Morning folks, hope you’re all doing well?

There’s very little Arsenal stuff to speak about right now that we haven’t already talked about, so instead I guess I’ll have to relent and talk about international football. I mean, I’d rather not, but given that today is the start of the Euro’s, I guess I have no choice.

I was in Munich at the beginning of May as they were gearing up for the tournament and I have to say even then I did enjoy seeing the vibes about the place as posters went up, etc. It doesn’t mean that I’m going to be all turned around on the subject of international football, but in the absence of The Arsenal I guess it’s a temporary sticking plaster until we get back to the real stuff.

As for me, it’s times like this that I’m glad I get to call on a varied family lineage, with a half-German, half-Dutch Grandmother who we used to call ‘Oma’ when she was alive. It means I get to put a foot in three camps: England, Nederland and Deutschland. And weirdly, it’s England who appear to have the best odds – although I suspect that’s because of people lumping on for England from this country, because when you start to look at the pundits there appears to be a lot of very sensible people voting for the French. They do have the strongest squad I think and when you look at their probable line up if they include the beast that is Big Bill Saliba, then they’ll be hopeful of going all the way I suspect.

England have a decent squad too and should be looking at getting to a decent position if they win their group, but they have the complete muppet Gareth Southgate in charge who will almost inevitably screw it up with a complete lack of tactical nous, ending up with England finishing second in the group and then most likely getting knocked out in the round of 16 to the Germans who I think will win their group. If that happens my allegiances will thankfully switch to Der Mannschaft and when you look at their possible route to the final if they win the group, you’d probable fancy them to go deep. The Dutch have a group with Poland and France in and I can see them finishing second in it, which should mean they’ll get a Slovakia or Ukraine I would have thought, then after that I think it’ll be Portugal, who I think will win their group and meet the Dutch in the quarter finals. Portugal are a funny team because they have some good players, they have some talent and you never know if they might be dark horses, but usually they just fall short and that’s my expectation this year too.

If I’m picking a final I’m probably going for the pedigree of the likes of A Germany versus France final; both teams have pedigree and good players who can hurt you. It’ll mean Saliba versus Kai and that’ll be a nice little one-on-one match up with a little Arsenal narrative we can hold on to if that’s how it pans out.

Unfortunately for me, in my work sweepstake, I got Turkey and if they win the thing I think I’ll grow myself some magic beans to go and visit the giant in the cloud somewhere. It doesn’t matter what company I’m in or who I’m doing a sweepstake with, I think I always get a team that has absolutely no chance of progressing to the latter stages. It’s £2 I’ll never see again but I guess it is partially for charity so I won’t be too bitter. Much.

And that’s really it from me for today I think. I did a ‘one in, one out, one to bang’ last night with my old friends Harry Symeou and Mike McDonald on the Same Old Arsenal podcast, so if you fancy having a listen for a quick Arsenal fix you can do so here to see who they chose as their choices to join, exit and explode next season.

Have a good Friday peeps and I’ll be back tomorrow with some more Saturday musings.

Laters potatoes.