With all eyes firmly fixed on Sunday, it was a relatively quiet day on the Arsenal front, even in terms of gossip.
The Premier League got under way with Champions, Leicester, losing at Hull as Jamie Vardy missed in front of goal as if he was wearing an Arsenal shirt, but in actual Arsenal news, Olivier Giroud spoke about his hopes for the season ahead, and Per Mertesacker was announced as the new club captain meaning that our run of having a proper captain start a game will continue to be appalling (13 in last three years).
Five Arsenal fixtures were moved for TV, Johan Djourou spoke about how Hamburger now remind him of Arsenal, and while we’re touring around Europe – Arsenal are now ranked 11th on the continent.
The u23s got their new season off to a poor start with a 2-0 defeat on Friday night against Reading and Helen told us about her pre-match routine and why she’s glad to be heading home to the Emirates this weekend.
In pre-match build-up, we have a preview, a predicted XI and a preview of referee, Michael Oliver, who is not the Arsenal hero many think he is. There was more coverage of Arsene Wenger’s press conference, with the manager speaking about Manchester United’s finances, while Jurgen Klopp said some nice things about Wenger. Again. Oh, he also gave an update on his squad ahead of the game.
In gossip, Arsenal are apparently after Jeremy Mathieu, Everton could cause problems for our Mustafi bid and Lacazette finally returned for Lyon after being out with a hamstring problem many doubted was real. We aren’t signing him, BTW.
Finally Claudio Ranieri said that Arsenal haven’t bid for Riyad Mahrez, who scored a penalty for the Foxes in their defeat.
So, all in all, a day of a lot of talking, mostly about nothing at all.