Morning folks, how we all doing on this fine looking Monday, eh?

I decided to go for a little bit of ribeye steak last night with homemade triple cooked chips and, as a result, drank a little too much Napa Valley red before going to bed and having to get up early this morning for a run. Exorcising the demons didn’t feel great at 6am, let me tell you that much; but I’ve got the endorphins in my system all fired up now and I’m excited about The Arsenal.

That’s because on Saturday about four hours after I blogged, we announced Declan Rice was confirmed and as a result my Saturday afternoon was spent absorbing just about every piece of content I could possibly lay my hands on. Videos, podcasts, blogs, opinion pieces, pictures and interviews on the official site, the lot. I was immersed. And despite the fact we’ve all spoken and read about a billion things on the internet with regards to this transfer, it still gets you giddy when you see the player himself in red and white.

Then later on Saturday I saw the Athletic deep dive on how the transfer went down and I gotta tell ya, it got me even more excited, because it opened the lid a little on the importance of the Rice deal not just for the way we are going to line up next season, but also how it impacts other plans, like the arrival of Kai Havertz. I think we’ve all been given a little glimpse of where Havertz is going to play, but when you read things like that you start to realise that actually, this is all part of a very coherent strategy; we are no longer scrabbling around trying to find a David Luiz because Laurent Koscielny has gone on strike at the club. We aren’t desperate to bring in a Demba Ba on transfer deadline day because we’ve left ourselves a little too short in attack. We have our targets, we have our plans, we want everyone ‘on board’ by the summer tour and we want to get those players knowing exactly how they are setting up from day one of the Premier League in a few weeks time.

The players departed yesterday for the summer tour and the squad that was announced was a pretty strong one to be fair. No place for the likes of Nwaneri or Lewis-Skelly and only Cozier-Duberry is a player who has joined the team on the plane from the youth set up. The rest are more senior pro’s, although Alex Runarsson has joined the travelling squad, probably because we needed three ‘keepers and Turner isn’t around at the moment as he was on international duty.

No place for Cedric or Pepe though, so I would assume that pretty much all but confirms that they’ll both be looking to find clubs elsewhere in the coming weeks. There were some noises a few weeks back about how Cedric wants to fight for his place and I’m sure with the vibe at the club right now that is of course the case that he’d feel that, but if you’re not being including on tours like this then you surely must know that your card is marked and you might as well find somewhere that you will get regular game time. I doubt we’ll get any decent money for either of those players, but this is the biggest indication that we’re looking to move on players. There will be clubs out there willing to take a punt, although not for any real value and if you look at Pepe as an example, you’d think we’d be hard pressed to get more than £10 – £15million for a player who cost us £72million just four years ago.

The other absence that I thought was interesting – and potentially telling – was Thomas Partey not being with the team. There was a note saying that Partey and Smith Rowe are set to link up with the squad later in the week, but I wonder if that is because there is some smoke behind the fire of the rumoured interest from Saudi Arabia? Partey played in Nurnberg and he’s clearly somebody that Arteta is happy to use. We all know he tailed off a little towards the end of the season but you can’t just dismiss a guy who has been one of our transformative players in recent seasons (when fit) and although I’ve seen some Arsenal fans suggest that with Rice we may not need him any more, I’m not sure I can fully get behind that line of thinking now.

If, however, he’s looking to make that megabucks move and there is something going on, then it makes sense why he wouldn’t be travelling with the squad this week because there’s been no noises about a potential injury. Odegaard and Trossard picked up knocks in Germany but they have both travelled, so Partey must surely be talking about a big money move. And you’d expect the only way Arsenal are letting him have those conversations are if we are getting a pretty decent fee for the guy. If you’re talking about recouping all of the £45million outlay we spent on him, for example, then you have to be looking at that as a deal that has to be done.

The key though will be in ensuring that we have cover. Could that be Lavia? Liverpool are sniffing around him but haven’t made a move, so if Arsenal were to be pushing for this Partey exit then you’d wonder if we’d move quickly to see if we could get that done. But it feels like a lo of ducks have to be lined up for that to happen, so we’ll have to wait and see.

That’ll be me for today I think. We’ll be continuing our series on Wednesday this week with our ‘one in, one out, one bangs’ on Wednesday night for the Same Old Arsenal podcast and I’ll post a link to where you can watch that tomorrow. Until then, you guys have yourselves a good one and I’ll catch thee all in the morrow.