Beck's Inter Miami.

Most of the reports I’ve subsequently seen say the afternoon before the trial, conviction and sentencing. So what 16hours if no one sleeps? Not ideal, or actually fair one might say.

Nullified. Makes sense really.

https://www.skysports.com/share/12057203

There were reports that Gabriel had his medical last week, as well as early this week. If he did take and pass it, wonder why there’s been no confirmation of the signing on Arsenal.com? After all, it’s gone 9.00 pm Wednesday in the UK so it won’t be confirmed tonight.

There have been reports that terms have also been agreed. I’m not prepared to suggest they couldn’t have been yet. But if they have and the medical has been taken and passed, why is there still nothing on Arsenal.com confirming the signing?

If Elneny is starting games for us this season then that is awful transfer window management.
Feels like we'd be stupid not to get Ceballos back on loan.
We really need to push the button on some of these sales, Guendouzi, Sokratis, Holding, AMN, Chambers, Mustafi, Torreira, Kolasinac, Lacazette have all been heavily linked with moves away. Highly unlikely that they all get sold but there is easily £150m worth of sales there and not all of them would need replacing.

Even if we have to take a bit of a hit on the sale price in order to get them gone and get our target in it could be the difference in actual points in the league because we'll be 4 league games in before the transfer window closes

Hi Rich.

The problem we have is that other sides know we are keen to offload and as such they would be silly to offer top dollar straight away. The longer they wait the more likely it is we will drop the price, unless of course we can get a bidding war going.

Gabriel (if it goes through) and Willian are a good start but the truth is that if we want to hit the ground running next season we need our midfield recruits in asap. We are lacking in pace, power and creativity in that area.

Exactly

Gabriel arrives Monday. Still no announcement its a done deal.
Until its done, it isn't done.
Looks like Arteta is willing to roll the dice and get rid of a lot of quality players just so he can get the right players. It will be a thin squad if that's how it is. There is a risk but I get it.

They must be putting Gabriel thru a pretty big medical- he’s been in there for about 3 days depending on which story you read.

Don't think there's been a delay with the medical, just the announcement. Because Arsenal still suck at PR.

Let me not mislead you. There would have been months between the arrest, the committal from the Magistrates Court to the ultimate trial in the Supreme Court. But as long as both sides are agreed there is no need to waste court time which seems to be part of the system in the UK. The judges often kkeep questions relevant to the case and don't allow side issues.

What do you think is happening with Aubameyang. Is he waiting to see what signings are made.

Fabrizio Romano - very reliable - has said the medical is all done and the signing is all done - so it is just down to when Arsenal want to make the announcement.

Desperately need some central midfielders in

Chilwell signs for Chelsea for £50m, the production line of huge sales at Leicester is fantastic. I saw an article that talked about it and compared it to clubs like West Ham and even Everton in my opinion. Some of these clubs see the idea of selling your best players as unambitious which is nonsense. A team like Leicester simply can't keep these players when the biggest clubs come calling - of course there is the exception most notably when we tried to sign Vardy, but by and large players at Leicester would want to play for the clubs challenging at the top and in europe every season, not to mention the huge hike in wages they get. So the smart clubs sell those players when they are their absolute peak and reinvest in the team. Who would you rather have in your team now Kante or Ndidi? Not necessarily an easy choice. Soyuncu or Maguire? Not that much difference in my view.
I see Everton are being linked with James Rodriguez, really not the sort of signing they should be making. They're making the same mistakes they've made before.

I would include Arsenal in this equation as well, albeit I would like to think we would strive to operate on a higher level than the clubs mentioned above but we can't be arrogant to think that we don't need to sell players when they're at their peak. My view is that the stubbornness of not selling our stars is one of the biggest reasons we're in the mess we are, foregoing the best part of £100m on Sanchez and Ramsey

That £50m fee is something though. That's half of what we reportedly paid for Tierney - who is a year younger, and in my opinion a better player, but with a slightly worse injury record.

Then again, Chelsea once again seem to be in a position where they don't even have to think about how much they pay so...

Right, so nothing like the case in point. Please bear in mind there were 6 complainants - all police, 3 defendants and multiple charges across two locations. Even an Australian court with it’s super judges, never wasting a second or allowing a single side issue, would be hard pressed to wade though all of that in weeks, let alone one afternoon. And now there’s a retrial anyway which I suspect the court knew all along and just performed this perfunctory charade to move it along. But yes, as you were, let Harry Maguire rot in Jail after his manhunt and extradition...

Truly the longest medical in history. I wish they'd taken as long over Francis (glass ankles) Jeffers.

Partey rumours seems to have been squashed as well. I get that money is an issue this summer, but it would be nice to have some solid rumours about incoming players, not just departures.

Yep if we don’t bring in new midfielders it’s more of the same next year.

Can’t see us signing Partey, 50 million quid and wants 200k a week? You wouldn’t contemplate it unless he was insanely good.

I wonder if this is true about us and Gabriel. (If you can't trust Le10 Sport, who can you trust?) From back in February:
https://onefootball.com/en/news/arsenal ... d-29011940

Arsenal youngster Sam Greenwood has signed for Leeds, £3m plus add ons.

Arsenal had Greenwood, Balogun and John-Jules all in the same category. The first two look likely to be sold, John-Jules will go on loan again

If true it seems sensible that we got Mari in on loan, but then if we were going back to Gabriel why did we make Mari permanent before we concluded our chase for Gabriel this summer?
You can only assume Arteta liked what he saw of Mari and wanted both.

All the activity in the centre of our defence is interesting, particularly new faces like Saliba and Gabriel but also those that may leave – Sokratis, Holding and Chambers.

What also intrigues me though is the future for Zech Medley, currently on loan at Gillingham. He’s 20 years old, 6’ 5” and pretty skilful from what I’ve seen. I really like the look of Zech. Then there’s that lad who scored a really good goal against M K Dons the other day, Mark McGuinness. I didn't see much else that he did but he’s a 19 year old Irish lad and another biggun at 6’ 3”; I’ve never heard of him before.

Any others?

Gosh where did you dredge that up from! Makes you question the plans for Mari for one, Gabriel seems to be the original tall left footed CB of choice.

Also you wonder are they waiting for Gabriel to stop quarantining to announce him? Or is the announcement in the back pocket for the next time some bad news rears it’s head?

Ballard is another thats very highly thought of, but seems the be the unluckiest footballer going. He’s not quite as tall, I think, but another one in the probable loan to decide his future category.

Unlike say Sol Campbell or Keown who had such intensity Zech seems a relaxed, classy type of player from what I’ve seen, which is very little. I would question as a young player whether having some tenacity and devil might serve you better than being more laid back.

So Arsenal are shuffling the pack with ‘cheap’ players, youngsters and having to offload valuable assets like Ainsley MN.

Meanwhile, and entirely in keeping with Financial Fair Play, Manchester City are looking at a simply staggering outlay to get Messi in.

We just cannot compete with that. In fact we did well to stay competitive as long as we did after Abramovich parked his tank in our front garden and fired £50 notes at us (in Dein’s words)

I agree on Elneny but wouldn’t put it past Arteta to get something useful out of him. As I say I literally haven’t seen any kind of link to a midfielder let alone a credible one. I mean, there’s Coutinho links tbf, but honestly... Ceballos you can only imagine RM killed that by their terms but I’ve not heard whether it was us, RM or the player who was the reason a deal wasn’t done.

Even if we get someone in before the charity Shield, there won’t be enough time to integrate them and you’ve got to think we’d be starting the season with a mixture of what’s already here, hence my Elneny comments.

Randomly channel surfing I came across a documentary on Garrincha. Very interesting but sad story. Born crippled, amazingly brilliant footballer anyway and illiterate when he got on the football scene. Personal demons, etc.

An additional potential problem is quarantine maybe applying to inbound players which would lengthen the period before they could be up to speed with us.

Quite, the only silver lining is other clubs will have the same hurdles but no one amongst our immediate rivals has as glaring a hole as our midfield right now since we lost Ceballos. Chelsea are going to get Thiago Silva in under the wire for their defence although GK is a mess. Utd, Liverpool, Wolves Leicester etc have reasonably balanced squads if not all amazing.

Buying Uk based players is the only work around for any quarantine issues, but I’m not sure many exist beyond players like Grealish who are out of our price range. Out of anybody’s range it seems. And not even in the england squad! Did Doucouré go to Everton? None of our youngsters are central enough (barring Guendouzi) to fill in really effectively either. Arteta must be sweating a bit.

Had Wenger not been petty, we'd have Fabregas 'quarterbacking' the attack now. But the past is the past.

With Stan as the owner, was anyone expecting anything different? We might as well get used to it for the foreseeable future, as it’s the Kroenke way.

Interesting comments today from Arteta

Looks like the Gabriel transfer maybe far from done, his agent was the agent of Malcolm who strung along roma waiting for a better offer until Barca came in and stole the deal.

The comment Arteta made about Guendouzi strikes me as a translation of “look this guy is a complete d******* and will demand too much from any move so I can see us not be able to flog him in which case we will have to use the silly prick until someone naive enough comes along”

Gabriel still having his medical is he

Chelsea sign Malang Sarr on a free......and loan him out. Of course they do. Easy money.

Doucoré not yet signed for Everton but most likely destination. If we can’t get someone else soon we should hijack that deal pronto. Ceballos signing doesn’t look completely dead either from Arteta’s comments,

“We had some talks. Dani knows really well what I think about him. He was pretty clear with me as well that his intention was to remain with us.

“Obviously, Real Madrid is involved there and I don’t know yet what they want to do with the player.

“He is a player we are interested in because we really saw in the last few months of the season what he is capable of bringing to us.”

Hope for our midfield yet.

Ash. I agree. I think Doucore is a very good player who could be even better in our set up. I saw him (on TV) have a blinder at Anfield ....
Although it looks like he’s out the door I’d still rather keep AMN but I’m all in with Mikel. Let’s hope his grand rebuilding plan (probably a 2/3 year project) works.

Probably not getting Ceballos either.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/metro.co.u ... 85602/amp/

[Edit: Just saw Ash's post, so no Ceballos].