Morning all.
The first World Cup semi-final takes place this evening, as Spain take on France. There’s Arsenal interest on both sides, with Mikel Merino, Martin Zubimendi and David Raya on one, and William Saliba on the other. The centre-half is the most likely to start the game, assuming his back is holding up well enough, whereas Zubimendi and Raya have yet to play a single minute at this tournament.
Merino, as we know, will be introduced at some point in the second half to score his now customary goal. He’s bagged winners against Portugal and Belgium in the last week, and you wouldn’t bet against him doing it again. This does have all the makings of a classic encounter, with France’s firepower and Spain’s technical quality and organisation, but games like this can often be disappointing, cagey affairs. As a pure neutral, I hope it’s not that, but we’ll find out later on.
There’s not much happening from an Arsenal perspective, although it seems as Leandro Trossard to Besiktas is close to completion after the Belgian international reportedly agreed terms with the Turkish club. The rumour mill remains relatively quiet in relation to other potential deals. There was some guff about Bruno Guimaraes but the source of it was a Newcastle beat journo who ended up last summer with egg on his face after insisting Alexander Isak would not be sold at any price, so I take that with a very large pinch of salt.
A few things are starting to move elsewhere though, and Aston Villa selling Youri Tielemans to Man Utd is a bit unexpected. Apparently he has a release clause which meant they can’t do much about it, and I wonder does that have an impact on our pursuit of Morgan Rogers. Although Villa are about to sign Swiss midfielder Johan Manzambi to bolster the ranks, they lost Amadou Onana to a long-term injury during the World Cup, and they’ve already been making noises about how they view any potential fee for Rogers in the same ballpark as Man City paid for Elliot Anderson. That, in my opinion, is far too much for Morgan Rogers. I like him, but not at that price.
We had a question on this week’s Arsecast Extra with regard to comments made by Mikel Arteta after the Champions League final about how Arsenal get to the next level – which I think we need to acknowledge is difficult when, you know, you’re the Premier League Champions. It’s much easier to improve a team that finished 8th or 5th than 1st. Nevertheless, Arteta said about the transfer window:
We will have to start making some very important decisions if we want to reach another level. We are going to have to show that ambition because we are more than capable of doing it, but it is going to demand us to be very ambitious, very fast and very smart.
The question for the pod was about the word ‘fast’ and whether the manager might be getting a bit antsy at the lack of business we’ve done. Clearly the World Cup is a factor in that regard, but I wonder should we focus on the word ‘smart’ a bit more. Is it smart to try and sign a player from Newcastle after they’ve already sold two of their best players, one of them a central midfielder too, and their money worries have been eased? Is it smart to go after a young English player under a long contract at a club that has lost a key midfielder, and is about to sell one to Manchester United? Is it smart to try and sign a forward who has his heart set on a move to Barcelona, even if he must realise how difficult that could be because of the very public animus of Atletico Madrid towards that particular club.
It could be, if we get those deals done and those players help elevate the team. There’s still a long way to go in the window, and we might see Arsenal act in a way that has us all tapping our foreheads with respect and admiration for the cleverness of the deals. However, based on what we think we know right now, those two players – Guimaraes and Rogers – appear to be our two main targets, and I think both of them are quite complicated ones to get done. Complicated and expensive. Alvarez, I think there’s interest by virtue of his quality, but that one is less concrete, to use a summer 2025 transfer term.
I think we all realise that when you’re a team as good as we’ve been for the last few years, the pool of players who can improve you gets smaller and smaller. We could potentially look at Christos Tzolis, who is the de facto Trossard replacement, as a smart deal if he finds his feet in English football and produces decent numbers, but his career trajectory is one which means he arrives with a lot to prove. I hope he does just that, obviously.
I suspect as this World Cup enters its final week, and after the final on Sunday, things will start to move a bit more quickly. They need to, with just over two weeks to our first pre-season game against Girona. It’s inevitable that your early games feature a very mix and match looking team, but from there it’s just three weeks to the new season starting, and you need to be in the best shape possible. The difficulty of a post-World Cup summer is nothing new, but I think it’s probably rare that Arsenal still have so many players at the tournament. And let’s not forget that even defeat tonight doesn’t mean they go home because of the third place play-off game that nobody ever needs, but which goes ahead anyway.
So, let’s see. Smart. Fast. Ambitious. Yes please to all of them, but right now I have visions of Andrea Berta spinning plates in his office singing ‘I am so smart. S.M.R.T!’. A bit harsh, I know, but if you can’t wedge in a Simpsons reference on a midweek summer blog, what’s the point?
Till tomorrow.
