourselves when he went off injured against Fulham too – he’s a big threat from set pieces. Yeah, he only scored three in the Premier League (although he did get five in all competitions) this season, but teams know that he’s a threat and as a result he gets special attention. That means that other players are perhaps not focused on as much and so big Gabi does just as much threat and damage when he’s nowhere near the ball in the box, as he does when he’s getting on the end of headers.

But it’s at the back in which he delivers the most value and whilst Kiwior was superb whilst big Gabi was injured and I want him to stick around next season, you can tell that Gabriel was missing. Saliba had one or two iffy moments towards the end of the season – would that have happened if Big Gabi was there? Maybe, but I like to think having him there gives a calming influence to the rest of the team. He is solid as you like and when he’s playing we are a better team. He’s good with the ball at his feet too. His passing range is varied and whilst Saliba catches the eye because of his strength on the ball and ability to weave in and out of tight spaces as a centre half, Gabriel is the guy who can often be found playing those longer, straighter, ground balls to our front three of the two. I for one am delighted he’s signed on and it’s the first bit of good news this summer that we can all cheer about. Let’s hope we start getting regular good news with contracts and signings this summer now.

Until then though, we’ll just have to continue to be patient, although as I sign off let’s also lament the departure of ‘Big Ange’. He gave us so much entertainment as manager of The Scum and the fact he’s going is a real shame. It would have been hilarious to see how ‘season three’ turned out, but sadly, it’s not to be. Let’s just hope they don’t go out and get somebody half decent because I thoroughly enjoyed watching them implode in the Premier League this season just gone.

Catch you all tomorrow.

“What do you think about Arsenal’s chances and what do you think about Arteta?” was the question he asked me. It was a leading one, because as somebody on the outside he’s clearly been influenced by the media and their sniping at our Basque manager, but I held firm and said I back him and I am excited about next season.

Because I am. I think the noises at the moment are really positive. If we can get the Zubi deal over the line soon, if we can sort out the Sesko numbers and get that done, then if we can go into squad augmentation mode of rotation players like a decent back up ‘keeper etc, then i think we could be in a really good place. Liverpool will look good with Wirtz in their team, but I’ll be stunned if Salah has another completely injury-free season and adds another 40+ goals and assists to his tally at 33 years of age. VVD might well continue to be a rock in that team, but I also hope that somebody at PGMOL is looking at some of the highlight reel comps of him this season, because he’s gotten away with murder. So hopefully there’s a revert back to the norm. Man City have a rebuild on their hands and whilst I don’t think they’ll be as bad as they have been this season, I do think the days of 20-game winning streaks for them are (hopefully) over. We’ll not mention the 115 (or is it 130 now??) elephants in the room, eh? Chelsea will be in the Champions League but I still think they might be short of going the distance (and I hope so for that reprehensible club). Newcastle now have Champions League football again to contend with, whilst Villa will also have the Europa League to occupy them.

So it does feel like – if/when we do what we need to do in the transfer market – there’s a really good chance for us next season.

I think the players see it too. Look at the fact there are noises about Gabriel signing a new deal. Two years ago this is a guy who’s having his head turned by big Saudi money, but now there is a tacit admission from those ‘in the know’ in the media that a new deal for him is essentially done. That’s great to hear. It shows ambition, it shows the player buy in, it bodes well for those hopes that we’ll see Saliba sign up too. He’s just got his defensive partner signed up and his mate committed for another five years, he’s been part of a side who have reached the semi final of the Champions League, he’s at a club who love him and the fans love him and who he supported as a kid, so what is there for him elsewhere right now? Sure, he might want to give it a go somewhere else in three or four years and I don’t think any of us Arsenal fans are naïve to think he won’t, but a new deal now and another two, three or four year’s at The Arsenal feels like it would be the right thing of all parties. So hopefully that can be a deal we can get done.

The good thing about the noises we’ve all been hearing is that Andrea Berta prioritised the Big Gabi contract thing as soon as he walked through the door. Great stuff. It’s all very well us talking about the ‘shiny new toys’ that Arsenal fans all want to see, but you have to take care of your own house first and in that Gabriel contract Berta is showing that he knows that too. If he can sort out Saliba and Saka this summer, as well as these signings, then we’ll be getting to the end of this summer and saying he’s had an A+ start indeed.

What we need to see now, however, is these things all come through the official channels. There’s been lots of positive back channel noises and media discussions, but with the transfer window officially opening today, it would be good to start having a regular trickle of positive news filtering through from today. Let’s see if we get it.

Right, that’s me done for the day, I think. I’m off to try and run this hangover off before a big Yorkshire Sunday lunch. Catch you tomorrow.

If you’re looking at the way the competition is shaking up at the half time stage, you’re saying that it feels like it might be PSG on our side of the draw and Barca/Inter on the other side of the draw. That’s a tasty collective and if we were to progress it would be three teams with which we all have some form of history with, be it recent or past. PSG we beat 2-0 earlier in the season, Inter we were robbed of anything with a dodgy penalty and some profligate finishing earlier in the season, Barca we seemed to play every year in the 2000s, so we all know about that. But I’m not going to be thinking much more about them at all at this stage, because as Bellingham said post game after Tuesday night’s defeat for Real:

“One place where crazy things happen is our house”.

Yeah mate – because you get 75% of all decisions, that’s why.

And that is a very real fear I have. Whoever the referee is next week, they are giving Real absolutely everything. Freekicks, throw ins, corners and woe betide any Arsenal player making a challenge in the box, because that’s probably ending up in two penalties. It’s the same with Barca and as you can probably tell by the fact I’m bringing up the most ridiculous second yellow for Robin van Persie in 2011 against Barca. That night, that decision, was the first time I realised that the two big Spanish clubs essentially get 75% of decisions in all matches. There was stuff on Tuesday night, even, that led me to that continued hypothesis. Camavinga may have eventually have been sent off, but before that I watched two times within five minutes in the first half where he bundled over a player, for the referee to do nothing, then penalise Timber for making a very similar tackle.

That’s what we’re going to be wary of next week and that’s why Bellingham and his teammates can make statements like that above.

Anyway, back on to more pressing matters, which appear to be locking down some of our players for new contracts. The arrival of Andrea Berta may have signalled a flurry of rumours of incomings in the shape of gossip around Gyokyres and Williams, but a big and important part of his job along with Richard Garlick and the contracts team at The Arsenal is making sure we protect our valuable assets. Bukayo Saka was asked about it in his pre match press conference and you have to say that he seemed very relaxed. As a result I feel relaxed. But Arsenal can’t, because for his last contract we left it far too long before getting it signed. This time around it would be good to have it done with plenty of time to spare. The key thing for the likes of Saka, Saliba, Gabriel, Havertz, Odegaard, etc, is that they see progression and the hope that their footballing ambitions can be realised. Games like Tuesday night will give hope, but we also need to finish the job and find ourselves in a semi final first. If we are able to overcome what was one of the favourites for this competition, then if you’re in Saka’s shoes you’re probably telling your agent “this shows me we’ve still got another level to go. I want to be here for that. Get the contract sorted mate”. If you’re Saliba too, who has already said he wants to win things at The Arsenal, at 24 year’s old you can probably do another four year contract and if in three year’s time you want to move on to Real Madrid (as has been some of the rumours), then you’re still in the prime of your career and able to do it. But Arsenal need to make sure they move now for these things so deals can be done in the summer, because if we’re talking about those two players and their contracts in particular this time next season, then the worry will be a lot more heightened for sure.

It appears the club are also looking at improved terms for MLS and Nwaneri too, which makes total sense, given their impact this season. Domestically it’s felt like such a slog but those two have been the glorious surprise packages and I’ve heard multiple people on match days and on podcasts saying that if you were to buy two players like that today, you’re talking north of £100million. That’s not an exaggeration I don’t think. MLS is an England international at 18. That sort of call up bumps the value of a player up and the fact he’s also bagged his first goal and is an English player so will come with that English premium, makes me think you’d have to spend something like £50 – £60million. Man United bid for Jarrad Branthwaite last summer for a deal that would tot up to £50million. This is a guy who had made one appearance for England by the time last summer rolled around. Now, Myles has only made two, but by the way Tuchel was talking about him and how effusive he was with his praise, it feels to me like he’ll be making plenty more.

Then you think about Nwaneri, who has only just turned 18 and has been fast-tracked to the England under-21s too, with a goal scored as well in the most recent set of matches. He’s lighting up Premier League stadiums, bagging goals for the under-21s and is considered an important asset too. TransferMarkt has his value at €55million (£47million) and it kind of does feel like that’s the kind of premium you would pay for an 18-year-old who has eight goals for the first team this season.

So it stands to reason that these players – who will absolutely be a big part of the team next season – get improved terms and are recognised for their position with nice long contracts. It needs to be done alongside Saka, Saliba and others and if Berta can get some of those sorted this summer, that’s some ‘quick wins’ that will have us fans ‘on side’ relatively early in his tenure.

Right, I better leave it there, so will be back tomorrow to see what Brentford fans are saying and how they are playing ahead of the game on Saturday evening.

Catch you then.

This is fantastic news.

He had been talking about how it was going to get done, there had been plenty of journalists saying there isn’t any issues and of course this was probably just a formality, but until you physically get that confirmation and see the announcement, you never really know. So to get that confirmation yesterday brought a smile to this here Gooner’s face. In December Arteta will have been at the club for five years and this time five year’s ago if you’d have told me that we’d have won an FA Cup and competed with 115 Charges FC for two seasons, amassing the highest number of goals scored and wins for an Arsenal team in the Premier League era, I’d have thought you were mad.

It kind of is mad to think how far we have come. The Emery era ended on a quite sour note, the signings we made were either bang average or terrible and when Mikel arrived he talked about getting that connection back with the fans. When he first did his first interview as Head Coach of Arsenal I remember thinking “lovely, but let’s see how he turns this in to reality”.

He has done just that.

When we were linked with Arteta before Emery got the job, my ol’ mate Dave told me that he’d spoken to Paul Davis about Arteta (or he’d spoken to somebody who had spoken to Paul, I can’t 100% remember) and Davis had been doing his coaching badges at the same time as the Spaniard. He’d talked of how impressive Arteta was; his knowledge of the game, tactical insights, his approach and also his intensity and drive to become a top coach. This is a driven man who during his playing days had been called quite an intense character. So there was no doubt he would be a top coach and that’s why Guardiola wanted him on his coaching staff. But that doesn’t always translate to success as the main man. I remember people talking up Steve McClaren as a great coach, or Brian Kidd, but whilst they absolutely nailed it as Fergie’s number two, they couldn’t hit the high notes as a manager.

I think that so far the signs for Arteta have been very positive. He even got the old ‘hasn’t won anything’ stick that is used to beat coaches with out the way early, winning the FA Cup in 2020 and whilst we haven’#t won anything of note yet, there’s no doubt in any real Arsenal fan’s mind that we are heading in the right direction. He has overseen an overhaul of playing style, of culture, of what it feels like to go to The Emirates, of the connection between fans and players and he has done it during some of the most challenging periods in football history. The global pandemic was unprecedented as we all know, but Arteta has turned Arsenal in to a competitive side that we all thoroughly enjoy watching. He has his naysayers in the press, rival fans and even some weird Arsenal fans, but you cannot argue that Arsenal aren’t in a better position now than when he took over.

His words:

“Together with the players and everyone at the club, we are looking forward to the coming years, with our supporters, who have emotionally transformed the club and the team. Our supporters have transformed individuals and we are different now. You can tell that we are different and for me, that is down to them. We look forward to continuing the journey together.”

The journey is still going and what’s next has to be to realise the amazing work he, Edu and the team at The Arsenal have done. We have to see the next evolution and that has to be winning trophies. Nothing is guaranteed and it is hard to win one of those important shiny silver trinkets, but we are in a great place to do it.

He’ll have his press conference today and I suspect that he’ll be given congratulations, there might be a reflection question or two, but it is his driven nature that will see that talk quickly ‘filed’, because he’ll be focused on the job that needs to be done on Sunday. And it’s another big task – and ask – for him to go this early in the season to a tough ground, with a bunch of injuries and suspensions, and pick up three points. It is going to be a massive game this weekend and many of us – me included – are fearful of what might happen in the next nine days given how tough each of these matches are, but in Mikel we have a guy who will absolutely not be making excuses, who will see this as an exciting challenge and who I think will be bullish in his press conference today.

I’ll pen some post-presser thoughts tomorrow, particularly as we’ll get an update of sorts (although I doubt he’ll give any timeline) on Martin Odegaard, Gabriel Jesus and Riccardo Calafiori, but for today I will leave it with the positivity that Mikel is here to stay for another three years and hopefully, he can realise the dreams we all have for The Arsenal, which is big prizes and big trophies.

Have a good one peeps.

And as if to rub salt in to our collective wounds, new signing Calafiori was taken off after a sort of freak accident after Dembele from France tumbled in to him last night. I’ve watched a clip of it and the most worrying thing is the way his teammates were furiously gesturing over to the bench to get somebody on. When that happens you immediately fear the worst, but with Spaletti saying that it’s not so bad and he might be fit for Monday, that’s at least some crumb of comfort. Riccardo should really be on the first flight home though. It’s ridiculous that he is even remotely in contention for playing another game after coming off injured but therein lies my biggest issue with international football during the season: The international managers just don’t care. Got a friendly against a big nation? An international manager will play your player for the full 90. Borderline whether they are fit? International manager will play your player for the full 90. We’ve already seen that Declan Rice isn’t 100% right now, but instead of resting him, you can bet that Carsley will play him this evening. I guess Rice is suspended so he’s getting a rest next weekend when we play the Scum, but that’s besides the point. The point is that these international managers chew our players up, run them ragged and spit them out/chuck them back to us in pieces.

Even Kevin De Bruyne has spoken about the number of games they play and how FIFA and UEFA are just chucking in more games, so it’s not just us fans that think this is pointless, but the players too. But as he says, money talks.

I know I am a broken record on this and I’ve been peddling this line for years, but that’s because it’s been frustrating for years. Arsenal pay these players’ wages. Arsenal have all the risk. But it’s the international teams who get to do what they want. It’s maddening.

And so now we sweat on the fitness of the rest of the players on duty. Rice and Saka are with England tonight, as is Timber with the Netherlands, Havertz with Germany, Zinchenko with Ukraine. Odegaard played the full 90 against Kazakhstan this week and Partey seems to have done a full 90 for Ghana against Angola. That tells me he’s at least ok. So that’s a relief. What is weird is that I can’t see Trossard in the Belgium team line up from their game against Israel. I don’t know whether that’s because he’s picked up a knock or not, but there’s nothing I can find online, so hopefully he’s just fallen out with his national team manager and is going to Ben White his international career. That would be nice. Focus on being in the Arsenal team Leo, we’ll appreciate you much more than any of those Belgians would.

I’ve seen some links suggesting that after the Saudi bid, Arsenal want to open talks with Trossard over a new deal. That makes sense to me. He doesn’t usually get too injured, he’s not the kind of wide forward where his pace is his biggest asset and that will start to dwindle as he reaches his 30s, plus he’s already shown this season how valuable an asset he is. He’s the best finisher at the club by a mile. His current contract runs until 2026 so in January he’ll have 18 months left on his deal. By the time we hit June 2026 he’ll be 31 by the time his contract is due to expire and is reportedly on £90k-per-week, so it’s not as if he’s on a massive wage in comparison to others; if the rumours are true even Reiss Nelson was on more than him!

But it’s a bit of a weird age. He’ll want more security in his contract length, but Arsenal won’t want to bump him up and slap another three years on his deal. So perhaps it will suit all parties to give him a pay rise, maybe bolt on an extra year with a ‘plus one’ on the end, then perhaps drop an extra £20k-£30k which he gets now to reflect his improved status in the team, as well as give him a little more security. All parties win and it nips the Saudi interest in the bud, so that’s good.

Right, I think I’ll leave it there for the day. Time to go for a walk in the Northumbrian air.

Have yourselves a splendid one and I’ll catch you all tomorrow.

Laters.

We were always going to sign Raya after the Spaniard clearly became number one back in September last year, so the announcement – whilst good to be confirmed – I didn’t think took any Arsenal fan by surprise. He did a nice little video in his Spanglish Northernish accent confirming it and then of course there were the usual niceties on the official site. It’s a deal Arteta and Inaki Cana will be happy with but will probably almost certainly lead to Ramsdale looking for new employers when he’s back from the Euro’s. Personally I’m still not 100% convinced on Raya but I think most of that was down to a few of the mistakes he made towards the beginning of the season; he was certainly more improved and assured in the second half of the season and so perhaps with that under his belt we can start to see him step up a gear in terms of his consistency, knowing that he is the current number one.

We do have to note the ‘current’ though, because let’s face it, Mikel does like to go through goalies and in 12 months time who knows what he might be thinking when it comes to the next evolution of his team.

He too has been in the press having spoken to James Olley and was quoted as saying that they are looking to strengthen in all departments. So I guess that’s a note of caution for senor Raya; don’t rest on your laurels mate, because Tricky Micky will have somebody in before you know it.

Hopefully that’s not his area of priority though, because I think we’re fine there unless Ramsdale leaves and they need to find a proper number two, so the focus needs to be on those other areas. He did admit that the international tournaments are getting in the way at the moment but what I did like was his response to transfers, which was to say that the club has a very clear plan of what they want to do and they want to be aggressive in the market. I wonder if that is in part linked to his new contract? He seemed to suggest that he was happy, the deal will be done, that all was ok. But what we have seen from Arteta is that he is a ruthless man and steadfast in his determination to get to the top and if the Arsenal hierarchy don’t match his ambition, then I’ve got no doubt in my mind that he will look at other options. I know it sounds silly, but everyone is expecting Pep to walk at the end of his contract when next season finishes and if City know that, then I have no doubts in my mind that they will be coming to Arteta and asking him if he wants the top dog job and if they get away scott free of the charges that they have, then it might be tempting for him to get a blank check and join a team who he already has a bit of a connection with.

Our hope has to be that his connection with Arsenal is stronger, he’s given the resources he needs to go again next season and that we see signs that Arsenal are once again improving. It feels to me like we’re almost there; 89 points, a Champions League quarter final (that I still think we were shafted on with that Neuer foul on Saka in the box in the dying seconds at The Emirates), we were unlucky in the FA Cup and I think we might have gone far in that too. We do need to see Arsenal winning a big trophy soon but it doesn’t feel like we’re a miles off and Arteta has built that over a number of years. To jump ship at the end of this season feels like it would be odd, especially as all of his and Edu’s hard work hopefully comes to fruition.

But you just don’t know in football, do you? I mean, moves happen with players that feel like they come from left of field. For example I saw a rumour yesterday that Madrid are after William Saliba. He’s establishing himself as a big name in the global game with his Euro’s performances alongside his Arsenal displays and whilst he certainly seems very happy at the club, at the end of this coming season he’ll have just two year’s left on his deal and it wouldn’t be surprising at all to hear that Madrid are starting to court the young Frenchman. he’s young enough that they could have a two-year campaign starting now and then with a year left on his deal Arsenal are forced to accept some kind of fee for a player who – if he’s had his head turned – could very well say he isn’t signing a new deal. It’s not as if we haven’t seen this movie play out before as Arsenal fans, right?

Perhaps that’s why I naturally get a little pessimistic when it comes to long-term future of non-English players, because over the last couple of decades we’ve seen ourselves be pillaged by Real or Barca and it’s not fun. Especially when the money we get feels on the low side. Other clubs seem to offload their stars for mega bucks (think Coutinho to Barca) but we always seem to get lowballed. That’s got to stop and Arsenal need to work better at the outgoings for sure, although that could probably be a whole other blog to be fair.

And so I think I will leave that for another day. It’s the first batch of quarter finals tonight and my family interest starts at 5pm with a mouth-watering match between Spain and Germany. I am working from home today so I think I will absolutely be putting that on in the background in my office as I wrap up my working day; should be a good one. Then in the evening there’s Portugal versus France which I also think will be intriguing, before the calamity that is England take on the Swiss tomorrow. Can’t wait to see how Southgate is going to screw that one up.

Catch you all tomorrow.

I have my own thoughts on this, as you’d expect, but as with all of these things there’s a caveat in there because we know that Arsenal and Arteta can often go in a different direction to what is expected of them. So I don’t think we can dismiss this completely. But from my perspective, I think this would be a bad idea and I am hoping it does not happen. We all know that Gabby J has had his fair share of injuries since joining us; he had a phenomenal start to life at The Arsenal, then he went through a slight barren spell on goals, then he went off to the World Cup and got himself injured, which meant he missed a big chunk of last season (99 days and 17 matches for us in total). He started pre season in the summer of 2023 well, picked up something just on the eve of the season and then missed most of August, before picking up a knock in October, then January and February.

He’s spoken about not remembering when he didn’t play without pain as early as the beginning of April, so we know that he’s a guy who has his problems and he’s even referenced the possibility of getting surgery in the summer. So we know that there are some challenges there. But for me the talent and versatility of this guy isn’t something we should just be dismissing. Arteta himself has talked him up at times this season, saying that he is a player who “changed our world”, so I am in no doubt that Arteta loves and appreciates what he brings to this group of players. He is an all-energy, strong player, better in the air than those non-Arsenal watchers would believe and whilst he doesn’t exactly have the best shooting boots in the world, he still pops up with important goals.

I love the handful he is for defenders and although he didn’t get on the pitch in the North London Derby, I am absolutely convinced that he still has a big part to play across all three positions of the front three. He did really well at right wing when Saka was injured at home to City, we know what he can do centrally and for City he also played left wing. The benefits we’ve reaped from having multiple players in multiple positions this season has helped us kick on from last season and for me I wouldn’t be entertaining a sale. Apparently his contract runs until 2027 so we also don’t really have to make any decisions this summer as it is.

I’d like to say that some of these factors alone should prevent any kind of further talk about him possibly exiting this summer, but as we all know, Mikel is ruthless and you only need to look at what happened with the Ramsdale/Raya situation to see what happens when Arsenal seize an opportunity to potentially get themselves any kind of marginal gain upgrade. If Arteta and Edu come across a striker who has a far better availability rate and is similar in style and output as Gabriel Jesus, what I think we’ve all learned is that you just never know what might happen.

But as it stands right now I’d be surprised to see us looking to move him on. If anything it might be a similar situation to what happened with Raya, who was signed on 15th August with the season already underway. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to see Arsenal act in August, decide to keep Gabby J around and then have him fight for his place and then somebody like Eddie is already moved on earlier in the window. That’s the sort of deal that would make more sense, because most deals that happen don’t really get done early during summers where there are international tournaments. If Gabriel Jesus goes to join up with the Brazilian national team then he is unlikely to be getting a move anywhere until after then and that’s mid to late July. Eddie won’t be going to the Euro’s with England because he just hasn’t played enough football, so he is a far likelier exit earlier in the summer and if that happens I suspect Arsenal aren’t going to want Gabriel Jesus go unless they’ve found a couple of replacements. Which also makes it less likely. If Jesus doesn’t go to meet up with his Brazilian teammates, then that means he’s had surgery and will be out for most of the summer anyway, which would make it basically impossible to sort a move out for a player recovering from surgery, as it’d be too much of a risk for any buying club.

So I guess what I’m trying to say here is that I suspect a move this summer is unlikely. If we find that this time next year he’s not played as much, has had another few injuries, then I suspect that is the time Arsenal would be more likely to consider the situation. But for the here and now I think he’ll be around a little longer and for me that is great news for us. He is a valuable player and a good member of the squad.

And that’s probably all I’ll leave you with today. Tomorrow we’ll start to look ahead to a tricky game against a tough opponent in Bournemouth and I might do a little look at some of the data points to see what we’re up against when we play the Cherries on our own turf. Have yourselves a wonderful Thursday and I’ll be back in the morrow.

Dedication. Determination. Tomiyasu pic.twitter.com/2Q6kGZWNza

— Arsenal (@Arsenal) March 20, 2024

We all love Tomi, I think that’s a given, so getting him to extend his stay with us is great. But perhaps it is a mark of some of the challenges he’s had since joining us, the deal itself is only an additional year extension. Clearly the player wants to stay and extending that was his priority, but I wonder how that conversation went, when Arsenal only offered him an additional one year extension? Does it benefit both parties and therefore it made sense for everyone? If you are Tomiyasu and his agent and you want to stay at Arsenal and secure a longer-term future, then perhaps you do this as a gesture of “ok we’ll sign, but we want an option”? If I was in Tomiyasu’s shoes that’s what I’d be wanting. An additional year added to the contract clearly feels like the club might have said to him “we love you, we want to keep you, but we need to have a consistent run of staying fit in order to give you that longer-term contract. Show us you can be available for 35 – 40 games in a 50 game season and we’ll give you what you want”. And I think that’s probably fair enough. If you look at his injury history he’s missed 14 games and 72 days for us so far this season. Last season it was 16 games and 107 days and the season before that it was 11 games and 60 days. In his last season at Bologna he missed 10 games and 47 days, so we’re talking about a guy who does seem to break down at least once a season, so it feels natural that Arsenal wouldn’t tie him down to a deal in which we have a player who as he gets older, is probably not going to suddenly find himself able to shake off more of these injuries.

It’s a shame because he has been so good for us when he has been fit and available. When he signed for us everyone said he couldn’t play as a right back and I think it was one of those soppy Sky Sports ‘transfer gurus’ who said that people in the game didn’t understand why Arsenal were paying that money for a guy who doesn’t play right back. He came in, he excelled at right back, then it was only because he was injured that we moved Ben White to that position that he lost his place. Tomiyasu is a hard-working, strong-tackling, dual-winning, versatile defender who I would rather see us keep than offload this summer because he’d have just a year on his deal. BUt by extending for one more year we can at least park the conversation for another season and give him the chance to show he can stay fit for longer.

If he remains side-lined for something like another 15 – 20 matches next season, then the club have a decision to make in the summer of 2025, but if he plays and contributes and is available for Arteta for most of 2024/25, then it makes sense that we’d look to potentially move him on.

There’s also the emergence of Timber too, that we’re hoping for. If Jurrien comes in, is robust and stays fit, then it may feel natural that he is seen as a successor to Tomiyasu – if the Japanese international does break down again – so Arsenal extending by one year protects the players value, shows that we ideally want to keep him around, but also means that if he finds himself in a position where his chances are limited by next summer, both club and player can find a solution that works for both parties.

But that’s another year away and for now let’s just be glad that another good player who makes an impact in this Arsenal team has signed up to this ‘project’. The players are clearly loving what is happening at the club at the moment and in the last year all of the key players have been committing their future to the club, which is a positive example that is showing we’ve been moving in the right direction. We all know that, but it was about 10-15 years ago when we’d see players start to look elsewhere when their contract starts to run down, but that doesn’t really feel like it’s been a big thing for us now. We have the money, we have the set up,. we have the coaching staff that have proved they can improve players, all we need now is the trophies to start building a legacy. That last bit is never guaranteed, especially when you look at the juggernauts we’re up against, but it feels like we’re ideally placed to have a proper go. And Arteta is the kind of ruthless winner that makes you think that he will not relent until he’s added to that FA Cup he won in 2020 and the couple of Community Shield’s we have.

Just before I wrap up today, as we are now finding out from the press, it seems as though the truth is emerging about the Ben White situation and it doesn’t make England or Gareth Southgate look very good at all. I think most of us knew that something was fishy and I thought as much when I talked about this last weekend. Southgate has clearly lied through his teeth; I also saw the video of his interview during the last World Cup when he spoke about the situation and it was clear that he was both uncomfortable and unwilling to reveal the true nature of what had happened. That’s because his mate Steve Holland had clearly crossed a professional line by calling out White in front of his fellow professionals and I think we all know by now that what he has supposedly said to White smacks of arrogance. The current England set up is stale and dwindling; it is full of Southgate and his ‘mates’ which includes certain players that shouldn’t be in the squad and the sooner he exits after the summer the better. And if he takes the United job then all the more hilarious.

I don’t particularly want to talk about England any more though, to be honest with you. We back our lad Ben and Holland/Southgate can ‘do one’ as far as I am concerned.

Catch you all tomorrow.

Firstly and most pleasingly, there was the announcement that he’s signed a new contract at The Arsenal. Much like Aaron Ramsdale, this contract announcement got a really nice and heartfelt video where his teammates talked about him and what he brings to the club:

Benjamin White, as told by his team-mates pic.twitter.com/2O3pcUJu70

— Arsenal (@Arsenal) March 14, 2024

When I first watched it I thought “ahh, that’s nice. Lovely to see. Then the official site had a nice little interview which you can see here, as well as the usual pictures and text which is here. We’ve known about it for a while, I think Romano tweeted about it ages ago, but the club finally announced it and we can all be glad. But it was only until later on in the day that many started to conclude that this was a very rehearsed and precise reason why the announcement was made yesterday, because on the same day Gareth Southgate announced his England team and spoke specifically about the Ben White situation. We all know he left for ‘personal reasons’ in 2022 and there wasn’t much coming out at that time, although there have been a few stories around that time talking about a bust up. Depending on who you read and believe, it was because either he had a bust up with Grealish, or that he had a bust up with England Coach Steve Holland. The story seems to go in a couple of directions but two prevailing theories are:

• Steve Holland argued and questioned Ben White because of the fact he said he doesn’t watch football
• Steve Holland argued because Ben White didn’t watch the preparation training videos, because Ben White thought they were pointless and he was being targeted in the squad.

I suspect as always there is a little truth and a little embellishment in these stories, but I find it very off that a player of White’s calibre, who Arteta absolutely loves, would refuse to do any background research because he doesn’t care or because he just can’t be arsed. Firstly, if that attitude was displayed at any time whilst playing for Arsenal, I think we all know that Ben White would get the Aubameyang treatment from Arteta. This is a manager who values the ‘estandards’ and the drive and determination more than anyone else. I bet Arteta is even stricter with his players on knowing all the details. So for Ben White to do that at England level seems like a bit of a joke to me. Here’s Ben White talking about how he cried when he got his England call up. This isn’t a man who doesn’t care. This isn’t a man who won’t do everything in his power to play for England. Heck, this is a man who plays through injury, has been described as a warrior and for anyone to question his integrity as a professional should be ashamed of themselves.

Something is fishy here. I smell some bullsh*t and I don’t think it’s coming from Ben White.

This is coming from Gareth Southgate and his camp. Here’s his interview he did in full, which includes the context of the way the question was asked and I will say to Southgate’s credit, he didn’t instigate the discussion. He was asked specifically about Ben White and so he responded. But there are ways of responding. He played the magnanimous manager card and said “the door is always open”, but what he could have said was “the door is always open, but for now he continues to not be available to us and I don’t want to discuss what is a personal matter”. But instead he decided to go in on how he had a call from Edu, told that White didn’t want to be considered, etc. Clearly what Southgate is trying to do is put this all on Ben White and focus the attention on it being his decision. But why would a guy who has openly admitted he was desperate to play for England, suddenly decide that he doesn’t want to be selected?

Southgate refuted claims that there was an issue with Steve Holland, but having watched what he was saying again this morning, I am going to 100% say that I do not believe that Southgate was telling the truth. He is defending his coaching team and doubling down on that, which you’d expect him to, but by name checking Steve Holland too, it seems to me that this is fairly obvious that something has happened with that coach, which leads you to start re-looking at the above and when you again think about Ben White at The Arsenal, it feels like this has everything to do with Steve Holland. Gareth Southgate is telling porkies and Ben White is the victim, because now all of the headlines today are about Ben White snubbing England. It hits his own image and Southgate has been the instigator of it. So now we see why Arsenal went in to bat for their man and we saw the lovely media that went on the website on the same day Southgate decided to try to torch Ben White and his reputation, all the while playing the “no issue from us, he’s always welcome” spiel.

Screw Gareth Southgate. Screw Steve Holland. Ben doesn’t need you because he has an army of Arsenal fans behind him and we’ll back our lad all day long.

The up side is that White gets time with his friends and family and he’ll also get more time to prep for this intense period we’re about to go through. If we get time to rest up Ben and have him on full power for the last couple of months of the season, happy days, as far as I’m concerned.

I’ll leave it there for today I think. Back tomorrow with some more Arsenal musings no doubt. You guys have a good one.

For me I think this is the right thing to do. He’s a player who is great in the duels (and we know how much Arteta loves it when you win a duel), can play both flanks and for Japan has also operated as a centre half. One of the things that has become consistent in Arteta’s kind of defender is their versatility and I think Tomiyasu has certainly shown that. He absolutely pocketed Salah last season at The Emirates and were he fit at Anfield this season I’d have put some money on the Japanese defender to have started in that game too.

It’s that sentence that will have a few Arsenal fans questioning, however, the deal itself. I think nearly all the Gooners I have spoken to think Tomiyasu is a great player for us and we all love him. When he arrived at the club it completely changed our right back situation and then when we lost him to injury there was a void there. But since he’s joined he’s never really been able to shake off those persistent knocks and injuries and the fact he went away with Japan, played most of their games, then came back to us crocked, personally didn’t look great for me. Since he signed for the club, according to Transfermarkt, he’s picked up four separate injuries with us, totalling 225 days, which is 38 games that he’s missed in total. That’s in three season’s and effectively means he’s missed about a quarter of a season every year. His injury record before he joined us also wasn’t impeccable and that’s why if there was an Arsenal fan who was questioning his long-term viability as a regular in this Arsenal team, I could understand it.

But perhaps Arteta and Arsenal are just learning to adapt by building him in as a squad player. Ben White is pretty much recognised now as our first choice right back and with Zinchenko and Timber also able to operate in that left back role, Tomiyasu’s versatility means that whilst he’s not always fit, when he is fit, he’s not relied on like when he first signed as our number one guy in any position. And when I think of it like that, I can make peace with him signing a new deal and for us keeping him around. If he’s a player that Arteta trusts and he keeps delivering when he is fit, then it’s fine with me.

There’s also been some noises about Ben White on the verge of signing a new deal too, which to me would be another great move that Arsenal are doing to tie down a core set of players on long contracts. in the last 12 – 18 months we’ve done Gabriel, Saliba, Tomi when done, Ben White when done, Odegaard, Rice is on a five year deal, Havertz too, with Martinelli having signed and Saka as well. The core of this team is stable and I think the next big question that will be on Arsenal’s minds is what to do with Gabriel Jesus and Zinchenko. I think both have three year’s to go at the end of this season and whilst that isn’t something to be too concerned with, if their respective injury problems persist in to next season, they might be the only ones who Arsenal might be thinking about moving on from. Arteta talks about how Gabriel Jesus “changed our world” when he signed and we all saw how Zinchenko flipped our thinking of how a left back operates, but let’s not pretend that Arteta won’t be ruthless if he has to be. He loved KT when he signed but he has slowly been phased out to the point at which I haven’t heard an Arsenal fan really talk about him in any detail for about a year. Ramsdale signed a new deal a year ago and now he seems destined for the exit. Arteta is constantly looking to upgrade and improve this squad and we all know that the club are looking for a striker in the summer. If Gabriel Jesus can’t stay fit for long enough then you just know Arteta will move on from him, regardless of how much he loves the player.

Perhaps that was already meant to happen this season with Timber and Zinchenko? Had Jurrien not picked up that horrible injury right at the start, he might already be a regular there. Zinchenko was missing for the first game of the season against Forest and in came Timber at left back without a thought. He was good in that first half, too, having played so well in the Community Shield, so it wouldn’t surprise me to see that the next time Zinchenko picks up a longer term injury, he finds his path blocked to the starting XI by the likes of Timber. Or maybe even Kiwior? His form of late is such that I have absolutely no problem with him keeping his place and, in fact, I hope he does. You keep playing like that, son, and the jersey is yours to the end of the season. You just need to keep up your end of the bargain by keep on putting in those great performances you’ve been doing.

Isn’t it just amazing to be able to have these conversations though? Rather than wishing players fit, we’re simply allowing others to step up and improve the overall depth of the squad. I love it and long may it continue, because that will foster the kind of winning mentality that gets you the big prizes at the end of the season.

Anyway, there’ll most likely not be a press conference until tomorrow, so I think I’ll put a pause in today’s ramblings and come back to you tomorrow, with a more in depth look at how our opponents for the weekend – Brentford – are shaping up.

Have a good one.

First and foremost, Martin Odegaard confirmed that he had signed a new five year deal at the club and if you are a regular listener, you’ll know exactly how I feel about that.

Delighted. Super delighted.

Odegaard is not just our captain, he is our talisman, our engine, often the guy that leads the press high up the pitch and a man who sets a perfect example at Arsenal football club. He’s got a gravitas about him that belies his years at 24-years-old and where in the past we have had some captains who are unusual and probably not quite the right man for the job (Gallas, Aubameyang, van Persie spring to mind), in this instance it just feels like a match made in heaven. The pressure wasn’t really on him to sign the new deal straight away I don’t think; I think he still had two year’s left on his deal, but as his interview with Clive explained on the official site showed, this was an easy decision for him as well as the club. It’s always been said that he looks and feels good at The Arsenal and he really has found his place here with us. Arteta believed in him, we waited on him all summer before signing him back in August 2021 and I think the love he feels from all corners of the Arsenal fanbase have shown him that this is is his home, and I love it.

Arteta was asked about the deal in his pre match presser and of course he was glowing, because Odegaard and Saka are his keystone players and to have them both tied down to long term contracts just further outlines the importance of the project and its longevity too. That’s practically all of our ‘big’ players signed up to long term deal; now they just have to keep on improving and hopefully bring us major honours.

He was also asked about Martinelli and his availability and although you never truly get a proper response from the manager when it comes to team selection, I suspect he’s probably right in talking about Martinelli being touch or go. He limped off just a week ago against Everton and given the squad we have whilst it might not be as much of a blow because of the form of the likes of Trossard, or the availability of Nelson and maybe even Vieira and Smith Rowe, you just think the club will give him until the absolutely last minute before decided whether he can play. They have to go through test after test though because the last thing we want is to see it exacerbated leading to him missing out for an even longer period of time. We need him ready asap and if it means he misses Sunday but can be fit for Bournemouth away next Saturday, then I don’t think anyone at the club will want to risk it.

I also wonder if Arteta will want to reward Trossard anyway, after scoring two in his last two, so even if fit I wonder if he’ll be on the bench?

He was also – inevitably – asked about who would start in goal on Sunday and he said he hadn’t made his mind up. I suspect that was just for the cameras though; it would surprise me to see Raya not playing. He hasn’t had much to do, but he’s certainly been more composed and calm on the ball and with it being such an emotional game as it is on Sunday I think Raya will almost certainly get the nod. There is the game against Brentford in midweek and I suspect Ramsdale will play in that, because although Raya is an ex-Brentford player (practically – I know he is on loan but he’s basically an Arsenal player now), I think the club will want to give Ramsdale some minutes.

The thing that will be interested is how Raya performs if he plays on Sunday because he’s not going to have as quiet an afternoon against the Scum as he did for Everton and PSV. As opening games in your Arsenal careers go, he couldn’t have asked for much more of an easy ride than those games, but the Scum will test us a lot more and we know he will be busier. So he’ll need to show more than just good ball distribution if he starts.

He was also asked about how we are going to play against them and he recognised the style and approach they’ll have will be different to last season. Postecoglou has made them a much more attacking and attractive side so far this season, but they have been open as well and I think there was some hint in Arteta’s comments about how we have been playing and how we set up. Well, maybe not in his comments, but more in how we’ve already played this season. We’ve all been talking about how – up until that PSV game – we hadn’t really ‘clicked’ but what the metrics have been telling us all is that we have had a lot more control and dominance of the ball. I think Arteta wants to utterly ‘own’ the ball and perhaps we have sacrificed a little bit in an attacking sense to get to what he wants, which is less emotion and more like the City way of just relentless winning. If that means that we try to control more of the game and snuff the Scum out by monopolising possession, then I’d be more than happy with that. Tomorrow, it is only the result which matters.

He was also asked about the absence of Kane and how that’s helped the Scum and I think that was always going to happen. We had the same thing when Henry left us; other players just step up. And it was the same when van Persie slunk off to United; we couldn’t get one player who would replace all of his goals, so we got in Walcott, Cazorla, Giroud and Podolksi who all contributed 48 goals between them that season. That is what the Scum will be aiming to do but hopefully they can’t add to that this weekend. They probably will, because this fixture always has goals in it, but fingers crossed we can pepper their goals a little bit more tomorrow than they do to us.

I think that’s probably me done for today; got an afternoon at a boozy brunch in the City so off I go to put more toxins in my body.

Catch you all tomorrow.

I’ve woken up this morning feeling mega fatigued. It’s probably wine-induced, coupled with doing very little this weekend other than sitting in the paddling pool, so my body feels as though it has been set a precedent where anything else other than horizontal living in the sun is acceptable, but there you go. Need to wake myself up for a day of work and probably more meetings than I can shake a stick at. Such is life.

In the Arsenal world, there’s still little to speak of. Arsenal confirmed that Marcelo Flores has joined Tigres in Mexico and given the fact that they aren’t exactly a club you can imagine are flushed with cash, I doubt it’s one that will ensure London Colney can line the hallways with solid gold statues of former staff of bygone days. I know TransferMarkt has it down as circa €815, which is around £700k, but I suspect there is a significant sell on fee for him has been negotiated. He’s 19-years-old and has played three times for Mexico so far, so I suspect this is one of those where the club has inserted some clauses in, just in case he ‘bangs’ in Mexico and clubs in Europe come calling for his services in the next few years.

It’s another one from the academy helping to drop a little bit of cash in to the club – albeit a small amount – but I think the most important thing Arsenal are doing with these players is adding in those sell on fees. We’ve seen that as a growing trend and already this summer I think we’ve received a bit of cash for Guendouzi heading off to Italy and Mavropanos coming back to England with West Ham. When players walk out the door at The Arsenal there is still plenty for us to be expecting from Edu and the club in terms of selling players and recouping cash, but what they do seem to be getting right is these sell on clauses for each player. Let’s hope that this continues because I guess every little helps.

The only other bit of news that I read yesterday that I thought was worth touching on was that Fabrizio Romano has suggested that the Odegaard contract extension that we’ve heard some noises about is going to get done with little concerns. He said:

This is music to my ears. If you are a regular reader of my waffle you’ll know how much I love him as a player. The way he glides across the surface, his intensity in the press as well as his passing vision, all contribute towards what make him our talismanic captain. We’ve had captains who are blood and thunder like Tony Adams, we’ve had captains who are the best player’s on the pitch and lead by example (Cesc, Henry, etc), but for me I do love the captain that Odegaard is. He is a role model, he works hard, everyone you hear who has spoken to him says he comes across really well and as I joked about on the Same old Arsenal pod last night he even does pretty decent captains notes in the match day programme!

When Arsenal are purring, it is usually when Odegaard is at the heart of it pulling the strings and that is why I love it when he is doing what he does best on the pitch. He’s also added goals to his game last season and has two to his name already. He’s a star for us and to hear news that the contract situation shouldn’t be a problem is vital. Even if we hadn’t have gotten this kind of news, however, I still think that few of us would be panicking just yet. We may all disagree on what level of success the club has in making money for our players, but what we can probably all agree on is that they have been pretty good at ensuring the contract extensions for our top players have been successful in reaching the right conclusion. Deadls for Ramsdale, Saliba, Gabriel, Martinelli, Saka have all been completed, as we work hard to keep this nucleus of young players together. Then we have the news like this with the likes of Odegaard and it just feels right and proper that it’ll get sorted at some stage during the season.

And with that I think the core of the team is pretty much all tied down I think. I think Ben White might be another one but again, I just feel like we won’t have too many problems with that when it comes round to renegotiation time. White seems engaged with the club, there are plenty of his teammates who I think he gets on with and with Arsenal being quite a good feel-good place to be right now, you look at what options are around and it seems as though there isn’t any better place to be for these young players who we’ve all taken to our hearts.

Right, that’s me done for today. A slightly shorter one than normal on account of the lack of proper football going on, but I’m back tomorrow with the usual guff so I’ll catch you all then.

It was good getting the business done earlier, eh? I remember too many times getting to the last week of the window thinking “nope, we’re still too short, they HACE to do something soon”. Of course quite often it would be leaving it until the last minute of the window and in some cases that meant paying over the odds for players. I don’t know whether I’m just imagining it though, but I feel like that tends to happen in January a lot more than in August. Perhaps it is because for many clubs the season is in full sway and you have to roll the dice because it’s either that you need to do something to keep you safe or pull you out of the relegation mire, or you are fighting for a European spot and you’re just missing something, or you are perhaps even fighting for a title. Either way, I think the desperation is a bit more and that is why we see inflated prices in January more than the summer.

Perhaps that is also why we haven’t had bids for some of the players who are struggling to make the match day squad? On Monday night we had Tierney, Holding, Cedric, Pepe, Tavares, Lokonga, Elneny or Balogun. Perhaps with the exception of Elneny, these are all players that we probably need to find homes for and whilst some you can question whether that will be an easy task (Cedric, anyone?), perhaps it is simply because clubs don’t feel desperate enough to try to take players right now? The season has just started, many clubs have a raft of fit players and in many instances I’m sure most are looking at what Arsenal want for players and thinking “we can make do” because they are reluctant to part with any cash. It is why I agree with Andrew and James on the Arsecast Extra from Monday this week; James talked about how he suspected what will happen come the end of the window is that Arsenal end up kicking the can down the road and sending a load of these players out on loan just to get them off the books.

I suspect James is right and that will happen, but it does mean that we really haven’t shaken that label as being bad sellers though, doesn’t it? The club have rightly tried to stay firm in their valuations of players like Tierney and Balogun, but clubs just haven’t been minded to do what some of our fans always want us to do and “just pay the f*ckin’ money!” for our players.

It also means one less year left on a load of deals if loans happen, which further reduces their sell value. Perhaps that doesn’t matter as their ‘book’ value also reduces and if Arsenal have avoided paying them for a year then it seems like it at least from an accounting point of view feels like there is some positive work going on, but it doesn’t help the real term situation given that Arsenal have spent over £200million this summer. So far we’ve recouped around £30million according to TransferMarket and if you’re looking at the fact we probably need to get to £100million at least I would have thought that we’d need at least £70million coming in to avoid an ‘unpleasant’ sale of one of the players we like. Loans with loan fees won’t cut the mustard. which is why I suspect Arsenal will basically put off any loan deals until deadline day because whether a player goes on loan or not, it is far better than to hold out for a deal. Sambi Lokonga is supposedly wanted by Brighton, but they only want a loan, which is interesting given all the money they have. They’re willing to take a punt on players from clubs overseas and pay the fee, but not for one who is already Premier League ready?

Perhaps that is because they know they’d have to give Arsenal close to the £17million we paid for him, whereas Brighton prefer to go to lesser known clubs and pick up players from them for £3 – £10million. So perhaps Sambi is a little too well-known for them?

But this goes back to the ‘poor seller’ label we have, because Burnley have just paid around £15million for a ‘keeper from Man City who hasn’t played a game for them. Last season James Trafford was on loan at Ch was on loan at a League One club. Sambi has been playing – albeit not as regularly – at a Premier League team and you’re telling me nobody thinks that paying around £15 – £17million is worth it? Everton have just paid £11million for a Sporting Lisbon kid called Chermiti who scored three goals all season. Forest just signed Elanga – who made 26 starts in all competitions – for around £15million. Last season Sambi made 24 appearances in all comps. So it isn’t like we’re comparing apples and pears here. I just think we need to get away from our historical bad seller moniker and that has to start sooner rather than later.

I have no idea how we do it though. You can’t just magic up buyers for your unwanted players, unless you are Chelsea and you happen to have ‘friends’ from the Middle East who can help you out. The less said about those dodgy dealings the better, methinks.

Anyway, I should probably wrap up today’s proceedings as it is, as there’s little out there other than tittle tattle on the transfer front and, ultimately, we’ve got the team where we want it to be and now we just need to see them click properly.

Catch you wonderful humans tomorrow.

Firstly, on the man of the moment Declan Rice, you can tell that he’s absolutely over the moon to get that deal done early. What was interesting when talking about him though was that Arteta talked about his physical qualities that we lacked last season. We all know that Thomas Partey isn’t one of those ‘blood and thunder’ players who is a chest thumper in a more traditional mould, but it’s not like he can’t win tackles or provide good defensive cover for us. His defensive numbers last season put him in the 74th percentile for tackles, the 77th percentile for clearances and the 79th percentile for aerial duels won, so it is not like we have a slouch here. Yes, Rice is higher on interceptions and clearances based on last season (95th and 83rd percentiles respectively), but when it comes to tackles and aerials won he actually fairs worse than Thomas Partey last season.

I do think there are a few people sleeping on just how good Partey was for us and whilst we all know just how great Rice is, I don’t think we should just make the assumption that Rice is going to better in everything he does compared to Partey, assuming that he is looking to take his position, that is. It is also important to note that Rice played in a defensive team that sat a lot lower in their block than Arsenal; so will Rice’s numbers remain that high when he operates higher up the pitch? Possibly, and I am in no doubt that I think Rice will be a fantastic addition for us, but I just think it isn’t as simple as I’ve seen some people suggest. What will be important is how he integrates and that is probably why Arteta has also asked Arsenal to really push the boat out on this signing; he is English, his personality looks such that he can slot in seamlessly with his new teammates and as an Athletic article I read at the weekend said, Arteta has asked the Arsenal England players to give full feedback on his personality and mentality too.

Arteta also didn’t close the door on transfers either, which I’m sure none of us would have truly expected to be fair, but I thought he’d be a little more guarded in his response. He said there’s still time, but there is time for exits too, which I think all of us agree that will probably be the focus now. Because of the main bulk of the business being done early, Arsenal are also arguably in a good position now, when it comes to outgoings I think. I mean we’re not exactly going to get £20million for the likes of Pepe and Cedric each, but we are in a position now where from the outside, we don’t have to be bullied and low balled in to a sale. It is not as if we’ve briefed to the media that we have to sell before we buy; the investment of £200million on the three incomings shows we have already got that sorted. So clubs can’t come to us looking to pinch players for a song and a prayer. If they want to prize some of our better players away from us then they need to come with sensible offers.

Of which Flo Balogun to Inter for €30million is not one. This is a guy who has lit up the French league, has just become the main man for the USA men’s national team, who has two year’s left on his contract and is of an age where he could so supernova within the next couple of years. He represents so much more value than Lukaku at €40million if you ask me, so if they want our guy Flo then they surely have to get closer to the £50million Arsenal want. If he was a Reims player, or an Ajax, or even an Inter player, they would want a minimum of £50million, so why shouldn’t we demand that? I’ve seen some noises of €30 – €40million plus incentives like sell on’s or buybacks. I would have thought we’d want a buyback on him anyway, regardless of the fee, because if he does absolutely bang in Italy, for example, imagine if we could pick him back up for £50million in two season’s time if we’re looking for a main man and Eddie hasn’t worked out, Trossard has past his peak and Gabby Jesus isn’t the answer at number nine we wanted. It could be a steal to do a deal like that where you sell for €40million and then have a clause that means you can buy back for €50million instead of what Inter would probably charge if he bags 20 goals two seasons in a row, for example. They sold Inter to Chelsea for £100million and you can bet your bottom dollar they’d say the same back to us in two year’s time if we wanted him back.

We do probably have to raise some cash this season though I suspect and the three players you’d imagine that would fetch the biggest fees for us would be Balogun, Tierney and possibly Partey if the noises from Saudi Arabia are true. As I already talked about yesterday, if they’re willing to give us £45million for a guy who is 30 and one of our top earners, you probably do have to consider it. But we need to be ready to go again with a replacement if so. But that’s all ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ at this stage and probably not worth delving too much deeper in to at this stage.

That’s pretty much it from me for today, but just before I go, a little something non-Arsenal related that has been bugging me this morning after something I read on Twitter. It relates to Moises Caicedo to Chelsea from Brighton and comes from comments made by the journo Ben Jacobs, who has obviously been doing some digging from the Caicedo camp. They are apparently annoyed that Brighton are holding out for close to £100million for his signature and Chelsea are standing firm in saying they do not want to go anywhere near that. They’ve bid £70million plus add ons for the player and apparently that’s going to get rejected. The Caicedo camp feel like a club record fee received – which is what that would be – would be fair and feel like that’s what Brighton had led them to believe would happen in the summer if a big club came calling. Because there is no bidding war though, Brighton aren’t able to whip up that price like the Rice situation, so Chelsea are standing firm. The thing that is bugging me is not Brighton wanting that amount of money, nor Chelsea standing firm, it is why on earth Caicedo’s agents agreed to sign that deal in the first place. Alright, it put more cash in Caiceo’s hand right away in January, but if he’d have just waited until now he’d have a year left on his deal and Brighton would have been much more willing to find a compromise. As it stands Caicedo has given them the leverage they need to play hardball by the fact that he has some extra years added to his deal.

Why on earth did he think that Brighton would honour any kind of ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ come the summer? No football clubs do that. Just look at Wilf Zaha; when he signed the deal that has just expired, he thought that it would be a great big payday, then Crystal Palace would let him go if a big club came in. We came in during the Emery year’s but Palace wanted a fortune and as a result he didn’t get his move. He’s now of an age where he’s a free agent but none of the big clubs in England are sniffing around him because of his age. It was the same with Harry Kane when he went on strike; Levy gave him a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ that he would let him go, but when the offer from City came in, suddenly Levy decided that he didn’t want to do that deal. Football is littered with examples of where clubs change their minds; I think even we did it with Koscielny before he went on strike. Caicedo was poorly advised in January and as a result this saga will probably drag on for a little while longer, although I suspect Brighton and Chelsea will eventually find the right figure. But my point is more that some football agents never seem to learn.

Right, that really is it for me for today, as I’ve got a day of work to do. We’ve got our penultimate ‘one in, one out, one to bang’ tomorrow evening and if you want to join me from 7.30pm you’ll be able to find me on the Same Old Arsenal pod here. Catch you later folks!

It would suggest that he’s not got a place in the squad any more and is not part of Arteta’s plans, but to not even have him join the team is a little weird if you ask me. They have Runar Alex Runarsson in the travelling group and I think we can all agree he has no future at the club. He is behind Ramsdale, Turner and probably even Hein or Okonkwo in getting close to the Arsenal team. So why has he travelled but Pepe hasn’t?

There hasn’t been any noises about injury like there was from Sambi, so perhaps he has been told to stay away? Again, a little weird if so, if you ask me. We paid £72million for him, he still has a year on his contract and if we want to try and recoup anything for the player, surely we should take him on tour, right? We all know the season he had on loan at Lille was hardly a world beating one; 28 appearances, eight goals and one assist is hardly pulling up trees and there’s no surprise that Nice have decided against making this a permanent move. But surely he has value to somebody? Surely somebody wants to take a punt on a player who did show glimpses of great technique and showed flashes of skills that looked elite? It was only a couple of seasons ago that he had what many of us described as an indifferent season, whilst still bagging 16 goals and five assists in the Premier League and Europa League in a season. That’s got to be worth something, right?

I guess Arsenal have not had very much interest in a player whose rumoured salary is around the £140k-per-week mark. There aren’t many clubs on mainland Europe who would be prepared to take that on, but if Pepe is somebody who just wants to get back to playing football, surely he’d lower his wage demands to get a club interested in signing him? Let’s just say he halved his wage demands, for example, to £70,000-per-week. Even that to be fair would be a stretch for a mid-table French side, which is probably what he’d be looking at. I know wage websites you always have to take with a pinch of salt, but as an estimation I took the three clubs in France that finished ninth, tenth and 11th and had a look at their wage bills:

• Nice – highest player on the books now is Kasper Schmeichel on £65k-per-week (Pepe salary is lower than £140k because I think that’s what Nice paid of his wages)
• Lorient – Romain Faivre is the highest on £18k-per-week
• Reims – Balogun was the highest on £32k-per-week

So already I am starting to see why, if we want Pepe to go this summer, we probably aren’t getting a fee for him. I can’t see any of the big clubs taking him; there’s no money in Italy, so unless a Saudi bid comes in, I think a termination of his deal is likely. And that will mean Arsenal probably forking out close to £7million to terminate his contract and let him find another club. And when that happens I am sure there will be a few clubs willing to take a punt, only on their wage terms. I could see a club like Fiorentina, Roma, or maybe even Juventus have a sniff at the player if he was free, for example. When you look at their wage bills it feels like getting Pepe on a free feels more realistic. Fiorentina have a bunch of players on around the £40 – £50k-per-week mark. Roma have a load on north of that, whilst Juve too have a big squad they are trying to offload to make money. But getting a player in for free and paying him €70k-per-week wages wouldn’t be too much of a stress if they sold off one of their players on north of €100k-per-week like Chiesa, who has been rumoured to be attracting interest from a few clubs.

But for Arsenal to get any kind of deal from this they’d probably have to ‘mutual consent’ Pepe and that means paying him off. A ‘good’ deal in this instance is probably Arsenal not having to pay the full £7million in wages, to be honest. So if we gave him £5million to go away, then a Roma or Juve offered him a four year deal at £50k-per-week to start from next season, he’d make £5million from Arsenal which is akin to an extra £95k-per-week, which would offset the fact he’s taking a big pay cut next season, then the season’s afterwards he still secures himself a wage that is probably more realistically aligned to the outputs he’s shown so far in the last few seasons.

Everyone’s a winner, right?

This football contract lark is easy, yeah?

Of course there are so many variables here and it is certainly NOT as easy as I am making out, but I guess where I am at by the time I now come to the end of today’s blog, is that I can understand why Pepe might be training alone, I can understand why Arsenal might be looking to terminate his contract this summer and I can understand why ideally you want that to happen now. Equally, if nobody will come in for him but there is an option for another loan for a year in which a club takes on half of his wages, for example, that could work too. Let’s take a Roma for example, who may not want to sign up to a player for four years because of the financial risk. But if they paid half of his wages to test him for a season, at the end of the season if he has been a success they can sign him on a free contract. And for Arsenal, instead of having to pay out £5million for a player to go away, they have paid out around £3.5million for the season to cover half of his wages. They then let the player go next summer and they haven’t had to do a ‘mutual consent’ big pay off. It would be a kind of ‘win win’ for all parties.

Anyway, I’ve probably rabbited on about this enough for today, so I’ll stop there and let you get on with your day.

We’re podcasting tonight at the Same Old Arsenal pod at 7.30pm for our latest summer series ‘one in, one out, one bangs’ featuring my mates Woz and Ben. Give us a listen if you can here.

Catch you all tomorrow!

And I’m supposed to be going to a Bruce Springsteen concert later in Hyde Park.

Bleugh.

Still, on the up side, Arsenal confirmed the contract extension of Big Bill Saliba and that my friends is good news. I did a lot of my talking on it yesterday so I won’t go over old ground, but it’s nice to listen to the chatter on the official site, see the player talking about how he is happy and all that jazz. He’s a funny chap though; super monotone and you’d never know he was happy given the way he speaks. But I suspect that’s just his personality. He’s probably just a bit awkward in front of the cameras. But we’ve got him, it is another tick in the summer ‘to do’ list for Edu and Arteta and now all we need to worry about is getting those signings of Rice and Timber sorted before the team toddle off to Germany to begin those pre season preparations.

Of which in less than a month we’ll be heading to Wembley and thanks to my old mate Dave I’ve got my ticket sorted for then. Yes it’s a glorified friendly, yes it doesn’t mean anything and, yes, we’ll probably lose to City as is our standard operating procedure against Financially Doped Nation State FC, but for me it’s a nice day out and a curtain raiser to be with all my football mates who I don’t see much of over the summer.

Plus we haven’t been to Wembley for a few years so that’s always nice.

I realised after I’d written yesterday’s post that I didn’t even mention the fact that Granit Xhaka left the club this week. To say he divided opinion is of course a massive understatement, but ultimately I think most Arsenal fans are pleased to have seen the season we saw from him last season, with the way he’s helped us to improve and been such a big part of it, plus we’re losing him for a fee that, let’s be honest, is pretty tidy all truths being told. We have all rightly questioned Edu’s record when it comes to selling players, but I think we can all agree that he’s done a pretty good job of getting good coin from Bayer Leverkusen in that deal. Perhaps that is a positive sign of things to come when it comes to sales this summer?

Or, is it just as simple as saying that selling players who are good and play well is a lot easier than selling duffers, eh?

So, what else is knocking around on the ol’ online discourse this morning then, eh? How about this doozy in which Dwight Yorke says that Mason Mount is a better deal for Man United than Rice is for Arsenal? I have to say folks, I just don’t get the Mount hype. Yes he’s a tidy enough player, but I haven’t watched him for Chelsea and England and though “holy moly, he’s good. We should sign him”. He’s a decent player but nothing more. And he’s just come off the back of an incredibly average season. Yet Rice has just come off the back of a season in which he’s carried West Ham at times. In the game against us at the London Stadium it was his high pressing that won the ball back off Partey, forcing the turnover and then eventually leading to their penalty. He’s an all-action guy who will transfer our team. If you shoved Mount in to this Arsenal team, how much different would we actually be given the players we already have that play in and around his positions?

I’d say few. So Dwightie my boy, you are more than welcome to your opinion, but your ‘take’ is certainly not a ‘hot’ one to me, I’m afraid.

There’s also some noises about Flo Balogun to Chelsea and that is one I find very interesting. I can see why Chelsea would be interested and for sure, there’s a weird history of the two clubs being happy to do business with each other, but unless Chelsea want to talk crazy money I’m not sure why we’d want to send him to that scummy side of London. Could you imagine if he actually ‘banged’ there. It’d be hand-wringing carnage. Nope, unless those Chavs are willing to take all of that Mason Mount cash and drop it on our laps (£60million if you didn’t know), then I think we chuckle at them and tell them to pull the other one, because it’s got bells on.

Think that’s probably all I can muster for today. I’ve just read that exercise after a hangover is – oddly – a ‘good’ thing for the body. Apparently it’s all about releasing those endorphins, or something like that, so I’m going to give that a go. It could all end badly but let’s give it a try.

Catch you all tomorrow.

And yesterday’s latest explosion was the confirmation of the William Saliba deal, which has been signed, sealed and delivered and I suspect the club are just choosing the right moment to make the announcement, having confirmed Nelson signed a new deal yesterday too. Give it a bit of space, let the news be drip fed through, etc, etc, I suspect.

https://twitter.com/David_Ornstein/status/1677058778435403776?s=20

And this is fantastic news. It was one which, if I’m honesty, I had serious concerns about from about October time, when it became clear that this kid was absolutely mustard, that he was going to be a mainstay in our back line, that he was forging a fantastic partnership with Gabriel and we had gotten a serious upgrade in terms of our defensive solidity with him in at centre half and Ben White moving to right back. He has been one of the key reasons as to why we were able to challenge for the title for so long last season and when you have star players like Gabriel Jesus openly admitting on a podcast that Saliba’s injury was a big reason as to why they didn’t win the Premier League, it shows you just how integral he was and just how important this new deal is for the club.

It’s apparently worth £192k-per-week and you have to say the player is worth it at this moment in time. It is a big chunk of money for somebody so young but let’s face it, this guy is arguably the best centre half in the Premier League, which is the best and most competitive league in the world. And we’ve got him tied down for the foreseeable future.

There was a little debate about the length of the deal and there appears to be some discrepancy between the two big ITK hitters – Ornstein and Romano. Romano has been reporting the whole time that it is a four year deal with a one year option to extend. But Ornstein confirmed last night it is just four years. I copped a bit of flack for it last night when I quote tweeted Pete from Le Grove and him talking about it was a little bit of a shame on the fact the extra year wasn’t added in. I agreed with him and it is the only part of the deal that I was a bit like “oh, that’s a shame”.

Why does it matter though? Shouldn’t we just be happy that he’s signed a new deal?

Well of course we should and, believe me, I am delighted we’ve tied him down. But I guess having that extra year builds in a little more time with which negotiations can take place and a solution be found. Saliba’s camp want a four year deal so they can either negotiate bigger terms after two rather than three, so you can understand that, but it also leaves a young player with their options open if they want to go abroad to a Barca (throws up a little bit), a Real Madrid, PSG or maybe a Bayern in future. I think we all get it and probably know that Saliba probably won’t be an Arsenal player forever. But the idea that in just two summers time we have to go through this worry all over again, as opposed to three year’s time with the ‘plus one’ extension, is a little less palatable, that’s all I’m saying.

And yeah, I get it, maybe that’s just the way things are going with high profile footballers too these days. After all Saska’s agent on his last contract kept it at four years and that has meant we’ve been negotiating with him for the last six to nine months about his deal. But Saka’s agent did that because there was clearly an acknowledgement that the deal that he was on at 19, which was around £70k-per-week I think if the rumours are right, no longer reflected his importance in the side. If he’d have signed a six year deal at Arsenal back then, in theory Arsenal wouldn’t have to do anything until next season and could keep him on that money. But as Arsenal have shown, they are willing to reward high-performers and that’s why we’re hearing talk of Odegaard and White getting new deals. If the club performs well, it means the players are performing well and I guess it means these deals get done like we have in tying down Martinelli, Gabriel, Saka and now Saliba. Players WANT to stay at The Arsenal given the project and that’s a great sign of the positive future we have.

So perhaps I should worry less because in two years time we can be looking at a successful team that Saliba would be mad to want to leave. But Arsenal have to show that they can maintain the levels of performance that we saw last season and that is why next season is so intriguing. Are we going to prove that last season wasn’t a ‘one off’, as some pundits and fans of other clubs have suggested? Or are we going to show that one of the forces in the Premier League for the next few years will be The Arsenal?

Let’s all hope it is the latter.

One final thing though on the Saliba and Saka comparison’s; Saka is an Arsenal kid from Hale End. He loves the club, is English, has his roots with us and I think the tie to this club is closer than that of Saliba. Sure, Saliba liked Arsenal when he was a kid and he was pictured in an Arsenal shirt when he was a nipper, but as a French kid he’s probably more likely to eventually be tempted to the bright lights of mainland Europe. That’s also why I have a few concerns that next time we’re negotiating it might be a little more difficult than this time.

But that’s a problem for another day and another season. For now, my overriding emotion is of happiness and now we can awaiting the juicy new arrival announcements which will surely happen over the next couple of days.

Catch you all tomorrow.

Apparently the same can also be said for Reiss Nelson, who is also set to sign a new four year deal with the club, which I’m sure he’s happy about because it’s his boyhood club and there’s no doubt he’s one of us. I’m still not sure whether he’s going to get anywhere near making it as a regular at the club, but if he can contribute like he did last season every once in a while, then it has to be a good thing.

But back to Saliba, and I’m feeling rather chipper about it, I have to say. He was brilliant for us last season and to have him signed up for the foreseeable future is another good sign that the club is going in the right direction. It’s a shame that is is only a four year deal, because in two years time we’re back to worrying about whether we’ll need to sell up rather than lose him on a free, but that’s a problem for tomorrow and not today.

Today’s problems are now about getting plays bought and getting them sold. I haven’t heard much about the outgoings, but the latest incoming rumour is Timothy Castagne from Leicester, apparently. And I gotta tell ya, that one hardly fills me with giddy excitement. I don’t watch a lot of Leicester, but when I have seen him i’ve seen a guy who is very beatable, who didn’t impress me much, who has just played in one of the leakiest defences you’re going to see. For me personally it would be a hard ‘no’ but what these rumours do show is where the club are looking at the moment. We’ve had the Fresnada links, these links, plus the guy from Fenerbahce that I wrote about last week. It is clear we are looking at suring up at the back as well as the midfield rumours. But what about in attack? That seems to have gone rather quiet. Are the club happy with what they have? Do they think we’ve got enough? If so, I think they’ll need to find a solution for a Saka rotation option; he played a lot last season and we can’t get by in both Champions League and domestically without rotating him. Perhaps this is going to be one of those left-of-field signings that we don’t know is happening until it hits us? I hope so.  I do love one of those a summer. Real “wowsers, where did that come from?” stuff. I was in Portugal when we signed Fabio Vieira las summer and I’m heading there in two weeks. Maybe Arsenal could give me a little Portuguese surprise?

Other than that there isn’t really a lot going around at the moment. So I might call it quits early today I think. If you fancy having a listen then Amanda has Kevin Campbell on the show tonight which you can listen in on here. Other than that I shall take my leave and see you all tomorrow.

Have a good’un.

….Worried about every single transfer rumour that gets banded about, apparently, and I am by no means an exception it seems.

For yesterday in the morning – after I’d written my daily musings on here first thing, a story emerged about how Arsenal could be resigned to losing Saliba this summer after it emerged that he STILL hasn’t signed a new deal. Apparently, according to this particular red top tabloid, Arsenal have been left ‘staggered’ by Saliba’s camps wage demands.

So, there’s nothing new then, right? I mean, we’re not going to get a ‘Arsenal are delighted with Saliba’s teams very low and completely reasonable wage demands’ headline, are we?

And this is where I am at today after being a little bit nervous yesterday. Firstly, the rumours are that Arsenal offered £120k-per-week and #TeamSaliba said ‘nah’. Let’s remind ourselves that squad player Nketiah is on £100k-per-week. So if he’s on that, why would Saliba’s people just accept that deal? They wouldn’t. They know he’s just had a stormer of a season. When he came out of the team we looked weaker at the back and as a key connector with that right hand pod of players that we have, he was a guy who was helping to bring the best out of some of the key players in our team on the right hand side through his progressive passing from deep. We all see it, Arsenal will know it, so you can bet your bottom dollar that Saliba’s camp know it too. He’s one of the top names on the teamsheet and so he probably needs to be paid accordingly what he’s worth.

The other thing about this story breaking yesterday is that I feel like there’s an element of ‘get in there early’ from this particular red top. The season has barely finished and we’re going to get a summer of stories like this. If you go big on that kind of story in mid July, is it going to have the same impact as one that is hitting just as the season has finished? I’d wager not. We get exposed to so much transfer and contract tittle-tattle that by the time you get to July most of us have become desensitised. I would be willing to bet that if this exact same story were to run on 15th July, it would just get lost amongst all the other noise and pick up nowhere near any of the coverage that this one particular article picked up yesterday on social media. It got the clicks, it got the hits, the journo in question did his job and a large chunk of us were suitably worried, nervous and discussing the article amongst ourselves yesterday.

Now, that doesn’t mean that I am not concerned about the Saliba situation. I am predisposed to always thinking the worst, then your level of disappointment can be numbed slightly, which is why I started to get twitchy about a year ago with the Saliba situation. I was delighted to see him get straight in to the team, but as soon as we got 10 games in to this season just gone, I’ve had in the back of my mind “we’ve only got a years and a bit on his contract, we need to get this sorted now”. I think I kind of also thought about it when the Marseille loan was done; at the time I thought we should definitely send him to Marseille, but before he leaves we should slap an extra year on his deal. Feels all very Captain Hindsight now, but I do think the club, Arteta and Edu could and should have managed his situation better than they have.

What we have to hope is that the bond he struck up with the players and coaching staff, the fact he is a first choice defender in a team finishing second in the best league in the world, in the richest league in the world, plus he’ll get to play Champions League football for a good side next season, might help to give him that extra desire to tell his people to ‘just do it’ when it comes to the contract signature. I was listening to the Arseblog / ArsenalVision crossover pod they did last week on the last matchweek of the season and Ian Wright was on it talking about Saka. He said that Saka had even told him before they went live on air that there was never in any doubt, this is where he wanted to stay and it was just about sorting out the details. So whilst we were all worried about him over the last few months and the possibility that he could somehow leave, the reality was very different. I have to hope that the same situation is going on with Saliba. Sure, he doesn’t have the same affiliation with the club as Saka, but he will know how much he is loved and what a good trajectory we’ve been on this season, so my hope is that it counts for quite a lot in that young mans mind.

To be fair to Arsenal they’ve moved well in the contract signature game so far. Ramsdale tied up, Gabriel tied up, Martinelli now on a long term deal – there are plenty of examples of how we’ve been doing good work on that front. But until we get any kind of confirmation one way or the other, we’ll continue to be on tenterhooks as he now hits the one year mark left on his deal.

That’ll do from me for today. Back tomorrow with some more musings for you.

Ramsdale signed amidst much scepticism just under two years ago. He cost £32million. Most of us – me included – why on earth we were signing a ‘keeper with whom I’d only really watched at Bournemouth and then at Sheffield United when we played the,. And I’ll admit I wasn’t really that impressed. I didn’t think he was an amazing shot-stopper, I didn’t think he looked very impressive and I saw him playing for Sheffield United lumping ball forward after ball forward. Now, to be fair, I know that the way that Sheffield United played was that he was instructed to do that, but I didn’t see anything in particular that stood out and I actually thought that £32million for him was a bit overpriced.

I listened to the Arsecast (sorry, can’t find the link) in which Andrew talked to a Sheffield United fan about Ramsdale. He said that Arsenal were getting him slightly on the cheap because Sheffield United were going down. I scoffed at that when I was listening whilst out on my run. I also remember this fan saying that Ramsdale had a really good season, but there had been times where he’d made mistakes and there had also been patches when his form dipped, his confidence dipped and he had a period of time when he wasn’t exactly great. Listening to that podcast hardly made me feel like we were getting a world beater.

Then he made his debut up at West Brom in the League Cup and I went up there with my ol’ mate Giles. We saw he was on the teamsheet and both of us were intrigued. He spent the first half at our end (I think – can’t 100% remember if it was the first or the second) and honestly, after he’d made a couple of smart stops and had started to interact with the crowd, I started to look at him and think ‘hmm, maybe he’ll be decent for us’.

It would only be a few weeks until he displaced Bernd Leno as our first choice ‘keeper and he has never looked back. He has been brilliant. All goalkeepers make mistakes, Ramsdale is no exception, but he is so young for a ‘keeper, he’s got so much time on his side and above all, he’s shown just how good he can be.

I couldn’t be happier about us having tied him down to a long term deal. We talk a lot about how this is a young squad and he is part of that, but his personality, what he brings to the club, everything about him, I love. In the video he even talks about THE Arsenal. I love it. More of that please. Hook that shizzle to my veins. I want more of it.

He also loves to have a laugh. He’s a character. That’s exactly what you want from your ‘keeper and whilst he admits that he feeds off of the away fans at the Emirates, or when we go away, I think most fans recognise that he enjoys playing the pantomime villain and although they flick the ‘v’s at him, I don’t think there’s too much animosity to him after the game has been done and dusted. At least I think not.

So for me this is a good move for The Arsenal. Ramsdale tied down. Gabriel tied down. Martinelli tied down. They need to get Saliba and Saka sorted, then show a sign of intent with an impressive signing early in the summer (maybe they can put a cheeky one in for Rice the day after the Europa Conference League Final??), which would really get us going in prep for what we all hope will bee a continuation of the good work that the team delivered on this season.

That’s it from me today. Back tomorrow with more in-depth thoughts.

Laters people.

The big matches don’t happen until tomorrow with Man City going to Everton to pick up what will inevitably be three points as Everton lie down and have their chins tickled by a Man City side who will feel pretty confident that they can do what we could not. It’ll be a case of ‘advantage City’ by the time our match comes around to being kicked off, for sure, because I don’t know where some people’s hopes have been that they will feel the fatigue after the Madrid away game. They played on Tuesday and will have got back to Manchester on Wednesday, with Thursday, Friday and then today to prepare for the game, before travelling to the next City over in Liverpool. So let’s not have any hope in other places.

Instead, we’ll need to focus on ourselves and yesterday Arteta sat in front of the assembled media to give updates on player injuries between now and the end of the season. Arteta didn’t rule out Zinchenko or Saliba before the season finishes, but I think we can all take it as pretty much confirmed that they are out. His comments about whether it’s a chance for Kiwior and Tierney to step up was interesting, because he wasn’t really in the mood to give a shout out to KT and talk about what a great pro he is, etc, which I’ve seen him do before. Instead he simply said that there are always chances for everybody to step up. That’s the right mentality to have and I’m glad that he is constantly pushing and always wanting more.

There’s a Japanese term that I first learned about in business called Kaizen. It means ‘good change’ or ‘improvement’ but in Western world it has essentially evolved to a theory of ‘continuous improvement’. It is the feeling that there is always more to do. There are always more innovations to be had. You can always make changes and improve and when you have that mindset it sets you up for success because to be ahead of the game – whether it is in business or in something like elite sport, you have to continually innovate. In Arteta’s press conference yesterday he talked about the team still being very far away from where he wants them to be. He was specific about build up play, man-to-man situations and overall game management and when I read some of those comments from him this morning, this idea that he is constantly striving for more, wanting that Kaizen approach adopted within the club, made me quite excited for what the future holds.

This is a very young team. Arteta has idea about how far he can take his team and he spoke about how we don’t have a single player who has reached their peak. I think probably there are one or two I would question on that, given age, etc, but then again when you think how much Granit Xhaka has evolved this season, maybe there is more that can be got from the likes of him, Elneny, Jorginho, Partey, etc?

He also talked about how he’d been holding back some of his innovations and he admitted he had, which also filled me with some excitement. At the beginning of the season he basically flipped the concept of what our full backs do. Ben White on one side and then Zinchenko coming in to midfield on the other. That was a great tactical innovation, but teams will always get wise to it. I remember the first season Arjen Robben really exploded on to the scene for Chelsea all those years ago; he was lightning quick and scored a bucketload of goals through cutting in from the right and banging in goal after goal. He was still good the season afterwards, but he wasn’t as prolific, if my memory serves me right. That’s because defenders figured him out to an extent. He was still good and still managed to bag goals, but his main trick wasn’t a guarantee every game. That’s what teams will start to do for next season for us. They will learn about the spaces we vacate and where we are strongest and they will find ways to counter that. So what we have to do is to continuously improve, to innovate on our tactical approach, to keep teams guessing. So the fact that Arteta is talking about more ideas that he has had that he hasn’t implemented just yet, is really positive from my perspective.

The rest of the press conference was the same questions from journalists who asked things about contracts for the likes of Ramsdale, on breaking our transfer record, blah, blah, blah. He didn’t of course answer any of them properly – why would he – so I’m not sure it’s worth talking about it much on here today. If/when these things happen then we can all be happy and rejoice. Until then I’m personally not giving it too much thought.

So with that in mind, I’ll think i’ll call it a day today. I have a day of exercise, shopping and then a family virtual Eurovision party going on later this evening, so that’ll be fun, before the real fun happens tomorrow at the Emirates tomorrow*. Catch you all tomorrow.

*When I say ‘fun’, I mean ‘nerves’, ‘anticipation’ and at times downright terror, of course! But I wouldn’t change it for the world!

Saka is set to be announced soon according to Fabrizio Romano and at this stage you have to conclude they are just waiting for the optimal time in which to make the announcement of this supposed five year deal. The length of the deal is something that seems to be the latest bit of news that the journos have found out and the fact that it is a five year deal is good news all round. His last deal was a four year deal and I remember at the time thinking “yeah, so that means we’re back to sweating over his future in two season’s time and sure enough that started to happen at the end of last season/beginning of this one. But I suppose you’d just have to say that it was good for his agent because it has played out perfectly in terms of Saka being at his optimal value for his client; he’s our best player, he’s having such an impact, the fans, the club and the manager all love him, he clearly loves the club and this will no doubt recognise him financially as the jewel in the current Arsenal crown.

So everyone seems happy and now it seems like they are just waiting for the right moment. Will that happen this week? Next week? After the season has finished? I suspect they’ll wait certainly until after the Brighton game. That’s what I’d do anyway. Brighton are a bit of a bogey team for us, beat us at home last season, still have something to play for in the shape of European competition and so if they end our faint title dreams this weekend, then I’d give it until Tuesday before I released some really positive news about the future of the club. It would perk up the fans. And if Arsenal have managed to beat Brighton on Sunday, it would further boost the fans by putting another positive story out there.

Roll on the announcement.

There’s more noises in the press though, as Ramsdale is being spoken of as a guy in line for a new contract, as well as the club positioning that they are ‘confident’ over Saliba. Let’s hope not too ‘confident’ though; we don’t want that leading to an Ashley Cole style over-confidence where the player starts to look elsewhere if he doesn’t feel like the club are matching his own ambitions and demands. We’ve already seen this season just how important Saliba is to our build up play and whilst we’ve found a temporary solution in the form of Kiwior filling in at right centre-half, you can’t help but feel that if we were to lose him now just as this defence looks like it is beginning to take shape with the rotations of squad players as well as the first teamers in there, that it would be somewhat of a blow.

I suppose the good news is that the noises from Saliba appear to have been positive too. I’m also taking it as a good sign that we aren’t hearing about clubs sniffing around him. That normally happens when an agent wants to either let the club know that they will be positioning their player elsewhere unless demands are met, or it actually does mean that these clubs have been alerted to the situation and the player and his agent are open to moves. I haven’t seen tonnes of that crop up on my social media timelines, or online, so I’m hopeful that the reason for that is that it is because all parties agree that there are just details that need to be ironed out and that everyone see’s those details as minor technical bits that aren’t going to be too big a hurdle for club, player and agent to overcome.

The Ramsdale noises are interesting. He signed a five year deal the summer before last I think, which means at the end of this season he still has three years left. By all accounts it means the club could probably take their time to get that done, but perhaps it is a recognition of what some of these players have done and how far they have come in the last 18 – 24 months. These Arsenal players have taken us from a side in the doldrums of two eighth placed finishes, to competing for the Premier League title right up until the final weeks of the season. The club has to recognise that and whilst as fans we have all already spent the Champions League extra revenue on shiny new players, there does need to be an appreciation of the ones that have got you to where you are right now. So to me that means new deals for the likes of Ramsdale, Saliba, maybe even Odegaard, Saka, etc. These players – if they can establish themselves as regular Champions League playing footballers – will inevitably want (and deserve) that bump in pay and I suspect the club are mindful of that.

That’s all I have for today. Lots on at work so I’ll call it a day and catch you all tomorrow.

Have a good one peeps.