Incredible Arsenal transfer exclusive: they would quite like to sign three known targets!
It turns out that Arsenal would really, really like to sign Viktor Gyokeres, Nico Williams and Martin Zubimendi this summer.
Dreams can come true
Not to denigrate the undoubted journalistic talents of Sun reporter Dan King, but his back-page exclusive on Monday morning feels a little…obvious.
The claim is that ‘ARSENAL are working on a dream scenario of signing Viktor Gyokeres AND Nico Williams in a blockbuster £200million summer spree’. And, well, yeah. Of course Arsenal ‘are working on’ signing those two really good players who it is widely known they have a serious interest in, when ‘working on’ those deals basically amounts to trying to negotiate release clauses down.
‘The Gunners’ No 1 priority is bringing in a top-level central midfielder and they are confident of landing Real Sociedad star Martin Zubimendi for around £50m.’
Throw in a transfer reported on as essentially done back in January and voila, you have a ‘dream’, ‘blockbuster’ transfer ‘spree’, handily enough ready to go out on a morning after a dreary Premier League weekend was capped with a tedious Manchester derby draw.
Come back to us when Arsenal don’t want to sign Viktor Gyokeres, Nico Williams and Martin Zubimendi. It feels like Andrea Berta might need to rely on a little bit more than the club’s desire to do so, like countenancing their vast wages or finding the ‘generous buyers’ who need to take on some of their unwanted players to make this £200m ‘dream’ possible with regards to FFP. And that’s even before negotiating with three different – and notoriously hard to deal with – selling clubs.
Baby bye, bye, bye
The Daily Mirror website does remarkably well to muster up five ‘talking points’ from Old Trafford, although when one of them includes a mention of how Josko Gvardiol was booked for bringing down Alejandro Garnacho in the first minute it doesn’t half test the reliability of those conversations.
Ruben Dias received that yellow card and might be further frustrated to learn that Pep Guardiola is ‘set to lead City to a trophyless season,’ so ‘the only thing they have left to play for is a place in the Champions League next season’.
Congratulations to Nottingham Forest on their bye through to the FA Cup final.
Salah dressing
Liverpool tried their utmost to inject some drama into Sunday’s Premier League games but the title is wrapped up so even a defeat to Fulham does nothing to shift the needle.
Then again, Sam Dean of the Daily Telegraph reckons that loss might have significant repercussions for one Mo Salah:
‘At this rate, the 32-year-old might just be at risk of playing himself out of contention, if he has not already done so in the battle for the Ballon d’Or.’
If you thought Salah still had a chance of winning the Ballon d’Or after winning only the Premier League in an admittedly phenomenal season, we have some magic beans to sell you.
‘Liverpool’s Champions League exit to Paris St-Germain was hugely damaging in that regard.’
For ‘hugely damning’, read ‘entirely ruinous’.
Managing expectations
Martin Samuel in The Times worries about the Premier League becoming a ‘closed shop’, with this set to be the second season in succession that all three promoted clubs have gone back down.
It is an argument worth having, but it should also probably be pointed out how abysmally Burnley and Southampton spent money in preparation for their respective tilts at survival, how Luton and Ipswich went up ahead of schedule, and how Sheffield United and Leicester were dogged with ownership issues in their campaigns.
There is a big gap between the top of the Championship and the bottom of the Premier League but also the last six clubs to come up have made a series of dreadful decisions. The three before them who came up in 2022/23 were Bournemouth, Fulham and Nottingham Forest; they seem to have done okay and funnily enough are run very well.
But this is nonsense whichever way you cut it:
‘With Southampton’s dismal record – down with seven games to go, a first in the Premier League era – many will wonder about the wisdom of replacing a manager. Could it really have been any worse for them under Russell Martin? Ivan Juric came in and did nothing. Then again, this season has brought conflicting outcomes. Leicester City were not in the relegation places until Ruud van Nistelrooy arrived, so his appointment has been disastrous; against that, the small improvement under Vitor Pereira has saved Wolverhampton Wanderers. As always, the end justifies the means. There is rarely a consistent pattern of outcomes around sacking the manager if a club are already staring into the depths.’
A couple of things:
1) That ‘small improvement under Vitor Pereira’ has taken Wolves from 19th, five points from safety upon his appointment in December, to 17th and 12 points clear of the bottom three by April. Wolves are 10th in a Premier League table since he came in, above Bournemouth, Chelsea, Manchester United and Spurs. It’s some ‘small improvement’.
2) What do these entirely imaginary people who ‘wonder about the wisdom of replacing a manager’ make of David Moyes earning more points than Sean Dyche in seven fewer games with Everton?
