{"id":11366,"date":"2025-06-20T11:59:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-20T10:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=11366"},"modified":"2025-06-24T16:14:45","modified_gmt":"2025-06-24T15:14:45","slug":"is-it-a-bird-is-it-a-plane-is-it-a-centre-forward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=11366","title":{"rendered":"Is it a Bird? Is it a Plane? Is it a Centre Forward&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Screenshot-2025-06-20-at-11.55.39.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-11368\" width=\"573\" height=\"326\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Screenshot-2025-06-20-at-11.55.39.png 956w, https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Screenshot-2025-06-20-at-11.55.39-300x171.png 300w, https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Screenshot-2025-06-20-at-11.55.39-768x437.png 768w, https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Screenshot-2025-06-20-at-11.55.39-75x43.png 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 573px) 100vw, 573px\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>Silly season is well and truly upon us. Prepare to be bombarded with three months of vague phrases such as;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Interested in the player<\/li><li>Monitoring the situation<\/li><li>Gentlemen\u2019s agreement<\/li><li>Agreed personal terms<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>It really is all rather tedious. But signings must be made, and it is up to us to sift through the endless mounds of Twitter compost as we attempt to decipher what is genuine and what is horse manure &#8211; spoiler alert, this makes up about 98% of your timeline. We\u2019re all sick of everyone and their nan claiming to have some sort of insider information about player X and how they\u2019ve received intel that he\u2019s made Arsenal his \u201cnumber one priority\u201d and has informed his brother, brother\u2019s wife\u2019s second cousin\u2019s godson\u2019s babysitter\u2019s driving instructor\u2019s third wife that he will be joining Arsenal no matter what. You see what I mean by tedious?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think you will all agree when I say the transfer window has reached unbearable levels over the last six or seven years. The rise of twitter has a big part to play in this. Nowadays it is easy to know about a deal months in advance meaning we get constant \u201cupdates\u201d from certain journalists essentially just pumping out information we already know because they\u2019ve already told us 143798 times over the last three months. For example, according to Fabrizio Romano we\u2019ve agreed personal terms with Martin Zubimendi at least half a dozen times since January. That\u2019s a lot of personal terms.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For me it just saps all the excitement out of the transfer window. We all have a pretty good idea of who Arsenal might sign. That wasn\u2019t the case as recently as 10-15 years ago. I remember when we signed \u00d6zil not so long ago. we had just beaten Spurs 1-0 the day before Deadline Day and Arsene Wenger was asked in his post-match interview if Arsenal had anything up their sleeve regarding late signings. Wenger, normally watertight and coy when it came to these things merely smirked and remarked, \u201cMaybe we will have a surprise for you.\u201d The next morning, we woke up to the news we were advancing on a deal for Mesut \u00d6zil and by the evening we had smashed our transfer record and \u00d6zil was a Gunner, sparking wild celebrations outside the Emirates. And this was only 12 years ago. social media did exist, but it wasn\u2019t the phenomenon we know it to be now. That kind of thing would be very difficult to imagine happening now with all the constant non-updates we are bombarded with on social media.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Let\u2019s say Arsenal pull of the signing of Rodrygo from Real Madrid. I think that one\u2019s unlikely FWIW. Whilst it would spark a great deal of excitement within the Arsenal community, the chances are, we would all know about it at least some weeks in advance. Sometimes, the element of surprise is what makes these things so special to fans. I\u2019m far too young to remember the days of transfer news being distributed to the masses via carrier pigeon or Morse code, but even in the last ten years our sources of transfer news has shifted a lot. Arsenalnewsnow was a big site back in my day. I remember one summer in particular when my friends and I were constantly refreshing the page to see if we had finally agreed a fee for Higuain\/Benzema\/Suarez (\u00a340 million plus \u00a31.50 perhaps?) or Draxler. We had not. Of course, Sky Sports News was the place to be for a lot of breaking transfer news back then but now that simply isn\u2019t the case. It amuses me now seeing how much slower they are on the uptake than everybody else, constantly regurgitating information we\u2019ve all known for weeks.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These days, as we all know, the place for transfer news is the cesspit we know as Twitter. Yes, it is 99% garbage, but when genuine news does break, it will break on Twitter first. But it becomes interminably dull, all this constant scrolling and refreshing in the vague hope we\u2019ve signed someone. To be honest, I can\u2019t be bothered with all that faff. The problem we have now is everybody will declare we are doomed if we haven\u2019t signed 17 players by the second week of the transfer window. And obviously lots of people feed into it and you are left with a platform of doom-declaring doom scrollers and it all makes for a very unpleasant online environment. In many ways the most toxic part of the football season is when there isn\u2019t any football at all.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But as I\u2019ve mentioned, what is just as bad is the people who pretend to know things when they have no more idea than the rest of us. It seems people care more about gaining traction than being right. but we now live in an age in which opinion and speculation appear to be worth more than actual facts and reality, meaning it is incredibly easy to spread lies and misinformation and gain traction. Gaining lots of likes and retweets doesn\u2019t make you right all it proves is you are a person with fingers and access to the internet. Or at least the address for an internet caf\u00e9. We see all sorts of information apparently from different sources regarding potential signings. Nearly all of them are made up. These are just some of the things I\u2019ve read about Arsenal\u2019s striker saga:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sporting Lisbon President<\/em>: We\u2019ve told Arsenal we will only sell Gyokores for a minimum of 14 billion euros plus a lifetime supply of pastel de natas and a 50% discount for the Timeout Market. We are yet to hear back. Although we made the same offer to Man United and they said Luke Shaw was very interested in the TimeOut Market and asked if they do meat pies.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Gyokores<\/em>: Please don\u2019t make me go to Man United. I\u2019ve got Gary Neville in my DM\u2019s promising me a lifetime supply of Huel if I join. Personally, I think I\u2019ll pass on half a decade of sneering, nasal manc pundits questioning my Pashun and Desiyah after every 3-0 loss at home to Bournemouth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Gyokores\u2019 Mum<\/em>: I don\u2019t care how much Arsenal decide to bid for my son, he\u2019s going nowhere until he unloads the dishwasher, takes the chicken out of the freezer and folds his pants and puts them in the correct drawer instead of shoving them under the bed as usual. As if I won\u2019t check there first.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sesko\u2019s evil identical twin brother<\/em>: I promise you, I haven\u2019t seen my brother anywhere. No, his body is not currently dissolving at the bottom of a septic tank. How dare you make such an unfounded accusation against me.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I am sure you were able to figure out, these quotes are indeed fake. I completely made them up which means they are every bit as true as 95% of what you read on Twitter. I, like you, have no intel on who we might sign. My prediction is we will sign some players between now and September and some of those players may even have two legs and two arms. Who knows? Over the years I have learned not to believe everything I read, and not to get drawn further into the inescapable rabbit hole of the Arsenalsphere of Eternal Doom with every day that passes. Maybe one day we\u2019ll finally sign Julian Draxler, Steven Nzonzi and Yann M\u2019villa.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In fact, as I was about to finish this article, I checked Twitter and it would appear that the lesser-spotted Martin Zubimendi is in London to have his medical. Don\u2019t you just love it when a transfer just manufactures itself out of the blue? The magic of the transfer window has bestowed itself upon us at last!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Silly season is well and truly upon us. Prepare to be bombarded with three months of vague phrases such as; Interested in the player Monitoring the situation Gentlemen\u2019s agreement Agreed personal terms It really is all rather tedious. But signings must be made, and it is up to us to sift through the endless mounds [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[28,11,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11366"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11366"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11369,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11366\/revisions\/11369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}