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Freepik.
Morning all.
I thought it was the 1st April when Arsenal made an announcement about pre-season.
Our men’s first team will play our north London rivals Tottenham Hotspur in Hong Kong on Thursday, July 31 as part of our preparations for the 2025/26 season. The match, which kicks off at 7.30pm local time (11.30am UK), will be played in the recently opened 50,000-capacity Kai Tak Stadium in Hong Kong and will see our men’s first-team squad returning to the region for the first time since 2012.
Managing Director, Richard Garlick said:
> Everyone at Arsenal is excited to be visiting Hong Kong in July. It’s great to be back with our men’s first team squad after 13 years, and gives us the opportunity to meet so many of our fantastic supporters in the region again. As well as training hard and playing the match, we cannot wait to connect with our Hong Kong supporters in this wonderful part of the world. Playing against Tottenham Hotspur in the magnificent new Kai Tak Stadium will be a great experience for both teams and supporters, and will be a very important part of our pre-season preparations ahead of the new season.
I thought it was bad enough playing Liverpool and Man Utd during a pre season but Totts?
There are four games to go in the WSL and Arsenal sit just six points behind current leaders Chelsea. Beth Mead scored her 50th and 51st goal for the club during Arsenal’s 4-0 defeat of Crystal Palace yesterday afternoon and then later in the day, West Ham came back from being 2-0 down against Chelsea to nick a point.
The men’s and ladies teams need the club above them to go on a rotten run of results but sadly, both scenarios are very unlikely.
After the confirmed appointment of Andrea Berta yesterday, Arsenal’s transfer gossip has gone up a level. Having been heavily linked to us in January, Matheus Cunha has now told the world he wants to move to a “bigger club”. _The Observer_ on Sunday quoted Cunha as saying that he didn’t feel comfortable moving away from Wolves mid-season because relegation was still a possibility but now they are pretty much safe, he’s ready to move on. Perhaps if he’d been that concerned, he’d have focused more on avoiding bans.
Whether or not he’ll end up at Arsenal I don’t know but it won’t stop the media from suggesting he could.
The Athletic report that Arsenal are developing a strong interest in Sporting forward Viktor Gyokeres as they consider their options to sign a striker this summer. It is claimed Arsenal’s new sporting director Andrea Bertais a long-term admirer of Gyokeres. Well, who isn’t an admirer of him?
Already the media are going on about what Berta “must” do this summer which is in itself amusing because I’m sure the Italian has forgotten more about the transfer market and signing players than these writers ever knew in the first play and our need for attacking players is hardly something new. Creativity and goals is something we have lacked but whether that means Arsenal will sign an out and out striker or not remains to be seen.
What would be better, goal scoring wingers/attacking players or a striker or two? All would be every fans answer I’m sure but Arsenal won’t have a bottomless financial pit. I suppose I think about Darwin Nunez who hasn’t exactly been a success story since moving to Liverpool, neither has Rasmus Hojlund at Man Utd and my guess is both were expected to kind of emulate what Haaland has done at City. Take Haaland and Isak out of the equation, the next “striker” on the goals scored list is Chris Wood.
So perhaps a “striker” won’t be coming in the summer but a player or three who scores goals will.
Catch up in the comments.