Hey kids, how we all doing then, eh? Getting impatient about the lack of Timber and Rice announcements? Yeah, I am kinda too, but there’s so much leaking out at the moment that the club are sure to do something today I reckon. We had Jurrien Timber’s brother posting a picture of the player in an Arsenal shirt on a big post saying ‘goodbye party’, which pretty much let’s the cat out of the bag, then we had somebody saying they spotted Rice at an airport, no doubt on his way to join up with the Arsenal team as they flew off to Germany this weekend just gone.

Of course all of these are ‘unconfirmed’ reports, but we all know it is basically done, so now we’re just waiting on the official fanfare from the club.

And as a marketing person myself, I have to say I have a degree of sympathy for the PR, social and marketing teams at The Arsenal. Because they’ve probably put together something really slick, had a great plan all lined up, maybe something quite funny / innovative, that all they want to do is get right before releasing to the masses, only for constant drips of information and social media posts work to lessen the impact of their efforts. So much so that we’ll all be a little desensitised to the announcement, when we should all be amazed by how it has happened.

But the team are in Germany at the moment and we saw a video and some pictures of the players on the plane over the weekend. It’s a mixture of first teamers and some of the younger players too and I suspect Thursday’s game against Nurnberg will see a ‘half and half’ approach in which Arteta gives those young players an opportunity to step up alongside the bigger first team names.

In our ‘One in, one out, one bangs’ series we’re doing on the Same Old Arsenal pod, Mike McDonald put down a youth player as an outside bet for a player that ‘bangs’ in the shape of Reuell Walters and whilst I think he’s going to struggle to get game time given how many options we now have in defence for this coming season, it will be interesting to see what the club does with him. He’s used predominantly as a right back, he’s only 18, he’s got a chance to impress on tour this summer, but realistically how much game time is he going to get? If you think  about the squad as it is right now, we’ve got White, Tomiyasu, now Timber and of course there’s Cedric who is still technically an Arsenal player (even if I think we could probably all agree that his days are probably numbered). In a squad in which he would be third choice you’d think maybe a lower league team in the League Cup, or FA Cup in January, might be an option, but with the fact we’re bringing in a Dutch international for £34million who can also play in that position, it feels as though he might need to look elsewhere in the immediate future to get some game time.

But that’s not to say he doesn’t have a chance at The Arsenal, by the way, because if he goes off on loan this season coming and absolutely nails it, then maybe there’s a chance for him. It’s probably less likely right now, but you never know.

We have the same situation with Brooke Norton-Cuffy too. He’s done half a season at Lincoln, half a season at Rotherham, then half a season towards the end of last season at Coventry, in which I think he impressed and he even played in the playoff final against Luton. He’s now played 41 times in the Championship, three playoff games, 17 times in League One and at 19 he’s building a pretty good CV for himself. It feels like he’s a guy who needs a Premier League batch of games but that way – like Walters – is going to be blocked at The Arsenal, so how about a loan to a team lower down the league?

I haven’t really heard much in terms of that happening, but he’s a very talented young player for whom a Premier League season to see if he cuts the mustard could be good for everyone involved. It would be good for him because at 19 he’d be in one of the most difficult leagues in the world, but also good for us because we get to see if a) he can do the business at the highest level (because we all know of the jump up between Championship and Premier League), or if not then b) we can have him in the shop window so we can make some money from a potential sale.

The club have tended to do pretty good out of loan deals of late too, particularly with young players, I think. I mean, yeah, we’ve had a few that haven’t worked out like Cedric at Fulham, Pepe at Nice and Tavares at Marseille, but those players were all established first team stars, not the younger players with the hunger to cut their teeth. We’ve just seen the benefit of Balogun’s loan to France and the season before we saw how Saliba’s move to Marseille did him – and ultimately us – the world of good. So maybe we need to have another go at that with Walters and Norton-Cuffy?

Whether or not that happens, or some of the other players on tour also getting a loan move, remains to be seen. But the good news is we seem to be blessed with a fair few young players who have the ability, talent as well as desire to succeed and that hunger could manifest itself as quite a production line for us.

It’s great that Arsenal is such a desirable place to be right now too. We’ve got players desperate to keep their place in a squad that is young, hungry and full of talent and as a fan it is such an exciting time. I haven’t been this excited for a pre season in ages.

Right, that’s me done for today. For a little bit more bonus content, here’s Amanda talking on the Same Old Arsenal podcast last night as part of her ‘Talking Arsenal’ series we’re running over the summer. Catch you all tomorrow.