There hasn’t been much news about him lately and I find that a little weird, because given there are appeared to be very concrete interest from Newcastle towards the end of last season, I’d have thought they’d be banging down his door, but it’s all gone quiet. Perhaps that’s a good thing.

There has been some noises about a few players though, mainly those younger players or those that are on the fringes of the first team. Like weirdly, for example, the noises that Arsenal want to give Reiss Nelson a new contract and then send him out on loan for a season next year. Forgive my naïvety, but I don’t really understand this one, because he was effectively frozen out last season clearly wasn’t part of Arteta’s plans, will get even less game time this season and therefore surely it is best for all parties for us to cash in on him?

I get that Arsenal will want to get him tied down to protect any future transfer value, but what is in it for him? He’s a free agent in 2023 and so he can command a decent sign on fee and wages if he avoids signing a new deal. Arsenal won’t want to keep him hanging around doing nothing next season so he’ll almost certainly at least go out on loan, so I don’t really see an incentive for him to sign any kind of extension. Perhaps if they doubled his rumoured £15,000-per-week wages and all he had to do was to add an extra year to his value, then go out on loan, that would be decent for the 21-year-old, but if I was in his shoes I’d say “thanks guys, but I’ll just head out on loan for a season and then you are going to be forced in to doing a deal for me next summer”.

Of course money changes everything and if he’s got his agent telling him to sign a one year extension and double his purse he might just take it, knowing he’ll never get in to the Arsenal team but at least he’ll earn more cash out on loan next season.

Look at me, I’ve managed to talk myself in to kind of understanding why he would do it if I was in his position!

They other outgoing yesterday was the confirmation that Ben Sheaf joins Coventry City on a permanent deal. There has been no sniff of noise around a fee so I suspect this is one of those free transfers with a big sell on clause, so good luck to Sheaf who, let’s face it wasn’t going to break through and so needs to step up in his career and get a permanent move to see if he can rise up through the ranks.

Upon first glance it is frustrating that we pay these academy players good wages, build them up through our academy, then lose them for basically nothing, but if Sheaf is a success over a couple of year’s at Coventry and earns a move worth £2million, for example, if we’re getting £1million of that then you retrospectively look back and say that’s probably what he was worth when he left Arsenal and so we haven’t really lost out.

I guess it’s just frustrating for us because we know we need to raise cash – despite all the noises of £50million Ben White deals, or big money deals for Locatelli of Sassuolo – and so we are literally in the zone of ‘every little helps’ when it comes to money coming in. Yet all we’ve seen is free transfer deals that aren’t strengthening our “WAR CHEST” at all really. We know the more experienced players are where bigger fees will come from, but if we’d have made a million pound from all of the players that have left us over the last few weeks, we’d probably already have the money for the Nuno Tavares deal.

So yes, it’s those ‘bigger’ and more experienced players that we need to offload, but some of them aren’t helping, namely Granit Xhaka. He’s really pissed me off with his comments actually. He knows he’s an Arsenal player and should let the negotiation play out, but he’s clearly trying to drive this deal harder and get us to drop our already low price by making comments about how interesting it is to learn a new language, how he knows what Roma represent and how he will speak after the tournament.

I tell you what Granit, how about you just don’t, eh? How about you just shut up, let the deal go through and stop trying to drive this price down by making cryptic public comments? I really winds me up when this happens. It smacks of a lack of class and whilst I’ve been a fan of Xhaka during his Arsenal career – in the most part – it kind of makes me want Arsenal to just shunt him out the door so we can get on with our lives. We need to cull some members of our squad and whilst I didn’t think it would be Xhaka, this is making me feel quite ok if it happened now. Shame, as he is such a polarising player, but I do think he’s been very good for us in the most part.

Life goes on. Nobody is at Arsenal forever except us fans (well, until we kick the bucket, that is!) and so we move on.

And so will I for today. The weather looks good and it’s time for a run.

Catch you all in the morrow.

Matteo Guendouzi

He’s an interesting player because I’ve never quite warmed to him if I’m honest. His first season was good, I was pleasently surprised given how many games he actually played compared to what I thought he’d play under Emery, but from a football perspective I always worried about him from a defensive side. He’s decent enough facing the opponents’ goal, but the amount of times he was run past and just jogged back without much of a challeng (remember Pogba ambling past him in a game against United?) used to infuriate me. There is talent there but it has always felt like the ego has overridden that and for that reason I am hoping we cash in this summer. We bought him for £7million and so anything north of £10million means we get a potentially problematic player off our books and the money into the transfer kitty to fund a small part of the rebuild. I also think that despite what Arteta says about everyone having a clean slate, he won’t countenance a return for the Frenchman and with acccyear left to go on his deal this feels like a bit of a no brainer to be honest. I just hope we are swift in getting the deal done. No hanging around until the end of August in the hope of driving cthe price up. Just get rid.

Lucas Torreira

Lucas Torreira I’m particularly sad about. I’m even more sad that he lost his mum, has endured a torrid time as a result, plus what we thought would be a match made in heaven in the shape of Simeone and Atletico, just hasn’t worked out. He’s clearly not been in a good place for a while and the frustrating thing from an Arsenal perspective is whilst in this grieving position he spoke to the press a number of times about wanting to return to Boca, totally devaluing his value and making it all the more difficult to sell. He is an asset, he has a contract for another couple of years I think and whilst Arsenal would i’m sure be sympathetic to his wishes, now that Boca know how the cards have been dealt, they will be looking to get him for practically nothing. It is a real shame how this seems to be ending in terms of his Arsenal career because I have always rated him. Tenacious, energetic, a good player for us and only fell out of the team when Emery inexplicably played him as a number ten at times, Torreia could probably have come back and seen if he could fight for a place at the club had all of these noises not happened. I suspect Arsenal and Arteta will be looking to offload him anywhere in Europe now, but the price will be a far cry from what we paid for him.

Joe Willock

If the other two have been a disappointment in terms of their value, this is the gem that has massively increased in value and whilst I am as delighted as the rest of you with his upturn in form, I still think we should consider selling whilst his value will be at its highest. I think Willock has been superb, he’s scored goals in a midfield at Newcastle that has clearly been better than what our midfield has delivered this season. He’s a player who would no doubt offer more than Ceballos, but where I’m coming from is that we need much more than what Ceballos gave us and that ‘much more’ isn’t just goals. Willock has always been able to put the ball back in the net but the problem I’m having with him is working out where we would play him. In place of Smith-Rowe at 10? No chance. Wide forward? He isn’t one of those and we are stocked in those positions. In the midfield two? I’m just not sure he’s got all the tools for that, particularly from a pass distribution and defensive perspective, which is why I think we have to cash in because he just doesn’t fit our system. So let’s put the feelers out and cash in on a player who will fetch a premium. And that premium has to be north of £25million. If Newcastle want to pay that then fine, let’s do the deal, but I wonder if a cheeky first option £35million buyback could be inserted. You know, just in case he lights it up for them and ends up with Frank Lampard numbers from midfield. Easier said than done on that kind of deal I know.

Ainsley Maitland-Niles

This is another player who I would love to come back, tell Mikel he wants to take Hector’s spot at right back, then really work hard for it over the summer. But I just don’t see it. He wants to play midfield apparently and I can’t see Arteta giving him the keys to the motor so he can drive in the middle of the park. Which is why I would – and think we will probably see – him leave the club this summer. He’s got a year left on his contract, like Willock he has no real spot to jump back in to if he doesn’t want to play right back, so we should grab the money and look to re-invest. An offer of £15million seems like it’d be good for us and any team buying him still gets a Premier League proven, versatile, athletic, footballer.

Sead Kolasinac

I’d basically forgotten about him. Apparently did alright in a relegate Schalke team but let’s be honest here, he will want to move back to Germany and my hope is that a) there is enough interest in him and his stock is still relatively high, and b) we have a German team able to pick up his large wages. He’ll no doubt be one of those we offload for free so the ‘purchasing’ club can justify the wage outlay.

Overall

I’m not sure whether you can say that the high profile loans have been particularly successful – Willock aside – which means there will be a bit of work to do to make enough money to fund the rebuild. But that’s why Edu is paid what he is, so let’s hope he earns it.

The reason I felt compelled to write something about the loanees was after Arsène had recently spoken of the improved quality of the Championship, in the wake of the defeat to Sheffield Wednesay. Apologies, as I can’t find a link, but I know that he mentioned how very good players are now finding their way in to England’s second tier because of the money and players that are now being bought by all of the Premier League clubs. When you have players like Payet and Shaquiri joining West Ham and Stoke respectively, I guess you could certainly argue that this is the case to some extent. Would a 17/18 year old Jack Wilshere be given the opportunity to cut his teeth at a Premier League club like he did at Bolton? I’m not so sure any more. But do they need to? Is the quality in the Championship of a significant enough level for them to be able to hone their skills and return to Arsenal to win a spot like Coquelin and Bellerin?

I started to look at the loanees page on the official site to see how our younger players are getting on in this ever improved Championship that Arsène speaks of. Having not frequently visited on the page for a couple of months, I expected to see some positive news about some of our players on loan and in some instances it was good stuff. Jon Toral hit the net for Birmingham and there was a clean sheet for Emiliano Martinez against Burnley. But I also saw plenty of ‘came on as a substitute’ for players like Akpom or Maitland-Niles, whilst Wellington didn’t even get a sniff of action for Bolton. Gnabry may be in the Premier League, but Pulis seems reluctant to use him and has been critical of his level to date.

So why are these players out on loan if they are not – by mid-November – even getting in to their respective teams? What is the value in these players being only slightly closer to a first team than they might be at Arsenal? And what’s the solution? 

If Championship teams are getting better, so much so that promising players from the Premier League academies are looked at as players to boost the squad and not the first team, will we start to see the need for these younger players to drop further down the divisions to be assured of more regular football? And if that is the case, would they be ready to make the step up from League One to Premier League when they return to their parent club at the end of a loan spell?

The simple equation here is that the increased money in the game has pushed young players further down the leagues and may push them further still. I don’t like Tony Pulis at all, but it does make you wonder whether he’s correct in his general dislike in the academies. But as I’ve said before in previous blogs, when you can snap up a youngster and send him on loan for a couple of seasons, just so he can be sold on for £1.5million or thereabouts, the academies become a nice little earner for the Premier League clubs. The rich become richer as the big clubs hoard players and then sell them on when they are clearly not going to make the first team.

My first reaction is ‘that’s a real shame’, but as a supporter of one of the teams at the top of the tree, I could equally ask ‘is it?’ Because let’s face it, the clubs lower down the leagues still get good players, plus they don’t need the extensive scouting networks any more. There’s no point; they might as well just scour the Premier League academies for players. Then, if they want to, they can make a loan deal permanent and get themselves a good player who they could potentially sell on for profit when that player is successful. The only down side is the sell on clauses. That gives money back to the Premier League clubs (rich getting richer again), but also probably forces the selling club to think about getting a bigger asking price for a player. Think Benik Afobe at Wolves at the moment. You can bet your bottom dollar we have a sell on clause. So when Norwich come calling, Wolves need to value the player higher to get the money they actually want for him. And the rich become richer because we get a nice chunk for a player who’s hardly played for us at first team level.

It’s a perpetual cycle of money swilling around in football but ultimately, it all goes to the top, so making sure you’re playing the game by being a big club and being part of the cycle is important. 

Let’s just not expect the academy system to have an increasing impact on the first team. 

Anyway, let’s end on a high note, which is that Arsène won the manager of the month competition. Good for him, although I’m sure he’s not too bothered, given that he doesn’t really care too much for individual accolades. 

That’s yer lot from me for today. More tomorrow.