Morning. Let’s start today with something that has actually happened, and that’s the Carabao Cup third round draw. First, I’m amazed it’s still Carabao. I thought their sponsorship was finished. No idea why. To this day, I’ve never had a whatever a Carabao is, and I think at this point in my life, that’s not gonna change. Anyway, I don’t think you can even get whatever it is here, which seems like they haven’t properly exploited the market or something like that. It’s not that I’m hankering for a big healthy dollop of fresh Carabao, I’d just like the ability to actively not get it. Anyway, the draw could have been more kind. Facing Premier League opposition (Ipswich Town) away from home isn’t ideal, but it is what it is now. I would hope it’s a game where Mikel Arteta plays his ‘other XI’, but I think we know how he operates at this point. There will be big players who take part in this one, whether it’s from the start or off the bench. I will say however, that despite the fact we haven’t won the League Cup since 1993, I do not feel like this is an itch I’m absolutely desperate to scratch. 22 years without the Premier League? I am itchy and scratchy. 34 years without this particular trophy, not so much. To be honest, as much as I understand the way Arteta approaches it – in that every game is important, and we should want to win every game regardless of the competition – at this point I just find it annoying. Whenever I think of it, it reminds me of Shkodran Mustafi, and frankly I don’t need that. When the Mustafi comes with a side order of Kepa … please … give me strength. Here’s my guess for the team we’ll play against Ipswich: Saka, Rice, Rice, Rice, Saka, Saka, Rice, Saka, Saka, Saka, Rice. The game takes place in the week commencing September 14th. — Meanwhile, the Julian Alvarez saga continues. Yesterday, Barcelona’s President Joan Laporta released a statement basically saying ‘We still want to buy Alvarez, and we think Atletico should just be nice and sell him to us because we’re Barcelona and we’re better than everyone else and the player wants to join so how could you deny him the chance to come to the best place on earth? It’s mean if you don’t.’ I’m paraphrasing a bit. Atletico Madrid’s response came pretty quickly afterwards, (and I’m also paraphrasing), and it was something along the lines of ‘Go fuck yourself you tubby cunt’. So, things remain at a bit of an impasse there. Now there are insiders telling us that the player now accepts there’s no way Atletico will deal with Barcelona, and Arsenal is his only way out. The other thing he can do, of course, is stay put, deal with a few uncomfortable weeks, and then score some goals. While that won’t make the fans forget completely, they do tend to act as a natural salve to most footballing wounds. So, whether this latest tête-à-tête between Atleti and Barcelona opens the door for Arsenal to convince him we’re the place to be remains to be seen. It does feel like all our transfer eggs are in this particular basket though. Do we have any other eggs in other baskets that we don’t know about? It’d be nice to hear about Andrea Berta’s contingency eggs, but as I write that I think about him in a specially constructed nest in a tree at London Colney, sitting on them like a tiny little bird man squawking angrily at anyone that might try and take his precious eggs away from him. He laid those eggs himself and by god he’s going to hatch them if it’s the last thing he ever does. Which is not great because while we’d all appreciate some non-Alvarez eggs, he still has other work to do. Gabriel Martinelli was in training yesterday, so the deal with Al Hilal remains incomplete. Berta still has to try and figure out how to sell Gabriel Jesus (some more reports from Italy suggest Napoli are interested), Fabio Vieira, and Reiss Nelson (who has been linked with West Ham but as yet remains an Arsenal player). He needs a surrogate to sit in his nest while he gets on with that work. I don’t recommend Gabriel Heinze though, you just know he’s the kind of man who slurps down raw eggs straight from the shell with a metal straw. I think this transfer stuff could be driving me mad. The best thing to do is probably lash out a podcast about it all, so why don’t I go and prepare some of that, and we’ll have an Arsecast for you a bit later on. Until then. The post Something happened here but nothing really happened there appeared first on Arseblog ... an Arsenal blog.