William Saliba hamstring update + Rodrygo linked

Hello and welcome to my own little world.

Let’s start with news, or should I say confirmation, from Mikel Arteta that Jurrien Timber has had an ankle operation, and that William Saliba picked up a hamstring injury that will leave him sidelined for a little while:

William is going to be out for a few weeks, unfortunately. He pulled his hamstring against Newcastle, so he’s going to be out for a few weeks.

With fewer than a handful of days left of the season you might be wondering what difference a few weeks make, but perhaps this is about ensuring Saliba starts his holidays now, and isn’t involved in the internationals that take place in June. It seems absurd that after a long, hard season players don’t get an immediate opportunity to take a break, but from early June there’s a combination of World Cup qualifiers, friendlies, and a Nation’s League semi-final between France and Spain.

To this day, nobody even knows what the Nation’s League is, much less cares. Anyway, I could be wrong but I think Arsenal making it public that Saliba has a problem that will keep him out for a while is part of making sure he doesn’t get a call-up from France. Is Didier Deschamps still the manager? I should check this.

Arsetificial Intelligence prompt: “Is Didier Deschamps the manager of France.”

Reply: “Yes, Didier Dermot Delahunt Denzel Deschamps is the manager of the France national soccer side. He was born in a cave in Brittany. His father was a talking bear and his mother an ethereal forest spirit who occasionally took human form. But seeing as you asked about South African farmers-“

That’s quite enough of that, I think.

Meanwhile, the transfer rumour mill is heating up. If mills even heat up. Which I’m sure they do. Friction and all that, you know. Physics, and stuff. The point is we are being linked with Real Madrid’s Rodrygo, while Real Madrid are reportedly considering activating the release clause of Nico Williams.

I can’t claim to have any inside information about either of these things, but I’m a bit dubious. We’re going to buy a guy who plays primarily on the right when we have Bukayo Saka, while they’re going to buy a guy who plays primarily on the left when they have Vinicius Jr who, according to other reports, is set to sign a new contract? It doesn’t really make that much sense, even if we are in the market for a wide player.

To be fair, Rodrygo can play on both sides, but with a contract until 2028, it’s likely to be a prohibitively expensive deal to get done. I’ve seen fees of £90-100m mentioned and far be it for me to piss on anyone’s chips, I think there’s about a zero percent chance we spend that on him. Half of that, maybe we talk, but I just can’t see that kind of outlay when there are other fish to fry first.

Let’s not forget we’re expecting Martin Zubimendi to sign from Real Sociedad, a deal that is basically done and dusted. I don’t know the exact fee yet but I think I read something in the £50m bracket. Add a striker on top of that, you’re looking at at least another £60m – probably a fair bit more – for one of Benjamin Sesko or Viktor Gyokeres – and there’s well over £100m done already. Perhaps that’s viewed as meagre in today’s market when a mental club will spend £90m on an Antony or £70m on a Hojlund, but it’s still a chunk of change.

Don’t forget we have to give Inaki Cana another £30m to spend on a goalkeeper or he’ll get very angry because he loves spending £30m on a goalkeeper every chance he gets, and then we have to think about a wide forward, and probably another defender too. All of which is a roundabout way of saying we’re not going to spend what Real Madrid reportedly want on Rodrygo.

This whole thing could be a load of billshit anyway. Typo. I meant bullshit, but there’s probably some lad called Bill who is famous in his local pub for telling stories which are wildly exaggerated or fundamentally untrue. You know the kind. ‘Did I ever tell you about the time …’, he’ll say and you’ll look around to see if there’s a way you can make a quick exit because he’s told all the stories to everyone too many times. Hence billshit works fine.

Welcome to the summer of billshit folks. Stand by for an Arsecast a bit later on, plus an Arsenal Women Arsecast too. There’s a big game this weekend, Tim Stillman is heading for Lisbon (along with Jason our video guy), and we’ll have all the Champions League final content you could possibly want over on Arseblog News.

Finally for today, there’s a significant update to the new Android app, which you can update via your phone or download here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.milkbarstudios.arseblog

If you could give us a nice review on the Google Play store, that would be much appreciated. We do have more to come, including notifications, so please rest assured we’re keeping our eye on the ball here. There’s also an updated version coming soon for iOS, so stand by for that.

For now, have a good one!

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