The 49 players now tipped for Arsenal this summer

By Sir Hardly Anyone

A quick peek in through the shuttered windows of the Toppled Bollard (favourite drinking house of football journalists across London) reveals the awful truth.  It’s shut.

Which is why the rumour mill has gone into hyperplus overdrive as those who make up the summer transfer tales eschew their normal drinking hole and instead are drinking at home – much to the distress of numerous good lady wives.

Of course they still venture out, looking through each other’s rubbish bins in the desperate hope of finding something, anything, that someone has made up and is about to publish which they can nick.

Unfortunately, a bunch of pesky school children, wise to the ways of their elders, have been feverishly printing out fake stories and dropping them in litter bins on street corners, with the intent that as inebriated sons of the rumour mills stagger home and peer among piles of rubbish in the hope of a half-full bottle of gin having been left behind by a previous passer-by, they also find a story, suspect it has been mistakenly dropped by one of their compatriots, and publish it.

So yes, even in these days of lockdown we have six new tales and six updates.  So, rather amazingly for a period of total shutdown, here we are, back again with another 12 transfers that Arsenal are due to make.

Over the years we have been tracking transfer stories, the average accuracy rate is just under 3%, which means of the 49 players listed below approximately one and a half of them will sign.

Still, with no one knowing when football will start again, how much money the clubs will have, which clubs will actually survive, and which players will avoid being too ill to take the medical, 49 thus far is not bad.

The window creaks open on June 10, which means something in the order of 53 days are left before it begins.  So there again 49 is not too bad this early in the campaign.   It’s a bit of a shame only one and a half of them are true.