Morning. Let’s start with a bit of Arsenal stuff before we look back on yesterday’s World Cup action, and it looks as if the first addition of the summer will be a goalkeeper. Reports emerged yesterday that former Leeds man Illan Meslier will be joining the club after his contract at Elland Road expired on June 30th. The 26 year old played 215 games for Leeds after joining them from Lorient in 2019, 107 of those coming in the Premier League. Having broken through and emerged at quite a young age for a goalkeeper, he established himself as number 1 at Leeds, but over time that fell away. When they were promoted from the Championship in the summer of 2025, he played almost every game that season but lost his place in the run-in. Last season, he didn’t play at all, and most weeks was not even in the squad as Leeds used veteran Karl Darlow with Brazilian Lucas Perri on the bench. So, it’s not unfair to say he’s lost his way a bit. At the time of writing, despite a widespread expectation that Kepa Arrizabalaga will leave, our information is that the club expect the Spaniard to stay, and the arrival of Meslier as third choice will allow Tommy Setford to go out on loan and gain experience. Of course much can change between now and the close of the window. Kepa has a release clause of just £5m, and I’m pretty sure that if he gets the chance to play first team football somewhere, at the age of 31, he’d be more than willing to go and do that, and I don’t think that’s beyond the realms of possibility at all. £5m in this market for a vastly experienced, if somewhat flawed goalkeeper is nothing. Which then leaves Arsenal with a problem, because with all due respect to Illan Meslier, I don’t think he’s good enough to be the number 2 keeper at Arsenal. I certainly wouldn’t feel comfortable if we had to rely on him for any prolonged period of time, and this opens up that entire discussion about how you find back-up for an established number 1 like David Raya. There’s always going to be a drop-off. It’s there between Raya and Kepa, and it’s even more pronounced between Raya and Meslier. Some are of the opinion you just need some bloke, and that complicating the situation with another good quality keeper means this is a problem you have to keep solving because inevitably that guy will want to leave because he’s good enough to be number 1 somewhere. I think that’s my preference though. I’d much rather have someone who is at least close to the first choice than nowhere near, and based on the last 18 months, Meslier is certainly not close to Raya. Maybe Inaki Cana can revive his career, but Inaki Cana is also the guy who recommended Alex Runarsson and Matt Turner. We’ve lived with this situation before, when the goalkeeping coach’s desire to bring in Joan Garcia from Espayol, despite having signed Raya from Brentford, led to a protracted situation where at the 11th hour Edu had to go scrambling around for anyone, so we had Neto on the bench for a season and he was not deemed good enough for very much at all. So, let’s see how this one plays out. As number 3, Meslier is fine because 20 year old Setford can go play and develop, but if he ends up as the back-up for Raya, I’d be quite concerned. — At the World Cup, I really felt for Egypt yesterday. They were 1-0 up, and in the first half their goalkeeper, Mostafa Shobeir, was excellent, making a string of really good saves – including a penalty save from Lionel Messi. They thought they’d gone 2-0 up in the second half with what would have been one of the goals of the tournament, but VAR ruled it out after going back way too far to call a foul on Lisandro Martinez. I just don’t think you should be disallowing goals for incidents so far removed from the finish up the other end, it felt very generous for Argentina. Nevertheless, Egypt scored another great goal to make it 2-0, and it looked as if a big result was on the cards. Unfortunately, the keeper was weak for the goal that made it 2-1, and that strike turbo-charged Argentina. I thought the keeper’s wrists were a bit flappy for Messi’s equaliser too, although he did hit it really well to be fair. There was drama late on when Mo Salah lost the ball in the opposition box, and I’ve seen a lot of discussion about whether that should have been a penalty. I don’t think it was, but I do think there’s an obvious off the ball foul in the box from Alexis Mac Allister that would vex me considerably if that happened to an Arsenal player in one of our games and nothing was given. If the Martinez incident was enough to chalk off a goal, then this was certainly enough to give a penalty. From there though, Argentina went upfield and scored a winner, which was devastating to witness in real-time, and I’m just an Irish bloke who got invested in Egypt for this game. It didn’t help it was some Chelsea wanker who scored it either. What I would say though is that in their desire to get forward and find a winner in normal time, they left themselves too open at the back. I don’t think you can end up 2 v 2 in injury time like that, and unfortunately they got punished to the max. It was a valiant effort from Egypt who have had a really good tournament, and Argentina now face Switzerland. I watched the first half of their game against Colombia, but decided against the rest. It was 0-0 after 120 minutes, Switzerland went through after a penalty shoot-out, so I think I’m quite comfortable with my decision making there. Today there’s … nothing. No World Cup at all before the first quarter-final tomorrow, so hopefully there are no withdrawal symptoms. Right, I’ll leave it there for today, have a good one folks. The post Ex-Leeds keeper linked + Egypt unlucky as Argentina go through appeared first on Arseblog ... an Arsenal blog.