Morning all, a quick Friday round-up for you.

There doesn’t appear to be anything particularly new in terms of incoming deals, but according to David Ornstein, Lisandro Martinez is a ‘firm target’ for Arsenal, a player that Mikel Arteta wants to sign.

I like this one, I have to say. I know we’re all very focused on what we’re going to do to bolster our attack this summer, but we shouldn’t ignore other potential upgrades/additions if we can make them – that goes for any position. There’s no doubt that left back has been an issue in recent seasons. In 2020/21, an injury to Kieran Tierney left us without a recognised full back for that position and we tried to fill the gap with Granit Xhaka. It didn’t work.

Last season Tierney was injured again at a key point of the season, again we tried the Xhaka thing but the injury to Thomas Partey meant that was something we didn’t – or couldn’t – persist with (thankfully), but the fact Arteta went with it when he had Nuno Tavares at his disposal told us something about how he views the former Benfica man.

It has to be a topic of conversation between the manager, and the technical staff at the club. I love Kieran Tierney as much as the next person, but I wouldn’t bet 20c on him being able to stay fit for the duration of a long season with, fingers crossed, a European campaign that goes right to the end on top of the Premier League and everything else.

We’ve already had a bid of around €30m rejected by Ajax, but it seems we’re going to go back for more, and I guess it’s interesting to note that we saw some rumours regarding Tavares emerge yesterday. There’s talk of Marseille looking to take him on loan with an option to buy, which suggests that perhaps there’s an awareness out there that the player is available/gettable this summer. Atalanta, whose new sporting director has a long-standing interest in the left-back, are also keen to take him, but admit it’s difficult for them to bring Premier League players in (for financial reasons).

You can see pretty easily how a loan spell would be beneficial to Nuno, there are some obvious flaws with his game that need to be ironed out. My gut feeling, and I’m happy to eat some humble pie if this isn’t the case, is that those weaknessess probably make him too flawed to truly depend on as a full back in the system we play, but at the same time he is still relatively inexperienced at this level so a full season somewhere could do him good.

The difficulty he’d face after that season is an Arsenal side with, potentially, Lisandro Martinez and Kieran Tierney in it, and that might seal his fate as much as anything he does or doesn’t do during his spell away. Of course, we still have to get that Martinez deal done, but the fact we’re contemplating Nuno’s departure probably suggests some confidence in that regard.

Meanwhile, we’ve seen some young players depart. Striker Mika Biereth has joined RKC Waalwijk on loan, and he’s a player who will be looking to use this season as one to make progress and start knocking on the first team door. Tyreece John-Jules has joined Ipswich on loan, and I suspect he’s someone who will move on permanently next summer, much like Jordi Osei-Tutu who has signed for Bundesliga side VfL Bochum on a permanent basis.

22 year old Northern Ireland international Daniel Ballard, off the back of good loan spells with Blackpool and Millwall last season, will sign a long-term deal with Burnley in the coming days, and this is one of those where I’m quite interested in the financial side of the deal.

Exclusive: Burnley in advanced talks to sign Daniel Ballard from Arsenal on a permanent transfer.#AFC intend to insert a clause into the deal which would grant them the opportunity to match future bids from prospective buyers.@TheAthleticUKhttps://t.co/CtspeH6pp7

— gunnerblog (@gunnerblog) June 23, 2022

James reports on clauses and performance based add-ons, but when I wrote about our Academy as a revenue source earlier this week, this is exactly the kind of a deal I was referring to. A young player who has done well on loan, raised his profile in the game, but not seen as quite ready for the Arsenal first team. However, if you’re attracting the attention of someone like Vincent Kompany, the new Burnley manager, and Arsenal are inserting clauses which suggest they don’t rule out a return at some point in the future if things go well, you probably have something about you, and the fee should reflect that.

We all know the kind of players we’re finding it difficult to sell and to generate revenue from, and while I’m not saying this kind of deal is necessarily easy, the foundational work we’ve put into Ballard – and what the player has done on the pitch to get a move like this – shouldn’t be undervalued.

Right, I’m gonna leave it there for this morning. I’ll leave you with a brand new Arsecast, chatting to Charles Watts about all the latest transfer stuff and more. All the links you need are below, and if there’s any breaking news, you’ll find it over on Arseblog News.

For some extra reading this morning, Tim’s column this week is on three things to keep an eye out for next season.

Have a good one.

Download – iTunes – Spotify – Acast – RSS

The post Defensive arrival could be close + young players depart appeared first on Arseblog ... an Arsenal blog.

Welcome to another episode of the Arsecast – the Arsenal podcast.

In this episode I’m joined by Charles Watts from Goal to discuss the latest transfer stories regarding Arsenal, including the arrival of Fabio Vieira and how the club managed to keep the story so quiet despite working on it for a long time. We also chat about links to Leeds winger Raphina, as Mikel Arteta looks to bolster his attack this summer, as well as Ajax defender Lisandro Martinez. Then we turn our attention to the outgoing business we need to do, with a litany of names with little future in North London but as yet no alternative destination, the difficulties of selling, the importance of the Academy as a revenue sources and lots more.

Follow Charles @charles_watts

Get extra bonus content and help support Arseblog by becoming an Arseblog Member on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/arseblog

If you want to become an Arseblog Member on Patreon, you can sign up at patreon.com/arseblog for just €5 per month.

If you are a regular listener via iTunes, if you would be so kind as to leave a review/rating that would be greatly appreciated.

Download – iTunes – Spotify – Acast – RSS

The post Episode 683 – Ins and Outs appeared first on Arseblog ... an Arsenal blog.

Arsenal are, like other clubs, currently embroiled in the bi-annual transfer festival- the well-sourced noises from London Colney suggest that the Gunners are ready to wield the chequebook in a serious way once more. However, any team needs a series of more organic improvements in alliance with some judicious wheeling and dealing in pursuit of improvement.

In the summer of 2021, Arsenal signed six players; four of them went into the starting line-up. However, they were able to juice some improvements out of existing players- Bukayo Saka, Emile Smith Rowe and Gabriel Martinelli went to another level. Thomas Partey began to find a consistent rhythm in midfield, Gabriel Magalhães nailed down the left centre-back role alongside Ben White.

Those are just a few examples from 2021-22. Where are Arsenal’s most fruitful avenues for organic improvement in 2022-23? There are logistical differences for the campaign, of course, such as the permanent introduction of five substitutions and the mid-season break for the World Cup and the very different physical toll it will have on clubs across the Premier League. Here are three things I will be looking closely at next season.

More from Odegaard

I was really happy when Arsenal made the signing of Martin Odegaard permanent last summer. Here is the receipt to prove it. I was really happy with how he performed last season and he would have been on my podium for player of the season.

He managed seven goals and four assists in the Premier League last season. That was four assists from an expected assists of 6.8 (per FBRef), we can probably see how much a more threatening and suitable centre-forward could help to boost his creative numbers next season.

While I think the Norwegian enjoyed a positive season- especially after November, I think there are a lot more gears for him to find. I would liken Odegaard to some of Arsenal’s “broken eggs” signings from the Wenger glory years. In the US, I believe the term is ‘post-hype.’ Real Madrid pushed the boat out for Odegaard when he was 16 for a reason.

I am seriously convinced of the talent of this player and think there is another 15-20% to juice from him. It’s the reason I would be minded to make him captain. He’s had a season-and-a-half at Arsenal now to feel comfortable and at home, something that has been missing from his career for some years.

Generally speaking, the captaincy doesn’t matter to me, I do think you can give it to the wrong player and I think you can give it to the right player. Now he has found a home, I just have a hunch that giving him that responsibility will help him to find the next level. With or without the armband, I am expecting even more from Odegaard- especially in terms of his own goal scoring prowess.

Thomas Partey as the single point of failure

Arsenal upped the level of their starting eleven last summer and now they need to thicken out their squad with more players that you would trust for an extended stretch on the teamsheet. As supporters, we need to shed the idea of the ‘warm body’ in the squad and focus on expanding the core of players who can flit in and out of the starting line-up on a regular basis.

Arsenal need to close the contingency gap between the starting players and the squad players and make those definitions more fluid. From the well-placed reporting it looks as though the club are looking to address that this summer. However, it still begs the question of how they bridge the Thomas Partey gap.

It’s not just the quality of the player that makes this kind of planning difficult, it’s the burden of his position. As a single midfield pivot, he is basically being given the job of two players but is able to handle it. By definition, it is difficult to find a squad player who can plug in and play the same role.

Of all the injuries Arsenal suffered in the second half of last season, this was the one that cost them Champions League qualification in my opinion. If Partey’s calves are not once again assailed by an invisible sniper at Selhurst Park in early April, then Arsenal finish fourth- there is just no doubt in my mind.

There’s a false Thomas Partey number going around. Here’s the real number. pic.twitter.com/2WE9v4Exu3

— Adam Rae Voge (@adamvoge) June 19, 2022

Arteta responded to the injury by adjusting and experimenting and the team lost the two games immediately following his injury. It’s unlikely that they are going to be able to find another player who can lift that heavy a dumbbell in midfield. Instead, Arsenal probably will have to revert to more of a midfield double pivot.

If they do manage to sign Tielemans, for example, a Tielemans – Xhaka double pivot feels a little more secure than asking Elneny or Lokonga to be a one-man orchestra (even if that particular combination might lack some basic athleticism). This would be a slight mechanical shift to the midfield and it would need to be as seamless as possible.

There is no perfect world when it comes to replacing your most important players but perfect must not become the enemy of the good. Arteta and Arsenal are going to need a contingency plan for a Thomas Partey absence (and he’s had lengthy absences in both his seasons at the club now) and the answer needs to be more convincing and more readily deployable than it was in 2021-22.

ESR / Martinelli competition

The competition between Emile Smith Rowe and Gabriel Martinelli on the left-side of the attack is a good development for Arsenal. Two talented 21-year-olds, both capable of finding the net, vying it out for an important role. Last season it was pretty much the first place your eye was drawn to when the team sheet was released an hour before kick-off.

That’s because it was pretty much the only spot that had a strong sense of competition. This season, Arsenal are in Europe and teams are permitted to use five substitutes. It’s a healthy position for the team, not least because the players have different qualities aside from their goal threat.

The competition also insulates either player from feeling as though they have ‘arrived.’ However, for the players themselves, as individuals, they will want to nail down a more permanent starting spot. Bukayo Saka doesn’t share game time in much the same way that Joey doesn’t share food (though that may change if reports linking Arsenal with Raphinha are to be believed).

For Smith Rowe, the question is whether he can last a full season, physically speaking. He enjoyed a great second half of 2020-21 and a very encouraging opening to 2021-22. Those spells have been bookended by struggles for fitness. Meanwhile, Martinelli is chasing a place in a Brazil World Cup squad that also boasts Vinicius Junior, Raphinha, Gabriel Jesus, Neymar and Richarlison in similar roles.

The competition Smith Rowe faces at international level is similar. Both players will want to finally ‘explode’ this season after a couple of years of impressing as up and comers. It seems difficult to imagine that both will manage that. They might continue this jobshare arrangement, which would be fine for Arsenal. But I do wonder whether one of them might go “supernova” and leave the other trailing in their shadow.

Follow me on Twitter @Stillberto– Or like my page on Facebook

The post Three Things to Look for for Arsenal in 2022-23 appeared first on Arseblog ... an Arsenal blog.

Morning all. Can you believe it’s been over a day since Arsenal signed a player without signing any more? Ridiculous carry on.

As Fabio Vieira is added to the list, there’s still lots to do, and I didn’t have time yesterday to touch on the interview Edu did with the official site following the announcement of the former Porto player. There’s also quite a good behind the scenes video to check out as the Technical Director shows the new signing around, but we caught glimpses of Per Mertesacker, Richard Garlick, Vinai Venkatesham and others who are working on getting these deals done.

Edu talks about how many people are involved:

“There are so many people working for one signing. We are working really hard because we have a lot of people around it.

“We have the guys from the scouting side, the analysis, the data, we have our CFO, we have our legal team, we have our CEO and we have our board. We have a lot of people engaging to make signings happen.”

We often think about teamwork as something that happens on the pitch, but it’s clearly important off it too as we look to strengthen the squad this summer. Making a plan, and one that everyone more or less agrees on is one thing, but executing it is something else entirely. And while I don’t think we should underestimate the bit about making the plan in the first place, I suspect that’s more about the manager and Technical Director identifying the needs of the team, and then beyond that more people are involved to facilitate those deals.

The most promising thing about last summer was the fact that Arsenal’s transfer strategy was exactly that: a strategy, and not a series of deals which didn’t make much sense beyond a desperate attempt to put a sticking plaster over existing problems and get back into the top four. As exciting as it was to bring in Nicolas Pepe in 2019, for example, it was the complete opposite of what then Head Coach Unai Emery wanted, and as we contemplate his departure this summer, the absence of (footballing) strategy around that transfer is evident in what we’re going to have to do to sell him – which is take a huge loss and acknowledge that for both player and club it has turned out to be a terrible deal all told.

Speaking about what they’re planning to do, Edu says:

“We have to go to the market and sign exciting, exciting players with the right age, right attitude, right mentality.

“We want to see a club like Arsenal with a young squad, an exciting squad with a big, big future. As I said last summer, the idea to have a young squad is to give them an opportunity to play together for two, three, four, five, six seasons together.”

I don’t think it’s quite a Project Youth©® reboot, because that involved players quite a bit younger and much less experienced than the ones we’ve brought in. Go back to last summer and the likes of Aaron Ramsdale, Ben White, Takehiro Tomiyasu, and Martin Odegaard were all young rather than youth, but well established as senior professionals at their clubs or via loan spells.

I don’t know exactly what else we’re going to do this summer, but when you look at the names like Gabriel Jesus, Raphinha, Lisandro Martinez, Youri Tielemans (even thought that one seems less likely than it did a few weeks ago), we’re talking players in their mid-20s with their best years ahead of them, but with lots of playing time under their belts. Players who, ideally, will come in and contribute straight away but who might also retain some value in the market if things don’t work out the way we might like.

The plan is so obvious that even Gary Neville should be able to understand it without the need for a blackboard, and easy to comprehend illustrations.

But of course everyone is anxious for more, and on that Edu continues:

“I’m quite excited, I think we have some good conversations and positive conversations to be fair. I hope we can give the fans some good news.”

The Fabio Vieira deal showed that even in this day ultra-connected day and age, things can happen without too many people knowing about it. Whether subsequent signings will be more like that, or the completion of deals that we know have been in the works for some time, remains to be seen. Perhaps a little from Column A, a little from Column B, but I have to say I feel more confident about the club doing good incoming business than I have for quite some time.

That said, how we deal with outgoing business to try and get the best deals possible for departing players, and perhaps change the perception of Arsenal as a selling club is a really fascinating part of this summer. There’s plenty to do in that regard in a market that remains relatively challenging if you’re a Premier League club and Europe is the mooted destination for most of those players, but it is inextricably linked to our incoming business in terms of revenue etc, so let’s see what they do.

Right, I’ll leave if there for now, till tomorrow.

The post Edu on the summer plans appeared first on Arseblog ... an Arsenal blog.

There’s only one place to start this morning and that’s the official arrival of Fabio Vieira from Porto, our first major signing of the summer (sorry Marquinhos!).

The 22 year old will cost €35m + €5m in add-ons, he’ll wear the number 21 shirt and he’s signed a five year deal. Let’s start with what people had to say first.

Mikel Arteta

I am very excited that we have identified and signed such a special talent. Fabio is a very creative player that will bring high quality and versatility to our attacking play. We welcome Fabio and his family to our club and are looking forward to starting work with him ahead of the new season.

Edu

We’re so pleased to have completed the signing of Fabio from FC Porto. Fabio is a player with special qualities who is comfortable with the ball in the final third of the pitch. We are all looking forward to working with him and enjoying his future contribution to Arsenal. We will now continue to work hard and are looking forward to finishing this transfer window as strongly possible.

Fabio Vieira

I’m thrilled, of course This is an important step forward in my career. Arsenal is a huge and historic club, so I’m delighted to be here at my new home. Everyone knows that Arsenal are a fantastic team. That was one of the main factors behind me choosing Arsenal. I really like the way the team plays and I can’t wait to get started.

—

So, who is he exactly and what kind of a player have we got. First, I’ll point you in the direction of Phil Costa’s profile piece, and over on Patreon myself and Phil have a podcast in which we discuss the signing, the player profile and lots more – listen here.

In short, we have a very technically sound player coming to add real quality and depth to our squad. It remains to be seen exactly where he’s going to play, but Vieira himself likens his style to that of Martin Odegaard so with his desire and ability to make contributions in the final third, he’s going to play in those areas. Whether it’s as depth for the Norwegian, or with him, the season will tell the story.

And look, if you read regularly you’ll know Odegaard is a real favourite of mine, but I think we have to move away from the either/or mindset when it comes to the season ahead. We need a squad with more quality players in it. We all know one of the big issues was the inability to change games when we went behind, which is a significant problem of course. It’s also a much more difficult problem to solve when you look at your bench, see three defenders, a rookie/journeyman central midfielder, and a bunch of kids as your attacking options, and that was what we had at some points in our last campaign.

Everyone understands that this season’s schedule is going to be more taxing. I saw a Tweet the other day (can’t find it now) which laid out in stark terms how much is going to be expected of teams who have Premier League, Europe, the FA Cup, and EFL Cup, not to mention the World Cup slap bang in the middle of the season too. You cannot go through a season with 12/13 first choice players like we did last time. The very obvious consequence of that is you run out of gas, you pick up some injuries, and you’re banjaxed.

A player like Fabio Vieira, who can play as an attacking midfielder, a wide forward, in central midfield, and has even played as a second striker for Porto, helps you cope. It’s also why, as I wrote yesterday, I would welcome a signing like Raphinha who can also operate in various positions across the forward line and give us the ability to rotate, but also to react in game situations that require us to change the dynamic as well as the scoreline.

By his own admission, Vieira needs to work a bit on the physical side of his game. He’s still young and quite slight, but some time in the gym will be necessary to cope as well as possible with the rigours of English football. Size isn’t the be-all and end-all though. We’ve seen players like Santi Cazorla, David Silva and more recently Bernardo Silva (a player to whom Vieira is likened in terms of his playing style) thrive without the physical presence you’d normally associate with the Premier League. A bit more muscle won’t hurt though.

I do like the fact we’ve added more technical quality to the squad though and it’s the kind of signing that makes me think we’re trying to change the way we deal with in-game situations next season. Back in March, Arteta said of this summer:

I think now is the moment we have to go to a different level.

Imagine being 1-0 up in a tight game and – with all due respect to him – instead of bringing on Rob Holding to sit back and defend – you bring on Fabio Vieira and a player like Raphinha. Your plan isn’t to camp in your own half, it’s to play the game in the opposition’s. If you have the ball in their territory, it’s much more difficult for them to score. New players, plus the quality and versatility of Bukayo Saka and Emile Smith Rowe, will allow Mikel Arteta to alter the way we play the game and, in my opinion at least, move closer to the kind of football he ultimately wants.

After the Watford game last season, in which he was seen berating his players after we scored a goal, he explained his frustration:

I didn’t like how we were controlling the game. We had to make 300,000 passes in the opposition half and when they have the right moment to come at us, then we can attack them.

It seems pretty clear that a signing like Vieira is an important ingredient in that sense, and while there will still probably be those games where we have to dig in, if we’re moving towards a more technically assured team that dominates possession and negates the threat of the opposition by having more of the ball, I’m all for it.

So, welcome to Fabio Vieira, let’s see what’s next in terms of incoming deals, but this one seems pretty exciting to me.

Till tomorrow.

The post Fabio Vieira signs + how he might help us change appeared first on Arseblog ... an Arsenal blog.

With eyes on Darwin Núñez completing his record move to Liverpool, Arsenal were working quietly in the background to conclude a surprise deal for Fábio Vieira from FC Porto.

But who is the midfielder, what will he bring to Arsenal and why is he costing €35 million?

Phil Costa takes a look (@_philcosta)

—

From The Big Three in Portuguese football, Benfica and Sporting are often associated with producing the best young talent while Porto are instead famed for their recruitment. Over the last decade, only rivals Benfica (€690m) have recorded a greater transfer profit across European football than Os Dragões (€565m) who bought and later sold the likes of Radamel Falcao, James Rodríguez and Eder Militão for major sums.

But their academy has also borne fruit with some notable sales, namely Rúben Neves and André Silva, however their 2000 generation has quickly risen to prominence. Goalkeeper Diogo Costa, right back João Mario and midfielder Vitinha all played major roles in Porto’s recent domestic double under Sergio Conceição, as did 22-year-old Fábio Vieira who enjoyed a breakthrough season for his boyhood club and now finds himself in the Premier League.

Last season could be considered one of two halves for Vieira. Despite being named Player of the Tournament at the U21 Euros, he was peripheral early on and simply put, the playmaker was an awkward fit for Conceição’s preferred 4-4-2 system – he is neither a natural wide man nor central midfielder – while their attacking play largely revolved around Luis Díaz. However, the Colombian’s January departure to Liverpool sparked some unexpected flexibility from the Porto manager which handed Vieira more opportunities as a traditional number ten, as the second striker and even wide right on occasion. He quickly paid his manager back and with interest, averaging a goal contribution every 66 minutes.

Versatility has been a common theme among Arsenal’s recent additions, but what stands out whilst watching Vieira is the quality of his passing. During the 2021/22 campaign, the 22-year-old ranked second for assists (14) and eighth for key passes per 90 (2.3) in Liga Portugal despite playing just 1,329 minutes [WhoScored].

He also led the league for open play assists per 90 (0.68) despite taking set pieces, with Lionel Messi the only player across Europe to better his 0.81 through balls per 90 last term. Like a golfer mastering his craft, he can chip, drive and punch, and hopefully ease the current creative burden on Martin Ødegaard and Bukayo Saka.

The signing also has a nostalgic Arsène Wenger-style feel to it. Vieira – in stark contrast with his previous namesake – is a small, technically gifted midfielder who loves to feel the ball and combine with teammates. Quick, one touch backheels and ‘croquetas’ (made famous by Andrés Iniesta) are regular fixtures in his game, while he excels in the right-half space like Ødegaard. Those who have watched the playmaker will have seen a recurring theme – perfectly weighted passes between the right back and centre back which usually ended with Luis Díaz wheeling away in celebration. The prospect of similar situations playing out with Gabriel Martinelli or Emile Smith Rowe are exciting, particularly with Arsenal needing to balance their right-sided bias.

In a welcome change to most lefties, the 22-year-old is also competent on his weaker foot with six goal contributions (3G, 3A) last season coming from his right side. Vieira is also an impressive ball carrier and it’s here where the Bernardo Silva comparisons ring true; much like the Manchester City midfielder he glides across the pitch and found himself in the 89th percentile for progressive carries among positional peers in Liga Portugal.

Unsurprisingly, standing at 5ft 7in tall, Vieira is not the most physically gifted player and his arrival will not ease concerns at how easily the Gunners’ can be bullied. But his appreciation for finding space, feathered first touch and movement are what afford him time on the ball. However, the playmaker is no stranger to hard work having recorded 1.7 tackles per 90 last term, behind only Thomas Partey in the current squad. Vieira does look light in duels – he will need to bulk up and better brace his body for contact – although his pressing is intelligent in how he cuts off passing lanes and arcs his body to force defenders into mistakes.

Another factor to consider is that having spent essentially his whole career with Porto, Vieira will need time to adapt to English football and his new environment. Below the big three in Portugal, quality dips significantly and you are rarely pressed, you have time to turn, look up and pick your passes – that will not happen in the Premier League. We saw with Albert Sambi Lokonga how difficult that transition can be, although writing him off seems premature having watched Santi Cazorla boss the best in those tight PUMA jerseys.

Fábio Vieira, FC Porto 2021-2022 Midfield and Attacking Midfield Template, Radar pic.twitter.com/HEjmwzdJLj

— Scott (on vacation) Willis (@oh_that_crab) June 16, 2022

This transfer should not be about “Ødegaard plays there” or “what about Saka?”, but about how having better players makes you a better team. Despite improving their attacking play last season, how often did Arsenal lack finesse in their final ball or struggle to break teams down when key players weren’t firing. Vieira will not only be tasked with supporting existing options but aiming to displace them as well. More importantly, having greater technical quality within your ranks offers variety in breaking down deep blocks, sustaining pressure and taking the sting out of games, should you need it.

Some consider the fee expensive (€40m if add ons are met) for a player who is yet to truly establish himself at club level. But after spearheading Porto to UEFA Youth League glory in 2019, guiding Portugal to second place at the U21 Euros last summer and breaking through under Conceição – who often prefers experience ahead of youth – hints at clear ability despite those concerns being justified.

Arsenal and Mikel Arteta are banking on potential but reports in Portugal state the club have scouted Vieira closely for over a year. This is a player with technical quality, creativity and work ethic, whose wages and age profile all point towards him being a natural, exciting fit at Emirates Stadium.

The post New signing profile: Fabio Vieira appeared first on Arseblog ... an Arsenal blog.

Let’s focus first this morning on things which have actually happened.

They may not be the most exciting things, but they are definitely real. Arsenal sent two young players on loan yesterday, Omar Rekik joining Sparta Rotterdam while Harry Clarke has joined Stoke.

Rekik, a central defender who joined from Hertha Berlin in January last year, is already a full international for Tunisia, and could be involved in the World Cup later this year. He’s only 20, and a good season out on loan could well be hugely beneficial for him. Like goalkeeper Karl Hein he’s made his full international debut before his full Arsenal one. Clarke has spent time in Scotland, with Ross County and Hibs, but he’ll play Championship football next season.

There’s also talk of a move for young striker Mika Biereth with RKC Waalwijk said to be ready to take him for the duration of next season. He was top scorer for the U23s last season, and made the bench a few times for the senior team without making his debut. These moves definitely feel proactive for players at this stage of their developments, and the fact that there’s a change in the age grouping for the ‘Premier League 2’ next season may be playing a part here.

Via the PL website: The age group for players from the 2022/23 season is Under-21, changing from Under-23 as a reflection of the reality of the age of players in the competition, where the current average is 19.

The other thing to say is that we have a lot of familiar names at U23 level because of how much coverage there is these days. There’s a lot of talent bubbling under, but the reality is that only a very small percentage will ever make the breakthrough for Arsenal. Giving them senior football earlier will certainly help their development and increase their chances of pushing for a first team place here but – if not – that playing time should make them more valuable assets in terms of transfer fees and sell-on fees if and when we decide to move them on.

If you think about the fee we got for someone like Krystian Bielik a few years ago, it was pretty healthy (£10m) for a player who had come through our Academy, but that was because he had loan spells in which he’d impressed. A hot prospect at youth level who can’t do it when he has to step up and deal with the increased pressure and physicality of senior football just isn’t going to generate anything like the same fee, so good luck to these lads and whoever else we send out this summer.

As we struggle to sell senior players, we shouldn’t overlook the Academy as a potential source of decent income.

—

Back in the main room, there has been a lot of talk about Raphinha in the last 24 hours. One report said it ‘could’ happen this week as interest from Barcelona has cooled; The Times are reporting we’re set to make a £50m bid – but I may have to go and check if they’ve deleted that story without explanation; and a number of Brazil based journalists have been beating the same drum too.

I have to say I’m a little cautious about this. Not because I don’t want the player, I think he’d be an excellent addition and I don’t worry in the slightest that he’s a right sided attacker. We don’t have enough good players, he is a good player, and would add quality and depth to this team as we go into what will hopefully be a 50+ game season.

I don’t think it means anything sinister re: Bukayo Saka because he’s so obviously a big part of Mikel Arteta’s plans, and haven’t we said repeatedly we need to protect him and ease some of his burden? A player like Raphinha helps you do that, a player like Nicolas Pepe does not, as last season demonstrated. The whole point of this summer is to raise the level across the board and signing first team ready players is how you do that.

However, I can’t help but feel this could be part of a push to force Barcelona to make a proper move. I really hope it’s more about our interest than the machinations of the transfer market and agents using the interest of other clubs to get the move the player really wants, but it’s a story as old as time. As much as I want this to be true on the one hand, I think you have to remain a little cynical/sceptical on the other.

The increasingly vague language of transfer updates is another aspect to this one that we can’t ignore. Nobody wants to be wrong, so there’s a lot of possible more than probable going on. How much closer do we have to get to something before it will happen rather than it could happen? I know this is how it works these days, but the tediousness of stuff inching towards a finishing line which is itself always shifting further away ought to make all of us just a little wary of investing too much emotional energy into it. Anyway, let’s see what happens.

Right, I’ll leave it there for now. There’s a brand new Arsecast Extra for you below if you haven’t had a chance to listen yet. Till tomorrow.

Download – iTunes – Spotify – Acast – RSS

The post Sensible loans + Raphinha caution appeared first on Arseblog ... an Arsenal blog.

Welcome to another Arsecast Extra, the Arsenal podcast, with myself and James from @gunnerblog.

In this episode James and I chat about Eddie Nketiah’s contract extension, a show of faith in him, as well as the salary, how he still has lots to prove (that’s not a bad thing), and wearing number 14. We also tie in the contract renewal of Bukayo Saka as they share the same agent. Then there’s transfer talk with the imminent arrival of Fabio Vieira, links to Lisandro Martinez, and James explains why there might not be major urgency over Youri Tielemans. On top of that, listener questions about the money we’re spending, the ‘draw’ of Arsenal in its current guise, ethics and sponsorships and if the two things can exist side by side, the difficulties of selling players and lots more.

Get extra bonus content and help support Arseblog by becoming an Arseblog Member on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/arseblog

Remember, you can send us questions via which we’ll try and get to each week. Send them to either @arseblog or @Gunnerblog (or both) using the hashtag #arsecastextra. Best to send them Monday morning so they get noticed more easily.

You can subscribe to the Arsecast Extra on iTunes by clicking here. Or if you want to subscribe directly to the feed URL you can do so too (this is a much better way to do it as you don’t experience the delays from iTunes).

You can listen without leaving this page by using the player below, download the Acast app for iOS or Android, or download the MP3 directly using the link below.

Also, if you’re a fan of the show, please leave us a rating/review on iTunes, it’d be greatly appreciated.

Download – iTunes – Spotify – Acast – RSS

This Arsecast Extra was recorded with ipDTL

The post Arsecast Extra Episode 477 – 20.06.2022 appeared first on Arseblog ... an Arsenal blog.

Morning all.

A very quick Monday round-up as we’re recording the Arsecast Extra pretty early today. This post is likely to be mostly transfer speculation because perusing NewsNow this morning – even with my many and varied filters on there – that’s all I can see.

Lisandro Martinez

From Argentina, there’s a report that Mikel Arteta has Lisandro Martinez as a ‘priority’, suggesting that we’ll go back to Ajax with a bid of £30m after an initial £25m was rejected by the Dutch club. I was sure I saw talk of £30m for that first bid, but perhaps that was Euros. I can’t say much about the source of the story (TNT Sports), but according to Wikipedia:

TNT Sports Argentina is a subscription television channel dedicated to the broadcast of the sport of that country, along with ESPN Premium, which began broadcasting on Friday, August 25, 2017, from 6:00 p.m., after the alliance of Turner and Fox by the television rights of the Argentine First Division of Argentine soccer, being replacement of the governmental program Fútbol para Todos.

So, there you go!

I do think this is an interesting link, a versatile left footed defender who can cover centre-half and left-back, and it follows something of a pattern with recent recruitment under Arteta. Ben White can play centre-half and full-back; Takehiro Tomiyasu plays right-back for us, but centre-half for Japan; and as we await the announcement of Fabio Vieira, he’s someone who can play in a number of attacking/forward positions too. Depth via versatility? We obviously also need numbers, and maybe it’s just coincidence, but it’s something to note all the same.

It’s also being reported Man Utd are interested too, which would make life complicated given the connection between the player and his former manager.

Lucas Torreira

After his message last week, the pre-arranged deal with Fiorentina is well and truly dead in the water, and that leaves the player and Arsenal with some work to do. It’s clear he doesn’t want to be in England, and with a year left on his deal it’s time to sell. But to who?

Well, there are Lazio and Roma blogs popping up on NewsNow who say that Torreira has been offered to both clubs this summer, and you’d imagine that’s probably true of other sides in Serie A and La Liga.

The Lazio site says: Lazio are thinking about making a move for Torreira this summer as Maurizio Sarri is a big fan of the 26-year-old. The Arsenal midfielder could be brought in to play as a regista, moving inbound Marcos Antonio to a different role in the midfield three.

Roma, of course, are managed by Jose Mourinho, and they are a club we’ve done business with in the recent past. Ainsley Maitland-Niles went there on loan last season, and we sold Henrikh Mkhitaryan to them for £1m, a packet of custard cremes, and a packet of magic beans.

In a summer when we need to spend, what we bring in is going to be quite important, but when the market for a player is so small and everyone sees you as a club that will facilitate the departure of players like this, it’s going to be a real challenge for Edu and his team to generate a significant fee here.

Good luck to them.

Youri Tielemans

So far this weekend I’ve seen a story which says the deal will be done in the next 48 hours; a story about how he remains our top midfield target; and a story which says we’ve cooled our interest in him as we’re waiting to see how much money we have left at the end of the window (which doesn’t make a lot of sense to me).

Which one is true, or the truest? Pick a box. You might be right.

Matt Turner

The US international goalkeeper will arrive in London this week, determined to give Aaron Ramsdale a run for his money. He says:

I’m coming in to push him and become the best goalkeeper I can become, while also making him the best goalkeeper he can become. That’s really my goal for it all.

The consensus is that he’ll be the ‘cup keeper’ but I thought James made an interesting point on the podcast the other week about Ramsdale wanting to play in European games having never done so before. My guess is that we’ll see Turner in the Europa League group stages, but once the knock-out stuff begins (assuming we get there), we’ll probably see the profile of the line-ups change a little bit, and if you get far then you play your best team in important games.

I really have no time for the argument that sentimentality should dictate team selection, especially if there’s a gap in quality between your two options. Of course we’ll have to wait and see how Matt Turner does when he arrives, and hopefully he can, as he says, push himself and Ramsdale to be better. A competitive environment is a good thing for everyone, not just goalkeepers.

—

Right, that’s it for now. The podcast will be out mid-morning, so stand by for that, and we’ll have any breaking news over on Arseblog News.

The post Monday round-up: Martinez, Torreira, Tielemans, Turner appeared first on Arseblog ... an Arsenal blog.

Good morning, hope you and yours are well this Sunday.

The main story is the contract extension signed by Eddie Nketiah and officially announced yesterday. Mikel Arteta says:

I’m delighted Eddie is staying with us. He represents what we are all about and all the values of the club. We are very happy that he has extended his contract and now we have to get to work and continue to develop the great talent and person that we have in him.

And to be fair, the manager has consistently said he’d like to keep Eddie, so this isn’t a deal based on the goals he scored in the last few games of the season. However, given the way his contract was running down, and the player’s desire to get more regular football, it looked as if he’d leave on a Bosman.

I’ll admit I thought he would go for those reasons, but obviously he feels like he can fulfill his ambitions here. I guess with any contract negotiation the club has to present some kind of plan to a player and his agent about what kind of role they see for him, which isn’t necessarily the same as being given assurances, but we all know we’ve got a lot of football next season with the return of Europe, the ability to use five subs too, so there will be lots of playing time. Also – not that the two things are directly connected – but Eddie’s agent is Bukayo Saka’s agent, so perhaps getting this deal done augurs well for the extension we’d all like to see happen this summer.

Obviously Arsenal are still after the number 1 striker, the links to Gabriel Jesus persist and I think most people expect that deal to get done. That leaves Eddie as the back-up option, and still with plenty to prove. That spell at the end of the season, with five goals in seven games, was decent (almost like he’d listened to a motivational podcast or something), but the next step in his career is to produce on a more consistent basis.

In the podcast he did with The Beautiful Game, he was quite up front, saying (and I’m paraphrasing here), ‘If I get a run of starts and don’t score, fair enough, I’ll be the first to admit I’ve blown my chance’. But he got that run of starts, scored goals and looked more dangerous, so hopefully that’s something he can build on. He’s only just gone 23, and there’s obvious room for improvement.

He’s also taken the number 14 and good luck to him. If people are furious about that, they need to run their heads under some cold water and go outside for a while. It’s just a number. I mean, if you come to me complaining that William Gallas, a Chelsea centre-half, has just taken 10 the season after Dennis Bergkamp retired, then I’m with you all the way, comrade. That’s an abomination of gargantuan proportions, and I will march to the ends of the earth in protest, but a young Arsenal striker – a fan who has come through the Academy too – taking 14, come on.

Here’s Eddie:

I grew up as an Arsenal fan, it was in my family – my dad had grown up as an Arsenal fan so it was always there. Thierry playing there when I was really young, those are my first memories.

So why on earth wouldn’t he want that number? And why shouldn’t he have it? Sure, Thierry Henry wore it, but so too did Martin Keown, and a cast of luminaries in our history. It’s not as if we retired it or anything.

It’s such errant nonsense, and I was going to say I can’t believe people are getting angry about it, but then the Internet is the place where people just want to be angry at stuff that really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. Last season Emile Smith Rowe took on the responsibility of the number 10 shirt and I didn’t hear anything like this, or that it was tarnishing the legacy of Dennis Bergkamp, so why should it be any different for Eddie Nketiah?

When Smith Rowe moved to 10, Arteta said something about the weight of that number because of who had worn it before, and he rose to that ‘challenge’. I’m sure Eddie will feel similarly. In the end a player is judged by what he does on the pitch, not what number he’s wearing, but I’m sure he’ll be motivated to do justice to the 14 worn by his childhood hero.

As I said above, I think there’s still plenty for him to do to prove himself – not least because the sample size is quite small – but let’s hope he can do it because if it works for Eddie, it works for Arsenal and that’s the main thing.

Have a great Sunday folks.

The post Eddie Nketiah signs a contract extension and changes number appeared first on Arseblog ... an Arsenal blog.

Morning.

A quick Saturday round-up for you. Fabio Vieira arrived in England yesterday to finalise his move from Porto, the financial details of which were released by the Portuguese side yesterday. Medicals, photos, all that jazz. Quite when we’ll see the announcement remains to be seen, but this has to be considered a sure thing at this point.

Also, the more I think about it, the more I like it. Again, my exposure to the player himself is limited, but I like what it says about how we’re trying to build the squad. I’m reminded of something Mikel Arteta said back in March when interviewed by Sky Sports. He was asked if this coming summer was as important as the previous one, and said:

“More important. I think now is the moment we have to go to a different level. Now is the moment to raise the quality.”

And later, speaking about the potential recruitment of a striker to replace Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette, he said:

“Any successful team needs enough goal threat in the squad. Without it, you have nothing. You can play good football but you need enough goal threat in the team.”

Of course some of that has to come from a more prolific ‘number 9’, but goals just don’t appear out of nowhere. You need players who can create chances, and you also need goals from other areas. Last season we saw Emile Smith Rowe and Bukayo Saka chip in with 11 and 12 goals from the wide positions (primarily), if they can do that again, if Gabriel Martinelli can improve on his 6, if Martin Odegaard and Vieira can score and create, and if your centre-forward is more effective than the ones we had for most of the season, that’s an exciting prospect to think about.

There was an interesting line in the The Athletic’s latest Arsenal transfer round-up (£), in which we’re linked with Ajax’s Argentinian defender Lisandro Martinez:

Signing him [Vieira] does not necessarily mean Arsenal will stop chasing other targets, or that Vieira’s arrival replaces others in their sights, such as Raphinha, Gabriel Jesus or Lisandro Martinez. Rather, they are keen to press on. The plan, ideally, is to recruit them all.

Not all plans come to fruition, of course, but I like that kind of thinking. I think last season showed that we have the bones of a good team, but the lack of depth in key positions absolutely cost us as we approached the finishing line. Depth doesn’t just mean a warm body either, and if the idea this summer is to ensure we bring in 4 or 5 players who are starting quality, then that’s the kind of transfer plan that should have most people excited. Can we execute it? That remains to be seen, and as the Vieira deal showed, perhaps there are some names out there we haven’t even heard of yet for positions we haven’t publicly shown interest in.

The links to Lisandro Martinez make some sense on the basis that Pablo Mari is probably going to go this summer, and the club are seeking another left-sided centre-half. He is a bit small for that role for my preference, but can also play left-back which may give us a hint at what lies ahead for Nuno Tavares with talks about a potential loan to Atalanta continue. As much as I love him, you just never know when the Kieran Tierney injury bomb might go off (although as James Benge said on the Arsecast on Friday ‘It’s usually April, isn’t it?!’), and an international player with lots of European experience with Ajax makes plenty of sense.

The reported fee of £30m+ sounds a bit expensive, but I don’t know that you get a player of the requisite quality for anything less than £20m these days, and this is the kind of ball park Premier League clubs are going to be in all summer long for these kind of signings. Everyone knows English clubs have plenty of money, that’s the reality. Let’s see what happens.

Finally for today, it’s being reported that Granit Xhaka’s booking against Leeds has been referred to the National Crime Agency by The FA after a 6 month investigation into suspicious betting patterns. The first thing to say is that there is no suggestion Xhaka himself did anything wrong, but even so I wouldn’t worry if I were him. From what I can gather, in the UK you can actually write the laws, then break the laws, lie to the entire nation and insist that you didn’t, then it’s proved that you did … repeatedly … and you still get away without any kind of censure whatsoever. Chill out, Granit.

Right, that’s your lot for this morning. Enjoy your Saturday, more from me here tomorrow.

The post Arsenal’s transfer plan sounds … good appeared first on Arseblog ... an Arsenal blog.

During the summer, people’s interest in the transfer window varies.

Some people go all in, they want every rumour, every juicy piece of gossip regardless of the reliability of the source, and it fuels them throughout the off-season. Others prefer to pay no attention to any of it, waiting until they see the pictures on the official website of the player when the deal is 100% done and dusted, signed, sealed and delivered.

Most of us, I think, can live quite happily somewhere in the middle. We pretty much know when something is nonsense, so we can filter that stuff out; and we know when something looks credible and that can fuel debate and discussion. Far be it for me to speak on behalf of anyone else, but I would dip my toe into that water and suggest that pretty much every fan loves the actual transfer itself though.

Some might love the sagas, some might hate all the rumour and scuttlebutt and clickbait, but once the deal is done it’s exciting. And there’s one kind of transfer that’s got some extra sauce: the out of the blue deal. A player nobody had really heard of, let alone one who has never been mentioned on the back pages (real and virtual), and that’s exactly what we got yesterday.

In the afternoon, a journalist called Pedro Sepulveda posted a Tweet which said that Fabio Vieira would become an Arsenal player, joining from FC Porto for around €40m.

EXCLUSIVO. Fábio Vieira vai ser jogador do @Arsenal . Já existe acordo entre o @FCPorto e o #Arsenal. Valor da cláusula de rescisão é de 40 milhões de euros.

Fábio Vieira viaja nas próximas horas para Londres. pic.twitter.com/Evj0eSdt3y

— Pedro Sepúlveda (@pedromsepulveda) June 16, 2022

That was followed by Fabrizio Romano backing up that information, and while we were all looking at YouTube compilations to see what all the fuss was about, we got as close as you can get to official confirmation when Big D dropped a Tweet of his own:

Fabio Vieira set to join Arsenal from Porto. Fee €35m + €5m, 5yr deal. 22yo AMF flying to London today & will undergo medical before completing move. Process started + managed by Jorge Mendes, @TheAthleticUK after @pedromsepulveda scoop #AFC #FCPorto https://t.co/b839GEGBRC

— David Ornstein (@David_Ornstein) June 16, 2022

I’m not going to sit here this morning and pretend I knew anything about him yesterday, because I didn’t. Watching the Portuguese league is not really high on my agenda these days, but it’s so easy these days to ‘scout’ a player after the fact. I realise YouTube compilations aren’t the be-all and end-all of player assessment, but they can at least give you a good idea of what they’re particularly good at (for some reason these videos don’t include the bits that went wrong, odd I know!).

So I watched this:

As an aside, another reason you know this deal was completely under the radar is because there was not a single ‘Fabio Vieira – welcome to Arsenal video’ to be found when I searched him yesterday. Now there are dozens as the compilation makers got busy making/copying/repurposing etc.

I also checked out his stats on transfermarkt for last season, decent numbers for a player who just turned 22 at the end of May:

They also give you a handy guide as to where a player is chosen by the manager for those games, and his reads like this:

I saw a lot of people wonder if this arrival would mean Youri Tielemans isn’t coming, but although he can play in central midfield, I don’t think that’s what we’re buying him for. Obviously at this point it’s a bit speculative, but based on the way he plays and the kind of player he is, he looks like someone who can provide cover/competition for both Bukayo Saka on the right, as well as Martin Odegaard. He’s a left footer who likes it on the right hand side, has lovely quick feet, looks very good technically, and the age profile fits perfectly too – this is someone who can get better pretty quickly.

It’s been quite interesting that as we’ve discussed the need for cover for Saka, for obvious reasons, we haven’t necessarily applied that to Odegaard too. With Premier League, Europa League and cups next season, we don’t really have that in the squad right now, even if you could say Emile Smith Rowe might provide that to some extent. For me, I think he’s more of a wide forward than a central attacking 8 at this point of his development, so the signing of someone like Fabio Vieira makes a lot of sense. Especially when you consider the five subs rule coming in next season too.

And here’s the thing I really like about it. While it might take him a bit of time to settle in and get used to English football, we’re buying a player who has the quality and potential to be a starter, and we need more of those. I’ve written many times about the drop off between our first choice players and their nominal deputies over the last couple of months, and we have to address that. A signing like this does exactly that.

It’s also interesting to consider that this is the first transfer window where the primary focus will be on bolstering the attacking/creative part of the team. Yes, we signed Odegaard last summer, and the less said about the Willian thing the better, but in all his time here Arteta has never signed forwards.

Look at this this Arteta quote from July 2020, talking about the need for creativity:

“Look at the players that we had in the past at this club in those positions. You go back to  Cazorla, to Rosicky, to Arshavin when he played there, to Ramsey when he played there, to  Mkhitaryan when he came in. Even Jack Wilshere used to play in those pockets all the time.

“That is a lot of players who are now not here. We have to renew that cycle. They are a big part of what any squad needs.”

When you think about some of the technicians we had, Cesc Fabregas chief among them, but even someone like Alex Hleb who frustrated me because he was technically impressive but without enough end product, that’s something that’s been sorely missing. It explains why we’re after Tielemans, it makes this deal even more exciting, and adding those two players to Saka, Smith Rowe, Martinelli, Odegaard and then adding to the forward line augurs well for the way we are going to try and play next season.

There are reports that things are advancing with the Belgian, as well as Gabriel Jesus, but let’s wait and see what happens. However, if you added those three to the squad in the next little while, it would certainly be an excellent start to our summer business. First team quality signings. There’s more to do obviously, both in and out, but it promises to have a significant impact on this team and the kind of football we might be able to produce.

—

The Vieira stuff happened late yesterday so there’s not a lot about it in the Arsecast today – however, as we always do, we’ll have a new signing podcast over on Patreon for you as and when it becomes official.

For now, I’ll leave with today’s pod, happy listening.

Download – iTunes – Spotify – Acast – RSS

The post Fabio Vieira – out of the blue excitement appeared first on Arseblog ... an Arsenal blog.

Welcome to another episode of the Arsecast – the Arsenal podcast.

In this episode I’m joined by James Benge from CBS Sports to discuss statements sent in by our Patreon members which he has to strongly agree, agree, disagree or strongly disagree with. On the agenda – cover for Bukayo Saka, goal expectations for Gabriel Martinelli next season, Kieran Tierney, William Saliba, the fixture list, officiating and lots more.

There’s also some quick chat about an out of the blue transfer story which we’ll cover in more detail in another episode.

Follow James @jamesbenge

Get extra bonus content and help support Arseblog by becoming an Arseblog Member on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/arseblog

If you want to become an Arseblog Member on Patreon, you can sign up at patreon.com/arseblog for just €5 per month.

If you are a regular listener via iTunes, if you would be so kind as to leave a review/rating that would be greatly appreciated.

Download – iTunes – Spotify – Acast – RSS

The post Episode 682 – Statements (James Benge) appeared first on Arseblog ... an Arsenal blog.

At the conclusion of the two most recent seasons, left-back has proved to be a pinch point for Arsenal and has gone some way to the team not achieving its main objective for the campaign. Immediately following the March international break in both 2021 and 2022, a Kieran Tierney knee injury sparked a reshuffle in the starting line-up.

In April 2021, it was the failure to overcome Villarreal in the Europa League semi-final that put paid to Arsenal’s hopes and in 2022, defeats in the last two away matches of the season, at Spurs and Newcastle, cost the Gunners Champions League qualification- as well as a triplet of defeats in April. In 2021, Arteta did not have dedicated back-up for Tierney and experimented with Granit Xhaka at left-back.

The problem with this tactic was not so much Xhaka causing a problem at left-back per se, it just took him away from Arsenal’s midfield. When Tierney was struck down with a knee injury again in 2022, Arteta did have specialised back-up for the Scotsman in the shape of Nuno Tavares- it’s just that he didn’t fully trust the young Portuguese (for reasons that are not impossible to decipher).

Arteta briefly revisited the Xhaka to left-back solution for the 2-1 home defeat against Brighton after Tavares endured a tough evening at Selhurst Park a few days earlier. With Partey also injured, it simply compounded a subtraction by addition error Arteta had made 12 months earlier. It left Arsenal’s midfield light and they were beaten, subsequently missing out on Champions League qualification by two points.

Nuno Tavares partially recovered, starting games against Southampton, Chelsea, Manchester United, West Ham, Newcastle and Everton. However, when right-back Tomiyasu was fit, he was preferred as a makeshift left-back. It’s relatively clear that Arteta does not entirely trust Tavares, in January he hauled the player off during the first half of the FA Cup defeat at Nottingham Forest.

The main element of this equation is, of course, Kieran Tierney’s fitness. Tierney suffered a lot of pelvic and groin issues during his time with Celtic where he was patched up to negotiate the pain barrier on many occasions. During his first season at Arsenal, he missed three months with a dislocated shoulder.

It would be unfair to attribute that to any physical deficiency, it was a freak accident and the area has not caused him any problems since. The knee injuries that have curtailed the last two seasons for him are more of a concern. Personally, I don’t think we are yet at the “it’s time to cut our losses” stage, though it is worth reiterating, a good player is only a good player when he is playing.

I still think the sample size is too small for such a drastic decision. If he spends next spring on the treatment table then I think that would be sufficient for a conversation. His contract runs for another four years so there is no financial need to make a decision on his future- it was already made last year when his terms were extended. It would also be incredibly obvious why Arsenal were seeking to move him on and that would impact his market value.

This is not an opinion I hold incredibly strongly because it is superficially formed without detailed knowledge of the player’s issues but I do get the impression that he could better manage his body. Tierney revealed the genesis of his season-ending knee injury in April came in February, “We played Wolves at home in February and I felt something in my knee in the first half,” he explained.

He played back-to-back friendly matches for Scotland in March, against Poland and Austria. Ultimately, not only did he miss Arsenal’s crucial run-in but he also missed Scotland’s World Cup qualifying playoff match against Ukraine in June, which the Tartan Army lost. Playing through pain cost him a shot at competing in the Champions League and the World Cup this coming winter.

His predilection for wearing shorts and tee-shirt in all weathers has (understandably) won him cult status with Arsenal fans. Maybe it’s time to put the hard man image to one side, put some tracksuit bottoms on in the winter and to not to try to play through the pain barrier so much. Availability, especially in crucial games, is an attribute- a superior attribute to grinning and bearing the pain (though it’s true that most athletes operate with some level of pain almost constantly).

I accept that sounds very harsh and I could be way off-beam here- after all, injuries often do just happen due to luck too. Santi Cazorla was one of the most durable footballers I can remember at Arsenal, he was rarely ever injured, until he was. Sometimes that’s just the way it goes. Tierney might leave all of this behind him and enjoy a better run of fortune from here on.

However, his situation does, at the very least, mean that Arsenal have to think hard about who his deputy is. You have to think enough of your squad players to be able to play them for entire seasons should the headliner fall to serious injury. It’s not enough for squad players to just be considered rotation options here and there, even if it is unrealistic to all except clubs run by nation states to have two genuinely top-class players in every position.

For the time being, Arsenal have to assume that Kieran Tierney’s deputy is going to play a lot of football. The signing of Tavares always felt like the sort of punt beloved of Arsene Wenger. A low-cost gamble in a low priority position given all the other business the club wanted to do last summer. It was just a case of whether he would be an Amaury Bischoff (failed gamble), Oleg Luzhny (serviceable back-up) or Kolo Toure (accidental superstar).

Nuno Tavares has played 1,170 minutes in the Premier League this season.

He played 1,561 minutes combined in the Primeira Liga in the previous two seasons.

Think a lot of people fail to recognize this; he is far from the finished product but this has been a huge learning curve.

— Zach Lowy (@ZachLowy) June 12, 2022

In a summer when Arsenal bought four players for the starting eleven and central midfield cover, I totally understand both the financial necessity and the time resource issues that drove the signing. Tavares is as raw as they come. His on-ball qualities are largely very good, he attacks incredibly well, he is a strong defender when he is engaged, either in a one-on-one scenario or when aggressively intercepting passes.

His ability with both feet marks him out from Tierney, he knifes his way inside as well as outside and creates some excellent angles that keep opponents guessing. It’s just a shame that most of his forays inside end up with a car alarm sounding as he sends a wayward shot into a nearby driveway. Arteta needs to decide whether he can coach the rough edges out of Tavares’ game.

Off the ball, Tavares has far less pluck. He switches off easily, mentally scanning the Chinese menu for his post-match takeaway as a wide-forward runs off his shoulder. Personally, I think I like Tavares more than Arteta seems to, even if his misgivings are not alien to me. It’s not just a case of playing when Tierney is injured, the deputy left-back needs to be able to rotate into games to give the Scot a rest, from the start and from the bench.

For home games against teams in the bottom half of the table, I would be comfortable with Tavares’ brand of wing-back play. Injury to Tomiyasu counted against Nuno last season too, I think. The mix of Cedric and Tavares was always an uncomfortable one since both like to aggressively overlap which unduly impacted the balance of the defence. Tavares is far better at that than Cedric and I don’t think he’s much worse defensively.

At Newcastle, I thought Tavares was Arsenal’s most dangerous player and given Newcastle were focusing all their attacks through Saint Maximin on the opposite flank, he wasn’t exposed defensively. Yet he was the first player sacrificed by Arteta in the final third of the game and I think Arsenal’s attacking game went with him. It felt like a substitution borne of pre-conception rather than based on the events of the game.

However, if Arteta really doesn’t trust him, wants to move him on or even loan him out, Arsenal will need to spend money and time on purchasing another back-up option given Tierney’s unreliability in fitness terms. I think there is very little point in sending Tavares on loan because the squad cannot afford to wait for him to come back in 2023.

They can’t carry this position next season so if Tavares is not going to continue in North London, a serious signing needs to be made, which would block Nuno’s return. Unless of course, Arsenal decided that Tierney’s race was run and they wanted to keep Tavares as a deputy to the new player. It feels resource intensive given Arsenal’s needs in attack this summer. However, one way or another, I think a firm decision needs to be made on Tavares.

Follow me on Twitter @Stillberto– Or like my page on Facebook

The post Nuno Limit appeared first on Arseblog ... an Arsenal blog.

Morning.

The Premier League fixtures are released at 9am this morning and already the rumour mill is full effect with talk of our first game of the season being the first game of the season … again.

This time, it’s going to be Crystal Palace on a Friday night. I wonder what the odds are of Arsenal being drawn away from home to another London club for the first game of the season two seasons in a row are. Quite high I’d imagine. I’m not suggesting any impropriety of course, and the rumour could be wide of the mark, so let’s see what happens.

But if it is true, I bet they’re already hard at work in the Sky Sports wardrobe department, whipping up some sexy eagle costumes for Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher to wear under their real clothes, ready to reveal if Palace should win so they can cavort and dance across the pitch, flashing their knickers at the home fans while insisting that William Saliba’s untidy debut for Arsenal is all the proof anyone needs that we overpaid for him and it’s all hype.

Afterwards, instead of interviewing Mikel Arteta about the contentious decisions that went against his side (not least the awarding of three penalties for fouls by Cedric, all of which were outside the box), they instead bring on a familiar face from the not too distant past. Everyone thought they’d seen the end of Mike Dean after his retirement as a referee, but in his new position as Var Tsar he is front and centre to explain that the decisions were correct because ‘I said so, and that’s it’.

He goes on to explain that the red card issued to new signing Gabriel Jesus was also the correct decision, despite the fact that replays show he has his eye gouged out by an opponent who then eats it in full view of everyone.

“If you refer to rule 18.4, section D”, says Dean, “you will quite clearly see that feeding bits of yourself to an opponent is prohibited since the Covid-19 pandemic took hold, and in this instance the Arsenal player did not do enough to keep his eye in his own socket. The referee was absolutely right to deal with this the way he did.”

It will later emerge that the former Man City man will have his three game ban extended for protesting too vigorously about being blinded in one eye. Arsenal appeal to the Premier League, citing a long held understanding that cannibalism is not an acceptable part of the sport, but that is rejected, the club are fined £6,000,000 and Bukayo Saka is forced to run a marathon around England’s training ground every day for three weeks as punishment.

Elsewhere, Harry Kane finally does it: he backs into an opponent who lands awkwardly and is paralysed from the neck down. The England captain successfully tucks away the penalty he is awarded for said opponent having the temerity to be in the same area of the pitch as him.

In Manchester, the opening day derby is a fiery affair, ending in victory for Pep Guardiola’s team thanks to an Erling Haaland hat-trick which leaves Harry Maguire looking much less accomplished than normal. Fans and pundits alike are taken aback by his apparent clumsiness, poor decision making, and the way he repeatedly clumps long passes out of play.

Afterwards, Pep Guardiola is enthused by his new signing, insisting to a Sky Sports reporter that he is ‘so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so happy. So happy like you cannot believe. So happy like a room without a roof.’

He actually is genuinely happy, but it comes across so sarcastically that Haaland immediately puts in transfer request on the basis that his manager his a complete weirdo.

Newly promoted Nottingham Forest beat fellow newly promoted side Fulham in dramatic style in a game involving two former Arsenal players. It’s 1-1 in the 89th minute, but a late penalty for Forest sees Ainsley Maitland-Niles step up to face Bernd Leno in goal. The Bird Catcher ambles towards the ball, the German thinks he knows how to stop his ex-teammate, but even he can’t believe it as Maitland-Niles floats the ball towards the top corner like a three day old party balloon, only for it to change direction at the last minute, bounce down on the line, hit the underside of the crossbar, spin off both posts, and then in.

Newcastle, having spent £354m during the summer, lose 4-0 to Liverpool. Eddie Howe is sacked on the spot, and never seen again.

“What’s a Jamal?”, says their Chief Executive, Amanda Staveley.

—

It’s all ahead of us folks.

The post The fixture list is imminent appeared first on Arseblog ... an Arsenal blog.

With the final international games last night, this season is finally over for some of our players, including Bukayo Saka.

It’s genuinely insane that these guys are still going in mid-June. Sure, there was a backlog and all that, but player welfare is now so far down the list of things the people who run football care about that it’s below decent treatment of fans. I don’t know how much of a break Saka is going to get, but I really hope that he gets some time off to just chill out and relax.

It’s why I’m so invested in another wide forward this summer. I want to add quality and depth to the squad, but I also want the brightest star to emerge from our Academy in a long time to have a long, successful career. Ensuring that happens is part of our duty of care towards him, and while his importance is a by-product of his talent and the best players always get played, we can offset some of the demands on him by bolstering our squad.

It was interesting to see James report genuine interest in Leeds’ Raphinha, but how likely that is I don’t know. The links with Barcelona would, I’m sure, be a bit more attractive to a Brazilian footballer, but their financial issues continue to be an impediment to getting deals done. There’s also interest from Sp*rs and I suspect that’s going to be something of a story this summer. Not so much them, but the way the football world works and the way transfer stories play out online, there’s a lot of mileage to be made from tacking other clubs onto to Arsenal related stuff.

I bet every single player spoken about in terms of a possible move to Arsenal will have at least one other club attached to it. Maybe it’s because there’s a shortage of quality players and there’s only so many to go around, but I guarantee some of it will be just clickbait to draw in terrified Arsenal fans looking to see how a deal might go south and how we’ll be dealt a ‘HUGE BLOW’ in the pursuit of a player we might not even have been that interested in.

I’d like Raphinha to be honest. He’s an exciting player who did well at Leeds and seems to have a bit of edge to him. If we also added Gabriel Jesus, we’d have quite the Brazilian community at the club with those two, Gabriels Martinelli and Magalhaes, and incoming new boy Marquinhos. The Edu influence, or just a coincidence based on who’s available in the market this summer?

Meanwhile, Lucas Torreira’s move to Fiorentina is well and truly off. He released a statement last night via his social media to say goodbye and thanks to the fans, and made it clear he’d have stayed but for the behaviour of people, we assume, at executive level. He said:

Know that I did my best to continue being part of this club, but unfortunately there were those who, acting in a bad way, according to my understanding, managed to prevent this from happening and that is why I have to leave.

The loan deal made last summer came with an €15m option, and after a great season in Serie A that should have been relatively straightforward. However, the Italian side sent Arsenal a knock-down bid which was rejected – understandably so when you’ve already negotiated a fair price that both sides have agreed to.

I’ve previously linked to reports that there was some kind of falling out between Torreira’s agent and Fiorentina, and given the way their owner thinks about agents and the way money influences decision making at football clubs, that wouldn’t be a surprise. However, the why it fell apart isn’t really the issue. Now we have a player with a year left on his contract who we know doesn’t want to be in England, and we have to find another willing buyer in what remains a difficult market for Premier League clubs to sell abroad.

With so much to do this summer, this is another complication I guess we’d have liked to do without, but that’s part of parcel of how football works, unfortunately, and an example of how what seems to be a slam-dunk transfer can fall apart despite everything being agreed. If you were looking at it objectively, you’d say that this is entirely deliberate from Fiorentina. While there’s always some room for negotiation, offering half what was agreed, as well as changing the terms of the player’s contract/salary, means it wasn’t really a negotiation at all but a self-destruct button.

There is a solid argument that Torreira could do a decent job for us next season, but then you have yet another player reaching the end of their contract and leaving for free. €15m was not a massive fee by any means, but it’s still FIFTEEN MILLION EUROS which would go a fair way in a summer when we have plenty do in terms of incoming business.

So where next for Torreira and what next for Edu and his transfer team? Your guess is as good as mine.

Till tomorrow.

The post Wednesday stuff: Raphinha interest – Torreira’s Fiorentina move off appeared first on Arseblog ... an Arsenal blog.

Well well, we made a signing.

The first deal of the summer has gone down, and it’s Marquinhos from Sau Paulo, announced yesterday by the club. The 19 year old will cost a little over £3m, and will arrive in London in the coming weeks for pre-season.

Technical Director Edu says:

We’re delighted to have completed the transfer with Sao Paulo, as Marquinhos was a player we had been watching for a while. At 19, he is still very young, so he is a player for the future. We look forward to Marquinhos now joining us for pre-season, making his new home, and continuing to grow and develop with us.

The other day I wondered if he was going to be the extra wide forward we needed in the squad next season, and I guess Edu’s comments about how he’s one for the future probably answer that. It was interesting to read that Wolves, who had serious interest in the player, had basically arranged for him to go on loan to Grasshoppers, so unless he’s a very quick developer, it’d be a surprise if he was deemed ready for Premier League action for us.

Young Brazilian forward Marquinhos has joined Arsenal.

A deal for Wolves to sign him was thought to be so far down the line that a loan to Grasshoppers was already being lined up for next season. Club has sought legal advice.

— Tim Spiers (@TimSpiers) June 13, 2022

There could be Europa League opportunities for him, of course, and while someone like Gabriel Martinelli has shown you can come from lower down the Brazilian ladder and make an impact pretty quickly, even he needed time to develop and to ‘add some gears‘ as Mikel Arteta said last season.

That still leaves us with space in the squad. On the right we have Bukayo Saka and, as it stands, Nicolas Pepe. That’s a subject that came up during yesterday’s Arsecast Extra and while it seems like what should happen next is obvious, it’s far from uncomplicated. I think the player will want to go, I think Arsenal will be happy for him to depart, but where is he going to land and who is going to cough up a decent fee for a player in the doldrums?

A £72m transfer fee also comes with £72m wages, and as we know the previous football executives at this club handed out very substantial contracts to their signings. It didn’t seem like that was something they worried about too much, as players like David Luiz and Willian arrived on big, big money, so I assume that Pepe’s wages are more or less commensurate with his transfer fee (still our record outlay).

It’s fair to say his stock has fallen after a season in which he started just five times in the Premier League, the last of which came in October of 2021. There’s also the fact that we still owe Lille money as part of the deal, so even if we do manage to find a buyer, it’s possible that what we get doesn’t cover what we have to pay his former club. All in all, it’s a tricky one, but I still expect him to go this summer. The bottom line is that actions speak louder than any words, and his lack of involvement last season tells you everything you need to know about where he stands with the manager.

Links over the weekend to West Ham’s Jarrod Bowen and Leeds’ Raphinha do then make some sense in terms of their playing profiles, but do you make a very expensive signing for a position where you already have your guaranteed starter (Saka)? You could obviously make a very good argument as to why it’s a good idea. Increasing the depth and quality of your squad is important, and there’s more football next season with the Europa League. Plus it leaves you better able to cope with the demands of the Thursday/Sunday schedule + increased travel etc etc, and the five subs rule means greater involvement from the bench from now on.

As the ‘two striker’ debate continues, maybe the idea is to add greater depth to the wide attacking areas. Gabriel Jesus, if he arrives, and Eddie Nketiah as the two centre-forwards don’t give you a huge amount of variety (even if they’re not exactly the same kind of player), but Gabriel Martinelli and Emile Smith Rowe on the left, with Bukayo Saka + 1 (Bowen, Raphinha) on the right certainly does. Add that extra bit of craft in central midfield when you bring in someone like Youri Tielemans, and it does go some way to changing the attacking profile of this team.

Let’s see what happens. I’ll leave you this morning with the Arsecast Extra, in which we discuss all the transfer rumours, Mikel Arteta’s beach pictures, and lots more. Happy listening.

Download – iTunes – Spotify – Acast – RSS

The post Marquinhos signs + a ‘second striker’ vs another wide forward appeared first on Arseblog ... an Arsenal blog.

Welcome to another Arsecast Extra, the Arsenal podcast, with myself and James from @gunnerblog.

In this episode James and I discuss the latest transfer rumours involving Arsenal, including Bernd Leno to Fulham; reported interest in Jarrod Bowen and Raphinha, but how likely are we to spend that for a position we have well covered?; as well as potential departures like Ainsley Maitland-Niles, Lucas Torreira, and Pablo Mari. There’s also a big explainer about the way transfers happen, from contacts between clubs, agents and players, and some of the snags that can happen; some info on our pursuit of a left-side centre-half; our lack of business so far; Arsene Wenger on Instagram, and lots more.

Get extra bonus content and help support Arseblog by becoming an Arseblog Member on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/arseblog

Remember, you can send us questions via which we’ll try and get to each week. Send them to either @arseblog or @Gunnerblog (or both) using the hashtag #arsecastextra. Best to send them Monday morning so they get noticed more easily.

You can subscribe to the Arsecast Extra on iTunes by clicking here. Or if you want to subscribe directly to the feed URL you can do so too (this is a much better way to do it as you don’t experience the delays from iTunes).

You can listen without leaving this page by using the player below, download the Acast app for iOS or Android, or download the MP3 directly using the link below.

Also, if you’re a fan of the show, please leave us a rating/review on iTunes, it’d be greatly appreciated.

Download – iTunes – Spotify – Acast – RSS

This Arsecast Extra was recorded with ipDTL

The post Arsecast Extra Episode 476 – 13.06.2022 appeared first on Arseblog ... an Arsenal blog.

It’s Monday, and believe it or not the Premier League fixtures are released on Thursday.

It’s going to be fun when we have four consecutive away games against Man City, Chelsea, mid-2000s Barcelona, and the 1970 Brazil team. Hopefully we’ll have made a signing or two by then. Then = the start of the season, obviously. I’m not expecting anything by Thursday, but it would be nice to get the ball rolling.

Hopefully the end of the internationals this week will be the kickstart for our summer business. Youri Tielemans, for example, is involved for Belgium as they take on Poland tomorrow, and after that the door is open for things to start moving. It looks as if Liverpool have sealed the deal for Benfica’s Darwin Nunez, which will probably accelerate the departure of Sadio Mane, and as much as we have to focus on what we have to do, seeing other clubs do their business tends to add some online urgency and/or restlessness.

Anyway, for today we only have more rumours, and none of them are about players coming in, more the guys going the other way (possibly). First up, Ainsley Maitland-Niles has been linked with a move to Nottingham Forest, which would make a bit of sense. It’s clear after he was allowed leave to go to Roma in January that his time was pretty much up at Arsenal, and with just one year to go on his contract, we have to sell this summer.

Forest, newly promoted, feels like the right kind of club for him based on how the last few years have gone for him, and interestingly they may be looking for him to play at right back given that Djed Spence’s loan is over and he has returned to Middlesbrough. When you think about the opportunity he had at Arsenal to really have a go at cementing that place as his own it would be quite something if that’s where he was earmarked at Forest should that deal go through. However, he was quite public about his desire to play in midfield, so maybe their plans and his won’t marry. Let’s see.

From Serie A come reports that Fiorentina have offered a low-ball €7m for Lucas Torreira, to which Arsenal have not responded given there was an agreed €15m purchase option in his loan deal. I doubt it’s a case that the Italian side don’t value the player, because he had a very good season for them and was three times their player of the month in 2022, so I guess they’re simply trying to negotiate the best possible price.

Based on our willingness as a club to facilitate deals that are favourable to the buyers/departing players, it wouldn’t be a surprise if they were chancing their arm a bit, but there’s also reportedly an issue between Fiorentina and Torreira’s agent over the size of commissions, so that might be why there’s a spanner in the works. Like Maitland-Niles, he has one year left on his deal, he doesn’t want to be in England, so let’s hope this one gets ironed out.

Staying in Italy and AC Milan are looking at Pablo Mari after he had a good loan spell with Udinese. He spoke about his desire to stay in Italy, and that feels sensible. He had a nightmare in our second game of the season, struggling with Romelu Lukaku in a way that not many other centre-halves did, and those were his last Premier League minutes of the campaign. They’re more than likely his last for Arsenal, and while he seemed like a nice bloke, he never really felt quite at the level required.

It’s not particularly surprising when you look at his career trajectory, and there were always questions over how his transfer came to be given the closeness between his agent and our then head of football, Raul Sanllehi. Was it a convenient deal that we knew we could get done because of that relationship, or one which didn’t have enough due diligence done regarding player’s ability to deal with the step-up to the Premier League? Still, if he’s found his groove in Italy and the Serie A champions are interested, he’s done well enough so good luck to him and hopefully we can get a decent fee for him.

Finally, there’s a story linking Nuno Tavares with Atalanta, and I saw somewhere on Twitter (apologies, I can’t remember who it was) that their new head of recruitment is formerly of Leicester and they have previously had their eye on the left back. Maybe a bit of 2+2=5, but Atalanta are in need of a left-sided player, so maybe there’s something to it.

Personally, if the money was right I’d be tempted. I wouldn’t sanction a loan because with Europa League + cup games in the first half of the season we’d be as well giving him the game time ourselves (unless the manager’s mind is already made up about him). Left back remains a niggling issue for us with concerns over Kieran Tierney’s durability, as well as Nuno’s quality, and the stories which suggest we’re after Bologna’s Aaron Hickey only really make sense if Tavares goes. One to keep an eye on.

Right, that’s it for this morning. James and I will be recording an Arsecast Extra for you in a while. 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.

Pod should be out by lunchtime. Until then, take it easy.

The post Departure lounge: Maitland-Niles, Torreira, Mari, Tavares appeared first on Arseblog ... an Arsenal blog.

Morning.

Not a lot happening as you’d expect on an off-season Sunday, but there are a few transfer rumours doing the rounds.

First up, Bernd Leno is a target for Fulham, with James reporting that the newly promoted Londoners are ‘in talks’:

EXCL: Fulham in talks to sign Bernd Leno from Arsenal.

No agreement but appears he is #FFC’s preferred choice as No 1. Move would suit Leno desire to stay in London.#AFC planning on Ramsdale, Turner, & Hein.

Story w/ @David_Ornstein for @TheAthleticUKhttps://t.co/GWq1YCanGo

— gunnerblog (@gunnerblog) June 11, 2022

A couple of weeks ago on the Arsecast Extra we did our ‘money in, money out’ predictions, and I’ve lost the bit of paper now but I think James predicted around £7m for the German goalkeeper if he were to depart.

Update: I just went back and listened, and he said £6m! I think this was based on the idea that his likely destination was somewhere in Europe rather than the Premier League, so the fact it is another English club would probably make that fee quite a bit higher. It’s not that Fulham are massive spenders, but a hugely experienced international goalkeeper who is just 30 years of age should command a decent amount, even if he does just have one year left on his contract.

I think this would be a decent move for him, especially if he wants to try and push to regain his place in the Germany squad ahead of the World Cup in November, and I think he’s the kind of keeper who would suit a side like Fulham. He’s always been a decent shot-stopper, and I’ve always had a feeling he’s at his best when he’s busy, rather than in games where he’s called upon after periods of inactivity (not that we saw that a great deal at Arsenal to be fair).

I said earlier in the summer that how we sell during this transfer window will be interesting, because we need to be better at it. If Leno was going back to Germany, I’d understand a small-ish fee because of the financial disparity between there and the Premier League (that includes fee and wages), but as it’s another club in England, I hope Edu and co can bring in a decent amount.

Meanwhile, The Beautiful Game Podcast lads report Arsenal interest in Jarrod Bowen:

Arsenal have opened contact with the representatives of Jarrod Bowen over a possible transfer. His amongst their list of potential transfer targets which includes Leeds United’s Raphinha #AFC

— The Beautiful Game Podcast (@Podcast_TBG) June 11, 2022

The language of this one is interesting. Arsenal speaking to representatives/agents, rather than speaking to West Ham. Are we speaking with them with permission from the Hammers, or is this informal sounding out, which happens behind the scenes all the time?

He’s a decent player for sure, but he’s primarily a right winger which is exactly where our player of the season plays. Given he’s English, and has a contract at West Ham until 2025, he would be extremely expensive – especially after a season in which he scored 18 goals and made 13 assists in all competitions. On that basis, I’d be quite surprised if this went any further than the rumour mill. We need back-up for Bukayo Saka, but I can’t imagine it’s going to be somebody who would cost this much.

Finally for today, there’s talk of Bayer Leverkeusen being interested in Granit Xhaka, and I do think his situation is one to keep half an eye on while we focus on the other more important aspects of the transfer window this summer. If we sign Youri Tielemans, he’s surely earmarked to play in that slightly more advanced left-midfield role that Xhaka was deployed in last season. We wouldn’t be paying big bucks for someone to come in an understudy him, that’s for sure.

In essence, despite how well considered Xhaka is by Mikel Arteta and how important a figure he sees him in the dressing room, it’s a demotion. He’d go from being a starter every week to, potentially, the Europa League group stage man. After six years, I think we know Granit Xhaka pretty well, and I’m not sure that’s a situation he’d relish. I don’t mean to say he wouldn’t be up for the challenge, but he might also read the room and think it’s time for the final move of his playing career. You might also wonder if irregular playing time might not suit a player whose more difficult moments come when he lacks a certain rhythm because of that.

I think Arteta would want to keep him, but I don’t think it’s impossible that he might want to go if his place in the pecking order is so obviously impacted. That would then leave us with another midfield issue, but it’s definitely one keep an eye on.

Right, that’s it for this morning. Have a great Sunday, back with more and an Arsecast Extra tomorrow.

The post Rumour mill: Leno, Bowen, Xhaka appeared first on Arseblog ... an Arsenal blog.