Arsenal go through, Chelsea owner caught making money and 7 weird transfers

 

 

• What’s wrong with football? Compiling (and hiding) the complaints
• Arsenal are still losing money, but there are reasons to be cheerful

By Ivan Idea

I suspect it’s just me getting old but it took me quite a little while to find out how to watch the Arsenal match on DAZN, but I finally got there, and thoroughly enjoyed the match – and of course the result. 2-0 down and 3-2 up, reminds me of a chant from the old days.

Checking the players and finding out that yes as per reports, Kim Little, Chloe Kelly, Alessia Russo, Leah Williamson and the rest were fantastic.  Apparently the crowd was a record for this round of the competition quarter-final in England.   Arsenal breaking new ground once more.  Who’d have guessed it?

So it is Lyon in the next round – who I see have just beaten Saint-Étienne Féminines 0-5 away.  The problem there is that Lyon are top of their league with 25 more points than Arsenal.   True they have played five more games, but their record of winning every game except for one draw (with no defeats) and a staggering goal difference of +71 suggests this might be a step too far for Arsenal who remain second in the English league.  Mind you, these French leagues are always a bit unbalanced – just think of PSG.

Elsewhere, we do have the amusing ongoing news that supporters of Chelsea (a football team from west London) want someone to investigate the club’s co-owner Todd Boehly, who has allegedly been engaged in selling tickets for Chelsea’s matches at inflated prices in the USA.  What is surprising is not that this is happening – it is Chelsea after all – but that people are paying.

Chelsea are currently fourth in the Premier League nine points behind Arsenal and with a goal difference that is 13 goals worse than Arsenal’s.   The Telegraph helpfully points out that the “Billionaire co-owns US-based Vivid Seats, which allows foreign-based users to sell match tickets for exorbitant sums.”  I think one might say, well, what did you expect?

But while we are casting around looking at matches past and future, we might also take in Real Madrid, who of course, we are playing int he Champions League.  And this is interesting because it is not the sort of last six game form that we expect.

 

		P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Barcelona	6	6	0	0	16	3	+13	18
2	Real Betis	6	5	0	1	13	7	+6	15
3	Celta Vigo	6	4	2	0	10	6	+4	14
4	Getafe	6	4	0	2	8	6	+2	12
5	Altheltic Bilbao	6	3	2	1	13	4	+9	11
6	Real Madrid	6	3	2	1	9	6	+3	11

 

Arsenal in comparison, have also won three, drawn two and lost one in the last six, but in Arsenal’s case, it is nine goals scored and only three conceded.  So maybe Real Mad really are not quite as scary as some like to make out.

What does seem to be happening in the news however, is that there are more transfer tales than ever doing the rounds, even though the season hasn’t yet ended.   Now we do normally trace these through the summer, and then see how many of them actually come true – normally it is between two and three percent, but as they have now reached such an incredible level I thought maybe we should start the tracking earlier, just to see if this early onset of silly stories is as unreal as normal.   

So here goes.  It will take us a few days to catch up, and I promise this won’t replace the stories that we would otherwise be following.  As ever, I have tried to indicate as often as possible which position the player plays in, but since virtually every playing being suggested now is a centre forward that might get to seem a bit redundant.

We are also noticing a new tactic this year, which the Mirror is quite active in using, that is having a long article saying that Arsenal is going to sign a striker but then not telling us who.  There’s an example of this nonsense here.   As usual we’ll keep adding to the list and if this summer is like any other the total number of players tipped to be signed by Arsenal will be well over 100 of whom about three will be signed.

And yes I know we have done this before, but it is always good to have a laugh every now and then.  I think the starting list below gives you an idea of where this is going.

The players Arsenal are signing this summer

 

Player	Club	Source	Details
Luis Diaz	Liverpool	FFC	Board can’t agree
Jorrel Hato	Brentford	Liverpool Echo	Defender
Alexander Isak	Newcastle	Football fan cast	He wants to join
Senne Lammens,	Royal Antwerp	FFC	Goalkeeper
Bryan Mbeumo	Brentford	Arsenal station	Forward
Benjamin Sesko	RB Leipzig	Caught Offside	€70 million
Martin Zubimendi	Real Sociedad	Daily Mirror	Agreed Terms