Arsenal made their first starting 11 signing of the summer. Dani Cabellos has landed with us for a one-season loan stint. The Spanish technician doesn’t come with a right to buy, which is a shame, but be real people… we’d probably offer £52.50 a year over the next 40 years and try and sweeten it with a small goat with wheels for back legs.

Key message for me is that we finally did a deal.

Big Dave Ornstein reckons this is a going to be a significant week for the club, with Saliba also in the hopper.

There are rumours that Palace won’t budge for Zaha and Celtic are planning on holding onto Tierney because too much of the deal is tied to Champions League, something their people think might be out of our reach.

It’s a bit disappointing we’re doing so badly on the Tierney front, likely because they don’t want to feel like we marched them through the playground with no trousers on (the dream analogy) like Southampton did with VVD. Hopefully, there’s a fallback deal we can chase down.

Zaha seems different to me because he’s older and he needs to move now. Palace is technically in a position to play hardball (5 year deal), but at the same time, they desperately need to strengthen their backline, and as we’re seeing the world over… clubs don’t want to hold onto players that’ll shit-post at their club and sulk all season.

I don’t know Zaha, but he looks a big character, and the fact he’s their best player means they look to him for more than just football… when you sit in 12th place, only 10 points splits you from 16th. Any disruption can be critical to survival… and if they have to sell him when they’ve been relegated, they’ll not be getting £55m and Reiss Nelson.

Big clubs generally don’t fuck around with players that don’t want to be there, a unified culture is far too important.

Cesc, Nasri, Song, and RVP were all let go in the end because the cost of the keeping them wasn’t worth the aggro. PSG will bomb off Neymar. Ajax won’t keep any of their youth products against their will. Atleti said goodbye to AG.

In other news, one signing we can get behind is the MIGHTY Camden Hells being our beer partner moving forward. No more piss water people, proper beer, locally sourced and tasty. That’ll make being 1-0 down at halftime feel a smidgen better!

There are 17 days left before the transfer window shuts, and it’s hard to see how we’ll really have moved the squad forward. The biggest concern for me is that even if we bring in all the players this week, the talent won’t have had a full preseason with us, and if we have to pick players up from other countries, we need these folk to hit the ground running. Coming in from Spain or Scotland… well, let’s just say that’s a huge ask.

It’s also looking ever more likely that we’ll be rolling hard with all the players we want gone, unless there are some predators lurking in the shadows waiting with a seriously lowball bid to see how desperate we’ll be (please god say there are clubs waiting to pounce).

We’re already seeing that with Laurent K. He’s done his deal with the French clubs, regardless of what his agent says… the financials are clearly geared around a low fee.

If you think Mustafi and a few of the others aren’t thinking the same thing, you are NAIVE. Or less conspiratorial than I am. The last week could be very Harry Redknapp, because that’s the way to supposed contacts method of scouting works.

I did think it was amusing in the comments section the other day when people were arguing that contacts scouting is good because, you know, you have to make contact to buy. To those who think that way, let’s be real here, if this is what contacts scouting looks like, it’s pretty fucking dire. No system in the world should wait for agents to offer players. We should be proactive, we should attack our targets and we should have sufficient data knowledge that we’re doing it before other clubs (ala, Dortmund).

Let’s hope Edu nips that nonsense in the bud and guns for the smartest approach to finding new talent.

Finally, I wanted to write this because there’s just too much wokeness going on about Rapinoe and that Bellerin picture.

Facts of life, there are cunts on the internet. You can’t put a picture of a disabled kid on the internet without some lowlife making depraved comments. People are cunts, unfortunately, the internet grows them like mushrooms. We’re not changing that.

However, this Rapinoe furore is so beyond the pale and the ‘why’ around it is such nonsense.

She’s one of the best female footballers in the world. She said she’d do something epic. She delivered on it. She is supremely arrogant. That is her schtick.

‘Men don’t like her because they can’t fuck her and they are threatened’

Why do we have to lower the argument to this because it’s a woman?

Maybe Rapinoe is a fucking PR genius playing the game like an absolute pro? Can we not salute her game? Can we not give a woman credit for doing a damn fine job raising her profile?

We do when it’s a man. Kap, McGregor, Ali, Ibra… the greatest, Floyd Mayweather. In fact, Floyd accused Connor of stealing a black man’s game by shit-talking so the haters would pay to see him lose.

That’s Rapinoe. Fair play to her. This isn’t to do with sex. Toxic masculinity. Some other woke trope.

This is to do with an arrogant sporting talent actually delivering. Can’t we just let a woman have that? Isn’t making her out to be a victim over a protagonist worse? I think so. She’s got game, she knows how to work a crowd and she’s raising the profile of the women’s game like no other. She’ll be rolling in cash this season. Women’s football will feel her halo effect. More clubs will get sponsors. More fans will go to see her. Everyone wins because @JoeMushroomPants wants to talk shit and keep the conversation going.

I applaud the player for having game. Great work.

Right, that’s me done. x