Five Arsenal players in the PFA Premier League Team of the Year, which tells you roughly everything about last season. David Raya, William Saliba, Gabriel, Jurriën Timber and Declan Rice, chosen at the Manchester Opera House on Tuesday night by the professionals who spent the year trying to play through them. Four of the five are the back line. Raya’s 19 clean sheets brought a third straight Golden Glove; Timber makes the XI for the first time after 30 league games at right-back; Rice is in for a third consecutive season. Manchester City had four, and between them the two clubs supplied nine of the eleven.
Rice has also been revisiting the moment at the Etihad in April when the cameras caught him telling teammates “it’s not done” after the 2-1 defeat that looked like it had killed the title race. Arsenal won their next four without conceding, City slipped up at Bournemouth, and the phrase ended up as a terrace chant at Selhurst Park. He posted “I told you all.. it’s done” when the trophy was won. Three lost words in April, and then not.
The women collected their share. Alessia Russo, Emily Fox and Mariona Caldentey went into the WSL Team of the Year, matching Chelsea and Manchester City for representation, and Olivia Smith took Young Player of the Year for the second season running — having won it at Liverpool the year before, she becomes only the second woman after Lauren Hemp to retain it, and the first to do so with two different clubs. Arsenal paid Liverpool £1m for her last summer, the first seven-figure fee in the women’s game. Ten goals in 38 appearances in her first season suggests they judged it about right.
Álvarez has barely moved since Tuesday. The choice is framed as staying and patching things up at Atlético or coming to Arsenal, and the leverage isn’t quite where you’d assume. Atlético have signalled they’d consider offers north of £120m and would sooner sell to Arsenal than to Barcelona, who they’ve ruled out entirely. It’s Álvarez who is holding this up. Barcelona is where he wants to go, and until he indicates otherwise Arsenal won’t put a formal bid in. A British record fee is a lot to commit for a player who has to be talked into wanting it.
Not much else. A Konsa training gallery, the women getting ready for Charlton on Wednesday, and a livelier under-18s afternoon than the scoreline suggests — 3-3 at Blackburn in the Premier League Cup, Arsenal ahead inside a minute, 3-1 down by the interval, level in stoppage time through schoolboy substitute Mikael Bonaventure Yetna, and down to ten men by the end. Save the attention for whichever way Álvarez goes.
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