Happy Monday folks, we all good?

It’ll no doubt be a Riccardo Calafiori-infused week for us ahead of the Liverpool game and I’m sure that no sooner have I hit ‘publish on today’s ramblings, that they club will have announced his arrival. I guess it doesn’t matter too much; we’ve said all there is to say about this guy and we know all there is to know after the deal has taken what feels like an eternity. The first time we all heard about it was during the Euro’s which was almost a month ago, but in summer transfer terms that’s almost an eternity. Then the focus will turn to the next shiny thing, another one which we’re all familiar with which will be Mikel Merino. €20million for a Spanish international seems like pretty good business to me, but I’m just not sure how much he ‘moves the needle’ as they say. By all accounts he looks like a decent player, he wins duels, he scores some goals, but he’s not a progressive passer and he’s just come off a peak season in which he played 45+ matches. He wouldn’t get that at The Arsenal and so I’m wondering what our expectations of him as a fan would be?

For me he doesn’t massively excite me, if I’m honest. I was recently up in the North East with The Management’s family and I got chatting to her uncle, who is a Newcastle fan, where Merino spent a season. Apparently he was bought by Rafa in the season that Benitez then left the club, so was in limbo and that’s why he was eventually sold the following summer. He didn’t seem to have anything bad to say about him, he was a decent player, tidy on the ball, but it hardly got me out of my seat with excitement. The fee is such that I guess it doesn’t really matter if it works or not, but if Merino is coming in to replace the vacant spot that Smith Rowe is about to leave, I’m not sure how much of a massive upgrade that really is.

But perhaps that’s because I have my Hale End rose-tinted specs on; Smith Rowe is much loved by the fans, but he’s also one of those players who is easy on the eye. He’s good running with the ball at his feet, he does score goals, plus we all have a relationship with him because he has played for us for years. Merino comes in with many of us fans not knowing a massive amount about him and with expectations of filling the Smith Rowe void. The reality is that he’ll be a different type of player to Smith Rowe and we’ll all have to get used to that. By the sounds of it he’s an off-the-ball merchant, which was one of the failings in ESRs game and probably why he didn’t get as many minutes. Merino wins balls and is good off the ball, he feels like your archetypal Arteta midfielder that he loves and wants to see in his team.

To be fair what we want from our left eight is somebody who knits the play, who wins duels, who bags a few goals, but doesn’t have to get in to double figures. If Merino came in, scored five or six goals in the season, did a passable job of Granit Xhaka, we’d probably all be reasonably satisfied. But for some reason, I don’t know why, I am just not 100% sold on this as a potential signing. It doesn’t feel very sexy to me. But I have to admit neither did Havertz. In fact, I was dead against it right up until it became obvious that it was happening, so I’d have to support him. But last summer I was frustrated that we were signing a player who when deployed as a striker didn’t score goals, then when deployed as a midfielder didn’t really seem to create goals. What we all know now is how Kai has been for us in so many different parts of his game that are suited to our style of play. And besides, he ended up bagging 14 goals last season anyway, so he did his job in the scoring stakes too.

So I’m open to the idea of Merino coming in and being flipping good.

Other than that there isn’t tonnes of stuff going on for this Monday morning musing. I’ve seen some noises about how Forest want Ramsdale on loan for the season without any obligation to buy, but Arsenal should be scoffing at that. That feels very much like a WhatsApp message where you get the two blue ticks, you know the other person has read the message, but they aren’t responding. We’ve blue ticked them but unless they’re going to come back by saying they’ll give us £10million loan fee as well as pay his wages for the year, then maybe it’s worth Arsenal countenancing it. But unless they do something special with their loan offer, I think we should reject out of hand.

That’s it for today I think. Let’s see what comes out in the wash re: Calafiori today and then maybe either today or tomorrow we’ll get some noises about his signing just before the Liverpool game on Wednesday. It’s a beautiful day today so I’ll be looking to spend some of it outside I think. Have yourselves a good one, whatever you’re doing, and I’ll be back tomorrow. Laters.