Morning all. It’s hard to believe it’s just three days until we play our first Premier League game of the new season. We’ve got lots to come here on the site in the build-up to that, with an Arsecast later in the week, and our traditional season preview post before it all kicks off again. I think the Community Shield win and performance on Sunday has settled some nerves. I sensed some anxiety, linked primarily to our transfer business thus far, and I suspect heavily informed by the Vinicius Junior situation. When you go for something as high profile as that and it doesn’t come off, people may applaud the ambition but it feels like something has gone wrong. Add the Morgan Rogers thing to that from earlier in the summer, and I do think people were getting a bit antsy. Then, you go to Cardiff and pretty much play Man City off the park and it reminds you that this is a very good team. Champions in fact. On top of that, you look at our preparation and how we seemed to be much readier than they are, and there’s some comfort in that. Obviously I’m quite all right with them being bad, and when you see the summer they’ve had, you’d have cause for concern if you were a City fan (i.e – a twat). Pep Guardiola is gone, and the chasm a departure like that leaves is difficult to manage, even if Enzo Maresca has Premier League experience and previous experience of being at a very cunty club. Bernardo Silva is gone, John Stones and Nathan Ake are gone, Rodri is going to Barcelona, Donnarumma’s hair is falling out with the stress, and they’ve also lost their star midfielder Kalvin Phillips. Sure, they beat us to the signing of 16 year old Jeremy Monga, but thus far the only significant signing they’ve made is to pay an eye-watering amount for Elliot Anderson. If there’s some comfort in other people’s misery, I think there’s something to be taken from where they are right now and how that clearly impacted their performance on Sunday. I expect them to do a lot of business between now and the end of the window, but it’s clear we’re in better shape as it stands. Ultimately though, we don’t care about other teams – only that they suffer and fail and have a horrible time and hopefully, third time lucky, can get relegated. I haven’t paid too much attention to what others have done in the transfer market, and I’m sure watching the first Match of the Day of the new season there will be some ‘He plays there now? When did that happen?!’ moments. Inevitably though, the final weeks of the window will bring their own stresses. Regardless of how big your squad is, there’s never a point where there’s consensus that we’re perfectly set. When we have just the right amount of keepers, defenders, attackers and midfielders. In terms of numbers maybe you get there, and I think as it stands you can’t really argue about the size of the Arsenal squad, you might even suggest it’s a bit too big, but there’s always room for an injection of quality. We had an interesting question on the Arsecast Extra yesterday about whether our frontline is in better shape going into this season in comparison to the last. Basically, it’s the same personnel with Leandro Trossard swapped out for Christos Tzolis, and perhaps you can include Eberechi Eze as an option we didn’t have at the start of the last campaign. If you really want, you can add a 16 year old Max Dowman as another option for the right hand side. The three strikers, Viktor Gyokeres, Kai Havertz and Gabriel Jesus are the same. You have Mikel Merino as another option. It’s Bukayo Saka and Noni Madueke on the right. Tzolis and Martinelli on the left, as it stands, but obviously there are big question marks about his future after he was left out of the squad for the Community Shield. You can make solid arguments it can be more effective this season, if Havertz doesn’t pick up an injury that keeps him out for the best part of 6 months we’re obviously stronger. If Gyokeres can do better in his second season, that would help, as would a run of fitness for Saka who hasn’t been able to deliver as consistently as he can when he’s at (or close to anyway) 100%. There are other ways we can be more effective as an attacking team, with the addition of Bruno Guimaraes, with Martin Odegaard bringing what he can bring when he’s at his best, with Myles Lewis-Skelly providing those kinds of passes from midfield. It seems to me the Bruno signing in particular was an acknowledgement that we need different ways to build up and get the ball forward from midfield areas, instead of always recycling possession. Nevertheless, I get the clamour for a new addition, seeing this window close without adding something to the forward line would feel a bit underwhelming. And I say that with all due respect to Tzolis who has looked very good throughout pre-season, and who I’m really encouraged by. I’m as confused as anyone else about how we seemed to have the financial firepower to do a deal for Vinicius Junior, for all that would entail in the short-term as well as the longer-term consequences of shattering your wage ceiling, but now seem to be trying to desperately generate revenue by selling players who would maximise the profit earned on any transfer – i.e Academy graduates and Martinelli whose meagre transfer fee from when he joined in 2019 has long been paid off. Maybe the simple explanation is that we can buy, but that we’d also like to sell to make the books look a bit better. It’s not necessary, per se, even if I think the ownership would like to see income to offset the big spending they’ve overseen in recent years, but a choice we’re making that is distinct from any financial imperative. Anyway, we’ll have a clearer picture of where we are by September 1st, and hopefully at that stage we’ve got maximum points under our belts, because that’s where the real wins are. Not in the transfer window or the accountants books. Righto, that’s it for today – the Arsecast Extra is below if you haven’t had a chance to listen yet. Till tomorrow. Download – iTunes – Spotify – Acast – RSS The post Settling the nerves until the nerves jangle again appeared first on Arseblog ... an Arsenal blog.