Well it was always going to happen, wasn’t it?

Last night Man City laid their cards on the table with an official bid for Declan Rice, following a weekend in which we’d been told they intended to, but they hadn’t yet. We’ve also had a weekend of hearing that the players’ preference was The Arsenal. That brought a lot of ease to many of us and the social media world was a little more chilled than it had been last week. But then yesterday evening Ornstein confirmed a Man City bid for the player of £80million plus £10million in add-ons and the game was truly afoot.

As we know, City can go as high as they want to and we can’t, which means that West Ham rejecting this bid suggests they want that £100million for the player who is their captain and talisman. Arsenal will have their valuation in mind and I think we’re probably nearing ‘endgame’ with regards to this transfer saga. That’s because City will either come back in with another large figure (probably close to £100million), or Arsenal will walk away if the fee proposed is felt to be too much for what West Ham are asking for.

My gut feel is that Arsenal go again one more time, probably closer to the £100million mark, then if that is rejected they walk away and start to look at other options. We can’t go toe-to-toe with a nation state. It won’t end well for us.

The fact City have bid at all suggests they have a green light from the players side, which also means that our bargaining power might be a little weaker than we thought. We’ve all seen the reasons why going to Arsenal could be more attractive, but at the end of the day money talks and City do a lot of talking with their money. They don’t place a bid in if they don’t think the player will join them. I’ve seen a few people online suggest that this could be just to drive up Arsenal’s price, but I don’t think they would do that. Declan Rice is a very good player and City want him to improve their team, not just to eek an extra £20million out of Arsenal so West Ham get some more cash. That’s not how this works. We just have to wait for that Ornstein tweet which confirms Arsenal’s third bid and I suspect that will probably happen in the next 24 hours. The City bid will – I’m sure – have been something Arsenal were anticipating, but it will now be all on whether or not that next one hits the spot from the Hammers’ perspective.

The fee is weird though. The media were calling out Arsenal’s offers – club record offers by the way – as ‘derisory’ and all of that jazz. Now City have come in with a slightly different structure and we’re not getting nearly as much backlash. Ornstein reported this morning that West Ham were ‘unimpressed’ with the City bid, so they are clearly briefing the media on this whole situation. That is their wont. They are determined for this to play out publicly so the two best teams in the league last season duke it out and spiral the price out of proportion. City going in for a bid like they have done shows that they and Arsenal aren’t fully committed to just smash the British transfer fee record for nothing. City did it a couple of season’s ago with Jack Grealish and of course they could do it again, but whether they will or not is interesting.

The next few days will go a long way to determining where we are from a transfer perspective I think. There’s also an expectation of the Havertz deal being done with some leaked pictures of him in an Arsenal shirt yesterday emerging. Plus the Timber deal is also apparently progressing along nicely. It could be a busy week.

And all because I’m on holiday 😉

Right, I’m going to stop for today as there’s little else on and I am beginning to feel like I’ve started to repeat my writing by constantly talking about those three players. I’m off to go and sit by the pool and drink mojito’s.

Catch you all tomorrow.