Morning people, hope you’re all doing well? It’s due to be a nice weekend here in London so I’m already in a good mood for a bit of sunshine. Whether or not we’ll get good Arsenal news remains to be seen. The only  news on the official site yesterday was that a young lad Amario Cozier-Duberry has signed professional terms with us now that he’s turned 17. Fair play to him, it’s a dream for any young kid who loves football like we all do, to sign for a big club. He’ll continue to get a great football education and regardless of whether he makes it, he’ll have ‘Arsenal player’ on his footballing CV and that in itself will probably be enough to secure him some kind of move somewhere else if he doesn’t continue his career with us beyond these current terms.

From a fan like me’s perspective however, it is little more than footnote news, because my interest is in the first team and as harsh as this sounds, unless you start hearing a players name by 18 it doesn’t usually end up with them breaking through. We have so many players at different youth levels and from that we get maybe one or two that actually make it to the men’s first team, so when I see news like that I think about how lucky the boy is to be living the dream of being a professional footballer, but I don’t expect to see him rocking up at the Emirates any time soon in a first team game. That’s because it’s so hard. Like being struck by lightning, it must be like a one in a million chance and if you think about the likes of Saka and Smith Rowe, both were making waves by 18 and getting some minutes. The fact I have never heard of Amario Cozier-Duberry suggests that he probably won’t break through any time soon and will probably end up somewhere else, but you never know. Some people blossom later in their career and I guess at 17 he still has the chance to do that. But I would be surprised.

The first team news that is reported is around the Lacazette return to Lyon but if I’m honest with you, I was done with him a while ago and him re-signing for Lyon doesn’t interest me. He is now a footnote in Arsenal’s long history and I like to look forward rather than back. Does that forward look like Osimhen? Maybe. There are some noises that Arsenal have made enquiries but that Napoli want €100million. I tweeted yesterday that if Man City want north of £50million for Gabriel Jesus then maybe we should look at other options, as it’s starting to feel expensive, so if I’m applying the same logic you have to say the same about Osimhen. He feels like a different type of player to Gabriel Jesus and Nketiah and so personally I am leaning towards him as an option for our attack if we only had one signing to choose from, but again €100million is way too much of a risk for a player who has never played in the Premier League. The Italian league is a very different beast to the Premier League and we were looking at Vlahovic for £60million in January, who ended up going to Juve and scoring 24 goals last season. Osimhen got 14 goals and Napoli want €100million? Feels waaaaay too steep to me so I hope if that’s the numbers they are being quoted then Arsenal should be thinking about walking away. Lautaro Martinez bagged 21 and if Inter are so keen on getting Lukaku back you’d think they might be open to selling him to make some cash. We’ve been linked and as long as they don’t want silly money then he might be worth a sniff. But again, if they’re talking similar figures as Napoli then we should probably look elsewhere.

Perhaps that’s just the mentalness of this summer though with strikers. Darwin Nunez from Benfica is supposedly on his way to Liverpool for €100million which, for a guy who has only played in the Portuguese league feels crazy to me as he is equally unproven. He’ll probably end up being a great signing for them but right now it looks like a gamble. The irony on the striker market right now is that the only one that hasn’t gone for rip off money is one of the best – Erling Haaland – going to one of the richest clubs that could probably afford to drop north of £100million on a striker.

So it seems this summer we are shopping in a market in which all of the big clubs are after centre forwards, which is unfortunate. Lewandowski wants to leave Bayern and will get a move, but won’t get a mega move at 33 I don’t think. I mean Transfermarkt has him at a value of £40million but who would pay that for a 33-year-old? Certainly not us I don’t think. Madrid maybe? But doubtful. This morning there are rumours they’ll get Kane in so if that comes off it’ll mean the Scum will need to go in to the market. City have just got their man from Dortmund. Liverpool are after Nunez as we said. Inter look interested in having Lukaku back but if that happens Chelski will want a striking option to come in. So in a summer in which our needs feel quite precise, we unfortunately appear to be at a point in which there are so many other clubs in a similar position. Which makes our hand a little weaker if we’re going in to competition with clubs who can offer Champions League football.

We will of course just have to see how this all plays out, but when there is suddenly so much demand for one type of player, it usually means there’s a lot of posturing before anything actually happens. If Arsenal are so hot on Gabriel Jesus and they are so close as so many journos are reporting, I just hope we just get on and do it and don’t want around all summer, only to pay the price that was originally quoted in the first place. We don’t have the luxury of being able to wait around for the right player, at the right place, at the right time, to just fall in to our laps.

Get it done early, Arsenal.

Catch you all tomorrow.