So now the curtain has properly come down on the 2025/26 season, we are left to feed on the scarps of transfer rumours and whispers for the next couple of months for our Arsenal fix…it’s going to be a long summer!!
International football isn’t really for me, so I’ll be paying close attention to the transfer links with a bit of substance and reporting my thoughts on here. The rumour mill has been turning pretty much since the curtain came down on the final game of the season and as such, there’s a few to catch up on, so let’s get into what’s been happening.
Strongest rumour so far
I’d say the strongest rumour so far, has to be the links we’ve seen to Aston Villa’s Morgan Rogers. Not a name I was expecting to come up as we headed into the summer transfer window, but it’s been doing the rounds for a few weeks now and has been mentioned by all of the normal reliable sources – namely David Ornstein, Sami Mokbel and after last summer’s updates, I guess we’ll have to put Hand of Arsenal in there as well. All of the aforementioned names have spoken openly about our links to Morgan Rogers, to the point where you feel like this must have some legs.
After I spent all summer 2023 pouring cold water on what seemed liked ridiculous links to Chelsea’s Kai Havertz, only to be left looking a bit foolish when the German was holding up that fast red and white shirt, I’ve learnt to go with these rumours, even if it feels like they don’t make much sense!
I felt exactly the same last summer with Noni Madueke and I feel Morgan Rogers is going to fit into that bracket as well. (edit – just to be clear, I’ve no issue with either Havertz or Madueke as signings – they just seemed didn’t really seem plausible at the time)
My first reaction was, Aston Villa just secured Champions League football, why on earth would they sell their best player? The answer to this one is quite straightforward, when you think back to Villa’s financial struggles over the past few years. They’ve been sailing quite close to the wire for a while now and if they want to build a squad that’s capable of dealing with the demands of Champions League football next season, while also staying competitive in the Premier League, they could do with some funds to distribute elsewhere. So on that front, it makes sense, and again, there’s been a lot of talk around how Villa would be open to a sale and not a peep out of the club to say ‘hands off’ so this one really could have legs.
So Villa are reportedly open to a sale, Arsenal’s interest seems genuine, I’m sure they’ll be some back and forth on the fee, but the £80m figure that has been doing the rounds seems reasonable for all concerned so the final question is – where would he play? This was the key factor that made me so sceptical of the initial links, as I’ve always thought of Rogers as a central player and with the purchase of Eberechi Eze last summer, we seem quite well stocked in the creative midfield department, so this didn’t seem to make much sense. There was early rumours suggesting that he ‘could’ play from the left, which seemed like a stretch to me, especially given the numbers that were involved and also that we had the same conversations last summer with Eze, and he barely played on the left all season. However, dig a bit deeper and it seems as though Rogers has actually played more on the left than anywhere else. So there you have it. Morgan Rogers seems to be the front runner for the marquee left wing signing that we have been promised for a while now. One to watch for sure, let’s see what happens later in the window, when teams start getting sent home from the World Cup.
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