Arsenal responded to the reports of Lacazette punching his career in the face.

“This is a private matter which we are taking seriously. It will be handled internally.”

Oof… like being told you’ll be dealt with when your parents get home.

Hard to know what the club do here, because, like parents coming home to a child that has disgraced himself by drawing a cock on a Spurs fans notebook at school, how do you discipline something this stupid? Sometimes the offence is serious/trivial.

• A junior team member throws up on the CEOs shoes at the Christmas party.
• A stinging accidental reply-all to a company e-mail
• You’re caught stealing someone’s sandwiches our of the communal fridge

On the face of it, trivial and funny, but to a wider audience, you really can’t defend it.

So what the hell does Arteta do here? How do you tell a 28-year-old he shouldn’t be videoing himself doing something the press call ‘hippy crack’? I’ve seen some say it’s a career-ender. Can’t see that myself, he’s worth too much money and our squad has been in the gutter going forward. I would say that it might sand down any resistance there might have been to moving him on this summer… though I would be very surprised if he didn’t play for the club again.

The SPL cancelled the league and made Celtic champions. I can’t work out if that’s because no one watches the league for it to matter, or there’s more serious underpinnings? Regardless, I’m team Germany. If they can do it, so can we. I’d rather get this season out of the way and worry about what we do next season with TV money intact.

UEFA has said the Champions League and the Europa League must finish by August. So that gives the Premier League a bit of breathing space. I reckon they might try and bang the league out in a month, give the players 4 weeks off in August to work on fitness, then hit the ground running in empty stadiums in September.

There’s been a steady stream of ‘football is shit without fans’ commentary. Honestly, is that really an opinion worth airing? What’s the alternative? Wait 3 years for a vaccine and consumer confidence to return to the point where they’d be willing to sit within inches of other humans?

Football isn’t the same without fans. Of course it isn’t. It’s not supposed to be. There was never a moment where people were saying, ‘I think this moment in time is going to speed up the inevitable. Work from home will become more prevalent, home delivery services will grow in importance, and we’ll play in empty stadiums.’ Football is better with fans. But you know what is worse than football with no fans? No football. So stop whining on about the lack of atmosphere. I’d rather something than nothing at all. It’s an absolutely minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of a pandemic, so I ask kindly, that all you moaners stfu.

Before I go, Arsenal are being linked with a man Steve Rowley called the best target man in France at the moment.

Serhou Guirassy is fast, powerful and tall. He’s also 24 years old, which is quite a bit older than you’d think we’d been looking at. He’s scored 38 goals in 120 appearances, so who knows how good he is, but this is another indicator of the level we’re playing at in the transfer market. We’re not going for the top tier players, we’re going after strikers clubs like Dortmund or Monaco would. Not a bad thing, but certainly more of a risk. Are you buying Adebayor or Yaya Sanogo?

If there’s one place we would LOVE the club to spend money this summer, it’s in midfield. Thomas Partey is once again being heavily linked. It’s almost desperate now. He seems to love the idea of Arsenal. I guess he’d be the star, he’d get a big pay jump, and he might have been sold on the idea that he’ll be the Patrick Vieira like player we’ve been missing since Patrick Vieira.

I would be VERY excited if he were in our side next season.

Also, some journos reporting that Arsenal are calm about the Saka deal. Wouldn’t that be a ray of light in a dark cave of news?

See you in the comments. x