This might end up being a short one today, mainly on account of there being little to chew over from an Arsenal perspective, other than spurious rumours.

I saw talk yesterday that Arsenal won’t be accepting anything other than £50million from Aaron Ramsdale. Good. Whether or not we get that remains to be seen, but we signed him for around £24million I think, he established himself as a great goalkeeper in a side fighting for Champions League and then the title, so his stock should certainly have risen as a result of that. Admittedly it will have dipped a little because he didn’t play much last season, but he’s just featured for England in an international friendly and he’s going to the Euro’s despite not having played that much, which tells you that he is still held in high regard.

Transfermarkt has his value at €25million but that feels on the low side to me, plus they have his signing on value . He’s 26, still plenty of year’s in the tank and wherever he ends up he’ll be a very valuable asset for us. He is tied down to a long-term contract at The Arsenal as well and so for my money we should at an absolute minimum be looking at getting around or more than what we paid for him. If that means a club needs to pay between £25 – £30million, but Arsenal are setting a high bar through agent talk, then I think that would probably work out for all parties. Talk of Newcastle wanting him for £15million should be laughed off by anyone and everyone. The only way Arsenal should accept that is if ‘add ons’ consisted of a million quid for every game he plays for the first 15 games. Then sure, you can have him for £15million, chaps.

The other transfer rumours all seem to centre around players we’ve all already heard of. So there’s Zirkzee talk, there’s Onana talk, some Douglas Luiz stuff bubbling under the surface, but it all feels a little tentative to me. As soon as it starts becoming serious we’ll all know, but now it feels like there’s lot’s of agents doing lots of work in the background to hock their clients around. And given where we finished and how attractive the ‘project’ is at The Arsenal right now, you can understand why there would be plenty of players and agents dropping DMs to Edu on the down low. When you hear people like William Saliba talking about going to ‘war’ again with City next season, why would you not want to be part of a project that is aiming so high and has already been flying so high?

I gotta tell ya, I love this fighting talk from Big Bill. It’s what you want to hear as a fan and even as soon as that final whistle went against Everton on the last day of the season a few weeks ago, it feels like all of the players have been just gearing up to go again big in 2024/25. Martin Odegaard talked about it in his post match interview to the crowd on that final day; he talked about the fact he just wants to get back in to training again and go again and Saliba’s comments feel the same. Arteta has built a hunger in these boys that you just feel is so close to getting over the line and delivering silverware. Sure, it was disappointing to miss out and sure, it was clearly a crushing blow for those players to get so close and yet still not get over the line, but the energy and drive that this Arsenal team transmit gives me feelings that these guys won’t get their heads down. They want to go even further next season and I am all for that mentality.

We’ve even seen pictures of the likes of Gabriel Jesus dropping training videos and pictures in an effort to be ready for the new season. Personally I thought he was going in to have surgery to correct something on his knee, but hey, if that’s not the case and he just needs to get rest time, then fine. Although I’m not sure how getting yourself doing early training sessions this early in June is going to be the right kind of ‘rest’ that the doctors ordered mate! But at least the drive is there. Let’s hope we see more of it post the Euro’s and Copa America, because you just feel that we’re going to basically need to hit the ground running from day one next season to stand a chance of keeping up with 115 Charges FC.

Right, I’m going to leave it there for today, as there’s little else on. I might be doing a pod with James on the Same Old Arsenal tonight so keep your eyes peeled if you fancy listening in to a few Arsenal fans waffle on about…well…Arsenal, of course.

Back on here tomorrow with the usual ramblings. Have yourselves a good one.