Happy Monday folks. Hope you’re all keeping your sh*t together despite the fact that we are heading off for the first pre season tour of the summer and there are still no significant incomings for us all to get excited about. I tweeted something about three weeks ago saying “chill out people, plenty of time to do business” but I have to admit I’m starting to get real concerned. The club has gone a bit quiet and even the names we all expected to be joining – Tierney, Saliba, etc – haven’t materialised yet and that worries me that there’s the usual Arsenal procrastination going on. This was a new summer and a new team in the back room who were supposed to act a little more decisively remember. It feels like the same ol’ Arsenal though at this point.

All we need now is an Unai Emery press conference where he tells us all that it is difficult buying players because they are on tour, or some kind of Arsène Wengeresque type quote, and we’ll have full deja vu on our hands.

It doesn’t look good for the new regime at the moment though does it? One of the reasons we’re all so glad to have seen the back of Ivan Gazidis was because he was a snivelling PR man who presided over a decline at Arsenal, made sure he got paid more and took a few hefty bonuses despite us getting worse on the pitch, then disappeared just in time enough before everyone realised just what a mess we’re in. The mess we’ve been left in by Gazidis and Wenger is still having to be ironed out and so much like all politicians there is still an element of Raul and Vinay being able to blame the previous regime for the problems of the now, but at the same time what we all need to see is a plan being executed.

All we’re seeing at the moment though is a team who aren’t able to get deals over the line and that’s a worry. We got served up the sound bites from Raul a few months ago that he has spoken to many representatives and people are still very keen on joining The Arsenal, but it doesn’t look like he’s got players falling at his doorstep just yet, does it?

I just hope he wasn’t just serving us PR spin when he did that interview on the official website a couple of months back. I hope he has some aces up his sleeve because right now it looks like we have a dud hand. It looks like we’re walking away from deals because there’s a million or two too much being asked and that smacks of the old days of penny pinching. Remember when we balked at signing Xabi Alonso for something like an extra £750k from Liverpool, but he then went to Real Madrid, and was brilliant for about four seasons? Yeah, that…

There’s not even chatter about players exiting at the moment, other than seeing that other clubs seem to be able to ask the earth for players and can offload quite easily. Quite how Tyrone Mings can fail at Bournemouth and they get £25million for him, yet Calum Chambers is player of the season for Fulham and we’re supposedly asking for £15million, is beyond me. Chambers should be on the list only if we get £30million plus but why do I feel like there’s no way that’ll happen? Shkodran Mustafi dropped into about Arsenal on his Instagram account yesterday or the day before and everyone is speculating about his exit, but why do I feel that we’ll make a massive loss on him, or he’ll end up going out on loan? And why the hell does nobody want to take Mkhi off us?

It’s a bit of a joke really but I guess it is what it is. We need to offload players and do it soon. Hopefully the club can announce some sort of news that shows things are happening before they all depart for the US tour later this week.

Catch you all tomorrow.