VILLA PREVIEW: TIPPING POINT GAME

ARTETA HAS OFTEN BEEN SMACKED UP BY EMERY, CAN HE BUCK THE TREND FOR THE SECOND TIME THIS SEASON?

Let's bang through the news as quickly as possible.

The transfer rumor mill has been out of control over the last few days. Arsenal are definitely trying to move a player in before the start of the window, but my read of it is that we're either going to have to loan someone from a foreign country (Coman/Sane) or we're going to have to pay a premium to someone to bring forward a summer move now (Sesko).

Both of those options work for me as long as we're going for players we know can lift the level. I keep reading folk telling me we need to gamble. We don't. Gambling is always better when it's someone else's money and there’s no consequence to losing. But you don't gamble when you have finite funds and you're ever-so-close to squad perfection. What we spend this January does not come back in the summer. So we have to spend properly.

Paying over the odds for Sesko makes sense, we want him, £15m extra isn't going to destroy our window. Paying over the odds to bring Vlahovic to Arsenal? Not sure that's the sort of move that sets you up for a good 5 years.