Morning all and the start of another week.
England play again tonight against North Macedonia. After thheir final international game, players will then look to disappear around the globe on their holidays.
Some will book a private villa in the Caribbean and not be heard of. Others will be pictured chatting to some wannabe WAGs in Ibizia. Some will return to their home country and spend the time with their family.
Arsenal players will return from their break in the first week of July to begin pre-season training.
As we revealed last week, after a few days in London Colney, the first team squad will fly to Germany for a training camp, before spending a week in America. They will then return to London for the Emriates Cup and Community Shield and then the season starts!
Whilst players are on international duty, do not expect too much to happen in terms of transfer business. Players will be focusing on performing for their country.
There is then a small window between players finishing their season and going away. Some players will try and force through their deals in this window, so that everything is done and dusted before they go off to the beach.
What then happens is a bit of a lull as players are relaxing. Then a flurry of transfer business in the week before pre-season starts as players return to the UK.
And that is why we are putting a self-imposed new embargo on any more SheWore Declan Rice blogs.
If the deal is not done this week, we do not expect it to be officially announced until the end of the month. Although the deal could be provisonally completed earlier.
Arsenal will not call Rice back from his summer relaxation time for promo shots ahead of the official announcement. These will happen after he has finished his holiday (if not done this week).
That means we could have plenty of chatter as journalists and social media click baiters rehash old news, talk about deals being close, offers going in, offers being rejected and interest from other clubs. The truth is 99% of those talking do not actually know what is going on.
We spoke on Saturday about ignoring the noise around Declan Rice.#
All the rubbish of other clubs being interested creating a bidding war, Arsenal being wrong to negotiate and should just “pay the price for Rice” and West Ham fans tweeting more about Arsenal than their own club is tiring.
So we have decided to not add to that noise. We will not be blogging on Rice until he either signs for us, signs for someone else, or announces he will remain at West Ham.
I am still in the “Rice only wants Arsenal” camp, which puts us in a strong position when negotiating. Interest from Chelsea or Manchester City do not matter if he does not want to join them. And West Ham will eventually have to agree to a deal as Rice clearly does not want to remain in East London.
So if the deal does not happen this week, my bet is it will happen during the first week of July.
Some news that escaped us with all the Rice bollocks was Arsenal announcing the 13 players that left us due to their contract expiring.
The biggest name on the list was Ainsley Maitland-Niles. The club have done a really good piece on his departure.
Part of me feels for Ainsley. We should have sold him 3 years ago to Wolves for £20m.
At the last minute, we decided to reject a bid that had previously been rejected and Ainsley stayed. His career really has stagnated since.
Back then, he was in and around the England squad, and who knows how he would have pushed on with regular football.
Following Arsenal blocking his exit, Mikel Arteta barely played him and he has been loaned out to WBA, Roma and Southampton.
Maitland-Niles is not immune for criticism in his decline. He did not impress on any of those loan deals and did not put a case forward for himself to return to Arsenal and become a key member of the first team.
I think there is an attitude problem there. He feels sorry for himself a little too much and blames everyone else. He clearly lacks motivation to push on.
Ainsley turns 26 in August and has earned himself £15million over the course of his Arsenal career. If he ahs been sensible with his money, he could retire tomorrow and never work again.
I hope he does not and he finds himself in a place where he is happy again, both on and off the pitch.
He could still go on to have a good decade of Premier League football. It is just whether he wants to keep going.
Others to leave include George Lewis. You might remember him as being the Rwandan born Norwegian who signed not long after we agreed a deal with Visit Rwanda.
Matt Smith is the only other “known” player to depart.
He leaves after spending 16 years with the club, winning an FA Cup winenrs medal, being on our bench around 100 times but never actually making his debut.
I wonder if there is any other outfield player that has been selected as many times in the match day squad without seeing game time?
A couple of omissions from the released list were Reiss Nelson and Ethan Nwaneri.
It shows that we are still in talks with both Nelson and Nwaneri on new deals.
Whilst their release has not yet been confirmed, if new deals can not be agreed they will both still depart at the end of the month.
Have a good day and remember, lets not talk about Rice baby.
Keenos
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon 