Morning.
A very quick Sunday blog for you. Arsenal yesterday announced a 30 man squad for the trip to Singapore and Hong Kong. There are no massive surprises, although there doesn’t appear to be a new Swedish striker in there. Weird.
There are some players who we’ve discussed being potential departures (Reiss Nelson, Albert Sambi Lokonga, Oleksandr Zinchenko etc), but no Fabio Vieira who is also in the same bracket. Presumably he’s been given an extended break after an extended season with Porto. We know Noni Madueke will join up with the squad after the tour, and I imagine the same will apply to Cristhian Mosquera whose move from Valencia is not yet official but is basically done and dusted. He’s probably got a fair bit to sort out, moving to a new country etc, plus I don’t think his move is so critical he needs to be with us asap. Unlike, I dunno, a new Swedish striker or something.
As is typical, there are some young players to round out the squad, and as people had predicted Max Dowman is among them. He’s touted as the next big thing, and there’s a lot of hype around him. He’s still only 15 though, so you hope people will bear that in mind when assessing his development. There’s another 15 year old on the trip too – central defender Marli Salmon, another player very highly rated but whose profile is a little lower than Dowman.
There’s talk of first team action for Dowman next season, but from what I understand both he and Salmon have been earmarked for some U21 action, which, at 15 is still a significant thing. The tour should be a great experience for them both, along with the other young players, and it’ll be interesting to see how much of a part they play in the games themselves.
Beyond that, there’s not much going on. It’s basically been a full week since we had any substantive update on the Viktor Gyokeres transfer. I had a quick look at the Portuguese press this morning, to see if anything is stirring, and a Google translate from an A Bola article reports things are both quiet and emotional:
The Gyokeres deal is in serious danger of falling through. Sporting is adamant about the €80 million it’s asking for the 27-year-old super goalscorer; Arsenal hasn’t shown any signs of life in six days, and the possibility of never reaching the amount the club is seeking is beginning to seriously loom. The risk of collapse is high, and even the player’s family has realized that the forward is increasingly distancing himself from London. All of this has even brought Gyokeres’ father to tears.
Some of the comment below the article are quite good. I enjoyed this from Bad Spell, who says, “The Nordics have the habit of being serious people who keep their word, they came to get involved with crooks, and on top of that they are bankrupt, the result is clear to see.”
No real idea what he means, but you know those Nordics! Also, this one from fm62, “Maybe it would be a good idea to fire the said agent, then take a bath of humility and finally respect the club that introduced him to the world.”
Maybe he can have a bath of humility in the tears of his father. Finally, clownfish isn’t seeing any upside for the selling club, “Sporting will lose millions and the player won’t perform for half of this year. A player without desire won’t perform, but then Varandas and the Sporting fans will realize they made a bad deal.”
All I can say is let’s hope Ollie Watkins marks his Arsenal debut at Old Trafford with a couple of goals.
Right, I’m gonna leave it there for today. We’ll have an Arsecast Extra for you in a little while, with Phil Costa standing in for James who is currently en route to Singapore. Keep an eye out for the call for questions on BlueSky @https://bsky.app/profile/philcosta.bsky.social and @arseblog.com with the hashtag #arsecastextra – or if you’re an Arseblog Member on Patreon, leave your question in the #arsecast-extra-questions channel on our Discord server.
Pod should be out around noon. Until then, have a good one.
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