• Sometimes the things these footie journalists say are just so funny…
• For Arsenal we might say that so far this is looking rather good

By Tony Attwood

The headline from the BBC runs “Transfer deadline day 2025 – What can you learn from the Premier League’s biggest mistakes?”  Although I think that’s a bit unfair.  Because the whole point of the window is that no one ever learns from their mistakes.  Which is why it is all such a laugh.  Unless of course, you look at Arsenal, in which case it is all deadly serious.

Meanwhile, and just to be clear, the Champions League draw is not today, although one or two sites are trying to hijack the inevitable transfer information seekers by running the draw story as pure speculation a day early.  Whoever would have thought they would do that when there are thousands of transfer rumours still to be made up? Well, ten at least.

But this is an interesting window because when I last posted my list of transfer rumours affecting Arsenal, it almost seemed as if the window had slammed shut and the broken glass was being trampled all over the pitch.

Perhaps because Arsenal have moved so quickly and assuredly in the transfer market, or perhaps because all the transfer rumour mongers have retired to the pub and fallen asleep, in terms of rumours, this summer has been much slower than normal.  Those made-up tales have just not been appearing in the media.  

Potential transfers are invented of course, for two reasons.  One is that it is a way of bashing Arsenal as soon as the team drops points.  “If only,” it can be said, “Arsenal had acted more swiftly, more decisively, then this disaster on the pitch (usually of two points dropped through getting a draw in a match that was defined as winnable) “then the league would be Arsenal’s to take.”

But Arsenal have played two and won two, so that story doesn’t exist, and the media are stuck with their regular summer tale going at half speed. 

Thus the Express and the Mail (not, it must be said, always the most reliable of transfer news sources) each predict four more transfers between now and 7pm on 1 September!  The problem is they are quoting each other, which always raises suspicions that a freelancer sold each of them the same story as an exclusive, but no, I’m sure they’d never fall for that!

So on 19 August we had 61 players Arsenal were about to sign, and now on 27 August we have 72 – which is a nice balance of numbers.  OK we are still not gonig to reach the normal 120+ by the end of the window, but 60 or so invented bits of nonsense was pretty pathetic.  72 is an improvement.

So what happened?  Of course it is possible that someone saw our little piece pointing out just how poor the football fiction media were doing, but that’s unlikely.  They don’t normally take any notice of us at all.. More to the point, I think the media was taken aback by the speed of the Arsenal transfer machine this summer, with so many players signing so quickly.

Anyway, we’ve done our regular update with eight new names on the incoming list.  They won’t come in of course, but these journalists do like to have their fun, and I was getting a bit worried about their well-being.

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  And the players reported to be leaving…. (some may have changed their minds!)  In terms of names there is nothing new here – and that’s how it normally goes

   

  	Player	Going To	Source	Details
  1	Max Dowman	Manchester City or Barcelona	Football Transfers	AFC want to hold onto him
  2	Karl Hein	Rangers	4th official
  3	Jorginho	?	Mail	Simply going, no matter what.
  Update	Jakub Kiwior.	West Ham, AC Milan, Porto	Just Arsenal   (Or Palace – Arsenal news).  Going to Porto (Mirror).  He’s off. – Sport Witness.   Porto (Arseblog)	Porto most likely
  5	Myles Lewis Skelly	Real Madrid	Mirror	Deal rejected
  6	Marquinhos	Cruzeiro	F365,	Going back from whence he came
  7	Martinelli	Al Nassr	Daily Canon, Just ArsenalNo not going	Will go on offer of £50m+
  8	Reiss Nelson	Arsenal News	Back to Fulham	Loan extended
  9	Neto		AFC	Contract expired
  10	Nwareri	Chelsea	Caught OffsideGive me sport.  Contract ultimatum   He’s going to Chelsea And again  No he’s signed for AFC	AFC confidant of keeping him
  11	Partey	Barcelona	MailFFC – he’s off now.  Going to Galatasaray.   Signed for Villareal	Unless Arsenal offer a new deal.
  12	Declan Rice	?	TBR	Will go if club don’t start winning trophies soon!!
  13	William Saliba	Real Madrid	TBR	Mikah Richards says he’s off
  14	Raheem Sterling		Returned to parent club	Contract expired
  15	Nuno Tavares	Lazio	Just Arsenal	Been at Lazio on loan  Now gone (Sun)
  16	Kieran Tierney	Celtic	New York Times	Contract expired
  Update	Leandro Trossard	Fenerbahce.	Caught offside   B. Munich not interested  Aston Villa & Brentford now interested	He’s changed agents
  18	Vieira	Parma	Arsenal News	Enquiry made

   

  So there we are.  None of this affects football or Arsenal, of course – it is just a blogger game.  But it’s fun to watch, especially as they try to ignore the fact that for the last five seasons, they have never once got more than three per cent of their incoming predictions right.