GOOD MORNING!

Arsenal launched a new home kit and it is very nice – as usual these days.

Remember back in the day, when Puma took over, and kits were mostly a sadness?

NO MORE. Arsenal, and more widely Adidas, have leaned in heavily on gold this season and the kit is a homage to the invincibles. Kind of hate that the club dares lean into things that happened within my life because it makes me feel old, but here we are.

This will sell like hotcakes and it should do – wearing gold for the year we finally push past City to win the title? Would be nice, would be nice.

Reiss Nelson is getting me 19-hour-slow-cooked on the internet. I don’t often lean in on speculation, but I was told he’d be out this summer, and to my chagrin – he is not. After rejecting 4 deals, he finally put pen to paper and he’ll be staying at the club next season.

On the one hand, fair play to him. He’s a Hale-Ender that just can’t quite Arsenal. On the other – I do wonder why he opted to stay again. He didn’t get a lot of starting minutes this season and I doubt he will next year. People keep saying we can now sell him – well, we haven’t been able to the last few years. Is he staying for the sweet life of being 3rd choice winger, or has he been given assurances he’s a serious part of the squad next season?

Still, we live in a world of Arteta knows (mostly) these days, so I’ll just the process, keep my mouth shut moving forward, and we’ll hope our boy can have a spectacular season next year.

There are a lot of transfer rumours at the moment, but one I like is Jude Bellingham is heading to Real Madrid for 100m euros. That, for me, kind of sets the tone for where this Decland Rice transfer fee should land. There’s a lot of talk that Bayern is in the mixer for him as well. Again, not a shock major clubs want him, but I’m not sure Bayern have the financial power to drop the necessary capital on the 24 year old. What I do worry about is interference from newly minted Newcastle, and maybe even Manchester United.

The thing we need to keep clear in our head this summer is that there are a finite amount of players – but loads of clubs that have cash to compete. We’re not going to get every deal over the line, we’ll compete on certain names and lose out, and we’ll likely be running at multiple targets at the same time to see what sticks.

It’ll be fun though.

I’m also interested to see who exits the door – there seems to be a lot of names that could be offered paths out – there are also a few players that I’m looking at the price tag. If City and Newcastle is looking at Tierney, why is the reported number just £35m? If Smith Rowe is on his way out, surely we’ve got to be looking at £50m? If Thomas Partey leaves, will we get anywhere near the £45m we spent?

Arsenal has been a spend, spend, spend club over the past 5 years. Exiting big names has been problematic because we’ve had fading players on big deals. We’re not that club anymore – Thomas Partey isn’t a fading talent, he’s top tier. Emile Smith Rowe and Kieran Tierney are not busted flushes. There has to be some fat transfer fees out there somewhere.

If Edu can learn to sell – he’ll be the complete technical director. That really is a big missing part of his game.

Final game of the season – Man Like Matt Kandela is in London having paid $25k for a Wolves ticket. It should be a great weekend to see of the players and one of the first times in a LONG TIME the whole club deserves the lap of honour they are likely to give.

There wasn’t a lot of news – but Arteta did confirm William Saliba and Tomiyasu will be available for the American preseason tour. Superb news. I think taking William Saliba out of the action was very smart and very mature of Arsenal. The job to do next season is to make sure we have adequate cover in his position – is that going to be a Ben White and Tomi combo, or something meatier?

We’ll find out.

Ok, see you in the comments.