Morning all.
Let’s start at the World Cup where England finished third after a madcap 6-4 win over France last night. Declan Rice started, because it’s now a test of endurance to see how many games he can play without actually collapsing in an exhausted heap, and actually opened the scoring with a nice goal in the third minute. He then provided an assist for Ezri Konsa to make it 2-0.
Bukayo Saka also started this game, and made it 3-0 after France’s entire team decided to go walkabout leaving him and Marcus Rashford all the space they needed to eventually stick the ball in the back of the net. Arsenal teammate Eberechi Eze then provided the assist for Saka’s second, a really nice pass well finished to make it 4-0. Which was kind of a crazy scoreline to go into the break with.
After the break, and some half-time changes from Didier Deschamps, France rallied with two goals from Kylian Mbappe and one from Bradley Barcola making it 4-3. Michael Olise missed a couple of glorious chances before England won a penalty. It looked like Jude Bellingham was going to take it, but he handed the ball to Saka who tucked it away for 5-3 and his hat-trick. Is he the first active Arsenal player to score a hat-trick at World Cup?
I know there have been issues with his fitness throughout this tournament but, as a neutral observer, it’s utterly insane to me that Saka didn’t play a single second of a World Cup semi-final. I had assumed that the reason for that was the injury situation, and that he just wasn’t capable of it. Not so, it seems. While a 3rd/4th place play-offobviously has a different dynamic to a semi-final, if he can play 90 minutes and score three times, he could have contributed something. I already found Thomas Tuchel’s decision making hard to understand, but this adds another layer of crap to the turd of a second half he produced from the sideline.
The scoring wasn’t finished. Ousmane Dembele made it 5-4, before Bellingham scored a sensational goal to make it 6-4. I also like how it made him England’s outright top scorer at the tournament, deservedly so in my opinion, ahead of the greatest flat track bully of a striker football has ever seen. Crazy game, quite a lot of fun to be fair, and it was somewhat heartening to see William Saliba chatting to his Arsenal teammates afterwards. He did not appear to be in a full body cast, which is encouraging.
Now though he, Rice, Saka, Eze and Noni Madueke can all go get some rest. I think they get three weeks off, although they could probably do with more. I remember when I was a younger man and went clubbing at the weekends, you’d stay awake (ahem) for hours, and eventually it would catch up with you. We talked about how useful it would be to have microwave sleep, the concept being you could get 8 hours of kip into a shorter time frame. These lads need microwave holidays. Whatever they do, I hope they enjoy themselves, because they really have earned some downtime.
Later on, of course, we have the final between Spain and Argentina. The Arsenal involvement there means I’m up for the Spanish, and there’s another nice piece in the Guardian with Mikel Merino talking to Sid Lowe.
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The other big news from yesterday is that Morgan Rogers, a player we’ve been linked strongly with throughout the summer, is going to Chelsea for a fee of £117m. David Ornstein dropped the news yesterday evening, and on its own it’s a discussion point, but in the context of him being reportedly our main target, even more so.
I like this player, he’s definitely got something about him, but I’m not too upset at missing out on him at that price. Whether you think that’s just market value these days (more on that anon), it’s still a lot of money for a player whose potential role in our team was not easily defined. There was talk of him playing off the left, which I never really thought was 100% the plan, and he can operate more centrally too. It also strikes me that we already have the player that isn’t really a left winger, can play there if needed, but is more effective and impactful in central areas, in the shape of Eberechi Eze.
Clearly though, he’s someone Mikel Arteta had his eye on in a big way, so I’m curious to see how it plays out from here. There’s talk of Arsenal being slow to make this happen, and the player’s camp becoming frustrated by that. Whether that was Andrea Berta spinning all his plates and dilly-dallying, or an unwillingness on the club’s part to cough up that kind of money, we don’t know yet. If we ever will.
It seems clear though that the indecision played some part, and on the other side the financial incentives for Rogers to eschew a move to the Champions to join a club with no European football and who have been a basket-case for years now must have been considerable. Which is no criticism of him, you have one pretty short career, go make hay, just don’t expect anyone not to raise a cynical eyebrow when you talk about how much you were impressed by ‘the project’.
Then it becomes a question of ‘What now?’. The reaction among Arsenal fans has been interesting and while there’s never an absolute consensus, generally I think that fee for that player left many, if not most, feeling a bit uncomfortable (not that it’s our money, but still!). The reaction I’d like to know most about though is that of Mikel Arteta. If he really wanted this player will that be a source of frustration for him? In the past we’ve missed out on targets and reacted well, can we do it again?
It’s funny to think we had almost this exact scenario a few years ago when Chelsea hijacked our big money move for Mykhaylo Mudryk, and we turned to Leandro Trossard instead. In this instance though, who is the player we can pivot to who can bring to this team what Arteta (and others) thought Morgan Rogers could? I’m sure we have other names on our list, but having missed out on a key target, is greater decisiveness needed now?
Throughout the summer I’ve expressed concern about the level of complication surrounding some of our targets. Perhaps that played a part here, and I’m sure when we get the big ‘This is how the transfer window went’ story from James in The Athletic, there’ll be more detail and insight about how this one didn’t come to pass. It’s also quite interesting to see some of the discourse around Andrea Berta change. Last summer his modus operandi of having multiple conversations/negotiations was heralded as genius, now it’s potentially an impediment to how we do business.
There is lots of time, of course, and we’ve seen Arsenal very successfully deal with the loss of a big target before, so we should have relative confidence we can do it again. The optics are one thing, and it doesn’t look great when you miss out on a player everyone assumes you’re going to get, but the most important thing is how we improve the squad this summer so let’s see what the reaction to this one is, and what we do next.
Back to the fee, by the way, and does £117m not feel slightly deliberate? After Man City skewed the market with £116m for Elliot Anderson, the Rogers fee does it again. Maybe I’m too cynical, but we’re talking about two of the most rotten institutions in the world of football, for whom spending and outlay seems to bear zero consequence, so if they’re purposely inflating prices to make life difficult for everyone else, I wouldn’t be at all surprised.
A final, but extremely important, point: Chelsea still have a surplus of players and will obviously need to sell this summer. If anyone at Arsenal, be it manager, sporting director, scout, Josh Kroenke, or otherwise, even so much as glances in that direction before this transfer window closes, throw them in jail. I’m serious!
Right, I’ll leave it there for now. Enjoy the final later, more tomorrow.
