Morning all.
Arsenal are in Ireland and for the first time in weeks and weeks, we’ve had rain. Coincidence? A portent of the season ahead? Almost certainly. But this is just another one of those things you have to deal with as champions. As Mikel Arteta said, “We know this is a very highly organised weather system, with some outstanding droplets, and we have prepared for it”.
I guess they’ll do some training at their hotel today before the game against Real Betis tomorrow, and I’ve already seen pictures of some fans with some of the players. Quite amusingly, and I won’t mention his name here, a man I was in school with all throughout the junior and senior years, and who is obviously a big Arsenal fan, got himself a selfie with Max Dowman. Fair play, Peter.
Oooops.
Anyway, I’m sure he won’t mind. I just find the near 40 year age gap hilarious, and the pull of Arsenal Football Club is quite something.
Meanwhile, we await developments on transfers, and things are moving at glacial pace. Apparently we opened official talks with Newcastle over Bruno Guimaraes yesterday, but I heard yesterday we hadn’t actually done that. Maybe we have now. Or will do today. Then we have a Brazil based ESPN journalist saying the deal between the clubs has been done since the weekend, and Newcastle are just delaying until they have a replacement lined up. Which might be a serious issue for us because nobody wants to join them this summer, it seems.
I kid, but clearly this has been an unusual pursuit, with much of it carried out by agents and intermediaries, one of those being our old friend Kia Joorabchian who works very closely with Guimaraes’ agency. The player has travelled to Spain to Newcastle’s training camp, which is obviously the right thing for him to do while things remain up in the air, and we’ll just have to wait and see what transpires over the course of the week.
And in Madrid, Vinicius Junior is back at Real Madrid, and there are contract talks planned, but also no contract talks planned. There’s a hiccup over image rights, a discrepancy in the ‘overall package’, a willingness to talk but no plans to sit down and discuss a new deal from the side of the club. The player is willing to have that discussion but feels let down they’re making it difficult. We’re studying his body language and facial expressions when we get a 2 second clip of him and Jose Mourinho on the training ground. His agent is posting Instagram stories about how the ITKs are peddling libel, and in the meantime he’s also posting about how he’s flying to London, and this is manna from heaven for the Internet.
We love a good plane story. It’s amazing to me that they haven’t started paying baggage handlers and cabin crew for inside info. It won’t be long before we tick the boxes of cloud formations, the kind of bush that’s in the background of a picture which is local only to the London Colney area, the colours of the emojis used in social media posts, and Abou Diaby’s contacts down at the Mosque. Which is to say this is, as we thought it would be, a bit of a saga.
We live in a world of incremental non-update updates. It’s like turning your computer on in the morning, it tells you it has to update, you wait an hour for it to download and install it, then when it restarts it’s exactly the same except the font weight is ever so slightly different on one of the menu bars. Or is it? It looks pretty much the same. The update must happen though. For how do we even know we’re alive without somebody saying something about something at all times?
I realise that I’m sitting here saying something every day too, but it’s slightly different in that I’m not about the inside scoops on transfers. I very rarely get that kind of info, and if/when I do it’s usually best to keep it quiet. Which isn’t to say I know anything about this deal, by the way, but if I did I wouldn’t say anything anyway. I don’t need that heat. So, the state of play is that the two Brazilians we want to sign are currently in Spain, Arsenal are in Dublin (or an adjoining county for the moment anyway), and maybe London is where everyone meets in the middle.
Let’s see.
If you’re travelling to Dublin for the game, there’s a handy thread about pre-match pubs here:
Coming to Dublin for the Arsenal game this week?This pub tour will bring you to some of Dublin’s best bars on the 30 min walk from town to the Aviva stadium.Let’s talk Temple Bar first. It’s a tourist area where Dubliners very rarely go. Think Covent Garden. My pubs are much better. 1/4
— Darragh (@darraghdor.bsky.social) 2026-08-02T09:34:02.743Z
The basic rule of thumb is avoid most – but not all – places in Temple Bar (at least until such time as you’ve had enough Guinness not to care about how much your next pint costs). The Dublin Arsenal Supporter’s Club meet at the River Bar on O’Connell Bridge, so there’s bound to be a good crew there pre-game tomorrow, and Lansdowne Road (Aviva Stadium) is very walkable from the city centre – or you can get the DART if you need to.
Right, I’m gonna leave it there for now. We have our live event this evening at The Sugar Club, so you can join me, James, Elliot and Tim for some pretty casual Arsenal chat, and a few beers, and we’re looking forward to seeing those of you who got tickets later on.
Have a good one folks!
