Good morning, happy Monday to you all.
Two things will definitely happen this week. One, the Premier League fixtures are released on Thursday at 9am. We can then start poring over starts, middle bits and the run-in as we look to do better than last season, both in terms of points and finishing position. It should be grand now that Man City have ‘completed football’ all their motivation will be gone.
The other thing is that the transfer window officially opens. We know that at the end it slams shut, so does it burst open? Or does a dusty old janitor just turn the latch quietly, allowing the summer madness to begin? I prefer the latter. Old Jim just giving it a drop or two of 3-in-one to make sure it doesn’t creak too loudly to scare the birds outside.
Then, let the games commence. Who will be the winner of this summer’s Transfer Window Trophy? For some the most prestigious prize in football. Last year’s Champions Chelsea discovered that winning the window doesn’t necessarily mean winning football games with any great kind of frequency, but this time around they’re not going to spend half the season with a new manager so befuddled by a gigantic squad he can’t make sense of anything, and then an incompetent ex-player in charge. More’s the pity, obviously.
Arsenal could go big in the market. We all know the names, we know the needs, we just want to see the business done and done without any fuss. No sagas, please. Sagas are bad. Even the outgoings. Let’s just get them on their way, a firm handshake and carriage clock and warm wishes for most as they head for pastures new.
We might also go not that big. We might go functional. Which probably explains links to Leicester’s Timothy Castagne which emerged yesterday. He is a player I’ve never really thought a great deal about until now, but if you step back from it, it does make some sense. He’s 27, so has plenty of Premier League under his belt, and lots of international experience for Belgium. He can play in both full back positions, although primarily on the right.
We need another right back option, especially if Takehiro Tomiyasu isn’t going to be ready for the start of the season, and he’s relatively tall too. Reservations about how he was part of a Leicester defence that was shambolic last season are reasonable enough, I guess, but it is a team game after all – and as a team they were borderline pathetic. If a rising tide lifts all boats, a falling one does exactly the opposite. Let’s not forget that our very good number one goalkeeper suffered a couple of relegations in his career before we brought him in, and look at him now.
How much truth there is to the Castagne rumours I’m not sure, but it’s the sort of signing that wouldn’t surprise me at all. If your big money is going to go into the midfield, and everyone know the names and price-range of the players we’ve been linked with there, you have to be realistic about what you can spend elsewhere. You don’t pay massive money for a squad player who, realistically, will be playing back-up to first choices for most of the season. So, if this one does go through, the price will be interesting. I’ve seen £20m+ mentioned, so let’s see what happens.
Some marquee signings, hopefully, but then some small, regular tents. That’s what we need, and hopefully that’s what we’ll get. As soon as the window opens. No hanging around. Get our business done by the end of the week or blood pressure will rise and tempers will fray and …
… it’s time to go outside, lie in the park, and just let it all happen. Que sera, sera etc and all that.
Right, let’s leave it there for now. Please join us a bit later for an Arsecast Extra in which we have committed to doing our transfer money predictions – that’s both how much we’ll spend and how much we’ll generate from sales. This time, I’m going to keep them in a handy Google document so we can find them again and find out exactly how wrong we were. Which, by the way, is always ‘very’.
Keep an eye out for the call for questions on Twitter @gunnerblog and @arseblog on Twitter with the hashtag #arsecastextra – or if you’re on Arseblog Member on Patreon, leave your question in the #arsecast-extra-questions channel on our Discord server.
We should have the podcast for you around lunchtime at some point. Until then.
