Morning campers! Tim Stillman here for the final time before Andrew returns to the keyboard tomorrow. Yesterday I took in the delights of Sincil Bank to watch the Arsenal U21s take on Lincoln City. Ground number 70 of the 92 and that, dear reader, was the entire reason that I went to the game!
It was a really interesting test for the youngsters though, they lost to Bishop’s Stortford on Wednesday evening- which isn’t an enormously unusual result at this stage of pre-season. We’re talking about lads of 16 or 17 locking horns with fully developed and fully grown men accustomed to playing physical football.
I was anticipating the youngsters getting a proper hammering (I once watched an Arsenal XI team containing Hector Bellerin and Serge Gnabry lose 7-0 to Luton Town at this stage of pre-season- when Luton were in the fifth tier). For the U21s to only lose 2-1 to Lincoln having taken a second half lead was a very impressive showing. They controlled the first half but, as the game wore on, the physical advantages enjoyed by a League One side one week away from the start of their season became evident. An enjoyable day out, all in all.
Onto matters more senior and now the team will be fully gearing up for a couple of friendlies against Bayer Leverkusen on Wednesday and Lyon next Sunday. Saka, Raya, Ramsdale and Rice have all returned to Colney and it will be really interesting to see what the next few weeks hold for Aaron Ramsdale. I mean, his Arsenal future has to be in some serious doubt but there are complications.
Firstly, Arsenal haven’t been able to procure a replacement goalkeeper yet, they haven’t even been able to get the third choice goalkeeper they want with Wolves rejecting Arsenal’s bid of a bag of Maltesers, some training cones and William Saliba’s beard comb for Dan Bentley. Karl Hein has looked good in pre-season but surely part of the agreement that saw him extend his contract this summer was that he would be allowed to go out on loan.
Secondly, there just don’t look to be a lot of Premier League teams looking for goalkeepers, especially with the salary Ramsdale will be on having signed a new deal last May. Had Newcastle made it into Europe this season, I do wonder whether they might have been able to stretch to bidding for Ramsdale. If I had to make a prediction, I would say the goalkeeper merry-go-round might go until late in the window, with Ramsdale eventually leaving on loan with a view to building his value.
Due to the winter World Cup (in a European sense) in 2022, this is the first time we will have to manage the impact of a summer tournament for the players in three years. The 2021-22 season, you will recall, got off to a dreadful start with three straight defeats but I think that was a very different team to the one we have now. I also think that poor start was a little more down to late transfer business than poor physical preparation. The current Arsenal squad is in far better shape to handle the impact of protracted transfer business.
Also returning to pre-season training this week are the Arsenal Women, save for the players who have been playing in the Olympics, which has been a really poorly conceived and organised tournament. The schedule makes the games difficult for viewers to watch with games overlapping, players being asked to play extra time in the middle of the summer with only squads of 18 permitted and absurd amounts of injury time being played. The referee played 18 extra minutes of stoppage time with Brazil hanging on to a 1-0 lead over France last night.
Arsenal’s Emily Fox went off in the final minute of extra time during USA’s 1-0 win over Japan with what looked like a knee injury. She is 25 and has already torn her ACL twice in her career. I realise football isn’t and probably shouldn’t be the centre piece of the Olympics but the women’s football tournament has created undue welfare concerns for players in my view.
Anyway, the rest of the AWFC squad return to training and, as we exclusively revealed on Arseblog News last week, I am expecting them to add 21-year-old Swedish attacking midfielder Rosa Kafaji to their ranks and believe they will try to add one more player on top of that too. If you have any level of interest in the women’s team, do bookmark our Arsenal Women section on Arseblog News, we are expecting some business in and out to move along in the next couple of weeks as the squad takes shape ahead of the season starting with a UWCL qualifier against Rangers on 4 September. They will play a couple of friendlies in Washington DC in the middle of this month too and we will be in DC for the second of those against Chelsea on August 25.
Anyway, that will do from me today, Andrew- and normal service- returns tomorrow.
