Morning all.
A quick Saturday round-up for you. It seems Christos Tzolis will be travelling to London this weekend to do a medical and complete his move to Arsenal. So, we should have an announcement early next week assuming everything goes well in that regard.
There are various reports that as we look to offset the news about William Saliba’s back injury and potential absence, we’re looking at Aston Villa’s Ezri Konsa. On paper, I think you can see why. He’s 28, has loads of Premier League experience, can play centre-half and right-back, and provides cover for two positions where we have questions marks over the fitness of key players as doubts remain over Jurrien Timber and Ben White.
I think there’s very obviously a gap between Saliba and him in terms of quality, but I think that’s true of almost any player you’d target to be – when it comes right down to it – a stop-gap until Saliba is fit, and then a rotation option when the French international is 100% again. Would he be my first choice? Probably not, but I can see the logic to it from a footballing perspective. It makes a bit more sense to me than the suggestion doing the rounds that we target an out of contract John Stones, a player who has missed a lot of football in the last two years through muscular injuries (23 last season and 30+ the season before).
My main concern would be that it’s probably another complicated deal to do because we’re already trying to buy one of Villa’s best players, in the shape of Morgan Rogers, and as discussed over the summer, that’s not going to be easy. He has a contract until 2031, and while they might have a financial imperative to sell and balance the books a little, they’ve already sold Youri Tielemans. The arrival of Johan Manzambi from Freiburg adds to their squad, but they face a full season without Amadou Onana after he picked up an ACL at the World Cup.
It’s true that in the summer of 2022 we signed two players from the same club, with Gabriel Jesus and Oleksandr Zinchenko arriving from Man City. It’s not quite the same though, as the latter arrived after we’d tried to sign Lisandro Martinez all summer but he decided to go to Man Utd, and the reality is that City were more than happy to let both of them go. They had a certain Julian Alvarez to come in that summer to replace Jesus, and Pep Guardiola did not view the Ukrainian international as pivotal to his side. Perhaps that might be true of Villa and Ezri Konsa, but I don’t think it applies to Morgan Rogers.
Could there be a ‘package’ deal done? It seems unlikely to me, but stranger things have happened. Andrea Berta continues to spin the plates, and maybe the complexity of so many of our deals this summer is just because he fancies a challenge. I think it’s going to be a very interesting summer for the Sporting Director and how he is perceived more broadly. If he came in last year with much of the groundwork done on the targets and signings we made, this is one that falls well and truly under his jurisdiction. Especially given the changes he made to the set-up and some of the people who departed. I will say I’m not entirely convinced by his eye for a smart deal, maybe Tzolis will become that and I hope that’s the case, but the other names are far more obvious, a lot more expensive, thus the complicated nature of getting them done. Anyway, we’ll see.
Beyond that, not a lot going on. There’s a third/fourth place play-off at the World Cup later between England and France. I really hope common sense applies and we don’t see Declan Rice or Bukayo Saka. Eberechi Eze and Noni Madueke didn’t play in Thomas Tuchel’s decision making disaster against Argentina, so chances are they’ll feature. Frankly though, this is a game I couldn’t care less about once our boys come through it ok.
Right, I’m gonna leave it there for this morning. Hope you all have a great Saturday.
