Morning folks. How we all doing? We all pumped that yesterday Arsenal finally announced the arrival of Matty Turner from New England Revolution?

I think I am. I’ve certainly heard some good things about him and he seems like he’s a good enough guy. The ‘welcome’ video on the official site was lovely yesterday, as he talked about the dream of playing for The Arsenal, with some pictures of him in Arsenal kits as a kid. It’s always lovely when a fan becomes a pro and then joins a club he supported when he was little. He’s living the dream I – and maybe you – could never have.

It’s an affordable fee too by the sounds of it and with Bernd Leno expected to be off this summer, it addresses any cover issues before they become issues, so that’s good proactive work from the club in my opinion. We don’t want another Runarsson situation because that didn’t end well for anyone.

I have seen one or two suggestions that we’re downgrading our reserve goalkeeper, but I don’t think that’s the right way to look at it. Leno does not want to be a number two. He was  always going to leave this summer. The club knew that,  he knows that,  so we needed to find somebody else too. There is also some question marks about the money side of it. We paid north of £20million for Leno and he’ll probably leave for circa £10million if we are lucky. He’s still only 30 and so are we under selling once again? I’m not sure I buy that, because whilst the fee we get might be lower, let’s not forget that Leno will have been on a higher contract. Supposedly Leno is on around £100k-per-week and Turner – having signed for around £7million if you believe the numbers – will not be on anything near that. Even if it’s half that you’re talking an extra £2.6million saved a year from the wage bill. So this deal makes sense in every way to me.

The player himself will also want to prove himself because there is a World Cup later this year, meaning he’ll come in and challenge Ramsdale, looking to push him all the way. There’s nothing wrong with that competition and hopefully it will also elevate Ramsdale too. Turner will get minutes as well, now that we’re in Europe and so this side of Christmas you’d expect him to at least get seven games in the Europa League and League Cup. That’ll at least keep him ticking over should he be called upon for duties if Ramsdale gets injured or suspended.

So all in all, this is good work from the club.

But they want to keep pressing ahead with their work this summer it seems, as second bids for Raphinha and Martinez from Ahax have supposedly been tabled already. I admire the ambition, I really do,  but the Raphinha deal in particular has a whiff about it as I’ve said recently in other blogs. The noises from Barcelona aren’t going away and do you remember when Juventus couldn’t afford Vlahovic but somehow ‘found’ the cash for the player because that’s what his desire was? well, it seems to me like Barcelona is the preferred choice of Raphinha and they’d certainly like to have him. But their tactic of saying “can we have him for free please? After all,  we’re nice guys at Barcelona and play by the book” has fallen on deaf ears with Leeds it seems. They got away with murder getting Aubameyang for nothing, they’re trying to do the same with Lewandowski from Bayern, but it sounds like Leeds aren’t playing ball and fair play to them. They want their payday, Arsenal are prepared to pay that payday, so why even negotiate with the likes of Barcelona?

Of course the reason I say it has a ‘whiff’ is because I wonder if the Catalans will come with a Juve-style ‘deal’ which needs 10 years of payments on the ‘never-never’ and Raphinha tells Leeds he won’t go anywhere else. That could put them in a sticky situation but the hope – if Arsenal are desperate for him – is that our offer to Leeds is more compelling and acceptable on their terms to see the Spanish side just get shunned. The hope is that Arsenal have done enough in laying the ground work that the player himself is happy and has told Arsenal he’d love to sign.

Of course if he signs, bangs, then in two years time Barca come sniffing again, it  would be our problem and not Leeds, but hopefully if that happens it means he’s been successful and we’d get silly money from them.

But look at me  already projecting a players exit before he’s even signed! This is all just hypothetical nonsense so I should probably just leave well enough alone.

One that we are waiting on as close to being ‘done’ is Gabriel Jesus and  hopefully we get a medical and an announcement soon. I suspect given how we like to do absolutely everything including have the shirts modelled and the interviews done with the player before announcing, that we’ll have him on the official site towards the end of the week/weekend at the earliest. Arsenal might also want to spread out the announcement having  just announced the signing of Turner yesterday. That makes sense to me. Give the new lad a week at least before the fanfare over the next player coming in can begin. There will also probably be a big bit of noise for Gabriel Jesus too, as he’s the main man that we’ve chased for the most important and pressing position in the team. We have Nketiah but he’ll act as deputy to whoever the main man is and Gabriel  Jesus will be that guy. So there will be a lot of ‘content’ production happening as soon as the club announce him.

That’s yer lot from me today. Time to head in to the City for work, whilst frequently refreshing my Twitter feed to see if anything Arsenal-related breaks during the day.

Have a good one folks.