Monday round-up: Zubimendi, Zinchenko, Zebras*

Good morning everyone.

A quick Monday blog for you before I hand over the reins to other chaps for a week or so. I see a lot of Martin Zubimendi chat this morning after Spain played in the Nations League last night. It looks like Portugal won on penalties, which is a real shame because that means Cristiano Ronaldo is happy and that makes me sad.

Zubimendi scored in the first half for Spain, Mikel Merino took one of the penalties, and David Raya was on the bench, after which my interest is pretty limited. Especially as Cristiano Ronaldo is happy. Hopefully the Arsenal lads, and soon to be Arsenal lad, can have a nice break now and get some rest ahead of next season.

Clearly at this point, all the players everywhere should be on holidays, but there are World Cup qualifiers to deal with. I thought Thomas Tuchel’s quotes after England beat the mighty Andorra 1-0 the other day were interesting. He said:

I did not like the attitude that we ended the game with. I didn’t like the lack of urgency and it did not match the occasion. It is still a World Cup qualifier.

On the one hand, I get it. He has a job to do and games to win, but it’s now nearly three weeks since the Premier League season ended, and the issue for me is far more about the schedule. How motivated can you be for a game at this point in what should be the off-season? When it’s abundantly clear players don’t give a crap about playing what is, on paper at least, an important game, then I think greater focus should be on why that is rather than the players themselves.

There are some Arsenal players in action this week for their respective nations, so like their Spanish pals, I hope they come through their games ok, and then switch off properly for a few weeks.

In transfer news, Oleksandr Zinchenko is being linked with Lazio but there are suggestions his wages could be an issue. I suspect that’s probably true for most clubs who would have an interest in him, to be honest. I can’t imagine he’s going to go to a top-tier club based on how his stock has fallen over the last 12-18 months, but there are always ways around it. One of which is that a potential suitor’s outlay is reflected in the price they pay the club who actively wants to sell a player, so Arsenal may have to accept a smaller fee than they might like in order to move him on. Let’s see what happens.

Beyond that, not much going on today, so I’m gonna leave it there. There will be an Arsecast Extra a bit later on, but I’m not sure yet exactly what time we’ll be recording. After that, I’m taking a week off to go somewhere warm and not do anything other than soak up the sun and maybe drink a beer or two. It’s been a long old season, and I feel like my batteries need to be recharged. So, that will be the last podcast until next week at some point, but once I’m back normal audio service will resume here and on Patreon!

In the meantime, the blog will continue as ever with Andrew, Lewis and Tim providing your daily updates of something and nothing. Hopefully much more of the former than the latter, and all the latest stories of substance can be found on Arseblog News.

For now, take it easy folks, I’ll talk to you in a week or so, when we’ll definitely have signed all the strikers we need. Right?! ❤️

* There are no zebras in this post. It was simply a ruse to attract the people who love Arsenal AND zebras. I’m sorry hoofy-stripe fans.