Friday was a comparatively jam-packed day with deals happening – or supposed to be happening – left, right and centre, as well as the usual gossip-guff.

After finally completing his second loan move to Serie A club Roma, Wojciech Szczesny spoke about his desire to win the Italian title. He was also questioned about former Arsenal skipper, Thomas Vermaelen, potentially making his move to Roma from Barcelona, which the goalkeeper answered as any media trained Arsenal footballer would.

Debuchy looks like he could be moving to Turkish club Galatasaray after we managed to mess up talks with Bordeaux. It appears to just be another loan move, nothing permanent, nothing done just yet. However, two done deals include the newly signed Kelechi Nwakali, which has been in the works for roughly 85 years, and a loan move for Stefan O’Connor to Dutch club MVV Maastricht.

New striker, Asano, scored in Japan’s 4-5 loss to Nigeria – he was happy; Serge Gnabry spoke about how happy he was to score for Germany in the Olympics; Santi Cazorla spoke about how happy he is to play alongside Ozil and Alexis, and Bielik spoke about how happy he is to now play at centre-back. Happiness all around – I like it.

Apparently, Thierry Henry could have been part of the Belgium national side’s staff if Ralf Rangnick had been appointed instead of Roberto Martinez. Hmm. Would he have picked Belgium over coaching at London Colney? Who knows. He chose TV over us so… moving on… sort of. Arsenal are thought to be about to promote Freddie Ljungberg to Henry’s vacated role, he’s been coaching at the club at an u15 level since January and helping out during pre-season.

We have updates on the Mustafi as Chelsea and AC Milan apparently begin to show interest; Lacazette, after the French media claimed that there has been no further contract but some outlets say there has, and Icardi as Inter supposedly look to sign his replacement in the form of West Ham target, Carlos Bacca.

We also try to dig to the bottom of those Griezmann rumours.

On the pitch, Alexis Sanchez and Aaron Ramsey have returned to training – wahoo – but Jack Wilshere is out for the rest of our pre-season tour thanks to his ‘minor’ patella injury.

On Friday evening, Arsenal lined up against Viking FK in their penultimate pre-season clash. We won 8-0… yup EIGHT.

You can read the match report, complete with goal videos, here, as well as player ratings here.