Nketiah, Vieira + officiating concern

Good morning and happy Tuesday to you all.

Let’s start with the Eddie Nketiah news, as reported by David Ornstein. Arsenal are expected to accept a bid from Crystal Palace in the region of £25m + £5m in add-ons, and it looks like personal terms won’t be an issue. In the light of move to Nottingham Forest breaking down, it now seems obvious Eddie was aware of Palace interest, and eschewed the move to the midlands to stay in London.

I don’t blame him, to be honest. I think Palace is a better option for him, and it also comes without the upheaval of moving house and all the other hassle that comes with living in a different city. I realise that well-paid footballers will have the resources to have that kind of thing taken care of, but it’s still a pain. Anyway, I’m sure the primary motivation is football, and as I said I think Selhurst Park will be a good fit for him.

Palace have long been reported to have had an interest him and it looks like they’ll get their man. It’s hard to be 100% confident, because it looked like he was going to go to Marseille and that didn’t come to fruition; and it looked like he was off to Nottingham but obviously that didn’t work out. Third time lucky, I guess.

Elsewhere, Fabio Vieira is reportedly off to Porto today to complete his loan move to his former club. He’s due to have a medical before the formalities of the deal are completed.

Doctor: “Yes, this appears to be a tiny footballer.”

There is no purchase option or obligation with this one, which might suggest that Arsenal haven’t quite given up on him yet. I’d be quite surprised if he returned to play any significant role for though. You never know, a good season of regular football under his belt might be enough to kick-start his career in the Premier League, but by the time he comes back, he might find his pathway blocked by somebody else.

As I’ve said, it feels to me like Ethan Nwaneri is the prime beneficiary of Vieira’s departure, and if he can establish himself as this season progresses, it’ll make it very difficult for Fabio to usurp his place in the squad pecking order. Still, it’ll be interesting to keep half an eye on Porto throughout this season to see how he does for them. They’re in the Europa League this season, so there’s no danger of us having to face him/them, and it means there’s plenty of football for him to play.

Now, we just wait and see what the rest of the week brings. Will Aaron Ramsdale find a new club? Who will be the replacement goalkeeper if he does? Who else might leave? Is there any chance of another attacking player being brought in. Questions we’ll have the answers to by 11pm on Friday night.

Meanwhile, a small observation about the season so far – and I realise it’s only been two weekends so the sample size is quite small. I just have a little worry about how lenient the officials have been with regards some tackles and incidents of violent conduct. I think Wolves defender Yerson Mosquera was very, very fortunate to escape a red card for his choke-hold on Kai Havertz last week.

Despite what the PGMOL PR Department said in their weekly round-up on ESPN, to me that was the very definition of violent conduct – and he didn’t even get booked. The same player produced a red-card worthy tackle on Moises Caicedo on Sunday. This time there was a yellow, but it could easily have been a sending off. Then we saw Newcastle’s Joelinton let off with just a booking for grabbing Bournemouth’s goalkeeper around the neck. Again it’s violent conduct, it should have been red, and it’s absurd to me that with all the benefit of replays, a Bournemouth coach was the one sent off for complaining about the incident.

Again, I realise this is very early in the season, but I worry they have set a very high threshold for red cards already, and that will embolden some (not all) players to see how far they can push things. I hope I’m wrong, but the inevitable consequence of that is somebody getting badly injured. I don’t know if this is an edict from on high, if refs are being told to let things go (the old ‘let it flow’ mantra etc), but it’s hard to reconcile that aspect of the officiating with the heavy-touch influence of VAR in disallowing the Bournemouth goal that clearly should have stood in their game against Newcastle. Something to keep an eye on, I suppose.

Right, that’s your lot for this morning. We’ll keep you up to date with any breaking stories over on Arseblog News. For now, have a good one.

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