It’s hotter than hell in the UK today. But you’ll nee find me complaining that’s for sure. I don’t care that I have to squeeze myself into a suit for work because this type of summer feels like it comes along once in a lifetime and so I’m just embracing it.
Much like Aaron Ramsey should be embracing a new deal. He was interviewed yesterday and unsurprisingly he was non-committal about his future, giving the usual non-confrontational “my agent and the club are talking” nonsense.
Of course this is all just part of the game and we know that, but I just hope that Arsenal aren’t playing the game the same way we’ve played it in the past. If Ramsey and his ‘team’ are trying to leave it until the last minute to see if the club will give him more cash then there needs to be a stop point at which both decide that there should be a parting. I don’t know about you but quite frankly, I’m done with ‘sagas’ and I don’t care how good a player is, if he doesn’t commit by a specific point in time then we should offload him.
So to me that means a decision one way or the other should be made soon. The season starts in just over two weeks time and thankfully the transfer window closes by then too. That means that if he doesn’t sign up within the next week – in my opinion – then the moves need to be made to sell on. Ideally that would be abroad but the worst case scenario would be to a Premier League team with the intention of a massive premium.
Of course the problem Arsenal have is that there isn’t any real noises that I’ve seen around him. There aren’t clubs hovering to pounce like there were with Alexis, van Persie, etc. So Arsenal would have to drum up the interest by touting Ramsey to the rest of the world and to do that they’re going to need a bit more time.
I haven’t even talked about finding some kind of replacement.
So that’s why I’m hoping that Arsenal are saying to Ramsey that he’s got until the middle of next week and then moves will be made to offer him out if he doesn’t want to sign a new deal. Make a final offer, stick by that final offer, get a resolution, or get him gone. As a fanbase we’re all pretty fed up of having to do this every season and so some decisiveness from the club would probably be met with warm applause from most of the people I speak to.
But before all of that unfolds we’ve got the small matter of another game against Atletico Madrid in Singapore and this feels like the first proper indication of what ‘Emery’s Arsenal’ will look like.
I’ve gotta tell ya; I’m excited. Way excited. Excited at the prospect of a team pressing high and trying to force the opposition in to errors. Trying to catch teams cold. I love a high press and have always hated seeing teams do it against us. I remember seeing Barcelona come to our gaff a few times and hitting us with a high press that was really quite scary to be on the receiving end of. So to have a Manager – sorry, ‘Head Coach’ – who has that as his modus operandi in his previous team’s makes me positively salivate at the prospect.
Quite how we’ll line up will be interesting too. I’d love to see Laca, Auba, Özil and Mkhi in a line up together, but I doubt that will happen when the real stuff starts. So for me it’ll be interesting to see which partnerships can be forged in games like today’s and Saturday’s.
I’m also interested to see what the set up is defensively, because as we talked about on last night’s LoveSport Arsenal Fans Show, it looks like he may be favouring Chambers and Sokratis. That for me is fascinating given that everyone thought Chambers might be out of the door to Fulham this summer. Yet it appears Emery has come in and decided that he has a very big role to play at the club. But we also have Mavropanos, Holding, as well as the question marks over Mustafi and whether he’ll be moved on.
It’s all up in the air and the unknown feels so exciting. Let’s just hope that whatever the result today we can see an Arsenal identity that we can believe in, understand what Emery is trying to do, but also that the players look like they’re buying in to.
This is another start in the new era. And I can’t wait to see what happens.
Laters.
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