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 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!

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.

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.

Well, I say ‘derailing’, but our first priority this season was getting top four and although our metaphorical ‘goal posts’ have shifted because of the way in which we tackled the first half of the season. So even if we fall away now but manage to get top four, it would still mean we were ‘on track’ for what the club set out to do in July. Of course it wouldn’t feel like that and of course we’d all be gutted, but let’s not forget how young this team is; for many the journey is just beginning and that’s something to be pleased about.

I wrote yesterday that the club is being viewed in the media as some kind of ‘bad guys’ if you listen to what some sections of the punditry world tell us, but if you take away what some muppets in the press say, you can’t argue that Arsenal act with class. They don’t have to, but they really take time to try to connect with fans – or at least have done since the Lockdown for sure. When people talk about the ‘class’ of Arsenal, I think many who don’t follow the club as closely as we do, really know what it means. An example of it is how the club have tried to reflect the history, culture and voice of the fans in the external fascia to the ground. I was there for the Brentford game and I have to tell you, it looked class. That came about by the club listening to the fans and applying the principles of what the fans told them to the artwork that was created.

But another example of the class of arsenal is with the announcement of the new Elneny contract. He’s just suffered a long term injury, his contract is up in the summer, so it could have easily have been an opportunity for the club to say ‘thanks for the memories, Mo, and goodbye’. But they haven’t. They’ve moved to give a guy who has been nothing but a good servant and loveable guy a new one year extension. That isn’t a football move, because as I’ve said before, we’ve moved on from Elneny and even in Jorginho we have a player who is an upgrade in the same position as Elneny. It is very likely that Elneny may never play for Arsenal again. But by giving him his new deal they’ve moved to thank a player for his service and enable him to continue his rehab – which by the sounds of it will go in to next season – without having to worry about his next club. The noises are that it is on reduced terms too, so it’s not breaking the bank. It’s a good move on all parts. A classy move of goodwill by the club, Mo has a little more job security, plus there is an additional player in the team for next season that can come in if we need him, which of course we hope we won’t.

If we get a big midfield move that we’re all after in the summer, like a Rice or Caicedo, then Elneny will be fourth choice for that number six position. He’s not getting game time for that. I’ve never been his biggest fan but I appreciate that he’s never really moaned, is clearly well liked at the club, so has a positive impact in some sense.

The contracts that we all DO want to see, however, are that of Saliba and Saka. At the start of the season I feared we’d lose Saliba in the summer and I still kind of feel like that could happen, but with the way we are playing, the fact they both play every week, plus that Arsenal looks like a team that is on an upward trajectory, makes me feel like this is a good place to be and a place that players want to be.

Just look at all of the Declan Rice noises. In the summer it was basically universally accepted that he would go to a United or a Chelsea. Supposedly Chelsea have courted him for over a year now. He has history at the club having been an apprentice there and to me with the way Boehly has been spending, I could easily see a mega move made. But with the mega-long contract deal loophole being closed in the summer, I don’t think Chelsea will be ‘amortising’ their way to a £100million+ bid for the West Ham player. They also have Fernandez in there too. Added to that is the fact that if you’re Rice and you have the choice of an Arsenal team where they are now, or a Chelsea team where they are, which one are you choosing? If I try to take my Arsenal hat off for a second, he’s already said over the World Cup that he wants to play Champions League, but he won’t get that at Chelsea next season. At Arsenal he can see his natural progression in to the first team as Partey reaches 31 and continues to struggle with injury. Apparently he’s been impressed with Arsenal and the way they play, as well as with Arteta. So whereas nine months ago I’d have laughed off some Rice-related rumours, I find it increasingly believable that he could be a viable option.

Of course there are many moving parts in a transfer and just because it seems realistic, doesn’t mean it’ll actually happen, because you don’t know what other teams will do if they try to blow Arsenal out of the water with mega bids. But all I’m saying is that it feels moredoable now and that is a positive sign of where Arsenal are going.

Right, that’s it from me today, so I’ll take my leave and catch you all tomorrow with yet more of my usual ramblings.

Have a good one.

I’m back home from holiday, back refreshed and certainly, I’m back to obsessively refreshing my Twitter feed awaiting impatiently for the next bit of key news to come out about our impending arrivals. The Gabriel Jesus stuff seems to be drawing to a conclusion since I last spoke to you guys, with Ornstein telling us that the fee has been agreed and the next steps are agreeing personal terms with the agent and then the medicals, etc. That stuff should – in theory – be relatively easy because you don’t get this far down the line without a player giving it the green light and as we’re all transfer experts these days, I’ll assume we all know that by now. So within the next week hopefully we’ll get some news.

We should certainly get news from the club on the Matt Turner signing at least, with various people posting pictures of him in London, having already said his goodbyes last week, even talking about becoming an Arsenal player in interviews. It is a little weird that the club haven’t announced it at the time of me writing this on Sunday morning, but I did see that there was some kind of contractual legal thing that meant it couldn’t be announced until 1st July. If that’s the case then it’ll be Friday before that gets confirmed, but I’ll be surprised if that’s the case. And besides, it’s not as if we’ve never had an agreement with a player and team and then announced that somebody would be joining on a specific dates. We announced the arrival of Lukas Podolski from FC Koln in March of 2012 when he was still playing for the soon to be relegated German side and so we have precedent of making announcements when a player is still playing for another club, so it is a little weird that we’re staying schtum on the arrival of the goalkeeper, but it’s the world’s worst kept secret so that’s obviously just a matter of when rather than ‘if’.

I wonder if the club are just juggling the announcement based on the amount of airtime the player will get? After all if Gabriel Jesus is close to joining and an announcement being made, it would poor a bit of cold water over Turner’s moment in the sun if he gets unveiled and then Gabriel Jesus gets announced very shortly afterwards. So I wonder if the club will make the announcement tomorrow, knowing that Jesus will be later on towards the week.

Of course there’s also the supposed Raphinha advanced negotiations supposedly ticking along, so that might also be something that gets announced soon, as well as Lisandro Martinez from Ajax, which sounds like it’ll take a bit of time, but that we are supposedly in pole position to go for too. Normally we don’t get too excited but Ornstein has been dropping bombs left, right and centre over the past few days so that must mean we’re pretty close on a number of these players. That is exciting times indeed. The Raphinha stuff should be easy enough to do if Leeds agree, if his weekly wage is anywhere near this figure right now. Arsenal could add an extra £40k-per-week to that and still be well within our wage range – especially if they manage to offload Pepe.

Then, to add to it, we’ve also got the possibility being muted amongst some people on the internet (not even the crazy ones, mind) that talks are progressing really well with Saliba and his representatives for a new deal. This one, were it to get done, would be an equally as smart move as some of the signings we’ve been making this summer, along with getting Bukayo Saka signed up to a longer term deal. On Saka, supposedly he’s on around £30k-per-week and if that’s true then the club needs to be making big moves to give him a bumper pay rise. If the club can move him to north of £100k-per-week – certainly something he deserves given his status in the first team – he’d get a big pay rise, but we’d get the security of having him tied down. Heck, he’s that important that if the club offered him £200k-per-week I suspect there won’t be many of us Arsenals who would be thinking twice. We’ve just got to get the deal done and get him signed up. And sooner rather than later please.

On Saliba, I must admit to being happy but a little confused on this, because if I look at it from his perspective there is no massive value in signing a new deal now. He has two years left on his contract, he’s not played a minute of competitive football for Arsenal, there are two established centre halves in front of him. Arteta might have told him he’ll be playing 25 – 30 times next season, which will be positive, but until Saliba sees it himself, then I’d be surprised if he agreed to the deal. Of course from the clubs perspective you’d absolutely expect them to be talking to him and wanting to get a few years added to his deal. Marseille don’t have any money but they’re still interested in supposedly coughing up £25million. Of course that’s a joke of a bid given we paid £27million for him and look at how much promise he has just shown. If Marseille were selling him to us after the season he’s just had they’d want north of £40million, so they’re just chancing their arm, which I hope Arsenal don’t even bother responding to. Of course what could tempt him is the financial package. If you’re Saliba you want to play football, but if Marseille are dropping £25million on him, he’s going to want decent wages. I don’t know how accurate some of these websites are, but if the numbers quoted here of his weekly salary are true then Marseille will be needing to increase his weekly wage as well as cough up the cash for him. They have a few players getting close to the €100k-per-week salary and a couple over it here, but if they’re only able to offer Arsenal £25million for a player they desperately want to keep, it would suggest they’re not going to be giving him mega cash.

Perhaps that is Arsenal’s play. Actions speak louder than words in terms of football minutes on the pitch, but they also speak louder in terms of what you’re willing to pay a player. If Arsenal tell Saliba that he is a valued member of the first team and they want to double his wages to £80k-per-week, for example, then the player gets a mega pay day. The club get the security of a few years extra on his contract and Saliba is shown that the club see him as a regular. Supposedly Pablo Mari is on £85k-per-week. Imagine that we can offload him this summer and we bring in somebody like Lisandro Martinez. He’ll want decent cash and probably we can offer him getting close towards Mari’s salary (if you believe what he’s on at Ajax here) If you’re giving that to a new signing and you’re matching that with Saliba’s too, you’re saying to Saliba that he’s absolutely a big part of the plans and he’ll get the same billing as the new player in Martinez.

I know this is all a lot of hypothesis and certainly there is a lot open to interpretation here given I don’t know the credibility of the websites I’ve linked in terms of player wages, but I looked at a few different sites who all gave similar figures to these players, so we know we’re roughly on track with those numbers. And when you look at it like that then you see why the club is moving shrewdly in the market. Let’s see how it plays out first though.

On a final – and most glorious note – Mike Riley will step down as the main man at the PGMOL from next summer. What fantastic news! The old boys network at the PGMOL that I have long lamented might finally be getting dismantled. Hopefully we can have more diversity, better quality, more accountability and an end to the ridiculously poor standard of refereeing we’ve had in the Premier League during his farcical tenure. Good riddance to bad rubbish I say.

Right, that’s enough yammering for one day. Have yourselves a great one and I’ll catch you all tomorrow.

So of course today I’m going to be forensically analysing the fact that the world and wife have been talking about how Lacazette will be joining Lyon upon to ceasing of his Arsenal contract.

It’s not exactly sensational, left of field, out of the blue news in reality. But it does feel like a fairly standard move and given that Aulas the Lyon Chairman mentioned something along the lines of “we’re trying to sign him” a couple of months back, it seems like a deal that is pretty obviously going to happen.

And good luck to him. He’s come to The Arsenal, he’s seen out his five year deal and he’ll return to a club that he made his name at in France and will probably see his time out as he reaches the end of his career. Hopefully that happens and hopefully he is happy.

When I personally look back on his time at the club, it’ll feel like we went for the wrong guy, at the wrong time, if I’m being honest. Lacazette was a man who it felt like Wenger signed because we couldn’t get other players high on the list. He cost us over £50million and at that time and on the wages he joined on, you really are expecting a guy to bang a few 20+ goals a season during your spell at the club. His best season at The Arsenal came in 2018/19 and he scored 19 goals in 49 games in all competitions, 13 or which came in the Premier League.

So when I reflect on his time I don’t think it will be one I will say was overly successful. Let’s not forget we brought him to replace Olivier Giroud, who was more of a target man, link up play, but had no pace. Giroud has just bagged 14 goals for Milan this season in 38 games. In his best season he got 24 goals in 53 games for The Arsenal.

With Lacazette we got a smaller guy, but we thought – or at least I did – we were going to get a guy who could play as a playmaker and a finisher. At Lyon he wore the number 10 I think and he bagged a shedload of goals. I thought we were going to see a pacey goal scorer that could take us to the level that having a target man in Giroud could not. Yet as we draw to the end of Laca’s contract, those who appreciate the Frenchman say it has been his link up play and the fact he’s been so good for the other young players around, that have been some of his best attributes. I’m sorry, but that’s what we all said we needed an upgrade on Giroud for, so the fact that he exits us with people spinning that narrative only adds to my perception that overall this hasn’t really been a great deal for Arsenal.

Did I ever really know the real Lacazette though? What type of striker was he? Did Arsenal and Arsène ever really know either?

I’m not so sure, for the fact that we went out in the January after signing Lacazette and brought Auba in shows that actually I think Arsenal knew that he probably wasn’t ‘the guy’ and that’s why they brought Auba in. Aubameyang delivered exactly what we needed and as a result Lacazette’s time to me will essentially be remembered as him coming in on big wages, playing second fiddle to a better player (who scored 14 more goals than him in 32 matches less!), then departing back to France where he began his career and made his name.

The Lacazette deal also shows a cautionary tale, because if we get it wrong this summer in the striking position, we could be lumbered with an expensive asset that sets us back years. When we signed Lacazette we had cash in the bank to go out and get Auba within months. If we sign another non-scoring dud, I don’t think we’re dropping more big cash next January to correct it. So Edu and Arteta will be thinking very hard about who they bring in and if that is Gabriel Jesus, we all better hope and pray that he bangs at the club, because we need our striker to hit the ground running.

I guess that’s why all the talk is of players who know the Premier League inside and out and I for one am happy with that. Don’t get me wrong, if we go and get Osimhen from Napoli I’ll be thrilled, but his adaptation period needs to essentially be negligible, because if we fail to score goals in that position from the off in August, I don’t think we’re getting close to challenging for top four.

So whilst we all want juicy news about incomings you happen and happen soon, I am torn between wanting us to get somebody in straight away so they have the summer to acclimatise to The Arsenal, and getting in an oven-ready striker who will drop in to that cent reds l striking position and bang goals like he’s been at the club for a couple of years already. We have the foundations around any striker to give them the service they need; Ødegaard’s chance creation is high, Saka, Smith Rowe and Martinelli can all chip in with goals and assists, plus we have a stable base behind the attacking and creative players. We just need that jigsaw puzzle piece up top to hit form straight away and if that happens, we could be looking at exciting times ahead for The Arsenal.

I shall leave it there for today. It’s going to be a nice day and it’s my old man’s birthday, so I’ll celebrate it with him in the sun.

Have a good one.

I don’t know if my subconscious is also trying to manage my expectations too though, because a 1-1 draw away to Liverpool is hardly a rip-roaring rollercoaster ride, is it? I mean don’t get me wrong, I’d bite yer arm off for it right now as we stand, because it’ll maintain that unbeaten run, but in reality it would hardly be a mega statement by the team. Not like winning 2-0 or 3-0 up there would be.

Again, my subconscious probably kicked in and thought “nah, he’ll never buy that, he’ll know it’s a dream, so got to make it realistic”, hence the 1-1. Can’t even tell you who scored. Gets all blurry the more I try to think of it.

Back in the real world and there’s still little going on, other than Folarin Balogun scoring for the under-21s yesterday against the Czech Republic. They won 3-0, he scored the third, which prompted Lee Carsley to say he needs to be playing proper football, rather than the under-23s stuff. He’s spot on by the way. It seems a bit silly that we are in a position that Balogun has barely featured at all for us this season. He is smashing it at the UNder-23s and has clearly evolved beyond that level and you’d have to think he’d be getting more game time if we were in more competitions.

I think he’d certainly have played in some Europa games and he won’t also have played in that game at West Brom if Arteta had more matches to prioritise, but alas here we are, in the middle of November, and he’s had just a few paltry minutes for the first team. I wonder if the plan was to give him more minutes in the League Cup, but because of the disastrous start Arteta has had to field stronger teams to build momentum? If that’s the case I understand, but as I’ve already stated in previous blogs, I have no idea why minutes are being prioritised for Eddie Nketiah. Eddie won’t sign a new deal, he can negotiate to go abroad in January and in the summer he can negotiate with other clubs in England. And the second he has an agreement with another club he’s going to want to protect himself and his value. So as it stands we have ourselves a player whose value we are fattening up, only to get no value from him at all, other than a potential nominal tribunal fee. There’s a good explanation about how that works here.

If Eddie signs with an overseas club in January then his mind is elsewhere and surely there is no way Arteta will want to be playing him for us? If he signs for a club in England or the UK, then that’ll happen in the summer, but nobody can tell me he’ll not be negotiating the details from early next year. And as soon as that’s done then he’ll also be wanting to protect himself for his new club, so he can’t play. So what we have done is play a guy who we will only get a few months out of, instead of a guy who the England-Under21sHead Coach is saying is good enough for top flight football.

I can only assume a loan is in the offing for Balogun in January, because the lack of game time this side of Christmas can’t be allowed to go on. And the fact that most competitions get serious after Christmas means that his game time will probably be all the more restricted.

I don’t want to go too ‘Debbie Downer’ at a time in the season where we are playing well and on form, but the way the situation between these two players has been handled has been shocking. Last January we should have at minimum sent Eddie on loan, yet we kept him around to kick his heels most of the second part of the season. If we’d have sent him on loan it would have given Balogun more minutes as an understudy last year and he might be further along his path. We might also have been able to sell Eddie on this summer just gone, if we’d have seen him play regularly in the Premier League for a team. So For me this whole situation has become quite messy when there have been three or four instances where we could have avoided said mess.

The only other bit of news kicking around is Matteo Guendouzi, who is in the French national squad and has said he doesn’t really want to return to the Arsenal. I’ve got no problem with that really. I thought he was a decent, but not amazing, player and his character has been called in to question on numerous occasions. The only regret I might have will come in the summer when Marseille might get a French international footballer for £10million, which is a steal really when you think about it. I just hope there was a way that Arsenal got a sell on clause to garner some potential future revenue from him, but in reality I doubt it. European teams plead poverty in the summer, but in a couple of years if Guendouzi kicks on they’ll be the first team to want the earth for a player who, frankly, has acted like a spoilt brat at times.

He’s in the past though, we look to the future, and hopefully we can hurry through this dragging international break as quickly as possible. I might just have the football on in the background though – England I mean – just on the off chance we see Smith Rowe make his England debut. That’d be nice for him.

Catch you all tomorrow.

We’ve all seen players come back from their summer holiday’s not looking as sharp as the did when the season ended. But that doesn’t manifest itself in such a visible show of over-indulgence as we saw in some of those pictures. We all love a BBQ and hey, he’ll probably go on a strict diet regime and be fully capable of elite football within a month (???), but the optics of these pictures don’t look great, do they?

I mean we’re talking about one of the squads highest earners here. We’re talking about a guy who has done many a pre-season before and who knows what it takes to play at the highest level. Yet what this looks like – from the outside looking in – is a chap who is taking his money and happy to sit on it and do the bare minimum to collect his cashola from the club. When you add to that the season he had last year, that free transfer looks more and more costly every time we get any kind of news about the player.

What scares the bejebus out of most of us Arsenal fans most from these pictures, is the fact that if you are like me, you’re thinking:

“how the eff are we going to offload him – even on a free given his wages – to anyone this summer?”

It hasn’t worked out. This isn’t going to work. He’s not going to play much football next season. Judging by his current physique that probably isn’t really an issue for him though. A year in the stands making millions will probably be no skin off his nose. We just have to hope that Arteta realises the mistake he made in championing this guy and admits it, getting him out of the club this summer, pronto.

The problem is, however, that still we are seeing little movement. We’re now in mid July. The transfer window formally opened on 9th June. It is 12 week’s long and we have already seen five week’s go by and so far we’ve released a bunch of players out of contract, offloaded Guendouzi and Mavropanos. We have signed a back up left back to Tierney and officially that’s it, although confirmation on Lokonga is expected. This transfer window could quickly turn in to a shambles unless some movement happens en masse within the next couple of weeks.

Think about what the club needed to do this summer and what they still need to do:

• Offload Torreira
• Offload Willian
• Make a decision – probably to sell – Nketiah
• Give Bellerin the move he wants
• Find a replacement for Bellerin
• Sort out the Emile Smith Rowe contract
• Sort out the Xhaka situation either way – stay or go
• Decide what they are doing with Willock – sell, loan or stay
• Make a decision on Elneny with one year left on his deal
• Make a decision on Lacazette with one year left on his deal
• Find a creative playmaker so we aren’t overly reliant on ESR given some of the injuries he’d had
• Get in another centre back given that they are intent on loaning our Saliba
• Find a back up goalkeeper

Given all this, and if you were in their shoes, wouldn’t you have made some tough decisions already with some of this? I get that it isn’t simple, but some of it feels like it should be easier than others. For example the Smith Rowe deal must surely be one of the easier ones. Mikel wants to keep him, Arsenal want to keep him, the noises from the camp are that he wants to stay, so just get the deal done. Pay him like a first team player. Then go to Inter Miami and tell them they can have Willian for nothing. If they plead poverty on wages then suck it up and give Willian a sweetener to leave. You did it with Ozil and Mustafi, probably Sokratis too, so just admit the mistake, pay for it, get it done quickly, then start looking at the next item on the list.

Five weeks down, seven to go, approaching the halfway point in the window. In addition to this it is not like the previous summer in which they wanted the window to shut on the first game of the season. Which means if the club wanted to sort its squad out before then, we’re talking about less than a month to go on Friday 13th August, when we play Brentford. We are less than one month away from this very important start to the season in which we have tough opening games, and our squad is already weaker than the one that ended the season. That is especially so when you think that Xhaka and Saka might not be back given they were at the Euro’s and will need more time to rest and recover before starting up training again.

Already this is starting to set some alarm bells going with me, I’m afraid, because we can’t afford to see what our team looks like on 1st September and pretend the season starts then. We’ve done that too many times in the past and we should be sorting ourselves out sooner rather than later.

Perhaps over the next week it will all change. Perhaps we’re about to see a flurry of activity at London Colney and Highbury House. But it doesn’t really feel like it at the moment, does it?

I should probably leave it there today. Got plenty of work to be getting on with.

You have yourselves a fine ol’ day.

Laters folks.

Yet by the time I headed up to bed in the late hours of last night, the rumours across a number of different credible sources was that he would be joining up with the Marseille team on loan for the season.

Now, of course we don’t know whether or not this will happen because nothing has officially been announced, but I have to say that I’m rather disappointed here. On multiple fronts in fact.

Firstly, I’m disappointed that Arsenal spent £27million and signed a central defender who, at best, is not going to have played a competitive game for us for three years since he signed. It shows a terrible lack of strategic squad building capability and for a club who has always prided itself on its self sustaining model, it feels more akin to a team that spends billions on players, than one that has to watch the pennies at every turn. What we do have to say, however, is that the chief protagonist in this failure of duty – Raul Sanllehi – has long since departed and it shows just what a mess he made of things. So from a transfer and financial point of view then perhaps we can all acknowledge that this is less on the current team running Arsenal, Edu aside, who had only just joined when he arrived I think.

Secondly I am disappointed from a contractual point of view because I think that unless there is an announcement that Saliba has signed a new three year extension, it will put us in a difficult situation at the end of next season because he’s going to have just two years left on his deal. Imagine if in 22/23 he comes back, gets in our team, has a blinder? We’ll be back to normal with the usual Arsenal contract farce in which we’re all sweating on a player because he has just one year left on his deal.

Now, if we get an announcement of a new deal and we add another couple of years on top of the existing contractual length, then actually I’d probably be kind of ok with him going on loan. It would mean that next summer we get a 21-year-old who has further matured and could potentially be a future star for us. And given that Arsenal seem intent on trying to get extensions for players like Nelson and Nketiah done to protect their value, unless there is some kind of contract extension that is confirmed, it once again sends a message that the current administration isn’t thinking far enough ahead.

Or, more worryingly, that Saliba has no future anyway. But if that’s the case then why bother loaning? Why not just sell? Maybe they can’t find a buyer this summer so are loaning so they can sell next summer. Which brings me to my next thought, which is…

Thirdly, this smacks of “not my player” moves from Arteta, which I’m surprised and slightly frustrated with. There are loads of players in that team that aren’t his. There are players that ARE his and have failed miserably. So why not even take a look at this guy? Is there some sort of personal problem with him? If there is I’d be surprised, because you usually get to hear about this sort of stuff, not least from somebody in Saliba’s camp. Yet we get nothing. Arteta has professed to be wanting – and driving – a meritocracy at the club, but this smacks of anything but, which I find disappointing.

But I’m not laying everything at Arteta’s door, because fourthly and finally, I’m disappointed in Saliba too, if Marseille is his choice. Another loan in the French league won’t tell us much more than we didn’t already know. We were hearing that he rejected Rennes and wanted to fight for his place at Arsenal. We heard of a possible Premier League loan. Newcastle were mentioned. So why aren’t Arsenal looking to make a Premier League loan happen? If there are suitors then a move for a season in our league will give us much more information on his ability to cut it in English competition. Yet going to Marseille feels just like another year of his contract and career used, in which we’re no closer to knowing if he’ll make it at Arsenal. If, as appears the case, he has ‘chosen’ Marseille, it just says to me that he has taken the easy route and that feels a little poor in my opinion.

Right, I should probably leave it there for now. There’s a few Euro2020 games on this evening which are of interest so hopefully that can prove to be a welcome distraction. Well, until England fluff their lines against the Ukraine, no doubt.

Catch you wonderful humans tomorrow.

Yep, Arsenal Women emerged victorious in the North London Derby and whilst I don’t think it will make too much difference in the grand scheme of their league season, it’ll be a nice boost for those Arsenal players.

I didn’t bother watching though. I’m just not the biggest fan of Women’s football. Don’t get me wrong, I have no issue with it, I’m not one of these people who think it shouldn’t exist, I’ve just never really got in to it and that won’t change now. I already have enough stress and emotional investment with one Arsenal team, so doubling down with another one feels masochistic, so I’ve long been happy to give women’s football a bit of a swerve.

There appears to be a growing market for it though. When people return to grounds again for next season I do wonder if Arsenal should look to have a few of the big games at The Emirates. It would give people who can’t get to the games the opportunity to go there and if it’s given to people cheaply enough it would probably also fill a fair chunk of the ground. Especially if it’s a North London Derby. There has been so much to raise the profile of the women’s game in the last few years, that this feels like the next step for Arsenal, so hopefully they act on it.

It’s a clever move to have it on an international break weekend too. There are so many of us that have absolutely no interest in international football, so turn to games like that one yesterday, so it’s good to be raising the platform, which is grand.

Anyhoo, on to the men’s stuff, in which I’ve seen a couple of rumours about new contracts for players. The players mentioned were Tierney, Xhaka and Saliba that I saw and I have to say I find that really interesting.

Firstly, on Tierney, I think that’s a no brainer that we can all get behind. When he’s been for and playing this season he’s been immense and with each game he grows more and more impressive. Getting him tied down to a longer deal feels like an obvious move and hopefully the player thinks so too and we can get get it inked.

On Xhaka, this is the one most likely to get some people’s blood boiling, because I think many people have been hoping that this summer he gets moved on. Here’s my thinking though: we have so much more business to do in terms of outgoings, that keeping Xhaka around feels like it makes sense. Think about it; Elneny, Torreira, Guendouzi, Willock, Maitland-Niles, Nketiah, Nelson, Lacazette, Luiz – all of those players need their futures sorted and they should probably all move on too. That’s a massive bit of churn so why would Arteta be looking to make more change by getting rid of players who already feature heavily in his team?

I just don’t see that happening. Which is why I can understand Arteta and Arsenal starting talks with Xhaka. The reality is that we should probably be moving on from him, but I think in Arteta’s mind he represents stability and in a summer which is bound to be one of flux I think that will be welcomed. Personally, if I were Arsenal however, I’d just be thinking of running that contract down for another year. Xhaka has a deal until 2023 and that gives him two years left in the summer. We could keep him around next season and use him, but slowly find a way of phasing him out before selling next summer, so for me a new deal doesn’t seem to make much sense. The only way it did is if you add an extra year on to his existing deal to protect his value next summer. But I don’t see that happening if I’m honest.

The final rumour on contracts that I find most interesting of all is the William Saliba one. It’s also one that probably makes me the most heartened to see. It is just rumour at the moment but these rumours usually come from some kind of source and if somebody is briefing that Arsenal are looking at that, it suggests to me that they are confident he’ll be playing regularly next season, as well as the fact that he’s going to be a star in the future. Apparently he’s doing really well at Nice and that’s good to hear, but with some decisions needing to be made at centre half for us in the summer, I am hopeful that getting Saliba in to that first team is one of them.

There’s been a lot of people who have suggested that Saliba just isn’t going to make it at Arsenal and that Arteta just doesn’t rate him at all. If these rumours prove to be true then it shows that nothing could be further from the truth and that’s good to hear. We’ve spent so much money on the guy – more than we really can afford – that getting him in an Arsenal shirt and on the pitch playing feels a little more real with rumours like that one.

Right, that’s enough for one day, I’m off to drink lots of water and paracetamol. Catch you lovely humans tomorrow.

I looked at the league table.

It’s a bit mental. Usually by February you start to see one or two teams with a game still to play and usually it is because they’re fighting on a number of fronts, which is usually one or two of the teams at the top of the division, but right now we have about half a dozen teams with games in hand at a stage in which I’m sure the Premier League will be wanting most to be at the 19-match point like we are. Villa, for example, are just below us but have FOUR games in hand over us, so out position of 10th is probably a little bit false right now. They play Man City tonight and hopefully City get a win, not least to keep us in fourth at least until the weekend, but also because they are the lesser of all the evils at the top. Just my personal preference, but I am not a fan of Leicester, I REALLY don’t want to see the Scum there, plus you’ve got the irritation of United being top that frustrates. Liverpool I have made my peace with after last season so between those clubs I’ve just mentioned I’d rather see City then Liverpool up there than some of those currently occupying top spot.

It’s petty, I’m petty, but hey I’m a football fan and we have that attribute in spades as a collective. But when we all end up looking back on this season, I am in no doubt we’ll feel an immense sense of frustration. I find myself doing the ‘what if’s every week this season. If only we’d gotten our act together at home to Wolves Leicester and Villa. In each of those games we were poor, but add nine points to our tally and we’d be sat right up there dreaming of a potential title charge. Even the insipid performance at home to Burnley feels maddening, not least because it was of our own making and the recklessness of Granit Xhaka being stupid that cost us yet more points.

But I’m not turning this into a Xhaka bashing session, instead merely pointing out the opportunities we’ve had to correct any sort of blip. But we didn’t so much as ‘blip’ as fall head first into one of those sinkholes you see randomly open up in suburban towns and cities occasionally. It was a downing of tools from some of those players and I hope Arteta gets to the end of the season and shows no such loyalty to some of those chancers who got him in to the mess he was in just a few short weeks ago. Cut hard and cut deep Mikel. And admit that mistakes have been made. For example, if we have to give Willian a loyalty payment and a free transfer to get him out in the summer, just do it. If you want to move on Maitland-Niles, Chambers, etc, because you don’t think they have got it (although I’m not saying they are the problem, just that they aren’t playing enough), then do it. You’ve got Ozil, Kolasinac, Guendouzi out the door, but don’t even entertain the idea of a Luiz contract renewal (I don’t think they will ) and get Mustafi and Sokratis gone too. Hey, even Lacazette is probably somebody worth cashing in on.

There needs to be churn this summer because this Arsenal team at the beginning of the season – on paper and given what we have seen as the season has panned out – needs to be rebooted.

I know this is all stuff you have heard and read before, but I’m just saying it as it pops in to my head this morning. That’s what I always do with these blogs. And today has me thinking that come 1st July I’d rather have a squad looking thin than the one we had at the end of December looking more bloated than Mr Creosote in The Meaning of Life. 

We’re probably also getting to the point where the club needs to decide if it is going to take a big hit on Pepe too. I want him to come good, I think he has the talent to be a success, but it is increasingly feeling like it isn’t with The Arsenal. Saka has ‘clicked’ in that right wing spot and there’s no way he’s not starting in the most important games now, so unless Pepe can do something spectacular in the opportunities he’ll be given, I can’t see this ending well. So take the hit in the summer if you have to. I’m not wedded to any of the players who have gotten us into the mess we’ve seen this season. I have no favourites any more.

If you think about it, there is a long list of players that could potentially go in the summer, to which I’ve already mentioned a chunk. Yet there are still more I’d question. Like Elneny for example. Surely we’ve got to get him out with only a year left on his deal? Or Torreira, whose loan move isn’t working out at all. He’ll be on the ‘for sale’ pile for sure. Eddie Nketiah too will have to have a decision made on him and the more you think about it, the more it feels like a mass change around in the squad is inevitable. I’ve listed 15 players from our first team but didn’t even mention Reiss Nelson or Joe Willock, both of whom Arsenal fans have questions over and Nelson who looks like he is so far out of favour he doesn’t even make match day squads these days. Not on a regular basis, anyway.

I also didn’t even talk about Ceballos, who will go back to Madrid.

That is a huge turnover of playing talent. Which also highlights the mess of the previous regime and the way in which we’ve managed transfers, contracts and loan deals.

My hope is that we see a huge change in the summer. Will we get it as big as what I’ve described above? Doubtful. But there will be plenty of work to do and I’m ready for it.

Catch you all tomorrow with more ramblings.

Oh, I dunno, how about a certain German playmaker with whom nearly all of the major media outlets confirmed yesterday is on the verge of signing for Fenerbahce, bringing an end to a saga that has plagued the club for near two years?

Yep, yesterday it was Ornstein first who confirmed that Mesut Ozil will sign for the Turkish club on a free transfer, after the player and Arsenal came to an agreement on terminating his contract. Depending on who you listen to Mesut is getting all or a varying levels of “some” of the wages he is owed until the end of the season and Arsenal will pay the amount in installments over a prolonged period of time.

First and foremost let’s speculate over the deal itself. Whilst we are not privy to the information and probably will never be fully aware of it, I fail to believe that even Arsenal are going to pay up his full amount and let him go having paid him the £7million (ish) his wages are supposed to be between now and the contract expiry. That is my hope anyway. Why should they? We don’t have any money, plus the fact that you have a player in a position in which we need to strengthen, it makes no sense to say we will effectively pay him to play somewhere else. You might as well just keep him rotting in the under 23s/training and not playing. The player has refused to budge and if Arsenal have to pay him the exact amount he is owed then they owe nothing to the player or Fenerbahce that would see both of those parties pick up a player for free whilst the player himself makes even more money than he was due to make.

That is my hope anyway i.e. Arsenal have said to Ozil “you can go, you can get the £100k-per-week that Fenerbahce want to pay you, plus the signing on fee. But we have to be able to have some kind of benefit from the deal. So how about we pay you £5million instead of £7million, plus the loyalty bonus for seeing out your contract, then you go to Fenerbahce and earn more than that?”

I hope that is the situation because it benefits everyone: the player, Fenerbahce, but also Arsenal.

It also takes another one of these ‘old guard’ out of the team and allows Arteta to move forward with the core set of players that know they are going to play every week. We have known all season that there are a core of senior pro’s that aren’t delivering for Arsenal and in addition to that, there have been rumours of dressing room unrest by some of their situations. That is no good for harmony and the exit of Ozil, Sokratis, Kolasinac, this month is the start of a process that will finish with Mustafi, Luiz and probably one or two more in the summer. The purging and trimming is well under way and in terms of Arsenal moving forward it is a good thing.

It is also a relief because this has been a cloud that for far too long has hung over the club and I’m glad it is finally coming to an end earlier than we thought it would. I did believe we’d be asking the Ozil question until June. But a month from now we’ll be able to just move on and focus on the future of Arsenal, rather than the past, which is a-okay for me.

I will say, however, that it is a cloud of the club’s making because it was Wenger and Gazidis that sanctioned what frankly was a ludicrous deal at the time and it has completely backfired for us. The player’s form has been patchy ever since, even though he has still provided some great performances, but we put all of our eggs in the Ozil project and it didn’t work. It hamstrung us slightly in terms of wages and set a precedent that the other players were well aware of. So I’ll repeat what you will have read/watched/listened to from many others: it was not Ozil’s fault or problem that the club decided to pay him w hat they offered. As much as people have vitriol (I think wrongly) and animosity towards Ozil, those who have put us in this position and have sanctioned decisions like that as well as some shocking transfer ‘coups’, need to have as much animosity.

As for the player himself, I have never had that much ire for, because simply put I’ve always loved seeing him play. He will not go down in my top ten Arsenal players I’ve seen of all time, because i’m 38 and those top ten are Henry, Bergkamp, Pires, Wright, Adams, Rocastle, Fabregas, Vieira, Campbell, van Persie (contentious but think about the seasons he had when he was unplayable, as well as what he delivered). I’ve loved watching Arsenal and Ozil and van Persie probably fight for that spot in at 10, but regardless of whether you agree with me or not, when Ozil was at his best in an Arsenal shirt it was majestic to watch. He saw things others did not, played football like he was gliding across the pitch, had a vision that wowed Arsenal fans and rather than the last acrimonious two year’s, I’m going to remember those times he lit up the pitch and excited us all.

It shouldn’t have ended this way. I had hopes he would bow out a legend at the club, a true man who had delivered right up until the last day or his time at Arsenal, leaving me with the kind of sadness that the team was worse off with him going, like how I felt when Henry left the club. But I sadly don’t have those feelings.

I suspect that it’ll all be confirmed tomorrow and so I might write an Arsenal career obituary on the player and his time at the club tomorrow, largely with my positive memories of him, so for now I’ll leave it. But I’d urge you to try not to get too hung up on his departure one way or the other. Player careers at our club are finite; they’re all going to leave eventually and this is just another one on his way out.

Catch you all tomorrow.

The best Arsenal scraps we have to feed off are an under-23s game in which Chambers and Saliba played, as well as Gareth Southgate asking if Bukayo Saka is ok after the defeat to Villa. BUkayo broke down in tears, asked what was going wrong with his life and why he couldn’t have good things, then drove a golf buggy off a cliff whilst on fire in response.

He’s expected to be fit to make the England squad for this set of games though, so Gareth is ok with it.

The UNder-23s game against Gillingham probably has more interest to us because it included two players we should be looking at as first teamers. Apparently both did ok in the FA Shield/Vase/Trinket Trophy, or whatever sponsor it has these days, as we progressed on penalties after a 1-1 draw. For Chambers it is minutes under his belt and that can only be a good thing. He’s been out for a long time and that means he’ll need a number of matches before he can even make a match day squad I’d expect, but at least we have the first positive signs and hopefully we can see him in December at some stage.

I’ve always been a fan of Chambers. I don’t think he is blessed with the most pace in the world but I think he is a better ‘no-nonsense’ defender than Holding. I also think he’s a little quicker than Holding too and that is also a positive attribute when you think of the pace of Premier League attackers. Of course it will take him some time to adjust and we will probably even see some rusty games even when he is deemed fit enough to re-join the first team squad, but if it benefits us for the period after Christmas then I’m all for it.

The Saliba situation is a little more complex, because even if he was ready in Arteta’s eyes we still wouldn’t be able to play him in the Europa League, which is where you’d think he’d be given more chances. So instead this competition is pretty much the only competition he can get any kind of meaningful game time in. At least Gillingham played some relatively senior players and this competition will probably include another opposition like that in the next round. Apparently the young Frenchman did ok, had a decent enough game but wasn’t amazing, but regardless of that we have to look at the situation he’s in. We’re two months in to the season and that was his first competitive game. It doesn’t matter if you are 19 or 29 years old, match fitness is important and he will have been training with the first team and that’s it.

We know that Arteta doesn’t think he’s ready and I get that, but when you see some of the defending that we’ve witnessed over the last 18-24 months, I do struggle to see how he could be any worse than some of the player performances we’ve seen. My hope is that January brings about an opportunity to offload some players and perhaps either work Saliba back into our squad selection, or give him a loan that will guarantee him game time for the remainder of the season. Whether that is back in France or in this country I don’t know, but we don’t really want this completely fudged situation with him to go beyond January.

I hope the club are even now talking to clubs about getting a deal done as soon as possible because he needs lots of minutes as soon as we can get them. So find a club willing to pay penalties if he doesn’t get ‘x’ amount of games before this season is finished. Then let’s have him ready for next season because there will be a bit of a centre half exodus with Mustafi, Sokratis and Luiz all out of contract. So to my mind that is what we have to be aiming for. We need a ready-made defender good enough to come in and be ready to integrate straight away. And people saying that the French Ligue Un might not give him that, should also remember where Gabriel was plying his trade last season, so that is what we want to have replicated for Saliba.

That’s it from me today. Not a lot going on but hopefully we don’t get too much bad news re: injuries over the coming days.

More rambling thoughts tomorrow.

Still, at least with Arsenal there’s never usually not a talking point for us to chew over and the recent confirmation of the Europa League squads have done just that, with Arsenal confirming that Sokratis and Mesut Ozil won’t be making the Europa League team for the group stages. Now, we know that the domestic Premier League squads are yet to be announced and therefore there is a possibility that both players could be involved there, but given the calibre of opposition in Europe we have this season, if either player was to be featured at some stage I’d expect it to be the Europa League squad ahead of the Premier League squads. So I suspect this pretty much all but confirms that both players are surplus to requirements for this coming season.

It must be a very odd situation to find themselves in. You are paid to do a job but you are actively prohibited from doing it, or even having the slightest chance of doing it, but the rules that are in place. Of course we all know the rules, Arsenal knew the rules and I’m sure they’d have spoken to the players and their representatives before the current deadline shut. In fact if you listen to what Edu was saying yesterday when he was talking about the transfer window, new signings, contracts, as well as the two players that have been left out it was obvious that the club has been clear in its communication that the players would not play a part.

Which is why it is so curious that players like Sokratis in particular didn’t just move on anywhere. He was a player that I’m sure was quoted towards the end of last summer saying that he wanted to play and if he didn’t get the opportunity then he would happily look elsewhere for game time. By the sounds of it there was a definite move to Fulham on the cards that he flatly rejected, so there’s something a little weird about the fact that he is happier to just stay at the club.

Perhaps he knows that we’re less than three months away from the transfer window re-opening on 1st January and therefore he won’t have to wait to long to find another club? That would make sense and certainly if he wants to prove the old adage that players seem to improve in people’s eyes when they don’t play, this could be why he didn’t want to join a Fulham team shipping goals, as he still wants a number of decent European clubs vying for his signature come January or even next summer.

The other excluded player we all know enough about. Mesut Ozil is the very expensive asset that you’d have to call a white elephant right now, because he is going to be sitting around earning north of £300k-per-week to essentially manage his social media account. He’ll probably train with the under-23s but I saw a video yesterday of him with the first team and even fist-bumping Mikel Arteta, so lord knows how that one is going to unfold. It does just seem very odd that he doesn’t want to go anywhere though. We all know he loves London, but unless one of the other London clubs is going to stump up big cheddar for him – which will never happen – then wherever he goes next summer it will be away from the capital. So what difference does an extra six months make?

People are saying it is about money and maybe it is, but I’m not so sure, because if I was in Ozil’s shoes and I wanted more money I’d probably go to the club and say “look, you aren’t going to play me, so pay me off. My contract to the end of June is 32 weeks. I’m on £350k-per-week. That’s £11.2million you owe me. Pay me £10million right now and I’ll go find another club”. If it was about that and I was Ozil I could then go to Turkey, find a club willing to pay me £50k-per week for a few years, which also nets me around £1.6million between now and the end of June anywayu. So I’d actually be £400k better off.

Of course I am not privy to what is happening behind the scenes and maybe these conversations are taking place. Maybe the club has already made an offer to him and he’s just holding out for more? Or maybe none of the above. But one things for sure he is holding all of the cards and the club are going to either just suck it up and keep him running bleep tests every week, or they are going to have to cough up yet more cash to get rid of him.

Either way it is a very sad scenario for all involved. Many fans have just lost all faith in him and can’t stand the sight of him, but I will always look at what he has done, how we didn’t supplement his talent with players better than the likes of Giroud, and wonder what could have been. What could have been whilst he was at his peak, but also what could have been if the last couple of year’s had not seen his fall from grace come at such break-neck speed. I loved to watch Mesut Ozil at his best and there’s still a part of me that had hoped we’d get a farewell tour. But that is not going to happen now and this squad announcement is the final nail in a very sad coffin.

With that I think I’ll call time on today’s blog.

Catch you all tomorrow.

I have found myself constantly checking my Twitter feed already though, to see if there’s any news of any signings and with the latest noises now coming back to the potential arrival of Dani Ceballos back to the club next season, I think we can all agree how great a move that would be if we can get it over the line.

If we can get it done now then we’ll also have a player ready for the home game against West Ham after quarantine, so that’ll also be positive news for our team. As admirably as Elneny has performed in these two games we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks, there is a clear gulf in class between Ceballos and the Egyptian, so I’m hoping we can be announcing it soon so we know the details around quarantine, etc.

It does make me wonder why we haven’t given games to Lacazette, Pepe, Torreira, etc, though. All of those players – Lacazette aside – head off for international duty this coming weekend, so that’s something, but I’d have expected them to all play some kind of part in the Community Shield. Kolasinac got on the pitch but none of the above players even made the bench so I’m wondering how on Earth we’re going to cobble together a side for that first away game against Fulham.

The up side is that Arteta is pumped enough belief into those that are playing, that we have some players who we’d be pulling our hair out with them getting on the pitch nine months ago, but now we seem to have such a belief in the system that Arteta is building, that we believe that some of these players have a redemption arc in their game that makes us a side capable of competing even with some of the names that got on the pitch on Saturday.

Like Reiss Nelson. I think he has plenty of technical ability and a good touch, but he looked to be wilting under Emery, his Arsenal career also looking like it was heading south too. Arteta has placed more faith in him but he did tail off a bit after lockdown so it’ll be interesting to see just what the managers plans are for the player. But he’s featured in both of the games so far this pre season and to me that suggests Arteta is prepared to use him. There are plenty of links away either on Lon or a transfer, but I’d be surprised if anything happened just yet, purely and simply because he’ll be fitter than many of the other senior players who have yet to play a minute.

Hopefully for those that aren’t going away on international duty this week the club will be arranging some behind closed doors friendlies. Watford are only next door so all we have to do there is walk round and knock for them to see if they’re coming out to play!

The other confirmation we got yesterday was Mkhitaryan to Roma on a permanent deal, confirmed by Arsenal, the player and Roma themselves. It will go down as one of the worst swap deals in the history of the English game I think and with Alexis also pocketing a small fortune and delivering little at United before having to be paid off to go to Inter, Mkhi heads to Italy too having shown only the finest of flickers of a spark of the player that I wanted all those years ago from Dortmund. As I said after a few months of him as an Arsenal player, Jose Mourinho broke him, Wenger tried to revive him, but we never really got the player we hoped for and rather than get any money for a guy still under contract at the club, we’re releasing from his contract because of the exorbitant wages that we agreed to under the Gazidis regime. Crazy really.

What it does show though, also with the fact we’re offloading Sokratis for peanuts, is that we really don’t have much cash at all and are desperately trying to find ways to reduce the costs of players. That would be so much easier if we were in a market that was buying and selling but most clubs just aren’t doing it any more. You can tell that by the frankly ridiculous offer Valencia are supposed to have made for Guendouzi. I’m sure I’ve read that they have put a £16million bid to Arsenal. Valencia who have no money, putting embarrassing figures together like that for a player who is a French international? Do me a favour. I hope any bids like that don’t even get a response from the Arsenal hierarchy.

But it shows why we haven’t moved so far; we have to sell before we buy and our assets just aren’t really that marketable in a summer in which clubs who would be buying them would be willing to stump up. If we had a young asset that most of Europe’s top clubs would be interested in then it would be different. If Guendouzi has lit up the Premier League last season and clubs were now sniffing like PSG, we’d probably get some proper cash. But the big clubs aren’t biting and so it’s the smaller ones that we have to look at. None of them have the finances in place to take a punt on a Guendouzi which is why Arteta is making noises about re-integrating him back into the team. Because he doesn’t really have much more of a choice.

So I think unless we start to see some news hotting up on the outgoings, we’ll likely not see any incomings for a while, which means a quiet one today I predict. Unless we finally get the Aubameyang extension we’ve all been waiting for.

Catch you guys tomorrow.

Actually, probably not, because I’d imagine they’d get the contract signed before they take any pictures. Although, having said that, remember in 2002 when we thought we’d signed Carini from Juve on a season loan to be a back up ‘keeper? Arsene Wenger was even quoted as saying what a great addition he’d be to the club and I’m pretty sure he was either pictured in an Arsenal shirt or played in a few friendlies in Austria, before his wage demands – £34k-per-week after a certain period of games – were deemed to be too high for a guy who was going to sit on the bench all season. To be fair in 2002 that must have easily have been an established first-teamer wages and the Uruguayan was only 21.

So that broke down late into the process and so we can’t really get too excited until we get that official confirmation.

It’s the same with the Aubameyang stuff. I think everyone knows the deal was virtually there and Auba has posted his not so subtle Twitter comments with egg timers and the like, but until we get that confirmation, we simply cannot invest too much joy and happiness in the fact we’ve secured our leading scorer for the last two seasons. Imagine if Koeman in at Barca just tells his board to pay whatever for Aubameyang and Barca made a bid right now of something like £30million. We know Auba loves living in London and he enjoys being the main man in this team, but if Barca came knocking he would surely have a think about it. Champions League football essentially guaranteed each season, fighting for the league even though the team is an utter mess at the moment, a chance to play in a country he hasn’t succeeded in yet. Look, I’d love it if he stayed and of course I’m biased and I’d never leave Arsenal if I had the chance to play for the club, but I’m a fan and it’s different for somebody like Auba. He’s played in Italy, France, Germany and England. He’s been a football nomad and so moving clubs isn’t as much of an issue for him. But whilst all the signs have been good for him to extend with us, until we get that confirmation clubs can still test the water and even if they don’t bid, like, yesterday, they can still tell his agent that the bid is incoming and any element of doubt like that could force the holding off of penning any extension.

But let’s remain hopeful on both of the deals getting over the line and if they do, then I suspect we’ve just got the midfield to sort which means one position with which to find the perfect candidate and until October – at the latest – to do so. That’s much more palatable than the usual deadline day scramble we’ve been used to.

But back to the Gabriel Magalhaes stuff – and I’m going to have to find a new keyboard to get his name right to find the wavy line across the ‘a’ – it does leave me wondering about the future of someone like Rob Holding. Think about it; if the kid comes in then to start the season we have him, Saliba, Luiz and Holding as our fit centre halves to start the season. But the return back to fitness of Calum Chambers – supposedly by September – as well as Mari back to training in September, followed by Mustafi in October, means that the club will surely be forced to make some decisions. We simply can’t have ourselves seven centre halves for the season. That’s too much and even with all of the inevitable injury problems we seem to get you can’t look at that situation and think that we won’t see any exits. Holding is the one I think could be sacrificed if an offer came in. I know there is talk about Chambers and Fulham but they won’t buy him until he’s fit. That means we’ll probably keep hold of a few players as we get into the season before moving one or two on.

Supposedly Sokratis is one of those guys who will move on and Napoli are supposedly eyeing him up. Makes sense if they tried to go after Gabriel Magalahes and are trying to offload Koulibaly for big cash to City. Sokratis will provide depth and then with the Koulibaly money they can start to look at other options in defence. The Italian league is slower than the Premier League too so a player of Sokratis’ age and profile will probably do quite well.

But we do need to sort out our defensive options and quickly methinks. I suspect the arrival of any midfielder will be predicated on the sale of the likes of Guendouzi, possibly Maitland-Niles, Torreira or even Chambers. I kind of get that so hopefully the club can shift on these players if it is looking to make a big move. Let’s see though.

Right, that’s me for another one, so I’ll catch you all on that most wonderful of days – the Friday.

Laters.

It’ll be even happier if we can get confirmation on Aubameyang extended his stay at the club beyond the end of next season. The talk is of a two year extension that brings him to the ripe old age of 34 and will give him the mega cash that every footballer needs, but after his heroics in the FA Cup final, I don’t think you’ll find many Arsenal fans unhappy with this news as and when it happens.

So we wait. Ever so patiently.

If/when it happens, we can talk about what the future holds for him, the club, etc, but apparently he’s been given assurances verbally over player acquisitions and as Mr ‘Lets Go!’ Fabrizio Romano has reported, it looks only a matter of time before Willian is announced by the club. Again, I’ve kind of said my piece on him, but will take another bit of time to talk about the player as/when/if he signs for The Arsenal.

The other big news from yesterday comes in Ainsley Maitland-Niles flavour, which is that apparently he’s been told by the club he can leave. When this comes from one journo source the response from most Arsenal fans is usually ‘pffffh, whatever’, but this has come from a few sources like The Sun, the Mirror and the Telegraph. The first two still have an element of ‘pfffh’ about them, but the Telegraph reporting it does make you wonder. When a few journos have been fed that line you do wonder how much weight there is behind it and I suspect there might be an element of truth behind the noise.

And look, I know he was very good in the semi and the final, but two months ago we all thought his career was over. Apparently Arteta has said he has really knuckled down, showed he’s willing to work hard – like Ceballos – and the result is that apparently the boss now wants to keep him. I can totally understand that from Arteta. Maitland-Niles is a versatile utility player and with what looks like a manager who will regularly mix things up in terms of tactical set up depending on the opposition, a player like Ainsley – if he is channelled in the right way and his head is in the game – would be exactly the sort of player I’d expect Arteta to love.

In normal circumstances we might be in a position where we’d say ‘only if someone comes in paying megabucks for him’, but we’re in a COVID-19 world now and I’d be surprised if clubs are going to put the big bucks down for him. Depending on what you read it is looking like between £20 – £30million and if it’s close to the £30million mark then you’d have to take a second look at any offer. We’re in a position where we have to sell to buy and if we could get £60million from the sale of Maitland-Niles and Guendouzi, for example, then you are probably looking at Arteta having a fair bit of cash to play with.

But herein lies the problem; I don’t think there are many football teams at a certain level who are going to pay that money. There seems to be plenty of online chatter about how the market isn’t so different now because we’ve seen talk of Sancho to United for £120million, Chelski have spent £47.5million for Werner and £33million for Ziyech, with Havertz being next on their list for about £60million apparently. Man City have £300million to spend and Liverpool will also spend. But these are all the ‘big clubs’ with the ‘big bucks’. The likes of Brighton – who Maitland-Niles is linked to, will not be shelling out £30million for his services unless they can defer for a year, whereas Villareal in Spain aren’t spending the same amount of cash on Guendouzi.

And that’s the problem we face with selling our players; they are going to go to smaller clubs with smaller budgets who simply don’t have the money they would have had in the pre-COVID world. Had we not have had the pandemic you’d think we’d get the circa £30million, but right now I’m not so sure.

Which does make you think about whether it is worth it. I mean, I certainly would rather see Maitland-Niles play more regularly in comparison to Kolasinac, or even Soares on the right, for example. Which does serve to highlight why we bought Soares, unless the feeling was that Maitland-Niles wouldn’t buck his ideas up and now that he has, we have a slight conundrum on our hands. But that’s just football. We need to be able to make decisions based on the best squad available to Arteta and the good news is that I think if the boss was really given the final say – which I think he will – and he’s told “£30million for Ainsley that you can spend on a player in another position or keep Ainsley”, he’d make the decision based on what he needs from this team.

So whilst it’d be a shame to see him go, I think we can all agree that as long as Mikel is the one making the final decision, then we’re good with it.

Catch you all tomorrow.

But then we learn that it’s because Matteo Guendouzi has been mouthing off during Saturday’s game about how much he earns and, frankly, it’s a little embarrassing. I mean here’s a kid who has barely established himself in Arsenal’s first team and he’s tempting the football karma fates by trying to get a rise out of Brighton players. Bloody Brighton player! We already know they’re a bang average team, yet giving them a little extra motivation doesn’t help anybody from our part and the way the match unfolded it does feel as though the football fates decided to deliver us a big two fingers up.

Guendouzi is a player who looks like the exact problem with so many at Arsenal down the years – believing their own hype. We had Bendtner sticking his weekly wage on the back of his shirt like some kind of trophy for Christ’s sake. Yet here we are with a floppy-haired midfielder who has been part of the car crash this season and who I certainly think many people have realised is not as good as he thinks he is. His positional discipline leaves a lot to be desired sometimes and pairing him with Ceballos on Saturday was as painful a watch as you’re going to see this season. People who bemoaned Xhaka must surely now be realising that at least he offers more than Guendouzi by being on the pitch, right?

Maybe. Or maybe because he runs around a lot there are still some out there that think he’s deserving of the hype that he received last season. Not me though.

It’s just another bullet point added to the rap sheet of wrongs at the club right now, though, isn’t it? And you can see why Steve Round and Arteta have spoken about changing the attitude. The squad is imbalanced, but it also appears that there are a few bad apples in there too and until both players are moved on and those that remain change that attitude, then we’re going to continue to have this culture at our club.

Guendouzi is one of the midfielders who is available though, having had it decided that he’ll somehow escape punishment for his grab on Maupay at the end of the game. A stupid move that could have cost us even more.

Speaking of cost, today will be the day that we find out if another bunch of players are out of the club in a week’s time. Tuesday 23rd June was the cut off point at which the ‘mini extensions’ to contracts for this season had to be agreed and we’ll hear about Soares, Luiz, Mari and Ceballos too. After the three out of ten performance he put in against Brighton on Saturday I wouldn’t be crying too much if he went back to his parent club in Madrid, but given it seems we literally have no midfielders left at the moment, I suspect a deal will be found to keep him around another month.

As for the others…well…that will be interesting. Personally I think this season is done and so with David Luiz if you’re talking keeping him around for another £200k-per-week that is going to impact the club, then I’d be saying thanks and goodbye. There will be another time for us to look long and hard at Raul for doing that deal, but for now let’s just deal with the practicalities. Soares is an interesting one because again if you’re looking to save some cash you could just let him go and tell Ainsley he’s going to have to appreciate he’s an auxiliary right back for the remainder of the season, but long term if Arteta fancies Soares then I don’t see why that deal wouldn’t get done. Might as well have some other option because, if I’m honest with you, I can’t see us splashing big on a right back this summer to replace the ever-slowing Bellerin.

I’d have loved us to go after Meunier but the fact he’s just all but signed from Dortmund, shows we weren’t getting close. Dortmund are a perpetual Champions League team, uinlike us these days, so unless we were going to drop a ridiculous signing on fee and wages, then it was never going to happen.

But at least we’ll get some clarity today and with Arteta due to face the press today with the Southampton game looming on the horizon, at least we’ll know more by the time this week draws to a close. We’ll also know if this season really is a complete waste of time if we get beaten by Southampton and then Sheffield United in quick succession. But let’s see what unfolds today and let’s see what Arteta says later when he does his presser.

Catch you wonderful people tomorrow.

Maybe this is some kind of higher powers way of giving me the ‘darkest before dawn’ speech, so that when the team rock up at the Amex tomorrow, they’ll be firing on all cylinders and ready to give us one heck of a performance against Graham Potter’s men.

It’ll need to be and Arteta knows that, citing the fact that maybe it was a good thing to play a game so quickly after the City match, in his presser last night via Zoom. If only his team were as good as his press conferences, eh? He nails it every time and do you know what, I believe in him, so hopefully those players do more than anyone too because we need to see a reaction tomorrow afternoon and Arteta knows that. He talked about ‘revenge’ and that’s the kind of rhetoric that I want to hear. I want to hear the players are hurting, are more determined than ever, are angry and will react in the right way that will see us pick up wins.

He did confirm how tough it will be, especially given the fact we’ve lost three players for the game, two on a long term basis and in terms of Mari it sounds like his season is over. Which means we have one heck of a gamble Arsenal will be taking if he ends up signing. But as well as that when you look at the options at centre half, we’re now at the stage where we’re down to ‘the bare bones’ after literally one football match. We’ve talked about the sheer volume of centre backs there are at the club, but only Arsenal can have an army surplus supply of players in one position and still face a crisis. As it stands we have Sokratis a question mark, Luiz suspended, Chambers injured, Holding still not 100%, whilst Mavropanos is on loan and Saliba is not eligible. If you also include Mari on that list it’s an Arsenal team with eight centre halves on the books, yet only one is guaranteed to play in Mustafi. Absolutely crazy unlucky and Mikel must be wondering what he has done to deserve such a start to managerial life because he seems to have had challenge after challenge hit him as a manager since he joined.

But to be fair to him he’s taking it in his stride, he’s talking about how important it is not to use excuses, he’s seeting expectations on his coaching ability as high as those of the players he wants at The Arsenal.

Whether one of those players is Mesut Ozil long term I don’t know and whilst Mikel left the door ajar for the German in the presser yesterday, we must all have questions now as to whether Ozil himself walks through it. Arteta explained that Ozil was simply ‘not ready’ and rather than fitness it sounds like it is clearly an attitude problem that the manager has seen. That’s Emery, Freddie and Arteta who have all now had run ins with the playmaker and whilst I’ve stood behind him and back him at times because of his talent, you simply can’t ignore those numbers. Will it be ‘three times and out? Feels like it’s close to me to be honest. But whilst that massive contract still sits tucked away on Mesut’s agents cloud storage, he’s going to be an Arsenal player and that means Mikel has to find some way to get him involved. We may not like it but you can’t just have an £18million a year asset that just sits in the corner rotting away.

It is up to Mesut though. He won’t gain many followers by sitting around not playing, not putting the effort in, posting the occasional provocative tweet here and there. This isn’t like Emery; people aren’t siding with him that I can see, so it is a battle he won’t win with the fanbase.

So it’s time – once again – for there to be some bridges mended and they need to be mended by Ozil heading over to Arteta’s side of the water, not vice-versa. We don’t know because it’s only been a short period of time, but Arteta doesn’t feel like a guy who will flip-flop like Emery. He feels like a guy who will leave Ozil out unless he gets the outputs that are right for the team. And I’m all in on that opinion.

The main other talking point that I thought i’d pick up on today was David Luiz and what I feel is becoming more obvious with every passing day is that the guy won’t be here come 1st July. Arteta is playing a straight bat and saying he wants the player at the club, but let’s be honest, the club can’t do another £200k-per-week deal and if it’s not happening because Luiz wants two years, then i’m afraid it’s cheerio, thanks-but-no-thanks, on your way son. He hasn’t been that amazing that we should be biting his hand off to pay that money and whilst it will feel like making life hard now with the options we have, when this season of essentially glorified friendlies is over, that’s wages that can go into better players who will make more of an impact. That’s the ‘no brainer’ for me.

Right, I’ve waffled on long enough, so I’ll take a stop there and catch you peeps tomorrow morning with some kind of match preview.

Laters.

Which is probably why Lacazette and Luiz decided to break the rules and meet up, as well as Pepe going out for a bit of a kick around, with Xhaka also doing his own version of what constitutes ‘lockdown’.

Arsenal of course did the ol’ wrapping of the knuckles on the players which is what you’d expect, but it’s hard for me to go in two footed on them metaphorically this Saturday morning because frankly we’re all a little fed up of being cooped up at home and so it doesn’t surprise me that they tried a cheeky get away.

I know there are people who are less fortunate and I know that there will be people in tower blocks who are adhering to the rules and will see this as mildly offensive in terms of flouting the rules, but we’re all human and I defy any of you to say that you haven’t been a bit desperate to get away and be a little cheeky. I will confess that I myself have bent the rules slightly; I go for an afternoon run every day and one day over this lockdown period my wife hadn’t gone out for her daily walk and she wanted to get some fresh air before bed. So in the evening we went out and I accompanied her given that it was getting a little darker. So it seems a little hypocritical of me to be chastising the players.

Of course they’re a bit silly thinking that, as high profile personalities, they could get away with it. But I guess that is life.

Arsenal gave them a dressing down, they’ll no doubt avoid doing it in future, hopefully no bad has come of it other than people looking a little silly.

Which is also what Aubameyang’s dad will look like with his cryptic messages about signing a new contract with Arsenal, if his son ends up getting sold whenever there’s a transfer window to speak of. There’s apparently a slight increase on the £200k a week deal for the Gabon striker and it appears papa wants a brand new boat, because if he signs with Arsenal now he’ll no doubt also get access to a chunky signing on fee though.

What do you do with the Auba situation though? 30 years old, he will only start declining, but I suspect he’ll be at his peak for at least another three years so it’s a tough one for Arsenal to assess. Particularly given that nobody is going to have any money when the window opens, which means the value of players will inevitably reduce. So we may only get something like £30million for a £50million striker. But £30million of cash in the current market may mean you can get a young player who might have cost £40million, for half that price, so it’s all relative.

There’s also the whole question of the value of the contract from Aubameyang’s perspective. If every club except the oil whoring/financially doped clubs is going to be desperate to sell, then it’s a buyers market and Arsenal could cash in on Auba and have money to invest, but also for the Gabonese striker it means any club that can put an offer down probably won’t be offering mega wages. So in effect the deal on the table from Arsenal right now is worth even more than it was three months ago. It isn’t completely mad to think that a £225k-per-week deal – or thereabouts – is the equivalent of a £300k-per-week deal in ‘old money’ of three months ago.

So perhaps that’s where Auba’s dad is coming from. Perhaps he can see that it’s going to be a hard sell to get a club to stump up Ozil wages these days. So taking the cash now rather than gambling in a few months could be a shrewd move from the players perspective.

So it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out and whether we get some sort of news in the coming weeks and months – one way or the other. An announcement he has signed an extension would be a nice bit of news during this downtime, wouldn’t it?

There’s also some fluff from the Standard about Sokratis hinting that Thomas Partey will be joining us from Atletico Madrid. Sounds like nonsense to me. How on earth could Arsenal afford a £44million signing when they have only just asked their players to take a 12.5% pay cut. It just doesn’t make sense and the players would right go batshit mental if it happened. The only way a deal could be struck is if Arsenal are sending someone else the other way. Now, given that nobody has any money in football (except those that cheat the system as already mentioned) and given that Atletico are supposedly interested in Lacazette, I could see some kind of swap deal arrangement being discussed that would work for all parties. Apparently Costa is out of form, we have two strikers so we could part with one if the other signs a new deal, plus there’s the fact it would free up more game time for Martinelli to play through the middle. To me that would make a fair bit of sense if all parties were interested, but it would need a lot of haggling and swap deals are usually a rarity for a reason. But let’s just see how Arsenal approach the window when we know when the window will bloody begin!

And on that note I think i’ll say g’day for another one. Am trying to do blogs at the weekend now but weekdays are tough because work is so intense and long working hours. But if I get time and inspiration i’ll pen some thoughts.

Until we speak again.

Catch you peeps later.

Yesterday’s announcement by the club that Koscielny has refused to board the plane to head on the US tour was just another example of what a state it feels like our club is in at the moment. Here you have a guy with over 350 appearances for the club, the captain no less, under contract, trying to force a move. It speaks volumes about what some of the players think about the current situation and it’s little wonder we’re struggling to attract talent.

But let’s focus on Koscielny for now. His behaviour is unacceptable and unbecoming of a captain of Arsenal. He has to be stripped of that honour immediately in my opinion. The club/Emery needs to make an announcement of a new captain soon and we need to get Koscielny out of the club. His actions will tarnish what has been a fantastic career at the club and whereas he could have moved on this summer with Arsenal fans bidding him a fond farewell, now it feels like there is going to be a bitter end to his time at the club. And that is a shame.

I genuinely don’t understand why he thought the club would just let him go for free though. He knows he is an asset to us and at a time where literally every penny counts at the club, we should be able to get a fee for the player, even if it’s a few million quid. This summer is full of farcical fees for footballers and so it stands to reason that we want some cash for Kos.

I suspect it will play out and there will be some clubs going in for him now. We’ve made it public – which I think is the right thing to do because we at least know who the protagonist is in this saga – and so now all that is needed is for clubs to come in and give us some cash. The only problem we do have by making it public is that we’re now going to get lowballed by the French clubs as everybody knows that we have to sell. We’ve been forced to show our hands and now there’ll be some vultures circling to pick at the transfer carcass. The best we can hope for is a multitude of clubs in for Koscielny so we can at least set off some kind of bidding war.

For Arsenal it brings in to even sharper focus the need for central defensive options and I suspect Koscielny’s actions will mean that Calum Chambers is given more of a shot than perhaps the club expected him to be this coming season. I have no problem with that and Chambers at 24 needs to be given a shot. But there also needs to be a decision made ASAP on whether a more experienced centre half comes in. I am starting to think we’ll have another season of Mustafi you know. And that isn’t exactly the best news you want to read on a Friday morning I know.

The club needs to do something because fan sentiment is turning ugly and we’re at the stage where most of us are already losing patience. I’ve heard from two separate people that the way the club is viewed by agents and other people in football is that we’re a bit of a joke. Everything is done by committee and as a result no decisions actually get made. That sounds alarmingly familiar to the Wenger era and at this point in time it feels like we haven’t really moved on at all. This summer was supposed to be the one where Raul steps forward and shows us the positivity of the new regime. I’ve seen little so far to suggest we’re going in any positive direction I’m afraid.

Catch you all tomorrow.

Shameless plug over and done with, what do we have on our collective Arsenal-thinking minds today then?

How about the leaked Arsenal kits that Aubameyang and Lacazette modelling that came out yesterday? I’m not usually a person that cares too much about kits because ultimately I don’t buy them, but if I can see The Arsenal in a classic looking kit like that red one next season, I’d be sorely tempted. The yellow one looks pretty neat too.

We’ve also heard a little from Raul who, having now been in post for seven months has been a little more vocal in an interview on the official site. Actions of course speak louder than words but the Joint-Head-of-Football-Director-type-person spoke well enough and polished enough to make it sound like he’s got an idea in which direction we’re going. Forgive me if I don’t get too excited though; we had ten years of Gazidis and his polished nonsense that ultimately transpired in to nothing in the end, so I’m not getting too excited just yet. If the proof is in the pudding then Gazidis served us up a tramps shoe with sh*t all over and no laces, telling us that it was a Heston Blumenthal special, so until we see some positive impact on the football operations then I think I’ll save my praise.

He did give us insight in to the Ramsey situation and admitted kind of what we already know: Ramsey was ready to sign but it was the club that decided that they needed to pull the plug. Ramsey has really shown his value this side of Christmas but even now I can see why the club made the decision. Let’s imagine that we don’t get Champions League because we don’t win on Wednesday (entirely feasible). That puts us at circa £40million for signings. Now let’s imagine we’ve got an injured Aaron Ramsey on a big sea for the next four years. What does that do to the transfer budget? Knock it down to £20million? Force the club to move on players that W don’t want to move on like Auba or Laca?

Ramsey has been a great servant to the club, he will be sorely missed, but if he picks up injuries like he has throughout his Arsenal career we’d be left with an even bigger wage bill than we already have and players not contributing for their wage.

I’ve said it before and I’ll repeat one more time; for me the big mistake was the Mkhitaryan deal on that kind of money and now, in hindsight, the Özil deal, both of which cost the club circa £28million a year and both of which have probably contributed to our meagre transfer budget this summer. Those deals were done by…guess who…Ivan Gazidis and so it’s clear to me where the real blame lies. Everyone is mopping up that bald pricks mess right now.

The Welbeck situation – in which Raul also elaborated – was an interesting and surprising one though. We’ve assumed this whole time that it’s the club that had held off from a new deal but by the looks of it the driving force for running it down to a Bosman was Welbeck himself. I guess I kind of get it; he didn’t know what kind of place he’d have in the team with Auba and Laca both first choice last summer, he probably still wants to play up front, not happy to be second fiddle and so he thought he’d run his contract down.

He’ll get a decent deal somewhere else in the Premier League and will probably get the chance to play a lot more football if he stays fit and signs for a team lower down the division. But that’s the big thing, the if he stays fit, because his Arsenal career has been blighted with injuries and as a result he’s never really been able to establish himself for any prolonged period of time. He’s going to be 29 in November and so will want one last adventure and I guess he goes with a blessing from all of us. We’ll welcome him back with applause when he returns with another flub next season, until he gets the obligatory goal against us that every former player seems to know in, that is!

And on that cheery prospect I think I’ll say adieu for another day! Catch you all tomorrow and be wonderful.

It’s oh so quiet…it’s oh so still…

There’s nowt on out to shout about that’s for sure. No “we must respond”, no “learn our lessons”, no reported deep and meaningful team ‘heart-to-heart’s. Just radio silence.

I don’t necessarily mind that though. I think everyone associated with Arsenal is just pretty sick of this season. Matches like Sunday’s game at West Ham just feel like a bit of an inconvenience. Especially for me when I’ve got some friends we’re going to see on Saturday evening and so will be staying over and heading to the match from further afield than usual.

I can’t remember the last time – even when we were nowhere near competing for the title – that I’ve felt so ‘meh’ about The Arsenal. I don’t think I ever have to be honest with you. It’s certainly not the fact that we’ve nothing to play for in the league either. We’ve had that feeling in seasons past when we were nowhere near the league, nowhere near dropping out of the top four, in stasis and still I watched the games with more excitement.

The feeling that nothing is changing at Arsenal is contributing to that in the main part, which is why I’ll go into this summer for the first time not really excited about who we could be augmenting the team with. The infrastructure changes in back-room staff on the non-playing or coaching side gave us some hope, but the noises from Arsène about next season just worry me for yet more apathy.

If we think it’s bad now in terms of things like fan attendance or turning toxic early in games, imagine what it’s going to be like come November, when we’re out of next year’s title race and Arsène is finding excuses before Christmas?

The stadium will continue to look like it has done of late. People will find excuses not to go. Where birthdays, weddings and bar mitzvah’s saw late arrivals because of the match, people will find reasons not to be at The Arsenal if they can help it.

There just isn’t the desire to see the same stuff all over again.

Yet Arsène has certainly made noises that he wants to go again next season. It appears that he’s willing to repeat his fate again and again and again. The fans are not following suit though. In the stadium people have had enough.

This feels very similar to last year actually. I’m sure it was late April that the noises were louder about then and then post the FA Cup final the decision was that he would sign a new deal. It feels the same again. There’s no new deal on the table but it feels like the ‘deal’ this time is him seeing out his contract. The final may be the semi, but I’m skeptical about our ability to win over two legs. Who knows though, because this time last year our equivalent game was a match against Man City that we had absolutely no chance of winning, yet we did.

So whilst I’m lamenting the fact this all feels very familiar, I’d certainly take it if it meant a cup final in Lyon at the end.

But hypothetically speaking if we did manage a minor miracle and beat Madrid – miraculous given our defence – and go on to win the Europa League, I’d want Arsène to accept that he can bow out as a hero having delivered yet another trophy, because I’d love to see him in the stands next season watching Arsenal as a supporter.

If we won the Europa though there’s no way it would happen. We’d go back to the downside of our Groundhog Day season and see the same sort of announcement we got last year after the cup final: he’s staying.

Come on Arsène, realise when your race is run, realise that you could bow out the hero.

I’ll leave you all this morning with that classic quote from The Dark Knight:

“You either die a hero, or live long enough to become the villain”

Catch you all tomorrow.

He’s one of ours. Signed since the age of about seven and approaching as much time with an affiliation at Arsenal as Arsène Wenger. He’s risen up through the ranks, played in European competition, roused the fans at The Armoury for a hearty rendition of “what do you think of Tottenham?”, he’s been a sole Arsenal representation on England national teams, he’s loved his life in red and white.

Yet with all of the recent news about him not signing a new deal, about wanting a bit more cash and a little less incentive-based remuneration, it feels like his Arsenal career is slipping away.

And when I saw his cameo performance on Sunday I sadly didn’t feel the same pang of sadness that I did the week before and sadly, the week before that because the more and more I start to think about the reality of the situation, the more that pragmatism kicks in for my mind.

Because let’s be realistic here; another player who has the same style, form, injury record and recent performance levels, probably has us all talking about it being ‘best for all parties’ if he moved on in the summer.

Jack Wilshere has a special place for most of us because he is most of us. An Arsenal boy, a talented younger player who we wanted to be our Steven Gerrard, our captain fantastic. But those injuries. Those frigging injuries. Jack’s body has robbed us of our modern day Adamsesque club icon.

But the truth is that the club has moved on and I’m just not sure how Jack Wilshere fits into the current Arsenal set up. It certainly doesn’t help that with the current manager we seem to have declined to a point (I’m not talking recently because obviously we’ve had a few good results, but I’m talking over longer periods of time) where we don’t seem to have a specific style of play. If we knew what type of football we were supposed to be – our identity and style – we would have a better idea of where Jack would fit. But we don’t have a clue and as such were left guessing on what his future role in the Arsenal team would be.

But having seen him give the ball away so cheaply on Sunday, which was similar to what happened on Thursday night against CSKA, I am starting to wonder if he’d be anything other than a bit-part player next season anyway.

Just think about what sort of players we probably need next season:

• Goalkeeper to replace the ageing Cech or certainly the departing Ospina
• Centre half to replace the rapidly ageing Koscielny or the error-prone Mustafi
• Right back cover to replace Bellerin
• Combative midfielder – able to have an impact at both ends of the pitch
• Pace out wide in attacking positions

Perhaps some of that will come from the famous ‘internal solutions’ but the one area of the pitch where I think we really need to look at is that midfield and if we’re going to look at somebody like Maitland-Nile’s as that combative central midfielder, then sacrifices need to be made in the middle of the park, and sentiment can play no part.

Arsène has his hierarchies and that’s why Wilshere is playing regularly. He’s at the top of the pecking order and with Arsène Wenger you have to do a lot wrong before you start to fall down it. It doesn’t even matter if your contract is up for renewal and you have no intention of signing a new one, you’ll still be given game time if you are top of the pecking order. Just look at The Ox at the beginning of the season against Liverpool.

So Jack will continue to play this season but I can’t see there being any chance that he is an Arsenal player next season and again, if I take sentiment out, it’s probably best for everyone. If it stops somebody like Maitland-Niles being given his shot then it shouldn’t be something Arsenal are looking to do.

Sadly Wilshere just isn’t the same player he was. He looks bulkier than when he was at his best for Arsenal. He doesn’t seem to be able to weave around players like he used to. That famous ‘burst’ that Arsène always spoke about isn’t there. He’s not an amazing passer of the ball over long distances and so playing in a deeper-lying position just doesn’t work. We have Xhaka who has a better passing range and a more reliable body. And he can’t play the all-action runner; he’s nowhere near the level of Ramsey. Then in front of him at number 10 is Özil and again, he’s just not at that level.

So I don’t see a solution in the current Arsenal squad that sees Jack getting regular game time.

My hope would be for him to go abroad. I’d rather that than see him rock up in a West Ham, Everton, or some such other domestic Premier League short next season. But I suspect that is where this is heading.

When it happens we’ll all wish him well – depending on the team he chooses – but it won’t feel like the fanfare ending to an Arsenal career that I hoped for.

It’ll all end with a bit more of a damp squib. And that’s a real shame.

Catch you all tomorrow.

Perhaps I should just hire Troy Deeney to sit on it all night. It’ll never move then.

The only saving grace about tonight’s game is that it’s in Holland, meaning I don’t have to concern myself with stupid, drunk, annoying England fans on my commute home past Wembley. I don’t know why but England fans come across as more stupid and more annoying than even those Tiny Totts.

The only real Arsenal noises seem to revolve around Jack Wilshere at the moment though. Sadly for him he’s missing tonight’s game with a minor knee injury but by the sounds of it it’s temporary and I suspect he’ll start on Tuesday against <insert name of international team England are playing, because I don’t care and won’t bother to look it up, here> but that’s not really of much concern to me. We don’t play until next Sunday and as long as he’s fit for that then it’s a-ok for me.

What is a slight worry and probably also the first signals of Jack’s exit from the club is the interview he’s given about discussions that took place last summer.

It’s interesting because the club will monitor all media duties by their players and in times gone past you just haven’t seen this kind of candour from players. But the fact the club will have clearly sanctioned this interview to take place, only lead me to get more conclusions that everything feels like it’s unravelling a little bit, because I can’t imagine an all-powerful Arsène in full control allowing a player to show his hand like he has.

Jack conceding that he was a bit hurt by Wenger telling him he could go feels like his first tentative steps towards telling the fans he’s off. After all if you’re 100% happy at the club and about to sign a new deal you take the approach Özil did. Keep schtum, no PR that could have the public guessing which we this could go, then a nice pic of you signing a ceremonial piece of paper.

I think Jack has had enough and this season has been about showing the world he can still do it in the Premier League. But the question is: can he still do it at the top of the Premier League?

That’s obviously what Arsenal are asking and it’s why I can kind of see how the stalemate has been reached. Jack could sign a mega deal today and then get injured on international duty and we don’t see him until March next year. By that time fans will be talking about ‘same old Arsenal mollycoddling players and not doing the difficult thing and releasing them’. It’ll be the same stick used to beat the club – coming out of retirement – that people (including me at times I must admit) used in the Diaby situation.

The thing is though, Jack has something missing since he returned and we all see it, right? It’s that extra yard of pace, that mobility which has gone and that speed over five yards. He looks heavier on his feet than he used to and whilst I accept in the current team they’re all underperforming, he has also not really given us that spark that we were all hopeful for.

Desperate for even. I’d love Jack to get back to his best and do it for us in the coming weeks, leading Arsenal to up his offer and we keep him for another four years at least, but I don’t think that’ll happen. There’s still time this season and maybe being in the England squad will provide him with more motivation and help him to build his confidence more. That’s what we’re all hoping. But I’ve seen plenty of people pick out the things in his game a few months back that I wasn’t seeing through my own blind faith and now I worry that we’ll never see the great prospect realised that we’d all hoped for ten year’s ago.

That will be a shame. Injuries and stupid tackles from people like McNair have curtailed a career that could have been Gerrardesque I believe. But that tends to happen with Arsenal players sometimes.

What does need to happen if Jack does leave, is that we don’t just replace like-for-like. We need somebody who has the engine to move around the pitch, cover space, distribute and also screen in front of the midfield. We don’t need another small and nippy midfielder who travels with the ball at his feet.

Perhaps that’s why the club aren’t moving heaven and earth to tie Jack down? Perhaps – shock horror – there’s actually a plan for the structure of the team. That’s what we have to hope for anyway. We’re losing a player we all love, the last thing we need is another Yaya Sanogo-style experiment.

Wherever Jack goes after this season though, we’ll all have found memories of him, as an Arsenal lad and wish him the best.

Catch y’all tomorrow.

Step forward Nacho Monreal.

Not only has he turned out to be a pretty fine centre half, keeping other more experienced players who have played in that position on the bench, but he’s also been the kind of pro that you’d want your whole team to be like. No nonsense, gets on with it, proven his value.

So when he speaks he kind of deserves to be heard in my opinion. He’s deserved a distinct lack of scoffing.

So he’s been talking about the level of consistency in the team and although much of what he says is stuff we’ve all heard before, for some reason whilst I was chowing down on my cereal, I found myself not rolling my eyes at another “we need to do this every week” comment following the North London Derby.

What I did think was interesting though, was his admission about setting longer term targets, because although we all see the manager talking about taking everything “game-by-game” it is clear that the players talk and when they talk they’re clearly talking about final league positions.

So I’m reminded of last season and how Chelski won the league. After an indifferent start they went on a mega winning streak and amassed enough points to have the league pretty much sewn up, also allowing for a bit of a stuttering finish towards the end, and I wonder if there are too many teams like ours that spend too much time thinking about the end goal.

For that Chelski team last year it was clearly not about winning the league at first. It was just about getting back on the horse and putting a run together after a hammering by us. Then it was about extending the run a little bit. Then it became a streak. Then it became a ruthless juggernaut picking up points after points, before they began to run out of steam by the end of the season.

I don’t think we have the same discipline as a team to do what Chelski did. I also think Man City are walking away with the league and I suspect that they’ll get so far in front that they can afford a blip or two into 2018. But Nacho’s point remains a good one and if the players can in their minds just rule out things like top four, challenging for the title, Champions League, etc, then we might see us pick up some points in the coming weeks and months that could see us in at least a half decent position in the league which reflects the minimum of what we expect.

I’m not too sure about Nacho’s assertion on Alexis and Özil though, especially with rumours that the Catalans are after the German for £20million. Given that Arsenal have already shown in the summer that they’ll blink if given half the chance, if Barca are serious and make a bid for the player, I expect we’ll probably move him on.

The key will be a replacement though. There’d be fan meltdown if we sold one of our best players and banked the cash. It doesn’t matter that the club could have a summer plan for the money that it got for the Ox and potentially Özil, if we’re seen to be visibly weakening ourselves – especially if we are in a half decent position in the league – then that would probably be the straw that broke the camels back for many of the faithful I’d imagine.

Alexis is one I’d imagine we’ll keep though. I’m not sure why, I just have a feeling that Arsène would choose his end product over the German’s, although there have been some murmurings about both going. I can’t see that. I’d like us to, if only just to recoup some cash for a rebuilding job in the summer, but I can’t see it. Having just seen the second time around how much better we are with our current front three it feels like footballing suicide to just dismantle that trio just as we get it up and running.

We’ll just have to see though, because as we’ve learned with our football club, they can be quite unpredictable at times.

There’s not really much else going on at the moment, but Arsène will give his presser at some stage today and I hope we get the usual “I’m rotating everyone, btw” from the manager this morning. We have three games in under a week coming up before we play United and there’s no doubt that he’ll have to choose wisely as to who comes in and who doesn’t. The immediate future will probably see much of the same in Europe and hopefully he’ll confirm that later, but after this game and as we go into the Christmas period, he’s going to have to be a bit more subtle with his juggling I reckon.

Laters peeps.

Yesterday Arsène gave an update on the latest team news ahead of the trip to Goodison and thankfully we have some returnees to welcome back to the fold. Koscielny will be back, along with Alexis and Ramsey and despite the fact that I’d love us to start the process of phasing our Özil and Alexis from the team, we all know that they are our best players and will give us something different. And at a time when the character of this team away from home is rightly criticised, it’s important to have those players with an ‘X factor’ about them available.

Although with Özil you do wonder how much that star will shine, because he feels like the sort of player who is affected by his future and if I’m honest with you, Wenger’s comments about the supposed move to United hardly filled me with any belief that he’ll be an Arsenal player come next season. At first I thought Arsène sounded completely unconvincing in his response, but having reflected and remembering that two weeks ago it was being reported that Özil was close to signing a new deal, the only thing that is clear is that nobody has the foggiest what is currently happening and the gutter press is capitalising on that.

I remain 90% sure he’s gone in the summer and my only hope was that it was abroad, so I’ve been feeling particularly sour about the United news this week, because I love watching Mesut glide across the pitch. And you just know that if he joins United Mourinho will have him playing about 20% better than Arsène does and with players like Lukaku, Rashford and Martial he’d have a field day in a similar way to how he played at Madrid. 

Eugh, how to depress yourself on a Saturday morning, the Arsenal fan way.

Still, at least we have the hope that Jack will be integrated in to the weekend first team, with Arsène confirming that his time is drawing ever closer to some minutes. I reckon we might seee a cameo this weekend depending on how the game is unfolding and at a time when there feels little to like about Arsenal right now, a Wilshere regular return feels like an oasis in a desert of ‘meh’. Let’s hope he can start his integration from this weekend.

And that, boys and girls, is your lot from me. I shall see you in the Steve morrow.

1. Calum Chambers has signed a new deal
2. Özil’ agent says talks with Arsenal are progressing well

To the first point here. Personally I think this is a great deal for Arsenal. I have a soft spot for Chambers and have always said that I think he is a very good defender, he just needs a run of games to prove it, which I think he got at Middlesbrough and I think we would see a much different centre half to the one that left us if we had to play him for six games in a row now.

Let’s not forget that he was preferred to Rob Holding in the under-21s this summer just gone. We all know Holding will develop in to a great centre half and I’m excited to see him grow in the coming years, but where we are at the moment we have one brilliant young talent when we really should have more.

That’s where Chambers comes in. Nacho is 31 and will be 32 in February next year. Koscielny turned 32 in September and his legs are starting to show signs of failing him; we already know that he needs regular treatment on his Achilles. Big Per retires next summer and Mustafi wanted out this summer just gone by. The only player in the central defensive positions that seemingly wasn’t kicking up a fuss was Gabriel and he was shipped out in August. So tying Chambers down to a long term deal makes perfect sense.

But in another way it really doesn’t. I say that because it feels at the moment as if Arsène is reluctant to trust him. I know he’s injured right now and that’s why he isn’t playing, but it’s been common knowledge that Arsène was happy to let him go in the summer but changed his mind. So what has happened since then? Why has Wenger done such a massive U-turn on a player that he isn’t convinced about.

Perhaps – as some friends of mine have speculated – this is the first step of Arsenal preparing for life after Wenger. Perhaps the club have moved to tie down Chambers because they know that it is the next manager who should decide his fate, not the man who feasibly won’t be in charge in August 2019. 

Or perhaps it’s the club securing an asset from going on the cheap next summer with another year knocked off his contract? That wouldn’t surprise me and certainly given the situation we’re facing next summer with the exodus of key players this might be a move to get rid of the possibility of any more difficult contract situations.

Or maybe this new lawyer that has come in is actually a little more proactive than Dicky and we’re already seeing the fruits of his labour?

Whatever it is, I just hope we can see Chambers grow in to a first team player at Arsenal, because I think he has the potential to be good enough.

As for the other contract story from yesterday, that Mesut’s agent has told the press that contract talks are moving in the right direction with Arsenal. Sounds positive, right?

Maybe. What he also says – which I think is telling – is that Mesut wants to play at least another two to three years in the Premier League. Not specifically for Arsenal, but the Premier League, and I think the good doctor who is Özil’s agent chose his words very carefully there.

The real undertone behind this message is clear: 

“We’re talking to Arsenal, but if they don’t cough up, we know that one of the other Big 6 is definitely interested”

Özil has learned well from his friend Flamini. The first time the Frenchman left Arsenal he spent the whole season saying the right things, talking about a new deal at the club, then after January it all went a bit quiet until about April time I recall, when it was announced he’d signed a pre-contract agreement with AC Milan. 

This Özil situation feels remarkably similar to me. It feels like Özil’s PR team have played the perfect game up until this point and now they’ve brought the agent in to keep the fans on side. It all feels rather textbook but if I’m honest, I still remain convinced that he’s off and all this statement did was confirm that it’ll be to another club in our league. 

If that happens and it happens with Alexis too, then you’d have to say what the club were praised for in the summer of standing firm, now feels like a real dumbass move. Let’s just hope they have some succession planning in place.

That’s yer lot for today. It’s off to work I go. 

So when I see that Nacho was an unused sub, that Hector isn’t even in the Spanish national team, that Lacazette is probably not starting in place of Giroud (who needs games anyway) and that Mesut is at home with his feet up, it gives me an overwhelming feeling of relief.

Of course the internationals aren’t done and there’s still plenty of time for our players to come hobbling back to London Colney, but the signs are at least initially positive.

I didn’t both watching any of the matches because, quite frankly, I couldn’t give a monkey’s. These qualification periods are as pointless as can be and that is typified by the fact that England haven’t lost a qualifier in something stupid like 35 matches. What they should be doing is creating seeded teams that don’t go through the pointless exercise for the qualifiers because they’re clearly going to win their group. Then you leave all of the other teams to battle it out. A bit like the Open in golf. You get teams who get exemptions because they’re the best in the world, then the rest have to fight it out themselves to get through on qualifiers. You can base in on previous tournament wins, getting to certain stages in the competition, FIFA rankings (although we all know they’re a joke I know), etc. It would save us all the time and boredom of having to have international windows every month and would also stop our players getting banjaxed through playing too much football.

But that’ll never happen because FIFA is a decaying entity that is set in its ways. So let’s move on to Arsenal related things and yesterday I got in to a bit of a discussion about contracts with Clive, Dave, and also Woz about contracts and despite initially saying that I didn’t see the point in having a one year enforced extension like we did with Santi and Rosicky, it feels like the most natural blueprint for how every single transfer should take place at Arsenal from now on. My original argument was that a five year deal and a four plus one year deal are essentially the same thing, because you still have to start negotiating at the same time – ideally just before the two year mark in the contract. But s Clive pointed out – and it certainly makes sense – if you have a four plus one you have to negotiate with the player on that three year mark, because they have one year left. If they refuse to sign a new deal like Ozil and Alexis seem to be doing at the moment, then you go for the auto extension and you sell them on by the time you hit that summer at the end of the third year. You’ve protected yourself against losing your asset and you don’t have players dragging it out with a ‘will he/won’t he’ saga on their contracts. You force them and their agents to lay their cards down.

And that’s why we get ourselves in to this mess, because we allow agents and players to keep holding on to their cards, so that they can leave it until the last minute and then bugger off for nothing which is what we’re going to get with both of our star players next summer.

With all of the noise around the two contract rebels still going on, the wheels are starting to turn in the transfer gutter press and we’re starting to get linked to players like Lucas Moura in replace for Ozil. I’m not linking to the Express article because I don’t really want to, but getting a player like that would certainly work for me, as would going in for Draxler and shipping Alexis off to PSG. Think about it – if PSG want Alexis we should be driving him there and giving him a branded pen to sign his contract too, because getting anything for him in January and then replacing with a German international would be a good bit of saving face for the club. Plus if we could also pick up Moura whilst we’re there, you’d see it as one heck of a bit of salvage work.

But that’s probably all a little to easy for everyone to see and were forgetting the Wenger factor. He never does what seems like the blindingly obvious and so I fully expect a collective fan meltdown as Ozil and Alexis run down their contracts and join the two Manchester clubs, whilst we ignore deals that look like they could be easy to get over the line if we time it right.

still, it’s all speculation and despite the fact I always say that I try to stay away from it, i invariably get dragged in to it. I guess I’m human and a football fan so that is inevitable.

Right, off to eat some eggs for breakfast. have a good one folks.