They haven’t been completely inactive I suppose with Gabriel Martinelli already signed and William Saliba supposedly about to sign on the dotted line too. As promising a prospect as Martinelli might be he’s only just turned 18 and it would be expecting an awful lot for him to have a real impact at Arsenal this season. He might well be a star of the future, but we need to improve our team considerably for this coming season.
Saliba is another 18 year old who looks like he might have a very bright future in the game and he’s going to be an Arsenal player very soon if the rumours are to be believed. Those same rumours would also seem to point to Arsenal loaning him back to St. Etienne for all of next season as part of the deal and that would negate any impact in our team. It makes sense to help him develop as a player and it might be a good thing for us in the long run, but again it doesn’t help us this season.
And there you have the sum total of our signings with a month to go before the window closes and the players heading off for a tour of the USA. We have also promoted Reiss Nelson, Joe Willock, Eddie Nketiah and Emile Smith-Rowe to the first team squad as “project youth” appears to have made a full return despite Arsene Wenger departing over a year ago. Those four players all look like very good prospects and some of them could have an impact in the team this season.
Rumours still abound with Wilfried Zaha, Malcolm, Ismael Bannacer, Dani Ceballos, Everton Soares and Mario Lemina among those currently linked to Arsenal. While one or maybe more of those players might end up at the club we don’t have an awful lot to spend and any purchases would have to be on the never never unless we can generate income from player sales. There are certainly more than a few players who we could probably do without next season and their departures would free up squad places for new arrivals.
One player who might not be at the club much longer is Laurent Koscielny after the club issued a statement saying he had refused to travel with the squad for our tour of the States. It’s totally unacceptable behaviour from one of our “captains” and the club’s reaction would seem to suggest he won’t find it easy to get the free transfer he apparently wants. With funds badly required for the purchases we want to make we have to get whatever we can for him even if he is 33.
He has been a great servant to the club in the last nine years and I’ll be sad to see him go, but he’s under contract and he simply cannot be allowed to dictate what we do. We’ve been through this scenario so many times in recent seasons with so many captains and all of them got what they wanted in the end. I would be very surprised to see Koscielny play for us again and his impending departure only increases our need to strengthen the centre of our defence.
There seems to be a fair deal of interest in Kystian Bielik and there’s every chance we might be able to raise a few bob through his sale to add to the modest fee we received for eventually managing to sell David Ospina. Bielik did very well in League One with Charlton last season and he looked good for his country in the European under 21 Championships this summer too. If the rumours are true he’s not in Unai Emery’s plans and if that’s the case we would do well to cash in on a player with two years left on his contract.
With the team playing four games in nine days in America starting next Tuesday we should hopefully get to see plenty of football. I know they’re only pre-season games and they don’t count for an awful lot, but we’re up against some pretty good teams. We start off with Stan Kroenke’s American team when we play Colorado Rapids and we follow that with games against Bayern Munich, Fiorentina and Bayern Munich.
That’s it for today.
See you tomorrow.
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