Well GOOD morning to you all.

I was thinking about that Laurent Kos contract issue yesterday, and the more I thought about it, the more I thought it was very clever.

You give an older player a 3-year deal, which is good news to the player. The clubs assumption, generously, is that they will be relevant-ish for the first two years, but then less so in the players 34th year, but they are still kept on life support with a performance related bump so it’s not offensive. Maybe the total value of the deal is front-loaded to make it more interesting to sign.

Arsenal make the final year of the deal an unpleasant place to be if the player is not playing. That gives two options: The player leaves, freeing the wage bill. The player stays and DOES NOT mail it in for the final year. The player stays and doesn’t play but doesn’t cost at lot.

Daniel Levey of Spurs has a different way of making the final year tough. He gives players a bit of premium in their contract offers. So, say you have a young Harry Kane, you give him more than he’s worth at a young age and you give him a loooong deal. Then his special sauce is putting an optional extra year in the deal, so if it gets to that danger zone where they look like they could be off, he activates the additional year. The hope is also that the player becomes more valuable than the deal as it chugs along.

You’ll remember comically that Arsenal did this with defensive superstar, Johann Djourou.

So whilst I don’t agree that we should be keeping Laurent this summer, I do like the idea of being a little smarter with contracts so we don’t have to suffer the indignity of having 60% of our squad waiting out their deals.

In more positive news, Arsenal has kicked into gear with the Keiran Tierney deal. We’re finally going to cough up the £25m needed for him. That’s super exciting, he has all the ingredients Emery desires from a left back and he’ll be a nice counter to Bellerin on the right. The Celtic fans are naturally gutted, they feel like they’ve been pillaged by an English club again, and hopefully that’s 100% true.

There are STRONG rumours from France that we’re in the race for Pepe this summer. The £80m man is looking for an intermediary club for him before he moves to a big club and that intermediary is Arsenal.

Utter tosh people. If you think we’ve been pissing around in the shame mud all summer trying to work out Zaha when we’ve been carrying £80m of gold for Pepe, you are a madman.

Though Pepe has a lot going for him, namely age and fanciness because he’s foreign, we do not have that sort of cash… and Luis Campos is not going to let his star man leave for £40m while Spurs drop £80m on a similarly valuable player.

I’d imagine the noise is that PSG haven’t moved yet and the panic is setting in with his team that he won’t move this summer.

Zaha really would be lovely. Someone that’s powerful, direct, skilful and a total bully would be a very steep upgrade on what we have at the minute. It’s just a shame there’s nothing in our mixer worth swapping. Either because the player wouldn’t go, or the player we’d swap is clearly not good enough.

It’s also worth noting that whilst we sit there and concern ourselves is the lack of wingers at the club, there are bigger issues we’re facing down.

We lost all of our leadership. Petr Cech may not have been the biggest name at the club last year, but he took over from Per Mertesacker as a big voice in the dressing room. He’s gone.

We lost Aaron. I cannot overstate what an issue that’s going to be this year. We lost his energy, his passion to move the ball forward, the threat in front of goal and obviously the deep understanding of what it meant to be an Arsenal player.

We have 1 centre back that wants to be at Arsenal next season. That really is a problem. Can someone please get Lewis Dunk on the blower right now? Whoever we bring in needs to be organised and a natural born killer when it comes to leadership. We simply cannot go into the season with Mustafi throwing himself into imaginary challenges like a lunatic every game.

I don’t know how we’re going to plug all these gaps this season. From the outside looking in, it seems like we’re in a very nightmarish place. There’s no fixed vision of where we’re moving as a club, because the person tasked with that blueprint only just landed.

Interesting looking at the Chelsea model. Bringing in a young coach, take the transfer ban on the chin, refocus the club for a year, then spend the savings surplus next season when you know which young players are going to be good for anything.

We look like we have a self-imposed transfer ban, and to be honest, it’s looking more and more like the gaps in our armour are going to have to be filled by the kids. Chelsea is like the person dieting because they’ve been slung in a Spanish prison, we’re dieting because we’re on a self-imposed Crouch End juice cleanse.

Before I go, I’m not sure who this seasons celeb right back is going to be, but how about Dani Alves? He dresses real nice and he is a WINNER. Would shift some shirts as well. Make it happen, Edu.

Right, that’s me done, see you in the comments x