This might be a short one today, as I seem to have amassed a whole bunch of work I have to do first thing this morning (both ‘work work’ and life admin) that has meant I’ve got about 12 minutes to pen some thoughts before I go in to the first meeting of the day.

Not that there’s a lot going on, to be fair, because we’re on the verge of the Euro’s kicking off and then a week later it’s the Copa America. So if you’re a football fan and you’re starting to break out in hives because you haven’t had your fix, you’re about to get an overdose. It’ll start on Friday with Germany taking on Scotland at 8pm, then we kick off a week or so of games every few hours starting at 2pm, then 5pm, then 8pm, which will basically run like that until Wednesday 26th June with those group stages. But just in case that isn’t enough, from 1am in the morning on 21st June the Copa America will keep people going and the matches for that tournament go on at 11pm, 1am and 2am UK time. So basically you can watch football for 12 hours straight if you really want to.

I like having it on in the background and I’ll watch England and Germany games (family ties to Germany, you see), but other than that it’ll be a case of watch whatever is convenient. For me it’s always interesting to see who the stand out players are that are going to have their prices inflated, or how The Arsenal players are getting on. It’s funny though because four or five years ago I used to even get worried about the psychological damage that would happen to an Arsenal player who see’s his team get knocked out, which let’s face it will be 95% of the players from the club who actually go to the tournament. But Now that we’ve had back-to-back season’s in the Premier League in which we’ve actually competed for the title, I feel less worried about it. Winning breeds confidence and also given that when the tournament is over the players return back in to that environment in which they’ve shown what a good team and great set of players we have, I’m pretty sure they’ll be able to get back in to the cadence of being an Arsenal player rather than an international player.

It speaks volumes too that so many of them also seem excited to go back to The Arsenal when these tournaments do eventually end. We’re in a good place as a club and we all need to recognise that. We’ve got a good squad, good players, all young enough that for many the expectations is that even if we did nothing in the transfer window this summer, we should still have a side good enough to compete at the top. That’s a nice feeling I have to say. So many year’s of thinking we’re miles off, of needing to pull some sort of transfer rabbit out of a hat – or multiple rabbits – has been replaced by many of my Arsenal mates saying that we’re in a good space and that they trust the club. That’s a nice feeling, eh?

There’s some stuff about the Real Madrid ‘keeper Andry Lunin and with Courtois coming back and then playing at the end of the season and in the Champions League final, clearly he’ll be looking at his situation and thinking that now he’s had a taste of playing all season, he’ll want more substantial game time. Unless Arteta is going to do another ‘mega pivot’ and sign this guy with a review to binning off Raya (not completely out of the questions I think we’d all agree!), I think it’s an unlikely situation. He’s 25, he’s had a taste of first team football, if we sign Raya (nothing suggests we won’t) then dropping at least another £20million on this Ukrainian chap feels a little spurious to me. We’d kind of find ourselves in a similar situation to Ramsdale and Raya, only this time it would be an extra non-home grown space taken up in the squad.

And given that this is the only real story that’s emerged in the last 24 hours, I think I’ll leave it there for today. We’ve got our next ‘one in, one out and one bangs’ tonight with Harry Symeou and Mike McDonald at 7.30pm, so if you fancy joining me then you can do so here.