I love it when we get a couple of bits of good news come through in a short space of time. It really seems to compound really nicely, into making it a really good Arsenal day!
Yesterday was one of those days for me and the good news has continued into today as well really, which is extremely pleasing!
First Orn-bomb of the day
It started off with a nice Orn-bomb with David Ornstein confirming that Arsenal had taken a bit step forward in their move for Ezri Konsa and the talk about town was that this was a deal that was now going to get done.
Admittedly, this is not considered good news for all Arsenal fans, as I know there’s a few that are mixed on whether this is the way to go, but for me personally, I’m already sold on this deal and was really hoping to see some movement sooner rather than later, so I was buzzing on seeing this news. I covered this already in a previous post, but to summarise, I think Ezri Konsa is exactly what we need right now. We’ve got an issue in that position and if it costs us £50m to stay in the title race until William Saliba returns, I think that’s money well spent, and for the record, I think Konsa will add much more than that to our squad. You just have to look at his numbers (another duel monster – best in the league in ground duels, just edging out Van Dijk and Gabriel!!), what other players say about him and how gutted the Villa fans are about losing him. This is the second key player we’ve taken from one of the better Premier League teams in succession, and shows our growing pull and also financial strength.
Second Orn-bomb of the day
As it felt like a deal was close on Konsa, I was on my phone a bit more for the next few hours or so, waiting for the next big update (fee agreed etc.) and it didn’t take long for it to arrive – with an extremely rare follow-up Orn-bomb coming just a few hours after the first. This next update from David Ornstein was much more conclusive, confirming that a fee had been agreed and that Konsa would be travelling for a medial the next day (on Thursday). The rest of the news outlets then slowly followed suit, with Fabrizio Romano and Sami Mokbel at the BBC confirming the news and with that, a big signing was pretty much through the door, with the deal progressing massively considering where it was at start of play on Wednesday.
Ethan Nwaneri is not for sale
While I was reading the updates on Ezri Konsa, I then found another update from the reliable Sami Mokbel, this time concerning Ethan Nwaneri. Now Nwaneri is a player that my son and I have followed closely since he was a 14 year old playing for our U18s and have therefore grown very attached to (as most Arsenal fans have) and after the way this summer window has gone, I’ve been trying to prepare both myself and my son for the likely departure of our youngest every player.
Sami Mokbel however, confirmed news to the contrary! Sami reported that Arsenal now view it too soon to sell Ethan Nwaneri and will instead look to loan him out, which is something that I have been raving about for some time. It seems like the smart way forward, as hopefully Nwaneri will show his worth on loan and then be welcomed back into the fold in some capacity next summer.
More good news to come
So that was a very good Wednesday, which was then followed up by Mikel Arteta finally confirming during his pre-match press conference for the Coventry City game the chance of Myles Lewis-Skelly remaining at Arsenal were now 100%. Superb news. Overdue, but superb.
It would have left a really bad taste if we had sold Lewis-Skelly, especially to a rival, so I am so happy to hear Mikel really put this one to bed.
It does raise the question about why this update never came out about a week ago, when Mikel very much seemed to leave the door open on this issue, for which I have a theory. We know Arsenal are very savvy on the media side of things, leaking information all over the place to suit their own purposes so I don’t think it’s far-fetched that the news of potential ‘Hale End’ sales was their way of testing the water on how the fan base would react. The response has been pretty emphatic in any case, as I’m sure Arsenal will be aware, with the fans very much against these moves, especially the Lewis-Skelly one, so I’m really glad to see the back.
Finally
Not really news as such, but to cap off the good news vibe that I’ve been picking up over the past 24 hours or so, I think there is a really strong possibility that we’ve got a marquee signing left in us for this window, which is very exciting.
All the talk about departures, several reliable outlets confirming we’re still ‘active’ for a forward/left winger, some new links for old targets (Bradley Barcola and Kenan Yildiz seem to be back on the radar of at least the twitter ITKs!) all seem to point towards us getting either a signing out of absolutely nowhere or picking up one of the two aforementioned players or the serially linked Julian Alvarez.
I think there is question marks about all of them to be fair, but I really think one more start signing in the forward line would take this team to another level both from a footballing perspective and also from a perception point of view. I think this would send a message to our rivals that we’ve even strengthened the one area that we’ve struggled to really improve in the past few windows, as well as strengthening everywhere else, which cannot be underestimated.
In summary
So that’s it. I’ve got a nice Arsenal buzz going on at the moment and the Premier League due to return tomorrow as well, so keep it coming Gunners. Exciting times ahead!
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