Morning.
It was such a quiet day yesterday, I was hoping for a late night Orn-Bomb to give me something to write about in today’s blog. No such luck.
No exclusive about how PSG have made an opening offer of £54m for Nicolas Pepe. Of course, Arsenal would have rejected this offer because everyone rejects the first one, but sources are confident that the French side will return with an improved second bid which would see the winger head for Paris on an eight year deal.
By the way, it seems that Pepe has been posting training videos, just not training with Arsenal, which adds to the curious situation I mentioned yesterday. Maybe he’s waiting for that PSG bid to come in somewhere, but unless he’s rehabbing from an injury, it suggests his time at Arsenal is well and truly up (not that this should be a surprise, really).
In the absence of an Orn-Bomb, there could have been a Romano rocket. No, not Ray Romano, star of Everybody Loves Raymond, but Fabrizio, the star of Fabrizio Romano’s Twitter account. There’s nothing there about a ‘concrete’ move by some club for Kieran Tierney, which is edging closer and something about ‘all parties’.
Nada.
Zip.
Speaking of Tierney, you know the way he’s been linked with Newcastle, and that kind of made sense because it’s closer to home and they have lots of money and all that? Beyond them, I’m struggling to think of a team that might fit. Which isn’t to say there aren’t any, and KT is a good player, it’s just I find it difficult to envisage him in the shirt of too many other Premier League clubs (I don’t expect him to go abroad). I suppose I could see Liverpool in the mix, but then they have Andy Robertson and that basically precludes a move for Tierney.
Will he stay? It’s possible. I do think his happiness depends a lot on how much he plays, and even when Oleksandr Zinchenko got injured at the end of last season, he only started one of the final three games. You could make the argument that this was a chance for the manager to take a look at Jakub Kiwior in that position ahead of the new season, but in itself that casts some doubts over Tierney. Anyway, it’s all gone pretty quiet about his departure, so let’s see what happens as the summer goes on. I would not be against him staying, by any means. We’ll need a deep squad for the Champions League, but as I said, I think his desire to play regularly may force the issue.
Beyond that, will something happen today? Yes. No question. A lot of stuff goes on every day, and some of that will happen before midnight. Will it be the things we want it to be? I don’t know. The waiting on RiceTimber goes on.
There’s an actual game of football tomorrow though. For now, I’m going to put myself out of my misery – in blog writing terms – and head for the golf course. If anything happens, we’ll cover it on Arseblog News.
For now, I’ll leave you with some wonderful work from our friend Poorly Drawn Arsenal (@cantdrawarsenal), who animated a segment of Monday’s Arsecast Extra. Nobody can ever say we don’t cover the big topics.
