EZE DEAL: GET IT DONE
The past few days have been fairly newsless on the Arsenal front.
The Eze deal is the main source of heat and even that one feels like it’s losing a bit of momentum. The mechanics seem pretty clear: there’s a monstrous buyout clause of £68m, Palace wants £35m of that upfront, and the clause sunsets August 15th.
Palace don’t have as much leverage as we think. Steve Parish clearly thought Eze was gone last summer and it didn’t happen. He speaks glowingly of the player, so I’m sure he’ll want his top guy to get a good move if the financials can work. The whole charm of Palace these days is they build up players, make the top tier, then sell them to fund the next round of street-baller style names.
Arsenal, a team that has squeezed the life out of every deal bar one this summer, are probably sensing Palace are keen to do business, and they probably saw these comments from Glasner:
“Even though all the players are still here, we haven’t made the most of the transfer window so far. I was promised that we would be more active and bring in the new players earlier this year.
As of now, I have 17 outfield players. I hope we don’t lose any more. If that happens and we get four new ones on deadline day like last year, another false start is possible.”
Palace should be pushing for Euro spots next season and they should be doing everything they can to have a better start than the abysmal showing from last summer. They will know that £60m for Eze can go a long way to shoring up their low body count, as well as the added benefit of settling the dressing room with a firm yes or no result with their most high-profile player.
Arsenal also has skin in this game. We don’t need Eze for the start of the season, but it would be nice for him to have at least a week of preseason to adapt to the players, the dressing room, the tactics, and the weight of the badge. Ok, last point was a little bit dramatic.
This signing really would feel like a stage five signing. He’s ready to go at the highest level. I love how he operates in the pockets and how he can give us some extra imagination from the left when the deep blocks come thick and fast next season. Eze is unpredictability and magic, and I think his signature caps a very, very good summer that could be great if the coach gets it right.
James Olley had a little piece on availability. His sources tell him the club recognized the issue last season and have addressed it with robust talent this summer along with big volumes of players. No mention of whether Arteta would change his ways or even accept his role in exploding hamstrings with such regularity last season. We have to be clear here: you don’t solve this issue with bodies alone. You have to address the full picture, which is rotation before you are forced to, and a more measured approach to training and rest days. Andrea Berta needs to weigh in on that and be very clear about Arteta being part of the equation with player breakage. I hate seeing the word “luck” in a leak. Arteta is the biggest control freak in the league. Luck shouldn’t be in his vocabulary, because it’s an excuse, even though it does have value. I don’t want to be talking about luck this season, just progress.
Am I ready to start banging the table and join the NO EXCUSES brigade? I might be. I really might be that guy this season. Is there a welcome pack or a special hashtag?
Ok, so I do want to quickly make some excuses for the Spurs game. I’m a little less upset about the whole thing now. Arsenal pre-planned minutes so everyone got a little taste. They’ll be drained because the focus has been more on fitness than winning games. The players are also going to be rusty, so getting their mistakes out now is kind of what preseason is all about. Also… Spurs and Newcastle decided to use their preseason to put a deep block on Arsenal? A bit embarrassing. Not as embarrassing as people taking pops at Gyokeres for an anonymous start… come on, I’ve seen people criticising 20 minutes and they are being deadly serious. Grow up. Even worse, the kids are calling him fat? This guy has about 0.2% body fat. He will be absolutely ripped by the start of the season, then we’ll see if there are fat jibes going around.
I have actually noticed the decline in discourse around the game of late. My feed is just full of people bickering like children, trying to dunk on each other, rather than having coherent debates on the game that improve your knowledge base. So much of modern-day fandom is about who is wrong and right, which ITK is hot and which is not, who is SHIT or WORLD CLASS. It’s so hard to get really insightful conversation. I actually think Substack would be a great discourse space. It has the old Twitter feel about it, high-quality writing, and a growing community. It’s just a bit small right now. But I’m really not getting a lot of value from chat platforms. The poison in my comments is crazy. I get my juice from podcasts, blogs, and some really excellent YouTube content creators.
Final story on a light day: we’re being linked with Jeremy Jacquet. He’s a centre back from Rennes. Tall, good ball carrier, ball progresser... looks like the exact type of talent we might get in as the club experiments with successors to our two centre backs. Am I interested in following this story heavily? Absolutely not. The only deals that get me out of bed and typing are BIG deals. Eze or I stop writing. It’s that simple. Do NOT call my bluff.
Ok, that takes me to the end of the writing. I want to say thank you to all the Le Grove readers who signed up for ANOTHER year of reading this website. Your loyalty to reading this website makes me feel all sorts of positive emotions, so thank you kindly. Also, if you can’t support financially for whatever reason, I will comp you, because if this site makes you happy, you should be happy. I have had two fans who have supported the club for 70+ years mail me this week, which is totally awesome. So drop me a note if you want the primo action. You don’t need to tell me why. We’re all best friends here. xxx
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