Morning all.
After a couple of weeks of travelling it’s time to get my head back in the game. Things are gonna start heating up now. I can feel it in my bones. It’s June 23rd, mark my words, with just 7 days until July, when we’ll be able to officially announce Martin Zubimendi even though we all know it’s done already, stuff is going down.
Let me just go and check all the latest news on NewsNow’s Arsenal feed. What’s this? We might drop our interest in Benjamin Sesko? Why? Oh, it seems his wages demands are too high. But … wait … I’m sure I read we’d agreed all the personal terms with him. More than once. Everything was done. We’d been chatting to him for years, and on top of that I’m sure that I saw stories about how we’d approached RB Leipzig and had agreed a fee with them.
Except nothing happened after that. Despite the fact we’d agreed personal terms with the player. But now the wages are too high. What personal terms did we, in fact, agree?
Benjamin requires all the brown M&Ms to be removed from the package before being laid out in a gilded jasmine bowl on the end of a table made from the finest Slovenian oak
Benjamin strictly insists on a no-Drake policy for dressing room music
Benjamin wants to wear a number, but instead of a traditional number, it’s the Japanese symbol for ‘danger’
Nobody is to ever say the words ‘Viktor’ or ‘Gyokeres’ in his presence
Following the already in-place ‘Gabriel Protocol’, Ben White must now be called ‘Little Benny’, until such time as a third Benjamin is signed at which point he may become ‘Medium Benny’, but ‘Medium Benny’ may also be a transfer arrival
I mean, give me strength. What this summer window has clearly demonstrated to me – beyond the fact there’s a lot of bullshit around transfers,but we knew that already – is that nobody really knows what Arsenal are going to do. There are people out there with good information and good sources, but when it comes to this particular issue (striker), the fact that those people haven’t really said much beyond what we already know tells you plenty.
The ones whose online presence demands they consistently regurgitate stuff are the ones doing all the talking, but you can talk a lot and say very little, and that’s been a feature of this summer so far. More than ever people need to be discerning, to separate the wheat from the chaff, and there has been a lot of chaff.
Speaking of which, I saw a story linking Gabriel Martinelli with a move to Bayern Munich. They are supposedly interested in the Brazilian, but the same dude who reported that is also reporting – at exactly the same time – the German club’s interest in Luis Diaz, Nico Williams, Cody Gakpo and Jamie Gittens. Maybe in their search for a new forward these are all the options they’re considering, clubs often have multiple targets, but it also suggests a scattergun approach to reporting. If one of them happens, you’ve got it right, but if you throw enough darts you’re bound to get a bullseye now and again.
I have to say, I’d be surprised if we sanctioned Martinelli’s sale this summer, unless the offer was so good we couldn’t turn it down. We need to add to our forward line, not lose anyone (other than sending Raheem Sterling back to Chelsea), and I don’t think this is a market replete with great, obvious options for the left wing. Williams looks like he’s going to go to Barcelona, Anthony Gordon would be a very expensive capture from Newcastle if you could even make it happen, and beyond that the other names, mentioned mostly in passing, all have question marks over them.
I still think it’s an area Arsenal need to look at, but unless you sell Martinelli to finance Gordon, for example, his sale doesn’t make much sense. And even if you did that, you’re basically in the same position as last season in terms of depth, and you still have to think about who is going to deputise on the right wing. Nwaneri again? Someone else? That’s also a position Martinelli can fill better than Leandro Trossard, for example, so I’d put this Bayern stuff down as a ‘lots of darts’ situation until such time as anything more concrete emerges.
And I mean concrete in the real sense, not the madey-up bollox of transfer parlance sense. They’re even ruining words, as well as driving people out of their minds this summer.
Right, I’m gonna leave it there for this morning, but for some extra reading, here’s a lovely Sid Lowe piece about the amazing Santi Cazorla whose Real Oviedo side were promoted to La Liga this weekend. There are plenty of people in football who deserve little more than the back end of a wooden spoon cracked off their teeth, but Santi is not one of them. Beyond his ability as a player, what he went through physically was so horrendous, so to see him help his boyhood club back to the top flight after 25 years is just a great story.
We will have an Arsecast Extra for you a bit later on. We’ve already put out the call for questions on BlueSky @gunnerblog.bsky.social and @arseblog.com with the hashtag #arsecastextra – or if you’re an Arseblog Member on Patreon, leave your question in the #arsecast-extra-questions channel on our Discord server.
Pod should be out around lunchtime.
Now, I’m gonna go and bust Lana out of dog prison! Have a good one.
