The One and Only Arsenal Blog (except for the other 150!)
Arsenal’s GK Replacement close!
Reports on Sky Sports suggest that we are close to signing a replacement for the departed Emiliano Martinez. We are so close in fact that he could be here in time for our evening kick off against West Ham on Saturday, that is of course if he signs and then is registered by midday on Friday.
Our attentions now seem to have turned to Dijon keeper Runar Alex Runarsson a 25-year-old Icelandic footballer who has been at the Ligue 1 side for two years.
Talking tough is good Mari; welcome to the Premiership by Lagos Gooner
It is no longer news that Arteta has succeeded in bringing in his first signing as coach of Arsenal. Just yesterday, Pablo Mari was announced as an Arsenal player. Like other new signings, there are always fears if such signings would click or not. Well, as if Mari was reading the minds of the Arsenal fans, he provided an answer to that, while assuring the fans that Arsenal would compete with the best. Pablo Mari believes that with his performance against Liverpool’s attacking duo of Salah and Mane, he is ready for the premiership.
Henrikh Mkhitaryan hopes Aaron Ramsey ends all speculation on his future here at Arsenal, and becomes a real club legend.
As we all know and have read on a daily basis, Ramsey is no closer to signing a new contract with the club than he was a few months ago when negotiations started.
Nobody knows the full details about the kind of deal Ramsey has been asking for, but it has been rumoured he wants the same kind of deal which Ozil managed to get out of us last February when he literally waited until the very last minute to get a deal done.
The Barcelona coach, Ernesto Valverde, has put an end to speculation we could make a summer move for winger Ousmane Dembele, stating he remains a key component of his squad.
Signed for an jaw-dropping £135 million last summer as a replacement for Neymar, Dembele has failed to live up to expectations at the Camp Nou and failed to make any impact on the first team, partly due to his long list of injuries.
And that led to speculation we could swoop in and offer him an £88 million escape route, with Emery reportedly in the transfer market for a fast, direct winger that will take the defender on rather than stand-him up and pass it, thinking of a certain Alex Iwobi.
Granit Xhaka’s performance in the match against Brazil revealed why Lucas Torreira is fundamental to his future with Arsenal FC. The 25-year old player could well enjoy a new lease on life at Arsenal thanks to Torreira’s arrival. Of all the players that could be used as a reference point for how Unai Emery intends to reshape the midfield for Arsenal, Valon Behrami, from Switzerland, is not the most obvious choice. Yet, in the match against Brazil, the former utility man from Watford and West Ham provided a favour to Xhaka that should not be overlooked during the debate as to how to bring out the best in the 25-year old player at the Emirates and he certainly has the right mindset to go far.
The Gunners, for once, made serious strides in the latest transfer window, despite losing star man, Alexis Sanchez. It is certainly a rarity for a team to lose their best player and somehow be better off for it, but that is exactly what Arsenal seem to have managed.
For starters, Sanchez was just six months away from leaving the club for absolutely nothing. And while it’s disappointing that his contract situation got to that stage, to bring in someone in the ilk of Henrikh Mkhitaryan as part of the deal was nothing short of a masterstroke.
It is hardly a surprise but Arsenal now have yet another striker leaving the club in this transfer window, as it has been revealed by Belgian media outlet Het Laatste Nieuws that Chuba Akpom has has arrived at Sint-Truidense for a routine medical, before signing a contract that will keep him at the club for the next three years.
Akpom and his father were among the over-17,000 spectators that watched Sint-Truidense draw 1-1 with Racing Genk on Saturday in the Belgian First Division. They are currently in 6th place in the League and they are hoping that Akpom can score goals to help them get back into the European places.
This might not be the most thrilling of Arsenal transfer rumours, but it does at least have the benefit of coming straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, so we do not have to ask the usual question of whether it is just a made up piece of fake news from the always inventive football media.
With this one, though, the player in question, who is a 19-year old midfield star called Berkay Ozcan who is currently playing in second tier of the German Bundesliga with Stuttgart, has declared that he does expect to be signing for Arsenal, although it may not be as soon as the next transfer window in January.
If Arsene Wenger is right about how hard it is going to be for Arsenal to bring in the transfer targets that all of us fans would like to see come to north London in the future, then it does make his decision to hold onto our star striker Alexis Sanchez through the final year of his contract despite reported offers from Man City of more than £50 million.
I think that most Arsenal fans have now reached the stage, with just hours of the summer transfer window to go and just two signings made by Arsene Wenger while all our rivals are spending shedloads of cash on all sorts of players, that we would be happy with just about any new signing.
I would certainly be pretty happy if the Gunners were to add one of the two attacking wide players being heavily linked with a move to north London by the football media today, The Leicester City and Algeria star has been linked with Arsenal and many other clubs and seems very close to completing his transfer to somebody, with the BBC reporting that he has been allowed to leave his international team mates to finalise the move.