By Sir Hardly Anyone
Yes those rumours just keep on rolling rolling rolling.
The Daily Mail, the 19th century newspaper with 18th century attitudes is running the old story that Emery has just £45m to spend, although it could be more if we end up in the top four this season. Wow, haven’t heard that before. Although actually, now they come to mention it…
We do know for sure that the window will close on Thursday 8 August 2019. And as far as I can tell the actual window opens on Monday 1 July. So two and a half months away – and now we have more and more highlights being presented as preludes. And indeed here are some of them, or indeed some of the lowlights, depending on your point of view…
1: Nicholas Pepe – star player of Lille, who should be in the Champions League next season, and he is apparently the second highest scorer in the French league. But the club is saying, according to Telefoot, that they can’t afford his salary demands and so he’s up for grabs and Arsenal and Man U are after him, at least according to 101 Great Goals
2. Toby Alderweireld – the Tottenham central defender is avaialable for £25m and everyone knows we are desperate for central defenders.
3. Ivan Perisic – Spursweb are saying that Tottenham and WHU along with Arsenal want Ivan Perisic – the guy who scored in the WC semi-final against England, and who has previously been said to be off to Manchester United. Not too sure what Inter Milan have to say about that.
4. Benito Raman – a striker with Fortuna Dusseldorf, and former under 21 international. The price is around £15m. Burnley, Everton and WHU are all also said to be interested.
5/6. Sessegnon and de Ligt. Football London, which is becoming increasingly eccentric in its outlook as it desperately tries to keep up with its target of inventing 50 Arsenal stories a day has now run a story with the headline “Sessegnon and de Ligt in, Sokratis out – the surprising summer transfers predicted for Arsenal.”
Now the source of these is actually them playing the game “Football Manager” which seems to have taken predicted transfers to a level so low that it disappears off the radar, falls under the table and returns as an amorphous blob of gung that somehow started growing at the back of the cupboard reserved for food that somehow got bought, used once, and had some bits left in the package but which are never going to be used again.
Indeed these “transfers” are not really even rumours, but in fact desperate attempts to keep the machine that is Foot Lond rolling, so I’ll just give you the names but not incorporate them in the chart below unless someone else comes up with them.
Ryan Sessegnon, Callum Wilson, Dani Parejo, Jorge Mere, Matthijs de Ligt, Mouctar Diakhaby, Djibril Sow, Fran Beltran. Yep all them, on their way to Arsenal.
They also reckon we will sell, in addition to Sokratis, the rather well-known Koscielny, and moderatlely known Chambers, the unknown Asano, and the already gone Ramsey. And then we will loan out Holding, Xhaka, Nketiah, Maitland-Niles, and Monreal. If those loans are right I think I will finally admit that my knowledge of football has reached absolute zero. Loan out Holding????????????????????????
6. Wesley – Arsenal are offering 16m euros but Club Brugge want 20m for the player who is said to be the replacement of Danny Welbeck, who is out of contract this summer as well as being injured.
7. Jordon Veretout. The Ramsey replacement according to the Daily Cannon. He plays for Fiorentina and will cost 25m euros. Source seems to be The Metro.
Here are all the transfers so far as we seek to get 120 tales by the end of the window.
| No | Player | Current club | Source | Notes |
| NEW | Toby Alderweireld | Tottenham H | TBR Football, Sun | He’s 30 years old |
| 1 | Gareth Bale | Real Madrid | She wore a yellow | 87% of RM fans want him out |
| 2 | Ismael Bennacer | Empoli | HITC, Pain in the Arsenal | Ex Arsenal youth player |
| 3 | Marcelo Brozociv | Inter Milan | Transfer Tavern citing CalcioMercato | £40.5m; a “tough midfielder” |
| 4 | Samuel Chukwueze | Villareal | Foot Lond | Nigerian forward |
| 5 | Ryan Fraser | Bournemouth | Express, Mirror | One year left on contract |
| 6 | Ander Herrera | Man U | Express | PSG also interested |
| 7 | Paul Mitchell | Leipzig | Sports Mole; 90 min, Football 365, Sky; Talksport | Man U and Chelsea interested |
| 8 | N’Zonzi | Roma (midfield) | HITC | £19m; he’s considerred a flot at Roma |
| 9 | David Neres | Everton | Telegraph, Foot Lond | £34.5m; talks held. Liverpool want him |
| 10 | Christopher Nkunku | PSG | Foot Lond, Le Parisien | Midfield; he’s turned down a contract renewal |
| 11 | Nicolas Pepe | Lille | 101 Great Goals, Telefoot | Star striker. Man U also interested. |
| NEW | Ivan Perisic | Inter Milan | Spursweb, Gazzetta dello sport | Tots and WHU interested |
| NEW | Benito Raman | Fortna Dusseldorf | Express | WHU, Burnley, Everton interested |
| NEW | Jordon Veretout | Fiorentina | Metro | 25m euros for Ramsey II |
| NEW | Wesley | Club Brugges | Sun, Calciomercato, Daily Cannon, LaLazio | Forward, 22 years old |
Leaving Arsenal this summer…
| No | Player | Going to | Source | Notes |
| 1 | Aubameyang | Real Madrid | FootLond | FL cite Calciomercato |
| NEW | Welbeck | ? | Daily Cannon | Injured and out of contract |
| NEW | Xhaka | Inter Milan | Sund Express, BT Sport | Player says he wants to move. Inter wants him |
There will be more shortly.
I am not concerning myself at this time on Arsenal summer transfers but overly interested on how Arsenal will end the season to finish in the top 4 places in the PL table. And also win the Europa League Cup final match at Baku to lift the Cup at the end of Arsenal’s season campaign.
If Arsenal does eventually secured a top 4 place finish this season and also win the Europa League Cup, then the thoughts being alluded to in some Gooner quarters and also in some football expert quarters saying that the current crops of Gunners at the Emirates Stadium are not good enough to win the PL title and therefore they should be offloaded and new Gunners be signed during next the summer will not hold water. For, what Emery will need to do to win the PL title and probably the CL too next season if Arsenal got a top four place finish and also won the ELC too this season will be first and foremost to keep the core strength of the Arsenal first team squad that did the club proud to get a top 4 place finish and won the ELC. But not allow the squad to disintegrate but hold on tightly to every core valued member of the squad but 3 Gunners like Lichtsteiner for his advanced age and Ozil for his laziness in matches for Arsenal. And for his abject performance often occasioned by him in Arsenal games, Mkhitaryan can also be considered for offloading during the summer window. Who should replace Cech after he is gone in the summer is a big problem Arsenal have to address positively because his replacement MUST be of a very top quality goalie like Leno.
All in all, Arsenal will not in my opinion need to sign more than 3 out field senior new players in the summer as replacements for the 3 of Lichtsteiner, Ozil and Mkhitaryan who should all be offloaded from Arsenal before the summer campaign next season.
But should Arsenal also consider signing a top quality senior striker for cover and option to replace the injury prone Danny Welbeck? Well, it’s what I can’t say? But it’ll necessary for Arsenal to do that since Eddie Nkethia that is being natured for the position has not yet prove he can mann the position successfully for Arsenal.
OT: Jamie Cureton and some of his statistics
In looking for football news, I ran across:
https://www.thenonleaguefootballpaper.com/features/26671/jamie-cureton-closes-in-on-1000th-appearance-and-has-no-plans-of-retirement/
44 year old Jamie Cureton is at 999 games across 8 divisions of English football, with 358 goals (I think I got that correct).
Norwich (twice) _ _ _ 108 _24 _ 4.50 _(2.79 – 11.6)
Bournemouth _ _ _ _ _ _ 6 _ 0 _ infinite
Bristol Rovers _ _ _ _198 _79 _ 2.51
Reading _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 127 _55 _ 2.31
Busan Icons (S Korea) _21 _ 4 _ 5.25
QPR _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _46 _ 7 _ 6.57
Swindon _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _32 _ 7 _ 4.57
Colchester _ _ _ _ _ _ 56 _31 _ 1.81
Barnsley _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _8 _ 2 _ 4.00
Shrewsbury _ _ _ _ _ _ 12 _ 0 _ infinite
Exeter (twice) _ _ _ _ 96 _42 _ 2.29
Leyton Orient _ _ _ _ _23 _ 1 _23.0
Cheltenham _ _ _ _ _ _ 36 _11 _ 3.27
Dagenham & Redbridge _ 93 _29 _ 3.21
Farnborough (thrice) _ 48 _28 _ 1.71
Eastleigh _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 7 _ 1 _ 7.00
St Albans _ _ _ _ _ _ _17 _ 5 _ 3.40
Bishop’s Stortford _ _ 64 _32 _ 2.00
Total _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 999 358
Overall, that is 2.79 games per goal. We expect his variance to be 358, so a standard deviation of about 19. Hence, we expect nearly all of his data to be between 2.41 games per goal and 3.32 games per goal. Of the 18 different teams he has played for, only 3 of them have his scoring record within the bounds we think are in effect. If we look at his goal production at Leyton Orient, he is almost 7 standard deviations below par (for him). The 2 occurances where he scored no goals, have to be treated as if he scored 1 goal. His best goal production was at Farnborough. We would have expected him to score 17 goals there. He scored about 2.6 times his standard deviation more in that time. He has scored in all eight top tiers of English football.
He apparently played for England’s U18 team in the beginning of his career. I have no idea how many times he played against Arsenal.
The away game vs Leicester has been rescheduled
https://www.arsenal.com/news/away-game-leicester-rescheduled
I keep harping on the referees largely ignoring treatments. We play CPalace next. Foot.Lon has a note about CPalace, saying that in their last game versus Man$ity, a player needed to be substituted because having a treatment inflicted on them by Man$ity. Apparently that player is injured for the rest of the season now as a result of that event, which the PGMO ignored (as is typical of them).