Is this the weirdest Arsenal summer ever? Even so the Europa plan sounds fun.

Posted on by Billy The Dog

By Dr Billy “the dog” McGraw

Now this is getting seriously weird.  I mean, for years the summers have been first odd, then strange, then very strange, then weird, but now this.  This is, well, probably seriously weird is not enough.  Which ever way you look at it.

The BIG story for weeks and weeks and weeks has been the Hector Bellerin is going to Barcelona, and there is nothing that Arsenal can do about it.

“Arsenal transfer news: Hector Bellerin open to Barcelona move” – Goal

“Hector Bellerin wants to go to Barcelona but feels tied to Arsenal”  Sun

“Hector Bellerin welcomes Barcelona move for family”  Metro

Yes he really really really was going and he even bought a house.  “Hector Bellerin wants to join Barcelona” and “Bellerin really DOES want to go to Barcelona!”

And on and on and on.   Whether it was the newspapers, or the little bloggettas smothered in adverts that the newspapers have set up to try and give themselves a bit of extra cash, the story was everywhere, until… suddenly it wasn’t.  There was a desultory attempt to round the story off with

“Barcelona hand Arsenal ace Hector Bellerin ultimatum” in the Star and “Barcelona give Arsenal star Hector Bellerin an ultimatum in the idiotic Sun, and then finally they all gave up.  And it seems what we knew all along was true.  He is staying – of course.

Meanwhile Tottenham Hotspur have made no signings at all.  Untold wrote a piece about that and a lot of Tottenham fans wrote in saying it was the most balanced piece on the topic of the Tottenham team and its present position, and how weird it was written by a Gooner.

Then Tottenham, still without any signings seem to be selling the player who played the 7th most number of minutes for the club last season – Kyle Walker.  And yes he is a fine full back.   But is he worth £53m, making him world’s most expensive defender and the most expensive English player?

Meanwhile after six weeks of frantic bidding for Mbappe by Arsenal, rising to something like £120m, it turns out Arsenal have never made a single bid for the player.

Now in the face of all this you might expect that nothing much is going to be believed in terms of anything the newspapers and the bloggettas come up with – but no.  The story is out that Alexis and Wenger have been corresponding by text and through this means Mr Wenger has got an agreement with Alexis that he will stay at Arsenal!!!!

Plus there was the story that Santi Cazorla was finished, and would not play again – at least not in the coming season.   And Wenger was such a dolt because he had not bought a new player but was in fact going to rely on the kids!!!!!

A story eventually countered by a picture of Santi working out in the gym.

But actually that is not the oddest bit of the story.  No, the oddest bit is that people believe this.

And all the way through this, more and more names are put into the hat for new transfers coming to Arsenal, plus as per last year, virtually the whole of the current squad is ready to get up and leave.  Koscielny, for example, is going, because he can’t stand Arsenal any more.  And that was just the start.

And this problem arises just at the time when the one difficulty Arsenal have is the one that virtually none of the pundits and blogs – even the blogs not controlled by the newspapers – want to talk about.

Which is the point that Arsenal have too many players.  The issue isn’t who we are bringing in, but who we leave out of the 25 players list.   So the Koscielny could have been made to look realistic by using that point – but the writers of the story were so ****ing lazy they couldn’t be arsed to think up that connection.

So far in the summer friendlies we have used as starters in one game Ospina, Koscielny, Elneny, Monreal, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Ramsey, Xhaka, Maitland-Niles*, Iwobi*, Lacazette, Giroud starting the first game (that is nine players counting towards the 25.  The youngsters have asterisks.)

In the first game we started with Martinez, Mertesacker, Kolasinac, Bielik*, Bramall, Coquelin, Willock*, Nelson*, Ozil, Nketiah*, Walcott (six more over age players).

That’s 16 over age players plus Cech who is not in those lists makes it 17 plus nine players in the list below – players who are over 21 but not playing at the moment.

Alexis Sanchez, Shkodran Mustafi, Jack Wilshere , Gabriel, Rob Holding, Calum Chambers, Hector Bellerin, Joel Campbell, Santi Cazorla, Jeff Reine-Adelaide*

That gives us 26 – the perfect number plus one.  Someone has to go – and indeed more than one if we bring in another player.  And I am already discounting the players who have not made the trip to Australia because they are clearly not part of the club’s future plans.

So you might think the issue would be who has to be dropped – but no – it is about buying more and more and more players.  And you know what will happen next – it will be a crisis at Arsenal because WE ONLY SIGNED TWO PLAYERS.  And we only signed two players because Arsenal are so slow.

Meanwhile Liverpool and the League are deeply embroiled in one of the biggest scandals to hit the PL for years over the illicit tapping up of a youngster and a (so far denied) attempt to fake the evidence, with a parliamentary enquiry into the doings of both Liverpool and the League promised for September.  But that is hardly mentioned!

Elsewhere Manchester City are involved in a hearing before the Court for Arbitration in Sport which could possibly lead to a transfer ban for them.   And no one is covering that.

Sneaking in between all this is an apparent story to the effect that Arsenal are planning to solve the problem of the overload of the number of players in the squad by playing younger players in the Europa as well as in the League Cup.   Which judging by the way they have been playing in their first couple of games of the summer tour could mean we’ll win both.

Maitland-Niles, Iwobi, Martinez, Bielik, Bramall, Willock, Nelson, Nketiah, Holding, Chambers, Reine-Adelaide… supplement with a few older heads and that allows the youngsters every chance to develop and mature into Arsenal first team players.  And they’ll have two competitions to play in.

It really is a bit of a funny old summer.

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24 Replies to “Is this the weirdest Arsenal summer ever? Even so the Europa plan sounds fun.”

  2. Blooding young players could be one of the unexpected benefits of the Europa Cup,, some may take their chance to shine and be ready should injuries and suspensions hit

  3. Now you have news that Alexis wants champions league football which is euphemism for let me go as reported by some local newspaper in Chile.

  5. The Europa League is a strange tournament and trophy for me. Its a tourney for the teams that failed miserably last season PLUS a torney for the teams that fail miserably in the Champions League this year. Like Chelsea did when they won it, if u finnish 3rd in a group u shouldnt be able to win a trophy!!! For me Europa League is the loosers cup and I really hope we will not use many of our most important players in this cup. I will support the team in every match, but I hope this will be 6-10 matches for our 2nd string players. And I really hope that if the youngsters play and qualify from the group stage, then they should keep playing in the cup rounds that follow. It should be like the league for for some 10 or so years ago when we started a 2nd string side in the final of the league cup against Drogba’s Chelsea. We have a stubborn manager and he might actually do it, like he did when he kept Ospina in the team in the FA-cup final in may.

  6. Edda1971
    ‘We have a stubborn manager’

    Wenger is the manager and is paid to make decisions, the team functions and plays in the way he wants. He does it his way which as manager he is entitled to do so why do you say he is stubborn, by what criteria is he stubborn. If he is stubborn then so are all the other managers.
    Sorry but this stubborn shit really annoys me.

  7. Apart of the six youngsters of: Martinez, Chambers, Maitland-Niles, Iwobi, Reine-Adelaide,( but is he okay now?) and Holding who have emerged in the past one to three seasons, the Arsenal Australian pre-season two game tour this summer has revealed Arsenal have another set of five talented young Gunners of: Bramal, Bielik, Willock, Nketiah & Nelson who have emerged during this tour and proved to Le Prof he can rely on them and call on them to play for Arsenal in all competions next season.

    If positional play will permit, I will love to see Le Prof play as a team, all his emerged and emerging eleven youngsters of: Martinez, Chambers, Maitland-Niles, Iwobi, Adelaide, Holding, Bielik, Willock, Nketiah, Nelson & Bramal against a lower opposition team in the League Cup next season if Arsenal get such an easy looking draw to see how they will fare. These eleven youngster Gunners who are all good in my view can start to form the foundation of the senior Arsenal team of the near tomorrow.

  8. These youngsters are really good, but its nearly impossible for a club like Arsenal to get them through to the first team. Players like Willock, Nelson, Brammal and Maitland Niles are fighting for places against the likes of Welbeck, Walcott, Giroud, the Ox and Walcott. And when Arsene Wenger says on a press conference that he wants Giroud and the Ox to stay at the club, he wouldnt consider not even having them on the bench. And there is the rumour about Thomas Lemar, if he comes as well, the road for the youngsters will be even longer. Had talents like Nelson and Willock been at clubs like Everton, Swansea or Bournemouth, they would have had their Premier League debut by now. But at a club like Arsenal u really have to be an unique talent to get a chance. Sad but true…

  9. @MickHazel
    Maybe I used the wrong word. In this topic, stubborn might not be the right word. Consistant might be the right word. I just think that if he chooses to go with the B-team in the group stage, he will let those same players play even in the final.

  10. Europa is the league for teams that failed miserably. Say what? There is no UEFA league for the teams relegated from divisions. Oh, finishing 4 or 5 or 6 in a league, is to fail miserably.

    Sorry, I think we need to relegate your writing to the EDDA League.

    —

    Looking at articles in the medja since the Gunners won against WSW. By and large, if they are written by medja considered mainstream in the UK, they had to have a problem. Someone is injured, someone is to be sold, someone had a hangnail, someone ….

    Outside of the idjuts in the UK press, there are media around the world that think Arsenal play nice football.

  11. I think we need to add a midfielder to cover Santi amd Wishere as Santi seems out till December and Wilshere has fitness issues since a long time now.
    But nevertheless i trust Wenger enough that he knows the short comings better than us and the varous so called experts and blogtettas spewing there constant cricism on our manager.

    Re Alexis i believe he will stay at Arsenal for another year and possibly sign a contract as well.

  12. If Alexis wanted CL football he should have scored a few more goals last season. 😉

  13. More news:
    Santi will make a “miraculous” breakthrough and be ready to steady Arsenal.

    The anger at Alexis that the fans felt soon disappeared after the above news was heard.

    Arsenal will be a force this season with or without Alexis, as long as AW does keep his word and not sell him to a PL rival for however much money.

  14. Bily, you say “or the little bloggettas smothered in adverts” but this site just as bad…

  15. I had to do this in small sentences before the Untold advert script freezes the screen again

  17. @Gord
    I agree that my writing isnt much of a “top 4” quality. But I still maintain that Europa League isnt an important tropphy. The recent history of english clubs going out already in the qualifying rounds shows that even manangers for 6-8 place teams agree with me.

  18. Andy Mack – I agree with you on the sale of the soul. I have got to hate the pop up shite that has been introduced to Untold. I hate Google, another corrupt tax avoiding blood & money sucking organisation. No morals or concern for the human mind & the weak thinking innocents. It pays the bills one might say but so does prostitution.

    It’s time to decide football blog or subliminal leech!

  19. Menace, I wouldn’t mind if is didn’t freeze the page every 45 sends….

  20. was suppsed to say 45 seconds but I had o his send beore uit locked up ga

  21. Joel Campbell is having knee surgery and will miss a major part of the season, if not the whole season, so your 26 man roster has been reduced to the perfect number, 25.

  22. Andy…..you need some help with your software if the website is freezing up due to advertising. I have a terribly slow machine and am using win.7 (not exactly the fastest) and never have freezes so maybe you should upgrade your OS or whatever?

  23. Win10. Avira. No problem with any car, Bike or other footy site. Just Untold…

  24. Should say Win10 and IE etc
    Crash.net is nearly as slow and they’re also chocka with adverts and long scripts…

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