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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Arsenal transfer signings are going to start happening. Don’t ask me how, don’t ask me why, it just is a ‘thing’, going back to when we signed Per Mertesacker and Mikel Arteta in 2011. This is my ‘transfer home’ and I expect there to be some movement this week.

Alright, I admit it, there’s already one that everyone is already expecting to happen any day now with the arrival of Havertz, but my hope is that my holiday escapades will also have an effect and rub off on the Declan Rice situation, because you just feel the longer it drags on, the longer it probably plays in to Man City’s hands. Fabrizio Romano tweeted in the early hours of the morning:

https://twitter.com/FabrizioRomano/status/1672405854530699264

So I suspect within the next few days it will all become clear. I think if this one is rejected – which it very well could be if City come in and chuck a couple of mil on top to seal the deal – then I think Arsenal will do what they did in January and look for an alternative. The problem is, when you’ve gone hot on somebody for so long, what options are out there that could be just as good? We haven’t really been linked with many other options and although we bid for Caicedo in January, that is exceedingly quiet and all the noises are that Chelsea are progressing well with getting the player. Now, of course that can change in the blink of an eye and as we saw with Mudryk in January, a team can have multiple bids, they can seem to have the playing only wanting them and everything is going in one direction, then another club just comes in at the last minute and does the deal. Could that be Arsenal in a reversal of the Mudryk situation if Rice doesn’t come off?

Maybe. But we don’t tend to be on the right end of those deals, do we? Think back. Search your memory banks. When did we swoop in and nab a player from another team at the last minute? The only one I can think of off the top of my head is Park Chu Young when he was in the process of having his medical at Lille, but then left his hotel room and headed to England to sign for us when Wenger got the call. That hardly worked out to be the best transfer of all time, did it? But if that’s the last time we did any ‘swooping for a player to take them from another club about to buy him, then you’re talking about going back 13-and-a-half years ago!

I haven’t given up on Rice by the way. I’m not throwing the towel in that we could get him, but I guess I’m just preparing myself mentally for the disappointment if it happens. And knowing that we can move quickly with other options that are already being looked at, usually by the fact the press talk about those other options, would give me a little more ease. However, I guess we were able to quickly pivot with Jorginho and Trossard in January and they both turned out to be decent buys for us.

The only thing about this, however, is that we aren’t looking for squad depth players. We’re looking for first team game changers. How many of those exist? Sure, I bet there are lots of very talented players across the globe who would come in and do an amazing job. They could be in South America, mainland Europe, etc. But any player without any experience in the Premier League is a bigger gamble than one in it and if you think about Premier League options, what else is there other than Rice or Caicedo? I had a little look on FBREF as to which players it classed as similar to Rice and this is what came up:

• Nemanja Matić
• Moisés Caicedo
• Pierre Højbjerg
• Rominigue Kouamé
• Thomas Partey
• Nabil Bentaleb
• Valentin Rongiere
• Exequiel Palacios
• Stijn Spierings
• Thiago Alcántara

I don’t have to tell you that there are at least two on that list with a Scum connection that we wouldn’t want to touch. There are two players who have those United and Liverpool connections and I can’t see those being anywhere on the radar. One is Caicedo who we already know about, then one already plays for us! I get that this is just a top ten, that there will be plenty of other options out there, that this is also based on data and therefore you can’t exactly compare apples with apples when you have players in the French or English leagues, but I guess for me it just hit home that we’re going to need a bit of a rabbit out of the hat if the Rice deal drags on and Caicedo truly is off the table. This is a move to eventually replace Thomas Partey and bringing in Lavia is a good idea for a succession plan, but does it work to move the needle enough to have us compete for the league again next season? Because all of the teams around us are going to strengthen and strengthen well.

Yesterday I brought you a ‘reasons to be optimistic about Rice‘ piece and I haven’t flip-flopped in the space of just 24 hours, but I guess in the back of my mind there is a bit of mental self preservation happening today, so let’s see what play’s out and hopefully in the coming days it is in our favour.

That’s me done for today. I’m going to go and get some barbeque food for later. You be safe.

Laters.

The confirmation of the inevitable that we all knew would happen on Sunday didn’t really make me feel like I wanted to go in to much depth about how the season had ended, which is kind of how I’m feeling right now, but at some stage Arteta and his team are going to need to take a look at the fact that for two seasons running we have fizzled out when it got to the business end of the season. With the fullness of time we’ve all been able to look at what happened last season and say “yeah, but look at how we kicked on this season, which suggests that we just had loads of injuries and a squad not good enough to challenge for a top four spot”. This season has had echoes of that, only the prize this time was greater, but I do wonder if we will see the same Arsenal that started this season from the off in 2023/24. You have to hope that we do. For three quarters of this season it was so much fun, but what this last quarter has done has sewed a lot of seeds of doubt amongst many Arsenal fans.

I am one of them and last night on the pod we were asked if this end to the season makes us worried for next season. I said it did and I still feel like that this morning having thought a little more about it. So much needed to go right for us to have the season that we have had this season; we needed a good pre season having brought in our main players early so the new teammates could bed in and our playing style and approach was in place for the first games of the season. Then the confidence needed to be built as a result of playing well in pre season. Then we needed to have a good start given our first five games were all seen as ‘winnable’. Winning those games meant that the confidence grew in the team and we carried that momentum through a vast chunk of the season. This Arsenal team thoroughly deserve to be in the position they are in right now having done so well for most of the season, but there were a lot of factors that we got just right at the beginning which gave us a platform to build on.

Now fast forward to the beginning of next season. What if we don’t get our deals over the line and can therefore bed in the new players in pre season? What if we pick up a couple of key injuries over the summer during pre season? What if the fixture list see’s us have a couple of tough trips to places like Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle or even the Scum (yes, I know they are a joke but it still represents a tough game early doors in the season)? Dropping points early means you are constantly playing catch up. By us getting a bunch of points on board early this season it massively set the tone and so when I think about all of these factors needing to align, I do wonder how easy it is going to be to get everything right.

I think if anything the transfer stuff won’t be as easy as it was last season. Gabriel Jesus and Zinchenko both wanted out of City for regular football and we were able to do the deals pretty quickly in the summer because all parties were willing. If you take Declan Rice, for example, then I think there will be two of the three parties willing – Arsenal and the player. West Ham can trigger an additional year extension in his contract and that gives them a buffer. It gives them the opportunity to hold on to Rice for as long as possible and drag this out right across the summer if needs be, as they hope for a bidding war. The situation with that player is very different to the one we found with Man City, or even Porto when we signed Fabio Vieira. So I think we’re going to have a difficult time of it this summer compared to last summer and i really do feel like it is going to test Edu and Arteta’s nerve; particularly earlier in the window when there is more time and more inclination for the selling club to hold out for more cash.

Caicedo – if we’re after him – will be the same. Brighton will probably scoff at a £70million bid early in the window. There’s talk of an agreement to let him leave in place, but I’m not sure that agreement really means anything if Brighton don’t want to let him go and want to see if they can strong out silly money for his signature. So that one too feels like it will be more complex than any of last summers deals.

Which is why I think they’re also exploring the Gundogan deal, because that doesn’t need three parties, providing he leaves Man City. Personally I’m not a fan though. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a brilliant player, been top notch for them once again and a key cog in the current machine that should go on to win the treble. But at 32 he isn’t getting any younger or better and he’s not leaving Man City to sign a one year deal at The Arsenal. That’s probably what City could offer him so why go from that to us? He’ll be in a similar boat to Xhaka and he’ll be wanting three years minimum I reckon. And if that’s what it takes then I say we duck out of that type of deal. We’ve seen that already with Willian and we don’t need another guy lining his pockets for a final payday as he sees out his career.

There’s lots of work to be done and that work will / should have already have started. It’s probably why we are starting to hear the rumour mill hot up. I just hope we’re doing the right kind of deals and not falling back in to the Arsenal of three to four years ago.

Catch you lovely humans tomorrow. Have a good’un.

I wonder if the people who spend time putting together the videos, keeping things under wraps, preparing everything for a big unveiling, get really cheesed off when situations like Bob in flat 672B can just blow any final mystique about a possible transfer out of the water? Or do they just accept that keeping these sort of things secret is essentially impossible these days? We’ve already had the Edu meet and greet photos, the Ornstein and Romano tweets, the who kit and caboodle, so what is left?

And when it is announced, there will be a clamour for ‘cool, cool, but who’s next?’ from the fans. In our heads the Gabriel Jesus deal was done ages ago. It isn’t new ‘news’ any more and we’re already looking at players like Lisandro Martinez or reigniting the interest in Tielemans. Because as fans we are never happy!

The challenge we also have as fans, is that we get very sensitive when we think that those fantastic players who were going to improve our team – Teielmans, Raphinha, Martinez – seem to be going elsewhere, we are prone to a little overreaction. And when I say ‘we’ I absolutely include myself in this by the way. I had never heard of Martinez until about two weeks ago. I’ve always like Tielemans but it wasn’t until the journo rumours of ‘the two main targets for Arsenal this summer are Tielemans and Gabriel Jesus’ started appearing that I suddenly felt this need to covet his signing so much. The same with Raphinha, although with that one I was less fussed, because I figure we are well stocked in that position. I pretty much said as much a couple of weeks back. So whilst tomorrow I will dominate my thinking on the announcement of Gabriel Jesus and what this means to us (even though I’ve written a lot about him already, as have so many Arsenal fans and journos – check this out from Tim Stillman which I thought was very good), I will too be looking at some of the rumours of other players we’ve been after and how other clubs are stepping in now to firm up interest, with trepidation.

And this is my worry; we have our targets, we’ve gone after our targets, but what if we don’t get most of them? We’ve all spent the early part of this summer being pretty impressed with how Arsenal have been moving in the market. But a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush and as we stand right now if we get Gabriel Jesus but lose out on Tielemans (apparently United and West Ham are sniffing around), Martinez and to a lesser extent Raphinha, what does that say about the other quality of players that we will bring in? Missing out on your main targets and having to dip in to the ‘well, who else is out there?’ bin doesn’t feel as great as the beginning of the summer when we looked to be moving quickly, swiftly, trying to get deals done and people were suggesting we were looking impressive in the market. As it stands we’ve brought in a reserve goalie, a very promising versatile attacking midfielder and – pending – a very impressive forward in Gabriel Jesus. But is it enough for us to look like we could hit the big leagues?

Maybe it is. Maybe I am just having a ‘moment’ this morning. We all all humans and we are often led by our emotions and maybe this morning is irrational. But as always with this blog, it is just whatever words pop in to my head every day and this morning I’m wondering – in the absence of any official announcement of a certain Brazilian – whether all of the early summer excitement on players was misplaced because we will only end up getting 50% of our targets sorted.

And look, I’m not trying to do the club down here, because I’m sure that the club are working so hard to get everything done as quickly as possible. I believe they are working hard, I believe that they’re doing everything in their power to get us in an amazing shape for the new season and as I wrote about yesterday we still have loads of great things going for us already at the club. But if we go in to the first game of the season having looked like we wanted a striker, a left back cover, a central midfielder, another wide forward and we end up with a striker and an attacking midfielder, then it might feel as though that early summer optimism was slightly misplaced.

Anyway, it’s Friday today, we’re probably about to get a shiny new signing, so I should probably just try not to think about these things too much. Instead, let’s just keep refreshing our social media feeds awaiting for the announcement that can get us all excited for the season. And I think it certainly will.

Catch you all tomorrow. You have a good one people!

Arsenal to be given £180m to spend in the summer

I had to rub my eyes a bit. “Hold on. What time of the year is it? Have I accidentally slept through until May?” I thought to myself. Because we usually don’t start to see the old ‘war chest’ stories until at least then, maybe April at the latest. Sounds to me that somebody within the club that leaks these stories has gone a little too early. Maybe a younger member of staff that isn’t accustomed to the fabled Arsenal briefings through the back channels approach has decided that the frustration of the January transfer window needs to be tempered with a nice big “LOOK AT ALL THE MONEY ARSENAL ARE GETTING BECAUSE THEY HAVE SAVED SO MUCH!” approach.

Of course we all know that the chances of a mega-splurge like that are unlikely. Last season we spent a ton of cash and that was shocking to most of us as it was, so the idea that the club will do it two summers in a row feels a little nonsensical to me.

There will be a decent level of spend though; there has to be because we’ve shaved so much from our squad that we will need decent bodies in ASAP in the summer. If Leno, Elneny, Nketiah and Lacazette go as is expected, that leaves us down to 16 players including goalkeepers. Matt Turner will replace Leno, but that still leaves us with a squad of 17 including goalkeepers. If by some hope we make it in to the European spots by avoiding injury, then those extra games will mean we need a bigger squad to rotate. William Saliba would have to come in and I hope he does. That bumps us up to 18. Bellerin, Torreira, Guendouzi, Maitland-Niles, Nelson, Mavropanos, will all have left I think we can all appreciate that and of the youth players on loan I’m not sure how many will be promoted in to the first team. Balogun if his loan spell continue to be successful. Patino and M’Hand perhaps? That would leave us with 21, but I think we’ll need to be active in the market and I would suspect at least another five need to come in. We need to be moving away from Cedric and if we could then we’d need a back up right back. We also need another man in central midfield and that feels like it would need to be a senior player. Then you’re talking about centre forward and in that position come January 1st we’ll need a main man because right now when August comes around we’re looking at Balogun as the only recognised centre forward. I have hope we will be in Europe and that, plus the League Cup and January FA Cup, could give minutes to Balogun, but a striker will most certainly happen in the summer and that might be where the bulk of the money goes. But how much will be spread around?

If we need five players and we spend £80million on a striker, that gives you £100million on four players even if we do have £180million, which I don’t think we have. But assuming that’s right, that’s an average of £25million per player for the remaining four players. I’ve just had a quick and dirty check of Transfermarkt for what £20 – £25million would get you this last season. IT gets you:

• Bryan Gil (Tottenham)
• Emerson Royal (Tottenham)
• Vitaliy Mykolenko (Everton)
• Marc Guehi (Crystal Palace)
• Daniel James (Leeds)

Of course I’ve just looked at Premier League teams for now because it’s the best comparison, but what this serves to illustrate is that £25million these days doesn’t always get you those players who are going to kick on. Maybe you get a couple of good squaddies, but that’s about it. Suddenly this ‘war chest’ feels more like we are just replenishing, rather than moving the needle, doesn’t it? Are we just looking at a replenishment jar rather than a war chest?

I haven’t even mentioned Pepe, who will have two years left on his contract and a decision will need to be made on him if we want to recoup any kind of proper cash. We won’t recoup what we paid but a decent fee could be had and if Arteta doesn’t fancy him then he might be moved on in the summer. You’d need to replace that too in those wide forward positions and I’m not sure who you could get for good, but not expensive, money. Because let’s face it, Saka shouldn’t be dislodged. We should be giving him a nice big pay jump to extend his contract – something that is being reported now which is good – but with that comes the assertion that he’s the main man and we need an understudy. But you don’t spend £40million on understudies, so what do you do?

I suspect we will look for young players in their late teens/early 20s who can be versatile and play across the front three. That’s how you attract a player by telling them that you have multiple positions for them and therefore multiple options for game time throughout the season. So I do wonder if we go for a main man striker to lead the line, then instead of getting an Eddie replacement, we look at finding a wide forward who can also play through the middle. People have speculated about trialling it with Pepe through the middle but Arteta seems to have been reluctant thus far. But perhaps the paucity of options now available to him between now and the end of the season will force his hand. For example, we’re losing or drawing a game and the current set up isn’t working. Lacazette is once again chugging around and looking off the boil. Arteta needs to make an attacking change, but maybe Eddie has missed one too many easy chances. So why not bring Pepe on, tell him to keep switching positions with Martinelli for the remainder of the game and see if he can’t be an agent of chaos to cause issues for the opposition defence?

To me that option would be much more preferable than seeing Nketiah miss sitter after sitter in an Arsenal shirt. We’ve seen glaring misses against Everton and Nottingham Forest and I’m kind of done with it if I’m honest. Let’s get our Ivorian back in to the team, playing football and maybe after performing well at the AFCON, he can have a bit of confidence for the remainder of this season. That’s certainly got to be our hope as Arsenal fans. Let’s just hope he can start to deliver some of that output that we’ve been lacking with no Auba, Laca and Eddie as our central attacking threat.

Catch you all tomorrow.

And as much as I hate that feeling in the pit of my stomach ahead of a game, I’d take it all day long, as opposed to the football purgatory that we currently face in the shape of pretty pointless International games.

As Robert Carlyle said in The World Is Not Enough in 1999, from a football perspective:

“What’s the point in living if you cannot feel alive”

In a way, I could kind of support Wenger’s current mission regarding the World Cups, but only to a point. His main aim of making it every two years is a flat ‘no’ for me. There are already international tournaments every two years and that is enough, so chucking one in between to basically make it every season, just so FIFA can line their corrupt coffers a little bit, is just wrong, wrong, wrong.  However, in the proposal itself that has been mooted, there is one aspect that I could get behind, which is to play the qualifying rounds in a concentrated point in time so you don’t break up the domestic season.

Sign me up for that. But sign me up for it with a difference. FIFA want to line their pockets? Then why not use the end of the season in between tournaments to play the qualifiers? That way the season isn’t affected, you keep the tournaments to every four years, then you play games over a two week period at the end of May. It could end by mid June and then the players who go away still get a bit of a summer and recuperation before the domestic season kicks off again the following August. FIFA and UEFA (as well as the other federations) get concentrated air time and can have all of the attention over them, whilst the domestic leagues can claw back some weeks. We’ve had three breaks already since the season started. That’s three match weeks that can be played and removing any of the Premier League midweek matches that happen. It gives more players some midweeks and maybe the season can even finish a little earlier. Which means the qualifiers could start earlier and maybe even be done by around 10th June. If the following season starts around mid August, you’re still giving players two months for a summer during those qualifying seasons.

Simples, right?

But that’s me thinking as a fan and also about the players and clubs. FIFA and UEFA don’t do that. They think about their pockets and have long since done so. So they will either get their own way and have a World Cup every two years (which I’m hoping all of the domestic leagues and other bodies come together and block), or it will stay as it is, and I’ll still be moaning about these breaks in November 2030.

So what else is happening in the Arsenal world? Sadly not a lot, which means the old transfer rumour algorithm needs to be dusted off by some journalists looking to keep eyeballs on their content, with salacious rumours about replacements we’re going to sign in the summer, or players we are not looking at. Of course because Arsenal are going to need a striker soon – and that end of the pitch is always big business and exciting for fans, it is hotting up right now with rumours of that lad Vlahovic supposedly on our radar. I know my ol’ mate Giles likes him and he looks to have the physical prowess for the Premier League, but Charles Watts has been saying that he isn’t on our radar and I’d tend to believe that from somebody like Charles. He is usually quite straight when it comes to this kind of situation so if he’s got some intel that Arsenal  aren’t looking at him, it’s probably come from a source inside or close to the club. OF course perhaps that changes as the season evolves, but I wouldn’t be reading too much in to it at this time.

We will need to start our work now though. I know we are still building this young squad, but we’ve already gone big on a number of positions and so next summer you wouldn’t expect the same kind of volume of first team incomings as we had this summer just gone, so next summer will be about one or two big names. Maybe that is for big money but we have to remember that we aren’t a financially doped club backed by a nation state, so we will need to be clever about who we look at and when we make our move. Going to early inflates the price and with clubs like Newcastle around they could just double wages and transfer fees of players we are interested in. So when we’ve heard Arsenal execs talking about ‘outsmarting the market’, I feel like that kind of activity needs to happen now in terms of making those contacts, speaking to players and agents, getting them to buy in to this project ‘early’.

If you take a hypothetical scenario where Player A is attracting interest of both us and Newcastle, for example, then it is important we’ve been about to whisper those sweet nothings in to his ear about the ‘Project’ before an offer comes in that gives him an extra £100k on his weekly wage. There will be some players who will just go to the highest bidder, but I think there are a larger volume of those that will look at what the opportunity might be to enhance their profile at a bigger club. But you have to sell that dream early and that’s why I am hoping we are already doing our talks now for a striker in June/July.

Who that is, lord only knows,  but hopefully whoever it is has been thoroughly researched and the club can ‘outsmart the market’ kind of like they have done this summer by getting the right kind of profile player in that we need to improve our team.

Back tomorrow with some more Arsenal ramblings.

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.

Very little of course. Because it’s training. And you only get the occasional still. I do think all of the Premier League clubs should start broadcasting video content of the training. You know, so we can get used to watching it, because that’s essentially what we’re going to see come June 20th. Which we pretty much know for sure is the start of this end to the season, after Dani Ceballos also confirmed it in an interview with a Spanish media outfit. Sorry for the link but the English translation I read cam from the Express. I know, it feels dirty for me to read from their site too.

But Ceballos has said he’s raring to go and that’s good to hear. He’s a player who arrived with some quietly excited expectation from some Arsenal fans, dropping a peach of a performance at home to Burnley in the sun in August, but never really replicated that for the remainder of the season. Of course we know he had his injury and he’s also had to endure most of his season loan being managed by the bum that was Unai Emery, but still I’d have hoped we’d see more from him. Who knows, maybe we still can, as there’s at least another ten games to play for this season.

That’s also got me to thinking for the loan deals we do and, well, there’s only one that I can think of that has even been a modicum of success. Yossi Benayoun. But even he spent two-thirds of the season on the bench before coming good and helping us get in to the Champions League in the season he was at the club. The other roll call of loan signings that we’ve made have hardly been shining stars for us, have they?

We’ve had Denis Suarez, Kim Kallstrom, Julio Baptista, Emiliano Viviano…it’s hardly testament to our ability to pick up short term signings, is it?

Perhaps we should stick to permanent deals, although give the market we’ll see in July/August when they finish the season, I can’t really see much of that happening if I’m honest. Perhaps a free transfer or two?

The problem with that is that the types of players we need aren’t coming up for expiry this season. I had a little look on Transfermarkt the other day and the list wasn’t exactly extensive. There are a few on there i’d take, but in what positions? I think we’ll need another centre midfielder and if Aubameyang is sold then a replacement will need to be found. Apparently Blaise Matuidi’s contract is up for grabs and he might be a decent addition. He’s 33 though so would only be a short term solution. Santi is available but in reality that’s another short term solution with a player who is now 35 and we probably aren’t going to see many better years ahead of him. I loved Santi just as much as you did I’m sure, but there is little room for sentiment in football so that’s probably not one we should be looking at.

Ryan Fraser is available but if I’m honest I don’t see that as an exciting deal. We have the likes of Pepe, Martinelli, Saka, Nelson, who can all play in that position and so I don’t really see the value in getting somebody like that to clog up our wide forward positions.

If Auba does leave us this summer, there’s Cavani who’s available on a free, but ever time I’ve watched him he needs about 10 opportunities to finish his dinner, so given we seem to be a team with an aversion to shooting at times, it wouldn’t exactly bode well for us if he was leading the line. Dries Mertens is one that has been tipped to be on a lot of people’s radars, but I’m trying to remember how many footballers have come from Italy and been a massive success. Bergkamp and Zola, of course, but if you’re having to go back to 1995 to talk about Dennis Bergkamp then it shows just how rare it is.

The other names we’ve heard are Layvin Kurzawa who, if i’m honest, I wouldn’t understand why we’d pick up unless we knew we were going to get some cash for Kolasinac. It’s the same on the other flank if we went for his PSG teammate Thomas Meunier. Unless they’re planning on offloading Bellerin for money and bringing in the Belgian, I just don’t see why we’d do it.

Mario Goetze was linked with us once but he’s had injury problems and never really re-hit the heights at Dortmund the second time around. At 26 has he already peaked? Will he become like a Bojan and slowly fizzle out before he’s hit his 30th birthday?

It’s a tough one and the free transfer market doesn’t look like there are any names out there in positions that we really need them in. Again I know we’ve been linked with Willian, but why would we go down that route when we’ve already spent a big wedge of cash on Pepe and have such good young players coming through on the flanks?

Doesn’t make sense to me. But then again a lot of Arsenal’s transfer decision making over the five or so years hasn’t always made too much sense. Hopefully Arteta can change that. Until then we just have to see how this extended pre season plays out.

Catch y’all tomorrow.

Gabriel Martinelli joins us from Ituano and hopefully it’s not the ‘Petr Cech solo summer signing’ of a few years back, but it is still good to see a new face in at the club. A new face who models himself on Cristiano Ronaldo and if he can have the same career trajectory then we’ll all be happy with that. He’s a wide left/centre forward and at 18 I think the expectation from most of the Arsenal fanbase is that he’s probably a guy who will get a bit of time with the first team but by and large it’s likely he’ll go out on loan at some stage next season.

That’s not a forgone conclusion though I don’t think. Just look at what happened with Matteo Guendouzi last season. Nobody expected him to come from a lower league French team and then become so relied on in the Arsenal team from last season. Yet he managed to establish himself as a regular and in the middle of the park we now have another option and a player who should only get better for next season. Or that’s at least what we hope.

Martinelli may see Guendouzi as a perfect case study for his establishment at The Arsenal but if he’s going to model himself on Cristiano, then he won’t have much time to establish himself. Ronaldo was in the United team at 18 having started at Sporting Lisbon at 16. Martinelli has started at perhaps a little less pressurised of a club in Ituano, but he has certainly bagged the ‘goals and performances as a teenager’ badge and so he’s on the right path.

But this next 18 months are crucial. If he has a good summer and integrates well the manager might see him as an option from the bench in the League Cup and the Europa League group stages. If he continues to impress he could then earn a loan move or even stay with the first team. If that is his trajectory then it will have meant we have one heck of a player on our hands and only then can we probably start asking questions about whether he looks like the second coming of the second Ronaldo.

Adaptation at this early stage in his career will be key. He’s joined a foreign country where he doesn’t speak the lingo, is far from friends and family, plus he’s from South America where it’s nice and warm. I hope somebody told him about our wet November’s and cold January’s!

As usual there’s a lot of hope that he can be the ‘next big thing’ but I’m cautious about getting too excited these days. We’ve seen it with the Asano’s, the Wellington Silva’s and the Fran Merida’s; a player hyped at a young age that never develops. Often it’s a mixture of fortune i.e. not picking up long injuries, or of application, but what is good to read is him repeatedly talking about hard work and that he sees how hard Ronaldo works and wants to model himself on that approach. All sounds great but only time will tell if that becomes a reality.

The positive of his situation is that he also doesn’t need a visa due to his Italian nationality from one of his parents and so that i’m sure saved plenty of hassle during the signing process. Which is just as well really because this needs to be the first of a few signings we need sorted soon and with the transfer window closing before the first game of the season this year, that gives us a little over a month to make the kind of signings that will have us all hoping – nay, praying – that Arsenal have a better season than last time out. So Raul needs to get his skates on to confirm a few deals and that needs to happen sooner rather than later.

There’s talks about this Brahimi lad from Porto and on a free transfer and with us once again shopping bargain basement, I can understand where the links come from, but he’s hardly the eye-catching player we are all hoping for so hopefully that’s a speculative fourth, fifth or even sixth choice if we don’t get our other options. And we have to hope there are other options because we do need to replace Ramsey, we do need another right back, we’re hoping for a left back and everyone knows we want to get Saliba from St Etienne. There are deals there to be done but Arsenal need to get them over the line and as we all know that, with Arsenal, is never a simple task.

So we wait…still…ever impatient….but let’s hope the back end of this week starts to see some breakthroughs.

Catch you all tomorrow

Last Wednesday was a hammer blow to us all and in the aftermath I wrote about how we need to change and change quite drastically at the club. As I was penning my rage blogging though, Raul and Vinny were sending staff emails to tell people at the club to keep ‘perspective’.

Nothing to see here folks. That’s just the timber from the house on fire, slowly embedding ya all in flames, I wouldn’t worry about it.

I’m not expecting them as the guys running the club to be sending messages for everyone to panic, so all I have to hope is that despite their message to Arsenal staff last week, they are planning to rip apart the playing staff. Because it clearly isn’t good enough.

I’ve had time to digest and the performance last Wednesday night still disgusts me. 4-1 is such a modern day Arsenal scoreline. We are always told that games between the top clubs are always tight. There should be a caveat to that though: **except in the case of Arsenal, who are a walking car crash at times**.

I’m just so tired of it all. The talking up as a club of the way we are run. The talking from the players. Their actions say something completely different from their performances and if this was just a case of technical inferiority from the players then I’d probably begrudgingly concede. But you can’t tell me Chelski are that much better than us. So ultimately it comes down to mentality and this squad of players are a joke in that regard.

I’m so bored of Arsenal right now and that’s the real reason I haven’t bothered blogging. I just couldn’t think of what to say.

The owner is a disgrace.

The management of the club are still new but I fear that we won’t get much more than what we got with the bald-headed idiot that soundbited his way through ten years at Arsenal.

The head coach spent a whole season tinkering and ultimately it feels like we’re in the same position we were in last season. Just look at the numbers in that regard. We concede more big chances, we concede the same number of goals, we don’t create as many chances, we still have an appalling away record.

The players are overpaid and under delivering. The ones that aren’t are either injured or are more than likely due to have clubs like Barca sniffing this summer (Auba and Laca).

The foot all we play isn’t dynamic. It doesn’t look like it has a structural identity. It just looks like a mish-mash or set ups that never really fully work. Sometimes we get it right but too many times this last season it’s felt wrong.

There’s just very little to like about Arsenal at the moment and as long as we are going in the direction as we are going it just feels like we’re a team that will sleepwalk our way into mid table mediocrity. The archetypal Stan Kroenke ‘sports franchise’.

He can f*ck right off, I tell you that much, because his ownership and the malaise that it has brought is the reason we’re currently stumbling into becoming an Everton, or Leicester, or West Ham. The club was left to be run down by the owner in his consistent acceptance of it being a vanity project for our legacy manager, whilst the only other senior figurehead at the club just spouted nonsense about being ‘as big a Bayern’ without actually delivering anything remotely like a proper direction and plan at the club. Gazidis’ need for personal safeguarding of his reputation came when he needed to show that he could keep ‘big players’, which is why he sanctioned a deal with Özil at numbers which dwarf anything else in the whole league. How can a club like Arsenal do something like that?

Obviously it can’t and that’s why this summer is looking like it could be a mess.

Which is another reason why I’m just so weary about Arsenal at the moment. The end of the season usually brings reflection for a few weeks, followed by renewed hope that the club will make the necessary adjustments to drive it in the right direction, but as it stands now reflection is the last thing I want to do and ‘renewed hope’ feels like a unicorn, standing on a desert island, surrounded by sharks and killer whales, that all breathe fire; it’s that unattainable.

Sorry guys. This isn’t a fun blog today but I just don’t feel like Arsenal is a fun place and talking about it isn’t giving me any more happiness either.

This summer may – or may not – mean a bit less blogging from me I think. Right now I just don’t really feel like it. Hopefully I get the big back in a few weeks but as it stands I really can’t be bothered when the club is being run by an idiot owner like we have in Kroenke.

Might still be back tomorrow though. Glutton for punishment I guess!

People have stopped talking to me about Arsenal specifically at work now, because it’s clear I’m not interested and inevitably, conversation shifts to something else. Anything else.

But I’d be lying to say that in the back of my mind there isn’t always questions and today what I’m thinking of is our current crop of players and their best positions in specific conversations and what really worries me is the sheer amount of surgery that is needed on this team in the summer. But in addition to that, what worries me is that Arsène appears to have flip-flopped so much from a team set up point of view in the last 18 months, that we find ourselves now with players that don’t really all fit in the system he plays.

I’ve been listening to a few podcasts of late and talk has inevitably drifted into going into specifics of players. The guys on the Arsecast have touched on it but when you actually start to think about the individuals Arsène Wenger has assembled in his squad, his changing of team and style seem even more baffling.

It’s the change from three at the back with wing backs that I’m talking about predominantly. We seem to have a team in which most of our players are set up for the formation that we ended last season with. We have a glut of central defenders who can all operate in that system but when they play with two at the back they look exposed.

Historically Arsène has always looked to have a maximum of four senior central defenders in his squads. That’s a first choice two, one that is on the periphery, then perhaps a younger player who has potential. It has been a clear pecking order and he’s kept the team as it was. But with the shift to a back three last season and then keeping Chambers and Holding in the first team this season, we’ve had five central defenders plus Monreal who seemed at one stage to be a playing being converted into a central defender, then Elneny, who has been tried as an auxiliary defender.

That’s six players plus a spare. Makes sense if you’re playing with three at the back, right?

We also bought Kolasinac as a wing back on big wages. So for all intents and purposes, if you look at the way we started the summer, we were geared up for a season with a back three. That’s the sort of players we had in the squad and when you’re setting up your team with players that operate best in that position, surely you should stick with it, no?

Arsène binned off his back three by November if my failing memory is right. That’s a third of the way into the season. That tells me that he never really believed in the back three and was only doing it because he thought he had found a formula that worked with his current crop of players. The problem is, his quick eschewing of the three at the back for the back four hasn’t really worked either, because what he did in the summer last year was not buying the right type of players for the system we have.

If we’re playing with four at the back, two midfielders, three creative midfielders and a striker, then to avoid being too narrow in the middle of the park – something we saw again on Sunday – you need to have players who are more naturally suited to running those lines out wide. But we don’t have that. The only player who did that in the team was the now departed Theo Walcott. He was certainly not the answer and it was clear from the first few weeks of the season that he wouldn’t get game time, so why didn’t Arsène/Arsenal address this last summer by going for wide men?

Nothing makes sense from a structure and tactical set up point of view at Arsenal. Last summer we bought like a team that was wedded to three at the back with wing backs, yet we didn’t buy one to challenge Bellerin, then never bothered playing Debuchy either. But we didn’t buy like a team that was only using three at the back as a short term solution. If we’d have bought more naturally wide players who will stretch the play, then I think I’d understand that we were more than likely to shift our team structure and set up. But we didn’t.

It just speaks to no real plan at the club at all. There is no philosophy and short-termism has completely permeated the club. We don’t think a year or two ahead, we think a month ahead, which is why we’re in this mess where we have a squad geared up for one formation, yet we’re playing a totally different formation.

It’s why change needs to happen this summer. We need a fresh voice. A man who says “this is how I am going to set the team up. These are the current players who probably don’t fit that system in our team and this is the type of player that I’ll need”.

Can anybody see Arsène Wenger doing that? He’s already proven over the last 18 months that he’s not able to and it has felt like he’s been clutching at straws for some time now. Football has changed, Arsenal has changed, Arsène hasn’t and the result is what we’re witnessing now: steady decline.

I think we’ve passed the point of no return with Arsène I’m sad to say. I’ve always harboured hopes he’d find a formula to turn it around, that an old dog had secretly been learning one more new trick, but sadly I think the chances of that are gone.

Arsenal need a new philosophy, a new voice, a new coach.

It’s amazing really. About three months ago I couldn’t wait to be saved from the grind of seeing what felt like Arsène’s last stand. I just wanted a bit of time off from Arsenal and the predictability of it all. I was looking forward to the summer. Now I’m sat here on this Metropolitan Line train at Ickenham and I’m wondering how I could have ever felt like that. Don’t get me wrong, I was pretty cheesed off with the ‘rinse. Repeat’ nature of Arsenal’s season and I’m sure after 10 games we’ll have seen the same old same old as recent times. But at least it gives us all something to talk about, eh?

The apathetic nature of summer and the dross that comes with it with regards to speculation is a killer on the mind. And even the filler for the killer – the media noise – has been pretty much done.

Mbappe excitement has faded and all is quiet.

Lacazette ‘angles’ are all covered and the well is drying up on new variations of the same old rubbish.

Thomas Lemar is been mentioned in dispatches but nothing for a while now.

Even the ‘Ox to Liverpool’ stuff has a vaguely familiar sound to it these days.

Let’s not even bother talk about Alexis.

This is torture. At the end of the season I had a discussion with a mate about how I wasn’t going to be refreshing any of the news sites for Arsenal stories on a daily basis. But the footballing boredom has taken hold already. We need something. Anything. 

A catalyst for change maybe?

Jebus, old Ivan’s gonna regret saying that, unless he hasn’t already. It’s going to be like the old ‘we can be as big as Bayern Munich’ millstone around his neck. Constantly reminded by the fans of his hollow and empty politicians respondes when in fact, he probably would be one of the first to push for more change, if he could. 

It’s probably why he was spotted with Arsène on a recent sojourn to the South of France. Arsène probably told him he was off to find a Nice player and Ivan quickly grabbed his coat and shoved a toothbrush with some pants in a suitcase, with the words trailing in the air “I’ll come with you! Wait a sec”, as the door doesn’t manage to close before Ivan is belting it after the manager. 

He probably just went to make sure Arsène isn’t just going somewhere nice to drink ice T. Kermit the Frog style.

The worry I have is that the thirst for news won’t even be quenched when the window opens. I hope it is but let’s be honest; you’ve seen this story play out before, haven’t you?

June: rumours and pictures of people at airports, but radio silence from the club.

I can handle that. It’s early in to the summer and we still have plenty of time. Chill people. Relax.

July: window opens, no major news for the first couple of days, then Arsenal go away on a pre season tour. Arsène makes comments about being in the market for talent. But talks up more the fact they are on tour at the moment. 

Ok, we really need to step up our efforts in improving the squad, please. A pre season tour isn’t really an excuse not to be making bids or doing deals. We have only weeks until the start of the season. Why aren’t we doing anything??

August: season opener starts. We’re not ready. Players haven’t been signed in time to integrate and give them a good pre season. Arsène talks about the difficulty of finding value in the market. We make some signings towards the end of the month.

The anger of late July and early August falls in to an apathy because once again we’ve all fallen in to the trap of believing the hollow words of the club. The exciting deals haven’t really materialised and quite frankly we’ve got ourselves to blame for believing the same as every season. 

There is no ‘catalyst for change’. Only ‘apathy for the same’

I hope I am dealt some humble pie. This is some pie I would like to chow down on because I want to believe we could actually go in to a season looking very strong. I want the excitement. I just hope Arsenal deliver it.

Take this weekend and next weekend as an example, we’ll have already seen what Liverpool, City and United have all done with all of their games before we’ve even kicked a ball in anger. And if it’s anything like yesterday’s results, it isn’t really much fun if i’m honest. Liverpool coming from two down to beat Stoke – why do Stoke seem to roll over and have their bellies tickled every season against everyone but us when we go to their ground? – the Totts winning, as well as City and probably United today. It’s just not a lot of fun knowing that we have to go to Palace on Monday night knowing we have to pull out a win just to stand still in the league.

Mind you, perhaps that’s better than having seen everyone else lose and then we end up not being able to capitalise on Monday night. That truly is a maddening state of affairs. But for now there’s nothing we can do other than look on and watch today like we did yesterday. At least in London it’s a lovely weekend and I intend on making the most of it by not bothering to watch any football whatsoever. I’ll keep track of the scores of course, but it’ll be a beer garden and a pint for me rathe than an indoors afternoon of footie.

The main Arsenal story of today appears to be Mesut’s indication that he will stay. Supposedly. He’s been talking to The Fail about the importance of Arsene staying but he also says it’s important to know one way or another whether he leaves in the summer. But where he hints that he might stay is in the article when he talks about wanting to win trophies and titles at Arsenal, strengthening in the summer and looking towards next season. Of course he’s going to talk up the importance of Arsene Wenger, but I am now wondering really how much his future is linked to the manager, because I don’t thin k it is at all. If we pay him enough money, then he’ll stay. So it’s up to the negotiators to give him enough cash and get it done. Sooner rather than later in the summer too.

We all know Alexis is off, but keeping Mesut would be a big boost to us all at a time in which we don’t really have much to shout about right now, so I am hoping this interview is the first steps to him putting pen to paper on a new contract. There are those that are being a bit cynical about why he wants to stay, saying that Wenger makes his life easy and he’s not a guy who wants to be challenged, but I think that’s slightly harsh on Mesut, because I think he is somebody who is looking at the situation and wondering if Arsenal can compete in the near future. Financially we can bring in the players to challenge, we certainly have the infrastructure, it is just a question of whether tactically and through the drive of the coach we can get over the line. Messy must surely be thinking that too, but he’s hardly going to come out and say it, so he’s towing the company line. He was at Madrid for Christ’s sake, who change their manager every couple of years, so if he was that wedded to a manager that he didn’t ever want to play for a club after one leaves, then he’d have walked out of Madrid sooner than he actually did. So whilst he’s saying all the right things, I think his staying won’t really be affected by Arsene’s future.

I don’t thin k we’ll see a van Persie style demanding to sign players, but I do think he wants to see ambition, like we all do.So whoever is in charge come the summer, we need to be able to show that we’re going to not make a total balls up of transfer windows like we’ve been used to seeing in recent history. Get the deals done, get them done early in summer, then let us all go on our holidays happy and excited for the new season.

Right, I’m off to find the nearest ice cream van.

Laters

I have no major beef with Liverpool fans. I know a few southern Scouse wannabes though, most of whom are quite unbearable when it comes to talking about the size of the club and its history. I get it; they won lots of stuff and they’re proud of that, we would be too if it happened to us. But as we get constantly reminded – so what? We haven’t been competitive in a big competition for some time now. The same can be said for Liverpool, but I do have to laugh at comments from utter tools like Michael Owen, saying things like “what other club in England would you go to?” In reference to players moving from Liverpool. Unfortunately, his warped view of Liverpool FC i.e. It’s Barcelona, Madrid then Liverpool, is symptomatic of the extreme blinkers I see.

So why all this in an Arsenal blog? I dunno. Perhaps it’s because there’s little going on now the season has finished. Or perhaps it’s this notion of ‘big club’ and recruiting the best talent that has intrigued me.

Michael Owen’s laughable notion that you wouldn’t want to leave Liverpool for any other team has clearly been proven to be false by Raheem Sterling, but what defines a players desires to move on to ‘bigger and better’ things? Do they look at the league table from the previous season? That would make some sense, as perhaps to a foreign player who dips in and out of watching the Premier League, it’s a rough barometer of how good a team are. Liverpool are therefore a less attractive proposition than Arsenal or City, it would seem. But we all know that Arsenal lost its competitiveness when challenging for the league in March, so would we be a step up from Liverpool if we wanted one of theirs?

Probably. At the moment you can guarantee a Liverpool player Champions League football and given Arsène’s track record over the last couple of decades, you would feel that you should be able to get it for next season too. But that doesn’t really give an indication of a ‘big club’ i.e. Champions League football. After all, the Spuds are in the competition. 

Is it the history of the clubs that attracts players? I don’t really think so. If I was a professional footballer and I’d just signed for the club, I’d do my research and find out about its history, but only for my first press conference so I can get the fans on side. What’s the point in signing for a club who have a rich history that is decades old? Footballers live in the here and now and if there doesn’t look to be any success on the horizon or has been any in recent seasons, then they won’t be interested, which is why I’m also a little nervous about our predicament this summer.

I’m nervous because our immediate history has a couple of FA Cups. Is that enough to tempt a player in to ‘doing an Arteta’ and forcing a move to us? I’m not sure it is. Not unless it’s from a smaller team in England and the player wants to step up a level. But I don’t see any players in lower divisions or even the Premier League who are that good (when I say that I mean world class) and have been for a number of seasons consistently, who would massively improve our squad at the price Arsenal would be willing to pay. And here lies the conundrum: our valuations on price. I spoke about it yesterday so I won’t labour the point, but if players aren’t enticed by history, then they’re enticed by money, and so are the teams they play for. So the only way this summer that I see us getting a player for anything approaching what is market value or below, is if the player forces the move, which will drive down the price. If the player is motivated by winning the top trophies every season, right now he doesn’t join Arsenal. If he’s motivated by the history of the club like Michael Owen says, right now if he’s looking at recent history, he doesn’t join the club unless he’s playing for a smaller team. (For the record and to reiterate, I don’t think that does have an impact, so am just playing devils advocate). So the only other area that we can prize the Mesut Özil’s and Alexis Sanchez’s of this world, is to pay the bigger prices and the higher wages. Which is why I’m worried. 

Of course, one immediate way in which fears can be allayed will be an early signing, with which Granit Xhaka would be both welcome and also reassuring that Arsenal will do what’s needed. But until that happens, I don’t think this feeling is going away from the pit of my stomach, when it comes to The Arsenal.

But what do you think? Let me know in the comments.