The cricket(s) season

Good morning all, Tim here with the last ‘supply teacher’ Arseblog before Andrew returns from holiday tomorrow. Luckily, loads and loads and loads has transpired since I spoke to you yesterday. Such as….

This pre-season I am trying to stay off Twitter as much as possible but every time I do open that creaky door I detect a looooooot of angst about transfers. I am not here to tell anyone how or what to feel but, at the same time, I write about football so I have never been shy to opine on things I am not qualified to comment on.

Firstly, I personally think there is a lot of dismissiveness about Arsenal generally from all quarters. In one sense I am fine going into next season with nobody really tipping us for the title and by being written off. On the other, I do find it all a little out of kilter. Despite all the injuries last season nobody remotely challenged us for 2nd place.

I am not saying we should get a cake and a party for finishing 2nd but even with a significant injury crisis and even after phoning in much of the league season from about March onwards to focus on the Champions League, we were incredibly comfortable in 2nd. With one hand tied behind our back and about 70% focus for the final third of the season nobody looked like knocking us down into 3rd place really. I think that suggests we are a pretty good team.

On the transfer front, I look at it this way. It looks as though Zubimendi and Kepa are essentially done. There are two clear striker targets, it looks like Berta is getting the lie of the land and negotiating with both to keep the home fires burning and probably to negotiate a better price from whoever the club do land on. In addition to this, it doesn’t look seem as though we have strong Premier League competition for either (yet). Chelsea already signed a striker, Liverpool are spending the chunk of their budget on Wirtz, City don’t have a huge need for a striker and neither do Newcastle.

I think that is a pretty solid position in mid-June. Don’t get me wrong, if that is still the situation in mid-July, I can understand being a bit antsy and suggesting it’s time to poop or get off the pot. But in mid-June I think it is a pretty healthy position to be in. Like I said yesterday, I think the consistent supply and demand of non-updates has created a kind of feverishness.

I also think it can really silo your thinking about your own club. When we hear of another club linked with a player, in our minds the deal is done at that point. We aren’t tuning in for the thrice daily non-updates and we mentally skip over the several weeks between the link and the deal actually being done. The transfer of Florian Wirtz to Liverpool, for example, is not yet complete and announced. Don’t get me wrong, I am certain it will get done and the reporting suggests it is close.

From what I can see David Ornstein first reported Liverpool’s interest in the player on May 14. But obviously we have not spent just over a month tuning into hourly non updates over the transfer. It shows that even the most ‘slam dunk’ deals take some time to finalise. It isn’t only Arsenal that go over the fine details, these are big money transactions.

I had a look around the league for completed transfers and it’s not an especially long list at this stage. Liam Delap, Jeremie Frimpong and Matheus Cunha are three of the biggest deals and they were all release clause signings with no need to negotiate a fee. Reports suggest that Rayan Cherki had a sort of unofficial release clause at Lyon due to their ongoing fiscal issues which Manchester City triggered. (Add in that City and Chelsea had the necessity of adding before the June 10 deadline for the Club World Cup).

In short, there is less going on around the league than we think- City are the exception. They have kept their powder relatively dry in recent windows, have a lot of PSR headroom and a clear case for a bit of a rebuild and they are quite rich too. Every window has a different context.

I do understand some of the anxiety based on the last two transfer windows, which Arsenal simply cannot claim to have nailed. I think they had different contexts and, crucially, both had totally different Sporting Directors compared to the one we have operating in this window.

Last summer, I think Arsenal had their kind of ‘PSR summer’, where there was a big impetus on them to sell some players too and I don’t think it looks as though this summer has the same framework around it. (I think there is definitely a question mark as to whether spending the bulk of the budget on Merino and Calafiori last summer in those circumstances was the best use of resource). I’m not sure having a Sporting Director who was effectively serving his notice helped either.

Doing nothing in January looked like a case of keeping the powder dry for the summer and I think it is very reasonable to have big expectations of this window as a result. I would say that Arsenal bid for strikers in those last two windows. They bid for Sesko last May but he ended up signing a new contract at Leipzig. They bid for Watkins in January but clearly didn’t want to go any further than their initial offer so as not to jeopardise their summer plans.

I get the impression that this summer they are far firmer that they cannot let another window pass without a striker acquisition and rightly so. I am incredibly confident that is going to happen which is why I am not especially anxious about it, especially not on June 15. If on July 15 we are still ‘monitoring’, ‘assessing’, ‘preparing a bid’ etc, then yeah, the anxiety might start to kick in a little. If we had heard literally nothing about a striker link at this stage I might be nervous too but that is very clearly not the case.

Finally for today, we still have no news on Thomas Partey’s contract with some suggestion he may still join the team for their pre-pre season warm weather training camp in Spain at the end of the month, with his current deal set to expire on June 30. That would suggest a new contract is close and this is one I don’t really understand, to be honest.

I think between Zubimendi and Rice his position is covered and Arsenal should cut the cord and move on. There has clearly been an offer of a deal and the player and his representatives do not appear to have bitten the club’s hand off for it. I think Arteta can and should freshen the position up with something a little more dynamic and move on. But that is just my onion.

Mmmmm, onion. I wonder if anyone has ever teamed up a shed load of onion with a doorstep full of cheese and crammed it into a crusty roll before? I would eat the hell out of that.

There is also some suggestion that AC Milan are interested in Zinchenko and that is one situation to keep an eye on. I think it’s obvious that Arsenal wanted to sell Zinchenko last summer (his squad number change wasn’t announced last summer until the deadline for submitting squad numbers to the Premier League in August) but just couldn’t but they simply must this summer. The player is clearly surplus to requirements and has one year on his deal. I doubt it will be a big sale at this stage but a sale is a must.

Right, I will leave it there. Till next time.

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