This is the time of the year when Arsenal, and every other club, seem to be caught in the footballing equivalent of the doldrums, once the bane of every sailing ship known to man, where a relatively calm period occurs out of nowhere, and during which time no wind has the temerity to stick its nose in, and indeed prefers to disappear like ice cream in a hot oven, trapping sailing ships for lengthy periods lasting days, weeks and sometimes months, where for what seemed an eternity to their crews – nothing happened.

The transfer window is the fans version of the fabled doldrums, where during a tedious and seemingly never-ending period, dozens of transfer rumours are offered up by the media and many blogsites, on a daily basis, and then roundly condemned and ridiculed as nonsense by the very same blogsites and sports media who started the stupid stories running in the first place.

Then just to give us a short break, these same rumour mongers announce stories, designed to add more click bait to bolster their media and blog site advertising revenues, they feed us cute stories which are hard to prove, or disprove, as falsehoods often are. The trick here is to base the rumours on stories with just a smidgeon of possible truths, and embellish them with wild abandon and make them into something far more juicy.

Instances of this are: Injured Cazorla out until February 2018 – Lucas disgusted with Wenger for pinching his #9 shirt and giving it to someone else – Wenger bids €100m for Mbappe – and then these gems are swiftly followed up by: Cazorla trains with team, back soon – Lucas to leave for more game time – Wenger denies making any bid for Mbappe – and away we go, with fans pointlessly arguing for or against whichever nonsense proposition catches their eye.

And still the transfer doldrums bear down, trying to suffocate us with their mediocrity.

But wait – from out of left field the clubs decide to join in and titivate our sensibilities by entering the spirit of this nonsense and allegedly willy-nilly start to offer kings’ ransoms for this player or that.

Not your boring common or garden £80m or £100m offers for a striker, or two, obviously, but €200m for Neymar or Mbappe (yes him again) and we all laugh holding our bellies, and scoffing at these crazy stories, until, in keeping with this cornucopia of scrumptious jelly and cream La La Land make believe, the reality squirts out from the asshole of the transfer window – Citeh sign Walker – yes that Walker – from the Spuds, for £55m – now that is both unbelievable and incredible, and shows reality can outshine even the most fanciful banality. Yee Gods.

Any sense of reality just evaporates with that news – but hold on, one of the blogsites today insists that Wenger is still in the hunt for Mbappe. Who could credit that? Tomorrow – Wenger denies bid for Mbappe – and off we go again.

I am on record in saying the transfer window should start after the season ends, and finishes on the 31st July – but I am not so sure. Much as I am consecutively annoyed, intrigued, baffled or sneer at these farcical stories, they do actually give me something to fill the doldrums betwixt the ending of one season and the start of the new one – so let the good times roll.

What say you? 😂

Written by Zee