Happy Wednesday folks. Hoops it goes well with you?

There’s no better place to start today’s ramblings than the exclusive that Arseblog released yesterday following a Podcast chat with the Ornacle – David Ornstein – himself talking about what information he has on the January transfer window, Sven’s exit, plus other goings on at the club.

It’s certainly an interesting listen and I’d encourage you to have a go, but some of the interesting titbits he was able to provide included a little bit of context around the goings on at the club, like:

  • Sven’s reason for leaving was definitely because he didn’t get the Technical Director job
  • Huss Fahmy has stepped up and is broadening his remit further than just contracts; he’s your ‘StatDNA’ guy now
  • Perisic was a definite deal Arsenal wanted done and they tried super hard to get him
  • Nkunku seems the Ramsey replacement in that box-to-box midfielder role
  • The Rabiot links are real, albeit complicated because of his greedy agents (paraphrasing on that one!)
  • The transfer budget could be anything from £40million to £100million, so he’s been told
  • I think at this point it’s become fairly obvious that Ornstein is the club’s mouthpiece. He is always breaking news only just before it’s about to happen and he is also always repeating the ‘party line’ when it comes to information released to the media. If the club want to release information then he gets it before it is done. If the club also wants to spin a story he’s also the man for the job.

    • So whilst it’s great to get this insight and kudos to Arseblog for sharing, one can’t help but feel like some of the lines Ornstein was fed by the club are designed as a PR exercise. To me the stand out two are about Huss Fahmy and the transfer budget.

    The club are social media and fan sentiment savvy. They keep their ‘ear to the ground’ and do plenty of listening to what’s going on. So they will have known exactly the sentiment from the fans when it comes to the news about Sven Mislintat. When we all heard this, followed by the ‘Raul wants to deal with his networks’ it worried a lot of us, me included, because simply put we’re not set up as a club to be able to punch in bids for players like Pepe, who has probably hit a minimum of £50million after his breakthrough season this year.

    So when we heard Sven and his ‘diamond eye’ we’re going, plenty were questioning why the new structure was falling apart, plus how on earth we were going to unearth gems.

    So the talking up of Huss as a man who has massively impressed in the club seems a little fortuitous if you ask me.

    He probably is a very astute guy, he may well be doing great things and stepped up, but personally it feels like the timing is a wee bit convenient.

    On the transfer front Ornstein was very broad ranging on the money the club have in the summer and the difference between £40million and £100million is certainly significant enough you’d have to say. But again, forgive me for being cynical, but it feels like a little bit of spin the club are giving him to seem to placate the fans. Ornstein has been fed so much reliable information over the years that the fan base pretty much believes whatever he says as gospel. So if the club feeds him a line about the money to spend, of course he’s going to report it and of course the fans are going to buy it, so by dropping in comments like “it could be as much as £100million” feels to me like the club are using Ornstein a bit to curry favour with the fan base.

    Of course I don’t know anything more than you do, maybe I’m completely wrong, but it all just felt a little convenient and I’m just not sure that everything the Ornacle said wasn’t just what the club wants us to hear.

    The transfer stuff and the Sven stuff I can believe and seems to ring true with how everything played out this January. But there’s just some bits in that discussion which made me go “hmm…..”

    Anyway, it’s a free country, we’re all entitled to our opinions and conspiracy theories and I’m just giving you mine on a Wednesday morning commute in to London.

    Elsewhere there was a game for Mavropanos and Mkhi, but given nobody could see half of it because of the fog, I don’t know how much there is of it worth talking about! The good news is that both seem to be fighting fit and although Mavropanos has been left out of the Europa League squad, hopefully he can get some minutes in the league at some stage, because it feels like we need to see a bit more of him.

    That’s me done for the day so I’ll head off now and catch you all tomorrow.