Perhaps I should thank Gareth Southgate and the England team. I was starting to enjoy the Euro’s and international football in general, so good on him and his players to remind me just how turgid it is in general.

Last night was the first proper snooze fest of the competition and it reminded me of why I don’t bother watching England until tournaments, but even then I don’t put too much faith in them, because they’ll only disappoint you.

I am the closest I’ve come to being properly disappointed in England. Thankfully though I have been saved after watching a bore draw against the Scots.

So let’s get back to The Arsenal then, eh? Let’s focus on the more entertaining things in life and that is the stuff in red and white (and for next season that beautiful pale yellow), including the news coming out of a few respected sources that Kieran Tierney could be on the verge of signing a new five year contract. Now that’s a deal I can get behind and I don’t think there are many Gooners out there that would disagree. The only question surrounding the player is his fitness, but providing the Scot can stay for next season, then we’ll have our left back slot well covered indeed.

Perhaps the positive of reduced games and for large chunks of the season only playing once a week is that it will reduce the probability of him being overloaded and breaking down which will also increase the probability of us having a better season. When we were at our ‘best’ last season was when he was able to string together a series of games and when he was injured towards the end of the season we saw just how poor our other options were.

We still of course need an understudy for Tierney and the noises are that the club are looking at that. There’s been plenty of people bemoaning the links to Bertrand and I’ll admit it did anything but inspire me when I first heard about it, but if the club are looking for a one year ‘break glass in case of emergency’ type signing then I think I’d probably be ok with Bertrand coming in. That’s only on the proviso that Tierney basically plays all games and a player like Bertrand gets maybe five cup games in a season, tops. I like the idea of a young teenager coming through, but who is going to sign to only play a handful of games at Arsenal next season, given we don’t have European football?

Not any player worth their salt at 19 or 20, I don’t think, because at that age they are hungry for minutes. It’s why we have a situation where Eddie, Joe and Ainsley are probably going out the door; they all want to play and don’t want to see their careers pass by from the bench.

I also think – and have heard – that the reason why there is a question over the re-signing of Ryan is because of the lack of football, as the club really like the player but can’t guarantee him game time next season, so that’s why they haven’t already made the move. I wonder also how much of it is tied up to what they want to do with Onana. There is definite interest, we all know that, but he can’t play until November. The season starts in mid-August, is nine months long and if you have a player that can’t play until then it’s nearly a third of the season. that’s a long time to wait until you can tell him and Bernd Leno to duke it out between themselves. In an ideal world you’d want to get the Ajax ‘keeper in, have him available from September, then sell Leno next summer and get Ryan in on a free then (he has one year left on his deal so this season there would probably be a few). That’s if all of the pieces fall into place. But this is football and as we know there are always so many moving parts, so many variables at play, that the scenario I’ve just outlined above is almost guaranteed not to happen.

That’s about all I can see in terms of the Arsenal news today, although I have also seen that our first three games have been moved to televised matches now, which is a bit of a pain in the arse. The opener against Brentford is on the Friday night, the Chelski game a has been moved to Sunday and the City game to Saturday lunchtime. The latter two were always going to be moved to be televised, but it would have been nice to have started the season with a lovely old fashioned 3pm kick off. The Norwich game mid September hasn’t moved though, so let’s cross our fingers that it remains on the Saturday at the traditional time.

And with that I think I’ll wrap up for today. Have a good one and enjoy your Saturday.

Layers peeps.