So when we saw the frustrations of Roberto Di Zerbi talking to Mateus Tell on the pitch or kind of shouting at him on the pitch, and that's a sign that things are really starting to perhaps unravel as well behind the scenes, isn't it?

Well, potentially, yeah.

And I think there's a great point made by Riyadh in his intro in that mail piece, which is this is not necessarily that new for Spurs struggling.

As we know, last two seasons finished 17th.

What is new is the spend.

Under Daniel Levy, the fans are very unhappy with a lot of the performances and the transfer business, whereas now the context has changed because of how much money they spent.

And Obviously, that's not the players fault themselves.

How concerning is it that there are only five Premier League players on the shortlist?

That could be quite a tricky fixture, couldn't it?

Oh yeah, absolutely.

And it's a fixture they had quite a lot of trouble in last year when they drew 2-2 and conceded a late goal.

Um, but I mean, going back to the, the, the idea of keeping his players prepared for every- anything, the reason this came up in the press conference today was because there were significant flight delays on Tuesday when they were flying to Naples for their Champions League game against Napoli.

So already five games into the season, he has kind of been proved right that these things can happen and that he was right to plan and prepare for such a scenario.

Obviously, it's not quite as extreme as being late for the game itself.

It was the day before.

A- a- how much or how important is it that United, not just stake a claim in this fixture, but look to reverse that City reign and look to kind of impose themselves again in this Manchester derby?

Arsenal not an attractive proposition for top-class players, Sam?

Well, I think Arsenal absolutely are a very attractive proposition and I think you've seen that in the captures they've made of Esri Konca and Bruno Guimaraes, two high-profile players who've played for big clubs already in England and they're very keen to join Arsenal.

But what I would say is There is a difference between being attractive within England and in the European game and being on that same level as Real Madrid and Barcelona.

And this was the year, I think, in which Arsenal, having won the Premier League, really backed themselves and believed they could challenge for the absolute top talents in the world.

But it panned out, unfortunately for them, that they couldn't do so quite as they hoped they would.

Vinicius Junior, they tried.

He decided to stay at Real Madrid.

What did you make of how this all unfolded? How is it possible that a club as experienced as Everton have allowed Beto to leave, have allowed N'Jaye to leave and not been able to bring in a replacement?

But is Mikel Arteta likely to get those assurances that Alvarez does want to come to the Emirates? 'Cause of course we know how much he wants to go to Barcelona.

Mm.

Yeah, a- absolutely.

This is a really juicy one, and it actually dates back I think more than a year.

At this time last year, in the summer window, Arsenal had briefly explored the possibility of getting Alvarez, and then decided and realized that it wasn't gonna be doable last year, so they put it on the back burner.

And then here we are, 12 months later, and, and that interest has very much remained.

I think in the spring it was made clear that he was a player they really like, and Arteta especially is absolutely enamored with.

But, you know, w- with the money they look like they might actually now be spending, do you think the sorts of names that are being mentioned, so Nico Gonzalez being one, Matheus Fernandes Pardo being another, how do you see it? Do those names fit?

Do you think he slipped through the door while everyone was looking elsewhere and that's helped him maybe feel more at ease, Sam?

Potentially, yeah.

I don't think there was the same kind of pressure and expectation on him.

I mean, I think most Arsenal fans, when Zolis was signed, instantly thought, okay, well, where's the big high profile left winger? And I do wonder, and I don't know this, it's just sort of speculation on my part.

I wonder if he's been better than Arsenal thought he would be to the extent that maybe the week before he signed, I imagine they were quite insistent that they needed another left winger on top of Solis.

Whereas now, it wouldn't surprise me at all if the window closed later this month and he was the only left wing signing.

I think that would probably be testament to the impact he's made.

point of view my my question would be okay when Saliba is back fit what happens then but I've been speaking to a few different you know friends who are Arsenal fans and they've been making the point that when have Arsenal ever had a full fit squad in the last two years so yeah I think it'll be interesting to see when we get to January slash just second half of the season in general how those minutes are divided up and whether it's a case of rotation or if there are other injuries to kind of contend with.

Mm

... especially in attack, where they've got quite a few options of players who can play on the left side, sort of right-footed wingers who cut inside from the left, but pretty much no one who can do the same thing from the opposite side.

And obviously a big part of that is because Mohamed Salah has gone, and that was Salah's position for so long, the one he basically owned in the team.

And tonight there's the news that Liverpool have had a 50 million pound bid for Yankuba Minteh turned down by Brighton.

And that seems like the sort of profile and the sort of player that you would expect Liverpool to be targeting, and perhaps even more so in a, a more kind of obvious way than Bradley Barcola, who they've been looking at throughout the summer and have been sort of in discussions with PSG about, for a deal that could be worth well over 100 million pounds.

But again, Barcola is more of a left-leaning player.

Um, so to get someone like Minteh who's gonna start on the right would make a lot of sense.

It does

And even though it's your third or fourth year in the league, I mean, what do you what do you feel like the differences are that you've seen between like pro league matches and kind of college matches and just kind of the different aspect and the competitive nature of it? Like, what are some of the differences or similarities you've seen?

Yeah, it's a good question.

I think, um, there's definitely out of any post-college tennis environment.

Uh, if you're not a professional tennis player, I don't know what there is that gets us quite as close to the, to the just competitive nature, maybe of college.

Like there's no, like I've done some USDA leagues and whatnot.

Um, do the latter at old providence there's nothing that's like really gets close to college the way that pro league um can generate some sort of atmosphere that's that's along the lines of a college Not all college.

It doesn't have the same intensity of like these in my college teammates.

But as a younger guy, you know, what have you seen in terms of the Pro League, you know, kind of networking and, you know, building business relationships or just learning kind of how to handle yourself around different senior business people around Charlotte in a sports atmosphere, but also thinking of it with a working lens also.

Uh, so where are we at with this one, do you feel, Sam?

Well, it's an interesting one.

Arsenal's position is that if Vinicius does not want to sign a new contract and if Real Madrid are not willing to let him go into the final year of his deal, which does expire at the end of next season, then they would be willing to make an attempt to sign him.

Now, that's obviously a lot of ifs, um, and there's a long way to go on this, but Arsenal's position is that they, across the board within the club, feel that they could do it in that scenario.

That's obviously in itself very interesting because this is the sort of deal that financially goes way beyond anything that Arsenal have done before in their past.

And people might point at Declan Rice, for example, but I think the numbers that we would be talking about here for Vinicius Jr., certainly in terms of wages, are astronomical compared to Declan Rice.

And according to the latest reports in Spain, Vinicius has effectively turned down a contract which would, in England, be worth around £550,000 a week.

But is it too sudden a shift? Is it too extreme a move? Or actually, is this exactly what Chelsea should've been doing in the first place and they're getting it right?

Next week, yeah.

Yeah.

Newcastle's view is that he will be on the pre-season tour.

They're going to La Manga for training camp.

Their view is that he will be there, I think that leaves at the end of the month, July the 31st, or potentially August 1st, about around that time.

So that's their view.

They have no intention of selling him, and they've made that pretty clear for some time, sort of privately and, and I think publicly.

Mm.

After Tuesday's showing, we can perhaps add dad dancer extraordinaire to his list of qualities." Explain.

Yeah, so this is the, uh, quite, I would say, [laughs] extraordinary scenes post-match on Tuesday after Arsenal beat Atletico Madrid.

Um, we'll come on to talk about the celebrations, I think, uh, in more depth shortly.

But as part of those celebrations, Arteta, a man who I think is sort of generally quite sort of straight, call borderline broody, I think, on the touchline, uh, unleashed this whole different side to his personality, which is this dancing.

Um, hips were swaying, sort of thrusting, gyrating, arms were outstretched around players.

He was singing along, um, to the song.

And it was definitely a different, uh, side to Arteta, I think, um, which I, as a journalist who covers Arsenal, found quite interesting and thought I'd ask about it.

Sam, you're nodding away.

Mm.

It felt to me like a kind of culmination of, certainly in terms of the atmosphere anyway, and, and on the pitch as well to an extent, it felt to me like a culmination of this mission that he's been on to weaponize the Emirates Stadium, to turn it into something hostile and febrile a-and a genuine force, uh, in the biggest moments.

And I don't think he's ever achieved it, really.

There have been times and moments and spells when the crowd has been great.

I'm thinking back to sort of '22, '23 season.

But last night was the best it's, the best it's been.

Um, and I've been covering the club for almost a decade, and there are people who have been covering it for a lot longer than me who said last night that that was the best they'd ever heard it.

Sure.

You, you're looking at their upcoming fixture list, and you're thinking, "How long is it gonna be before they win back-to-back games again?"

I can't sit here and say Thomas Frank's doing a great job and deserves to stay in it for the next four years.

Obviously, I can't say that.

But I think-...

it would be fair to say there's a lot of other issues at Spurs that go way, way beyond the head coach position, and that's been the case for a long time now.

And the fact is, they've flipped and flopped between different styles since Pochettino's sacking in 2019.

They've tried Mourinho, the sort of experienced winner, the, the win now coach.

... on this one.

Mr. Sam Dean, eh, the Sunday Times, "Is this goodbye?" Is this goodbye, Sam? Do you think you'll feature in a Liverpool shirt again?

My instinct and feeling is that this is goodbye now, and I, I think that's partly because him playing yesterday, or, or at least being in the squad and then coming off the bench, was a really sensible outcome that kind of suited all parties, because Slot needed him, partly 'cause of injuries in attack, and also because the form has been so bad in the league.

He needed Salah, and Salah needed to say goodbye, as he said he wanted to last week.

If, if Salah didn't get that chance, it would've been him...

He would've gone out in a, a very sort of disgraced way, wouldn't he, if he is to leave.

So this felt to me like a very sensible short-term plaster over the problem, but I really would be quite surprised now if Slot doesn't long-term or the club don't long-term kind of lay down the law for, for what Salah did.

And I look back at sort of my own journalistic, sort of what I've covered in the last few years, and I remember, um, at Arsenal, Mikel Arteta and Mesut Ozil and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, when these players challenge managers, generally it doesn't repair itself.

(laughs)