Happy Friday folks. For me it’s a Friday in which I am slightly worse for wear, on account of going to Wembley Stadium to see The Boss (not Mikel) bust out his tunes, so naturally I had a few beers whilst listening to Bruce Springsteen. I gotta tell you, felt a little weird being in there and not watching football, especially The Arsenal. But had fun, drank beer, enjoyed myself and now I’m back at my desk and tapping away before I start my working day.

When I blogged yesterday morning there wasn’t any soundbites that had came out of the game against Bournemouth. Probably because it was 8am UK time and the game itself finished only a few hours before, but since then we’ve had more info permeating through the ether from the club and the manager and I guess the saddest bit of news is that it looks like the Smith Rowe deal to Fulham is all but done. He said “there are things happening in the background” which is the closest you’re going to get to “he’s offski” and so I think we can take it as read that the deal will be finalised in the next few days. If it is the report £30million (all the talk has been ‘up to £35million when bonuses are factored in) then what it means is that, as an academy player, the club can bank all of the £35million as profit. It means that when you add the Biereth money too, we’re knocking on the doors of £35million incoming but because of the way the whole amortisation works, it effectively means that Raya would have cost £5.4million on the books (five year deal at £27million) and Calafiori will be around €45million, which is just under £38million, and if that’s a five year deal they’ll have amortised it to £7.6million over five years. So on the books Arsenal will have sold £35million and the outlay for this summer so far on those two players would be £13million. It means that they would effectively still have £17million of ‘on the books’ cash that they will be able to play with, which could even be an £85million signing if they really wanted to.

And that doesn’t take in to account the possibility of Eddie and Reiss leaving. Arteta wasn’t really very committal either way yesterday, but I suspect if there’s good enough money coming in, then Arsenal will move them on. A bit of squad renewal is no bad thing and if you’ve got something in the region of £30million for those two players (which if the reports are to be believed then that’s on the low side), as a club Arsenal could very well afford to spend £150million amortised over the five years to help balance the books.

I suspect that won’t happen, I don’t think it needs to happen, but when you think about it like that there’s plenty of wiggle room should Arteta want and need to splurge on a specific position.

For the manager now he and his team prep for Man United and Erik ‘we don’t do friendlies’ Ten Haag. Arteta was asked about how we improve and grow next season and I thought it was interesting that he highlighted restarts, set pieces and minutes shared across the team. I think that’s probably an admission that he should have rotated a wee bit more than he did and I also thinks it goes to show why he’s looked at the Calafiori deal as a priority first signing. We have some fragile players at left back and so he needs more options. This deal bolsters that. Smith Rowe going will almost certainly trigger an incoming, because we do need players to cover multiple positions throughout the season, so you could see the club doing the Merino deal pretty sharpish after all the I’s are dotted and the T’s are crossed. As it stands our midfield options are:

  • Number six:
    • Partey
    • Jorginho
    • Rice
  • Right eight:
    • Odegaard
    • Fabio Vieira
    • Trossard (at a real push)
  • Left eight
    • Rice
    • Havertz
    • Trossard (again, at a push)

That feels light to me. Especially when we’ve seen Havertz play better in at false nine and Trossard feels like a ‘break glass in case of emergency’ player. Nwaneri looks like he can play in either of those eight roles and for the under-21s he’s played in as an attacking midfielder or a right winger. It feels like giving him a go in League Cup games to rest Saka could be a good option, but I don’t think we should be looking at calling a kid who turned 17 in March this year a viable first team rotation option just yet. So we’ll need to get somebody in and that’s why I think they pull the trigger on Merino as soon as ESR is off.

Then it comes down to attacking options and I think Arteta will be saying that if Eddie and Reiss goes, he needs another option. Arsenal fans have been getting pretty pumped about the idea of Nico Williams from Bilbao, but I don’t see him coming in personally. Feels like a Barcelona sell-another-training-ground-and-future-naming-rights type deal to me. Plus he’ll be wanting to start and where does that leave Trossard and Martinelli? He won’t play where Saka plays, but he can play there, but he’d be wanting to start straight away in at left wing and I just don’t see him displacing Trossard in the short term. Maybe Martinelli moves more centrally, but I’m just not sure of that just yet.

Anyway, it’s just food for Friday thought for now. and on that note, I’ll stop at the keyboard tapping (on Arsenal-related stuff, anyway) and get on with some work.

You have yourselves a good one, yer’ hear?