What do you want me to cover first…Lucas Perez or the Champions League draw?
I know, I know, Perez it is.
So, sitting thinking that we weren’t doing very much then all of a sudden Lucas Perez exploded into our viewfinder and the internet was set alight with people scrambling off to Youtube to watch highlights of him.
So, is it happening? It seems like it very well could be. A bid is in, it’s been accepted and the player is off to London. So say the local press, at least anyway. They also say that Depor will only receive €10.5m of the €24.2m Arsenal have to pay, thanks to taxes and sell-on clauses.
Deportivo have also announced that he won’t be in their squad to face Betis:
Lucas, con permiso del #DÉPOR, se cae de la lista de convocados para el choque ante el Betis https://t.co/pw4wxjcXss pic.twitter.com/VQHLc4VjGx
— RC Deportivo (@RCDeportivo) August 25, 2016
The other major bit of Arsenal happenings on Thursday was the small matter of the Champions League draw which saw Arsenal handed three sides they haven’t played in the competition before. That was nice. It was all getting a bit tedious with the Bayern-Barca-last 16-go home reruns. At the very least, we get to mix-up that first bit.
On the face of it, it’s not a tough group and Arsenal should expect to get out of it for the 17th straight year. Dig into the group and it remains a decent set of teams and Arsenal should be confident of possibly finishing top, that’s until all our players get injured and we scrape second place in the last game.
I kid. Sort of. I don’t see that happening this year. Even we can’t mess this one up, right?
In other news, there wasn’t much and it was all about the gos, the gos, the gos.
Omer Toprak seemed to be edging ahead of Shkodran Mustfi on the rumometer before the Ornacle arrived and changed everything ’17 out of 18 Bundesliga clubs’ want Serge Gnabry, and Calum Chambers looks set for a loan meaning we must *surely* be getting another defender.
Oh, there was some other news, but it wasn’t very exciting which is probably why I forgot. We got Forest away in the League Cup and Laurent Koscielny and Olivier Giroud were called up to the France squad for their games against Italy and Belarus.
We also released the second in our Sevens series, this time, the first player to ever wear the #7 for Arsenal – Joe Hulme. If you listened to the first one, you’ll know that these aren’t just one person sitting in a room reading a story but rather something we hope gives you a flavour of the time as well as lets you hear from the player himself.
Spooky, eh?