Don't laugh too hard at Spurs. Ours are also slightly inflated.

Two of our Wembley victories were from our ill-fated spell using it as our Champs league home ground.

Don't forget if you decline an invitation to meet Erdogan it will have repercussions for your relatives in Turkey, anyhow Özil has tats and a dog, that's haram. Quite a mess.

I have a signed photo of my dad presenting an enormous birthday cake to Mugabe. It dates from before Mugabe went totally mental, but nonetheless ... I'll let others cast the first stone here.

Decaf, you sure he wasn't feeding the crocs with Idi?

I loved watching Adriano who was totally unplayable when he was fully committed. One of my favorites at the time. It's sad what happened to him. I've heard people question the mental strength of Brazilian players at pubs I've been to. A lot of players grow up poor. Brazil, as beautiful as the country is, takes poverty to another level.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nV3LzAFuCEw

City dominating Chelsea in the Community Shield and purring like a well oiled machine - that opening league game is going to be an almighty challenge.

Fortunately, as supporters of Arsenal FC are well aware, a decent performance in the Community Shield is the kiss of death for the season ahead.

See that Emery was in the crowd today for the charity shield.

Like that, I always found it reassuring when George was at random games watching potential opponents that were coming up. Wenger never did it because despite his love of football he never believed understanding the opposition was part of his job because he was an absolute canoe full of moose meat

We appear to be letting Calum Chambers go on loan to Fulham for the season.

Seems weird given that we are not exactly stacked with quality CBs. In my opinion, he's probably the best we've currently got available.

Would have thought Holding was the one to loan out, if anyone.

I'd like to see us bring in a quality CB and not that Croation guy Vida.

You are obviously passionate about the whole deal which is to be admired . If someone was doing a university paper on the subject your article would be first cab off the rank for material

.... for your Joe Average Arsenal supporter perhaps a little long winded .....

but given the rise of cell phone texting , Twitter , Facebook , Linkedon every bloke and their dog feels they need to say something even if there is nothing to be said .

People shuffling around the supermarket clutching their cell phones peering at the screen every five seconds like it's some *&&^%$ life support system .

...sigh .... If only we could return to the the late 1950s , prosperity , no debt , full employment , no mass immigration ,
most consumeables made in NZ , great music , cars , cheap housing , affordable land ....no TV , cell phones , computers ...everyone out playing sport , kids playing hopscotch , marbles , knucklebones , reading books

....... halcyon days

Sergio ...?

Strange move as it only leaves us with holding and Mavropanos to cover Mustafi and Sokratis and they aren’t really experienced enough. It might suggest that we are bringing someone in but I think you are right and as usual the only thing separating us from getting the player we need in this area is the fee which would probably cost 50m + to secure the world class centre half we need. I would suggest the Croatian isn’t what we need either, looking at his overall career despite his decent World Cup he’s hardly set the world alight at all and I’d suggest he’s barely played at the highest level.

Tell you what, read my piece before you comment. I call 'Erdo' what he is, a de facto dictator who calls others fascists to cover his own fascist policies at home.

As for Sweden I quite like it, but I live in London, home of The Arsenal and the most multicultural city in the world, so my immediate rainbow nation is one of 10m+ and is the city of my birth.

Bully for you. Rather bigger things to concern myself with than whether the degree to which I dislike Bayern is not healthy (your implication being utter bloody nonsense), given that it doesn't affect my life in any way

Didn't we sell them Ryo Myachi? The totally of my knowledge in that direction.

Apologies if my pro-multicultural world view (perhaps influenced by being, you know, a mix of a number of different cultures and ethnicities) doesn't chime with your own. Even Canute only argued with the tide to prove a point about the limits to his power...

No one in Germany gave a monkeys about Özil being pictured with Erdogan *as happened many times before* until suddenly the same pictures turn up in the turkish elections. Like Özil had any say in that!

Also as Rotterdamnation says, you don't turn Erdogan down if you have family in Turkey. Hakan Suker was Turkey's best ever striker, but when he criticised Erdogan it all got nasty in a hurry for him and his family.

Likewise, what about all the other people photographed with Erdogan on the same visit to London? Much as I dislike the tories and think the current lot are spectacularly incompetent, I dont think Theresa May was championing his election campaign...

Unless someone else comes in its very strange, particularly with home grown player rules.

Your wrong, it didn’t go down well at all and was the starting point for all the aggro about this. Nobody digged him out when they won the World Cup.

Understand your second point here but it doesn’t mean you turn up to meet him with a gift, take a photo with a *%^@ eating grin on your boatrace then plaster it all over your social media. Also Özil is German not Turkish.

This is a interesting point. We need 8 homegrown players and with Ramsey, Welbeck and chambers off where does that leave us with complying ? Who are our 8?

Bellerin
Martinez
Holding
Mainland Nile’s
Nelson
Nketiah
Iwobi
Jenkinson

Didn't Lichsteiner start at CB against Lazio? Has the Polish kid left us?

Still struggling to comprehend the Chambers loan deal. I'm not sure how it really benefits us. A small loan fee and Chambers playing week-in week-out but he's already been on loan for a season once before and did well. Surely, it was either a keep or sell situation.

I would have thought that Holding or Mavropanos would have benefitted most from a loan move.

I can only assume we must be bringing someone else in (that young kid from Germany we were linked with earlier in the summer?) otherwise it looks like a case of shooting ourselves in the foot because in my humble opinion Chambers is the best of a fairly mediocre bunch of CBs currently at our disposal.

Daz is desperately hoping so.

You obviously spend time thinking about Bayern, and writing about your hatred of them. Everyone wastes time on issues they have no influence on. But despite only doing something others do, on whatever the issue, your hatred of Bayern therefore does affect your life in some way.

Watching City yesterday was a sobering experience. Their squad depth is frightening.

Unfortunately, whilst we have never been able to compete financially with City a number of very poor transfer windows in the last several seasons has left us miles off.

It hasn't helped that transfer fees have spiralled almost out of control in that time and the type of players we might have bought for £30m some seasons ago are now costing upwards of £60m, making our transfer budget seem laughable. We are now left to scratch around for second tier players in the hope they might plug a gap or try to find hidden gems like Guendouzi.

Liverpool are now doing what we should have done when we had the opportunity, strengthening when in a position of strength and buying top quality to address their positions of weakness.

I thought Chambers recently signed a contract extension. If it's a loan deal, meaning we presumably won't get much, if any, money from Fulham apart from saving on his wages, my guess is we'll be signing a new central defender.

socrates, I think it's pushing things to claim he's currently our best centre half of those available.

I'm not pretending he's a worldclass CB or anything but I have been seriously underwhelmed by what I have seen defensively in pre-season and he has looked the best of a pretty mediocre bunch.

I might be wrong but wasn't it at right back where he had a decent game, not central defence? If so, he'll have Bellerin and Lichtsteiner ahead of him there.

He played at CB against Lazio and I think mostly CB in the other games too.

He's a CB not a RB. As I said the other day his game is more rounded since his loan spell. He's no worldbeater but then neither are any of the other CBs we have (obviously it's too early to tell with Mavropanos but he only got limited game time during pre-season so he must be deemed not quite ready yet)

My initial thoughts on Sokratis are along the lines of "if he is the answer then what is the question?". He looks like a solid lump with good aerial ability but no pace and limited ability on the ball. He's no spring chicken either.

I agree he's mainly a centre half but I didn't see any of the Lazio game, not even the goals, so can't comment on that performance. I seem to remember Chambers doing okay once he came on against Chelsea, and I thought that was at right back.

Özil could have declined the meeting. Emre Can did. And he could have done that without criticising Erdogan. It is totally undependable for someone to criticise Özil for what effectively looked like an endorsement of Erdogan. It is a very different thing for a politician to be pictured with the likes of Erdogan . Theresa May is acting as a representative of her country. It's all tied up with international trade and international diplomacy.

I read your article in full. It is very good and I agree fully with the sentiments expressed. I also consider that Özil did himself no favours here.

Wonder if Guendouzi will be in the starting eleven against City? It's been quite a while since I've been this excited about a youngster breaking through as I am with him. Not even Wilshere, and certainly not Bellerin who looked really good initially.

Bloody daft decision to be loaning out Chambers.
After a good loan spell and signing a new contract really thought he was going to kick on and had a great chance of starting the season as first choice.
He seems to have all the attributes so it really is a bizarre decision.
Does this mean we are perservering with Mustafi?
Just don't get it.

Just like I don't get the AMN at left back nonsense. I'd thought we'd left all that behind with the departure of you know who. Play the lad in his best position and buy a bloody left back. We can't rely on Nacho going the whole season injury free, especially if he is starting off with one.

He has looked good. I’m excited to see Torreira, add in Xhaka and AMN and we’re well stocked for the holding/CM positions. Ramsey is the ‘late arriver in the box type’ Özil, iwobi, mhiki are more No.10’s. I suppose the one thing we miss is that powerful driving box to box.

Of more concern to me though will be our defence again. Chambers going on loan is an odd one, surely we must have someone lined up because going with only 4 CB is dangerous considering we played 60 games last season.

I'm not wrong because you have 100% misunderstood the point I was making. My point was that Özil has been photographed with Erdogan a number of times over the last decade, but it wasn't until this time when the photos were used as political propoganda (which hadn't happened before), and anti-turkish, anti-islamic and anti-immigrant feeling is at its highest point in maybe 60+ years. I know it caused a storm before the world cup - thats kind of my point.

As for the second point, if course you take him a gift and take smiley photsos with him - firstly they've met before a number of times and done exactly the same without any consequences, secondly, most poeple would do the same when asked to meet the leader of a nation they are so closely connected to, and thirdly, if you don't you get no more holidays with your Turkish wife in Turkey, and some of your cousins disappear....

Even after selling Coutinho and Suarez (they owe Rodgers and Dalglish for those), their net spend over the last few years is still more than 100m more than ours...

The main problem is that we didn't invest in the squad when we had a massive competitive advantage, and instead the 'custodians' and Kroenke were happy to expect Wenger to work miracles, and bribed him to do so by handing him so much power that it took 3 years longer than it should to get shot of him.

I agree Özil could have declined the meeting, but he has a lot more invested in his Turkish heritage than Emre Can - he still goes there every year several times, his partner is Miss Turkey and has a successful career there, he has ambitions to finish his career there, and he has a large extended family there. Bar some of the extended family element Can has none of that.

I agree that Özil's understanding of the situation was naive and stubborn, and that he allowed himself to be used by people with alterior motives. But I'm also angry that so much of the commentary and criticism of the player has come from people with absolutely no concept of the emotional pulls of being of mulitple heritage, or being the child of immigrants, or having had their ethnicity discussed for better or worse and used as a political points scoring element for almost their entire professional life.

The fact is none of the strongest critics and most commentators in general have absolute no even remote understanding of the experience of Özil's life. Hell, I don't either, but at least as someone of mixed race, whose 'difference' is always evident and has been remarked upon for my entire life, have some vague idea of how having that card marked feels, and I have none of his pressures, am culturally extremely british and live in London.

It just *%^@* me off all these old white blond Germans refusing to even engage with the broader issues while castigating the player, even if Özil himself could clearly have handled the situation better.

Which begs the question, where does ignorance stop and wilful stupidity start? And when does a reluctance to understand become prejudice?

Arsenal: Calum Chambers to Fulham first mistake of summer

Arsenal looked all set on the defensive side of things, but now Calum Chambers is on his way to a season-long loan and, just like that – mistake.

https://paininthearsenal.com/2018/08/06/arsenal-calum-chambers-fulham-mistake/

So Emre Cans relatives are being bumped off as we speak are they. Come off it.

I understand they had met previously and said tensions in Germany around immigration are high but who knows maybe there was a lack of awareness the first time they met as Özil certainly didn’t plaster it over his social media like this time.

Regardless

Quite simply if you take a picture with a fascist dictator smiling your chops off people will question you and form an opinion so be prepared to deal with the consequences.

End.of.story

Reiss Nelsen is reportedly on the verge of signing a new 5 year deal with us. Excellent news, protects a valuable asset and ensures a very talented player stays with us. He’s had a good pre season. Similar to AMN we need to see more of him in his best position.
Cup and Europa games should be 4-2-3-1 with nelsen right wing ahead of Lichtsteiner and AMN as one of the two centre mids