Compared to last weekend, this one was relatively quiet in the land of Arsenal as we were only trying to sign Barcelona’s most expensive player ever on loan while we offered Mauro Icardi €10m-a-year.
Yes, that’s right, there’s more madness afoot and Arsenal are at the heart of it.
Where once we could have easily laughed and dismissed these sorts of rumours, now we have to sit up and take note. Nicolas Pepe saw to that.
First up, Coutinho. Barcelona need to raise cash and see their record signing as the way of doing that. Arsenal can’t afford the €100m or so that the La Liga giants reportedly want, so we’re asking for a loan. But the player doesn’t want to go to Arsenal. And we aren’t even asking for a loan anyway according to Mundo Deportivo because we don’t want hmi.
Most reports this weekend claimed Arsenal were using this weekend’s game, which Arsenal lost 2-1 but we’ll get to that later, to open the door to negotiations as if Barcelona wouldn’t let them into the city if the game wasn’t happening.
On other fronts, it’s still being claimed we’re trying to land Sami Khedira who is going to cancel his contract with Juventus but not before they pay him to do so or some other nonsense. He wants to move for free, they want him to move, so they will probably find an agreement. A reminder, we’ve supposedly offered him a two-year deal worth €4m-a-season.
That’s unlike the Laurent Koscielny situation because we don’t actually want him to leave, what with him being our best (currently) fit defender. He seemingly wants to move to Bordeaux, by the way, where he also wants to coach. Board members from the Ligue 1 side were supposedly in London for talks with Arsenal.
The other bit of absolute bananament was a report that we had offered Mauro Icardi €10m-a-year to come to London. He doesn’t want to move to the Premier League, however, even though Inter Milan have told him he’ll never play for them again.
There might also be an issue with Arsenal’s move for Kieran Tierney but, for once, it seems like it’s nothing to do with us.
The player has been recovering after a double hernia operation and was expected to be back in training around about now. Reports now state he could be out for another two months with an injury that is notoriously slow to heal.
Actual football
There was a lot of actual football played this weekend.
William Saliba played just over an hour for St Etienne as they lost 2-1 to Newcastle on Saturday.
Watched William Saliba for the first time yesterday in pre-season friendly vs #NUFC at SJP.
Looked strong, great athlete, read the game well & seemed confident on the ball. Bit baffled Arsenal have loaned him back to St-Etienne when they're lacking at CB..#AFC #ASSE pic.twitter.com/VzfUWveHSO
— Olly Hawkins (@Olly_Hawk) August 4, 2019
Rob Holding returned to the football pitch with the u23s on Saturday.
Arsenal played their final game of pre-season against Barcelona in the Joan Gamper trophy.
They lost 2-1 and were largely the architects of their own demise in ways that couldn’t have been more Arsenal if they’d tried.
Still, Aubameyang’s goal was a peach.
After the game, Unai Emery game an update on Alexandre Lacazette’s ankle problem after the forward was omitted from the squad.
Emery also explained why he left Nicolas Pepe out of the squad.
Random news
While investigating something for another article I learned a curious fact about Hector Bellerin’s sell-on clause with Barcelona.
Other news
Beth Mead became an official ambassador of her hometown club, Whitby Town.
Finally, Arsenal eventually got around to letting us know that Takuma Asano has officially left the club.
We all knew about that in July, but, still, nice of them to think of us.