No thanks - The last thing we want is some super rich guy who didn't have his heart in it and didn't care about the club.

I see what you did there

Nice touch

Messi is rich waaaay beyond the dreams of avarice, but look how many more noughts Stan has:

Messi $600,000,000
StanK $10,000,000,000

It's truly obscene.

I haven't seen that many zeroes lined up since Mister Spock had a book signing.

Apparently it is actually against employment rules (presumably the rule is to stop individual players being coerced into taking paycuts, or something?).

He can't. Once they couldn't sign him he was not their player and even for free they couldn't take him on. It's the way the Spanish league is structured.

Without trying to over defend footballers on their salaries I have read footballers talk about how when they have a certain wage their lifestyle may reflect that, ie: they may still have big mortgages, have kids in private schools, have houses for family etc. They still have monthly outgoings and to drop from £500k a week to a measly £20k a week is going to effect that.

Of course, anyone of £500k a week should be sensible enough with their money to realise that just a few months work should have them set for life and never having to work again - but peoples lifestyles tend to reflect the money they earn

Added to Stan’s $10,000,000,000, his wife Ann has her own fortune of $9,200,000,000. As a couple they’re not that hard up with $19,200,000,000.

Not feeling optimistic at all about the upcoming season.
It just feels like more of the same old same old.
The 3 signings so far look good and I'm happy we look like we have changed the profile of our signings but its clearly not enough in terms of what we needed to do.
I cant believe that 3 days away from the start of the season we still havent addressed a back up keeper. Absolutely crazy. I mean what the hell are arteta and Edu actually doing?????
We badly need another creative body. Emile Smith Rowe cannot do it all on his own yet once again still waiting for something to happen.
Maddison Ødegaard yet you have a player Aouor who 12 months ago we desperately wanted and who we bid for who is now available for 25 million. Half the price.
Why not snap him up then use the rest of the money to get a keeper(Onana available for 6million)and right back or another body in midfield.
I just dont get what Edu is waiting for.
Frustrating and depressing to think that we have no chance of top 4 as things stand.
Top 6 is the best we can hope for.
How we have fallen.

At their level, it is a different measure of contentment. Power corrupts value, greed corrupts value. Sad truth of life.

If Arsenal line up on Friday with Aubameyang on the left wing and Lacazette in the middle I'm not sure I'll even bother watching. It's time Arteta had the bollocks to just leave one of them out. As for Elneny, if he is even on the bench....

So, what's the minimum Arteta has to achieve to keep his job?

So, I guess PSG wins the Messi lottery. If they are halfway decent businessmen, they will recoup most if not all of the wage, etc. And if Messi has good lawyers, he'll get a cut of the merchandizing, etc.

https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/58159464

New 3rd kit which will be worn vs Brentford.

We’ve maybe only got somewhere between 19-23 away games this season, and assuming we’ll change the kits again next season you wonder how many times we’ll actually wear this?

torrid kit...er..ah..turd kit..er..ah...third kit.

A few bits of news coming out about Ødegaard. He's concerned he won't get playing time at Real Madrid (most people could have told him that) and Madrid don't want an unhappy player so will sell him. Fee between 40-50m euros, which at the bottom end is £33m. Pitching that against £60m+ Maddison then it is a no brainer, we need to go and get Ødegaard back.

I agree with the general points being made about us being too slow in the transfer market, but Ødegaard is a situation where I think a little patience is warranted. At the start of summer the mentioned price was aroud £50m, but if Real are looking to sell that price will come down as the window draws to a close. It's always preferable to get players in for pre-season, but the main thing is just getting them at all.

Ramsdale was not named in Sheff Utd's League cup tie tonight, with many speculating it is so he isn't then cup tied if another club came in for him.
This continues to be a strong rumour I struggle to get on board with or see any logic in for 2 reasons.
1) The price is supposedly somewhere in the region of £30m. If we're spending £30m on a back up GK then we damn well better have all other areas of the team fixed, because by all accounts we could have Onana for under £10m, or probably any number of experienced older GK for next to nothing who would 'do a job' without much expectation they will play many games and push more of our budget to solving RB, CM, AM and striker issues
2) I've not really considered Ramsdale to be that good. Is he 5th choice England GK?

Would we be trying to sign him if he wasn't English?

Oh Tom dont....
The experiment of Aubameyang on the left wing has to stop.
2 pacy tricky players on the wings and one of Aubameyang , Lacazette or Balogun through the middle.
Arteta will just come across as *%^@*** clueless if he persists with that nonsense.

It just defies belief what on earth they see in Ramsdale to warrant wasting 30 million on him.
We could pick up an experienced keeper like Fraser Forster as back up.
I've always liked him.
Would love to know the thinking as to why they wont snap up Onana.
Ramsdale is utter tripe

Maybe I’m being naively over optimistic but I’d like to think it’s not necessarily Arsenal that Ramsdale will be moving to, especially for £30m.

Martinelli on the left, Aubameyang in the middle and one of either Saka, Lacazette or Pépé on the right. Particularly Martinelli and Saka on either flank should be enough trickery and pace. I'm most worried about the midfield. Ødegaard whilst good at times didn't seem to be able to really dictate the tempo so not sure he is the answer to the problems in that area.

Should that be the task of Ødegaard though? The best midfields have an assortment of player types. Creativity may be one of them, as well as defensive attributes, and box to box energy (I’m not claiming that’s an exhaustive list). Ødegaard ticks that creativity box.

But I don’t see dictating the tempo as the job of the creative midfielder. If we do end up signing Maddison, which I don’t think we should for Leicester’s price, he sure as hell won’t dictate the tempo of our play.

The best tempo driver I’ve seen at Arsenal is Vieira. It was him that did that, not the creative Pires. Before their time, it was probably Talbot rather than Brady who forced the tempo. In Manchester United’s best (arguably) team, their tempo was surely forced by Scholes more than Beckham?

Hi Bernard,

Ødegaard is a talented young player with obvious potential. I feel, though, he is not dynamic enough for what we need at this point in time. If anything he slows us down a bit and he tends to drift to the right where it all gets a bit congested with Pépé operating in that space as well. Nor is he a goal threat and we need some more goals from midfield.

I am not averse to the signing at the right price but I am not sure he is exactly what we need at the moment.

Hi david,

I agree, playing Aubameyang wide left cannot continue. Not with his current level of performance anyway.

His main threat is to cut inside and bend one into the far corner but once teams stop him doing that and he is forced down the outside his crossing is not really great, nor would you expect it to be really with his left being his wrong foot and him being striker by trade.

To be fair though, the same argument about goal threat could certainly be used against Saka and Smith-Rowe as well. End product is often something that develops over time in a player, as they get more experienced and are more used to those situations. Ødegaard, Saka and Smith-Rowe are all young though, I think we could certainly see improvement in that area in the future.

I'm expecting a slow start to the season based on what I've seen in preseason. I don't see any discernable tactic that works.

To be fair, Arteta has new players and other players were on international duty. But after say...a month, we should see improvement and a tactic that yields results.

Morning socrates. You’re not Maddison’s biggest fan (I’m sure you said that lately) but didn’t you imply you wouldn’t oppose signing him? I thought you said that. I think Maddison slows the play down even more than Ødegaard.

Look, Ødegaard may not be perfect for our needs currently. But as Hazuki says he is young enough (over two years younger than Maddison) to arguably develop more than Maddison. Given the choice between them, for me it would be Ødegaard over Maddison any day of the week, especially as he’d be significantly cheaper than the Leicester player.

Looks *%^@.

Hi Haz,

Yes, but if our ambition is to challenge for top four this year we need some immediate goal threats, not ones that will develop over the next 3 or 4 years.

Maybe Saka and Emile Smith Rowe will have a decent season goals-wise, it can happen that they have a break-out year. It did with Cesc. It could happen with Ødegaard of course but I think on balance I'd be happy to see a more proven goalscorer come in.

Madison scored 8 goals and made 5 assists in 31 games (7 as a sub) last year. Maybe not £70m stats but as we only finished 6 points shy of 4th last year that probably would have been good enough to have given us a decent shot at 4th.

Ødegaard scored 1 goal and made 2 assists in 14 PL games, albeit he was new to the PL and had some injury niggles.

My cards haven't arrived yet but I've had the relevant emails that include the option to download a digital pass to my iPhone wallet. It looks as though I can go through the turnstiles with just my phone.

What could go wrong, eh?

Hmm, I’ll be taking my card (imagine a smiley here).

I've seen more from Smith Rowe and Saka increasing the tempo than I did from Ødegaard and we need a bit more if that someone who is willing to exert a bit more energy into trying to speed things up. Maybe Ødegaard could develop that but I haven't seen it yet and aside from creativity I think it's one of the biggest things missing in the midfield. Partey tries to push through but we can't keep him on the pitch for more than 2 matches.

To be fair socrates we improved significantly when Ødegaard was in the team. In the 14 Premier League games he played we won 24 points, an average of 1.71 points per game. In the 24 games he missed we won 37 points, an average of 1.54 points per game.

Also, it’s worth noting that three of the four games he missed after joining us were against the relegated teams Sheffield United, Fulham and West Brom (the other was against thirteenth placed Wolves).

He played in the second half of the season games against Manchester United, Manchester City, Leicester, Tottenham, Liverpool and Chelsea. So his points per game stat wasn’t improved by him playing easier matches after he’d joined.

Let me be clear. I’m not saying we improved solely because of signing Ødegaard. That would be a nonsense claim to make. But what I am saying is that our improvement did coincide to at least an extent with him joining.

There - Fixed it for you.

I wonder when was the last time we had a "good" team? Was that the season we had the midfield of Fabregas, Hleb, Flamini and Rosicky (when he was healhty)? 2008?

Two days before Arsenal's first match and still no back up keeper. If Leno gets injured or sent off we are currently throwing Hein or Okonkwo under the bus. What are Arteta/Edu playing at.

15/16 was a good side that should have taken advantage of all the other big sides failing or being in transition and should have been more strongly backed in the transfer market for that final push of quality.

Sanchez, Özil, Cazorla, ramsey, giroud, per+kos at the back, the underrated Monreal and prime Bellerin - even our unused or fringe players were the likes of Ox, Walcott, Welbeck.

This was the summer when we only signed Čech and added Elneny in the January. Injecting a top class striker and a top class CM partner for Cazorla really could have won us the title that year. Leicester won it with one of the lowest points totals for 15 years