Sam Chapman, Laia Codina, Harrison Dudziak. Seb Ferdinand, Cam’ron Ismail, Will Lannin-Sweet, Katie McCabe, Beth Mead, Josh Nichols, Samuel Onyekachukwu, Victoria Pelova, Alexei Rojas Fedorushchenko, Barbora Votikova, Naomi Williams, Manuela Zinsberger
The contracts of Caitlin Foord and Aleksander Marciniak have also expired, but I have no information on what is happening to those players.
It is also reported that Piero Hincapie’s future is still unresolved. The report says that Arsenal have “an option to buy the Ecuador international for a reported £45million this summer, having struck an agreement with Bayer Leverkusen last summer.
We’ve also had several articles around concerning Declan Rice, with the notion that “Rice could be Arsenal’s lighthouse – someone to guide and improve those around him.” Certainly, from a distance, Rice seems a really decent and balanced bloke, so we are all hoping he can take all the praise in his stride. It certainly looks like it.
And it may be that he is now benefiting from the fact that he was rejected by Chelsea as a youngster. It seems to me that Chelsea rejecting Rice at any age was more like a failure by Chelsea than anything else – I get the feeling that the club doesn’t value players unless they cost at least £50m. Although, to be fair, Chelsea only released four players ahead of Xabi Alonso’s arrival.
Certainly, recent commentaries about Rice have made the point that, as the Guardian said, it is in his “ability to form connections with everyone he comes across.” He is, in short, “a leader in any setting.” Which is presumably why he is England’s vice captain. And as the article suggests, he is at ease as much talking to “a room of high-powered executives or heading back to his old school to spend an afternoon with a group of awestruck kids.”
And there was one point I picked up from the article which I didn’t realise before – Declan Rice doesn’t use a traditional agent. “He leans heavily on his two older brothers, his father and a handful of close friends.”
The explanation is that he has “never lost touch with his roots and is still in touch with his old schoolmates.” Rather an interesting insight, I thought.
But of course, the news is not all about how wonderful Arsenal players are. The Mail also offers us England targeted by World Cup heist plot in which we are told that boots and the team’s training equipment were stolen during the flight from Florida to Kansas City. Which, when you think about it, is odd, since England can afford as much security and protection as they wish – yet somehow they (apparently) still manage to lose the kit!
Moving on, we also hear in the Mail that Arsenal have been offered Club Brugge forward Christos Tzolis and are considering a £35million move for the Greece international. But then, as you might recall, each summer Arsenal are associated with over 100 player transfers and normally only buy a handful of players. Perhaps the difference here is that, rather than Arsenal putting in a bid, the report does say that Arsenal have been “offered” the player. I suppose that is what happens when a club wins the league.
But we should also note that the story that “Arsenal have made a new forward a priority this summer,” and I wonder why. If we print out the league table in the order of goals scored (which surely tells us something about the forward line) Arsenal were second last season. Here is the table in goals scored order, in case you’ve not checked it.
So why would we change a forward line that comes second in terms of the number of goals scored – especially when we have a defence which let in considerably fewer goals than all our rivals? I don’t know but I am sure the media will tell us sometime.