Morning Gooners, how we all doing?

I haven’t been sleeping well. Combination of stuff at work, some drinking, but also thinking about The Arsenal. On that last point I’m sure you can empathise.

We’re back on the Declan Rice trail today and yesterday I hadn’t seen the quotes from David Sullivan in the morning, but I certainly read them by the afternoon, as he admitted on TalkSport yesterday that they had told him they will allow him to leave. They have just come off of the biggest high in many West Ham fans’ living memory and although beforehand David Moyes was keeping his cards close to his chest, Sullivan has kind of let the cat out of the bag with his statement.

On the one hand it is good; it is pretty much out in public now that Rice wants to leave, with Sullivan even admitting that he turned down £10million to stay at West Ham. This isn’t a money play. Which is really positive from an Arsenal point of view. This is clearly about convincing Rice that he’s about to join a team who is on the up, he can win more trophies with, that he can fulfill his career ambitions. From an Arsenal perspective, we’ve shown we’re going in the right direction, we’ve shown that we are progressing rapidly and with the young team that we’ve got, the hope is that we can only get better. We have all of the carrots to dangle in front of the England midfielder.

But maybe what Sullivan has done is clever, because maybe he has just intentionally set up this for a bidding war. He’s given the player the green light to go and that will alert all of the clubs interested. Arsenal of course, but we know Chelsea have held an interest, as have Man United and Bayern Munich. If Arsenal want to avoid this becoming a saga, I’m sure ideally they want to move quickly on this now. United are still in the midst of takeover talk and maybe that might stop them from going hard on somebody like Rice, but let’s not forget just what a corporate juggernaut they are. If they want to sign somebody like Rice then maybe a takeover will have little impact if the plans have been identified. Is United a more attractive option than Arsenal right now? I guess that is a moot point if United slap £120million down for Rice. I’d be surprised if Arsenal went for that and so this could all be an irrelevance; Rice may prefer The Arsenal, but we all saw what happened with Mudryk and I think as fans we’re probably a little more de-sensitised now. Or at least I’d hope so, and I’d hope that we could quickly pivot away from Rice should silly money come in and blow us away.

We have to thank the club for that, because the faith we all have in Arteta and Edu is such that if Rice gets taken away from us, we can quickly pivot to another option, much like we did with Trossard and Jorginho in the January window. Ok, they were a little more short term as signings, but both have worked out well and I think most Arsenal fans were happy with their contribution. They didn’t get us over the line in the end last season, but I think that was more to do with other injury problems we had rather than those two players not doing the business for us in the end.

But back to the Rice situation and I do wonder how quickly this might play out. It really isn’t in West Ham’s interest to just get a deal done quickly I don’t think. Arsenal will supposedly come in with a £92million bid that is expected to be rejected, but West Ham have to make sure they don’t leave it too late to get in replacements and spend the money they receive. I do take heart in Sullivan’s comments because it seems he’s really fond of Rice, he appreciates that he’s stuck around and he’s even captained them to their first trophy in over half a century. I don’t want to seem like I’m reading in between the lines too much, but it feels like Sullivan wants to do right by the player, which if true and if Arsenal is his preferred option, you’d hope that the outcome would be that a deal could be done and not for an over-the-top price. West Ham getting close to £100million feels like a lot, but if we have to pay it then I guess we have to pay it. They get a big chunk of change, we get our man, all parties can shake hands and we all look forward to next season.

There’s also a little bit of me that hopes that the price for players softens a little too, with Arsenal being able to point to Jude Bellingham for £88.5million as an example, I would hope. Bellingham is a little bit more of a poster boy compared to Rice as he plays in an advanced position, so Madrid getting him for that fee means that we should be looking for a similar amount for Rice I reckon. Especially as he only has one year left on his deal. West Ham can trigger it, but they’ve also admitted that they are happy to let him leave this summer. A sensible compromise can surely be reached.

But this is football. And as we know, ‘sensible’ doesn’t always happen, especially at the top level and where transfers are involved.

Right – that’s me done for the day. There’s a long day of work ahead before the weekend can be enjoyed.

Catch you all tomorrow.