My word, these daily mini-drops of Bruno G progress… It’s floating on a Texas river in summer with an average light beer in hand… no, it’s like going to one of those beauty salons in Thailand, with the little fish that clean up your disgusting feet… NO, it’s like a wet razor to the back of your neck after a fine haircut at a Turkish barbers in north London.
‘What do you think boss?’
I love it, I truly love it; no one has ever shaved that part of my neck so well.
That is me to David Ornstein’s tweets, in private. Simply, I love it… I’m applauding my laptop in a coffee shop, a little misty-eyed; I’m inviting the patrons to look at the content, to share in the moment; I’m whooping and slapping backsides with people I don’t know because we’re all sharing in this beautiful historic timestamp, together, as friends. I might even give the Americans a bone here and shout ‘LET’S GO BRUNO’ because Americans love saying that phrase for literally any reason.
Ok, so I’m no longer in that coffee shop writing the blog. But I am having a good time. I wrote this the day after we were robbed of the Morgan Rogers deal.
I have heard there are strong feelings of positivity that Arsenal will get the Bruno deal over the line in the coming weeks. The fee will not be £100m, Newcastle have to sell him, I have my doubts that United would go to £100m in a gazump move. I also have faith that this player does actually want Arsenal, and so does his agent (I know what I said earlier). A deal is there to be done and there are absolutely no doubts about his ability to impact the club. For me, Bruno would be a better signing for our needs than Rogers ever could be, even with the age issue.
My overall thesis of the summer was that Arsenal were going to stick to valuations — and the valuation Arsenal didn’t want to go over was £75m and that is what the deal has been set at. It’s a spicy number for someone who is 28 years old, but it’s still within the realm of universal reality. There was a big concern a month ago that Premier League player valuations were going through the roof and the starting number for anyone good would be £100m. Well, I think we are starting to see that this sort of viewpoint is tainted.
There is the traditional view of market value, which is… the value is what the market will pay. But I don’t think we can accept that as how it is. We’re not buying a 2 up, 2 down in Newham here. We’re buying fine art. Art values are in the eye of the beholder, or more often than not, who you are buying against… and sometimes you’re buying against a madman.
Man City do not represent the market, they are a nation state unencumbered by reality (when they want it to be that way, we mustn’t forget that prior to the last 2 years, they generally stuck to valuations and often walked from deals). Elliot Anderson isn’t a £116m player, but they’re in a rush for some reason, and they just went there with that number.
Chelsea are also manipulators of the traditional view of the market. They signed Morgan Rogers to much hoopla. £117m was, in fact, a trap. They signed the deal, then Aston Villa used that money to overspend on Garnacho, which brought the net of that deal down to about £72m… a number we can all agree looked far more appropriate for Morgan.
The rest of the league is mostly doing deals that look pretty normal. When it’s club-to-club and there’s nothing weird going on, you can get some value in the market.
Talking of weird, it has not gone unnoticed that Fulham ownership is very close to Madrid ownership and their dealings this summer have looked very weird. Arbeloa was an odd hire as were the two Madrid benchwarmers they added.
Back to Arsenal…
What I am worried about is that Arsenal seem to be quite incapable of getting value for their own players. Reiss, Jesus, and Ethan are all still here… and it would seem that the most likely exit of them all is going to be the English teenager who is attracting interest from serial flipper… RB Leipzig.
Vidal reckons the fee will be €40m with a buyback option.
I’m sorry… what?
This is a kid who scored 9 goals in his breakout Premier League season. Leipzig are collecting €120m for Yan Diomandé. How have we landed with a lower fee than we picked up for Oxlade-Chamberlain in 2017? How can the fee be about the same as the Balogun one 3 years ago? This is a crown jewel in a market that overspends on teenagers. I feel affronted… there just doesn’t seem to be a premium on Arsenal players. Jamie Gittens moved to Chelsea for £52m last summer! We can only get £35m for Ethan? Crazy… just crazy.
The only positive I can take from this deal is that we basically have a regret clause in it. My view is that Ethan is going to get a very good education at a club well known for turning raw talent into the exceptional. Klopp has given the bland out-of-possession football the heave-ho, so he’ll be learning a better game out there… this was a snippet David Raum, their fullback, on the changes at Leipzig.
"With the ball, we play a little bit different,"
"A different formation but we play with clear wingers now and this helps us as fullbacks because we have very, very good wingers, good one-v-one players and if we can bring them into the game, it's very hard for every opponent and last season we played more with a [No.] 8 and wingers, they played more from the middle so I had the full line as a fullback and this season, it's more different because I have one in front of me and we can play with double wings. A little bit different but I like it."
Sounds good for Ethan, depending on where he plays… and my view is he’ll smash it in Germany and be a hot prospect for the Premier League in 18 months’ time. He just needs minutes.
Finally, we should start to hear rumblings today about whether our summer BIG signing is going to happen. Vini Jnr had his people in with Florentino. The discussion was about getting his pay up to Mbappé levels. If the President agrees, then Vini stays, if he doesn’t, they will push Arsenal to pay €140m to bring him to London. I find that a little rich for a player with one year left on their deal, but honestly, it’s not my cash to worry about. Vini would represent a significant shift in how Arsenal are viewed globally and if we can make it work, then we should make it work.
Arsenal face off against Real Betis this evening. I’m reading the club won’t have it on the website behind a paywall, but they should have it on YouTube later. I think. I can’t find much on the .com. Quite a messy site if we’re honest.
Anyway, I’m off to read that Bruno story one more time… also, check out the latest podcast with me and Johnny!
I'm injecting Vini hopium into my veins.
They told me to go to rehab, I said no, no, no.
It strikes me as a demonstrable upgrade to have Bruno in the squad. We now have the best overall midfield in the world assuming we don’t make many or drastic sales
But one thing I REALLY want to be true is that we don’t use Bruno as an excuse to abandon MLS. MLS is quality and one of our own. The season is long and grueling. The best thing Arteta can do is make frequent use of ALL of Rice, Bruno, MLS and Zubi rather than just settling for 2 or 3 of his favourites and playing them almost every game until they break then having unhappy cold players coming in for the last stretch of the season
I just really believe in MLS ultimately but if he’s not given chances I think he’s going to go on to be a quality player for one of our rivals which will be a huge miss when he’s already ours.