Welcome. As I’m sure not a single soul has noticed, posts here on TremendArse.com have been pretty scarce lately. And by ‘lately’, I mean since about 2016-ish, which makes them almost as rare as trophies won by Tottenham.

I say almost, because I have at least pushed the ‘publish’ button on an article or two over the last year or so, whereas that lot, have gone actual decades without securing silverware.

But for all those with a love of questionable football takes, and League One-level prose, you’ll be delighted to learn that my intention is to post with far greater frequency moving forward. So lets see how long I can maintain motivation to churn out whatever Arsenal-related thoughts my brain conceives, in this long-overdue, but completely un-called for, TremendArse reboot.

Soooooooooooo. Where to begin? Lets start with a quick summary of the season just past.

Going into it, I’ll admit I was a little underwhelmed with our transfer dealings over the summer. Gabriel Jesus and Oleksandr Zinchenko arrived from Manchester City, and William Saliba returned from his latest loan spell in France. (Matt Turner joined too, but clearly as a back-up to Aaron Ramsdale. So he doesn’t count.)

I liked the Jesus capture, but worried how many goals he could add. For me, he’d replace the departing Alexandre Lacazette’s squad role but we still needed to fill the Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang-sized goal-getting hole in our squad. Alexander Isak was my preferred striker signing but he’d landed at Newcastle. Elsewhere, I wanted Borna Sosa over Zinchenko – who to be honest, I didn’t really rate. I hadn’t watched him intently, but thought I knew what he was – an average athlete who was unremarkable in possession! Why were we signing him, other than he’d worked previously with Mikel? After all, our reported first-choice target was Lisandro Martinez, whilst Zinchenko was being eyed up by the likes of Everton. Boy was I off the mark on that one.

I was also far from convinced Saliba would stay beyond the close of the summer window, let alone be a starter. He’d looked very Calum Chambers-esque to me when I first YouTubed in the summer of in 2019 and pored over the clips of him playing for St Etienne. Wesley Fofana, his partner in central defence back then, seemed the more polished of the two. At the time, Saliba seemed very green as he turned out for for Les Verts (see what I did there). Understandable, given he was barely out of his nappies some might say, but still, he looked very raw, a little clumsy, and not quite in control of his frame.

It wasn’t really until Saliba showed some truly top class defending on loan at Marseille, showcasing blistering recovery pace and executing a well-timed tackle on Kylian Mbappe to thwart the through-on-goal PSG superstar, that I sat up and started to think we might have a player ready to compete for his place. I mean, our centre back pairing had seemed set in stone as Benjamin White and Gabriel, but if this kid could stay stride-for-stride with Kylian Mbappe in full flow, and dispossess him as cleanly as he did, well, what the sacré bleu did we have on our hands?! By fulltime on the opening night of the season at Selhurst Park, we’d begun to find out. By the time Saliba’s season was prematurely curtailed by a back injury in the middle of March this year, it had become apparent to all that Big Willy really was ‘the Mbappe of centre backs’ as he’d been dubbed by many, a generational talent who wouldn’t look out of place in any side in the world.

But back to last summer and from holy blue, to a bolt from the Porto blue, Fabio Vieira was signed out of nowhere, leaving lots of us I’m sure, immediately concerned about his physical readiness for the Premier League. As we saw snaps of Edu showing the Portuguese playmaker around London Colney on the official site, Vieira looked like a gentle gust of wind would send him sprawling. Or even just a passing glance from an opposing defender.

So I looked at our attacking options and despite fully expecting Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli to kick on, score more goals and grow more influential, I didn’t think we had enough. Two kids, a third in Eddie, a fourth in Emile Smith Rowe – if he could get fit – a far from prolific Jesus, and what else? Pepe had left too, or was about to.

Then came preseason, and as I stayed up late to watch us dismantle Chelsea, excitement grew, albeit tempered by a sense of caution that our performance wasn’t really informative, a mere fitness-finding exercise and not in any way a gauge as to how the two respective teams would fare in the forthcoming Premier League campaign.

In hindsight, that 4-0 score-line was a very telling result, as as we went on to record one of our best-ever Premier League points tallies, whilst they avoided a relegation scrap by the skin of their financially-doped, success-buying, history-lacking, transfer-target-gazumping, 9-year-contract-giving, bus-stop dwelling, 12th-place-finishing, Fat Frank re-hiring, nuts.

So where do we find ourselves now, with a fourth full season under Mikel Arteta’s command lying in wait? With arguably the most promising young squad in world football, that’s where. With our core of developing, but already title-contesting young guns tied to long-term contracts. Hopefully, the likes of captain Martin Odegaard and Saka-supplier White, will pen new deals soon, before we augment the squad with a sprinkling of stardust in the forthcoming transfer market.

Declan Rice, Moises Caicedo, and Mohamed Simakan would be nice for starters please, Edu. Maybe a Theo Hernandez, Armel Bella-Kotchap, Moussa Diaby, Joao Fleix, Victor Osimhen or Dusan Vlahovic thrown in for good measure too. Of course Kai Havertz seems to be in our sights and I definitely see the Robin van Persie comparisons, but is he THE one? Hmmmmm. Oh, and a couple of Brazilian starlets, more Martinelli than Marquinhos mind, wouldn’t go amiss.

So what should be another stellar season for Arsenal awaits, in which we’ll hopefully challenge for major silverware again, only this time the Champions League too. It’s a truly exciting time to be a Gooner right now. After years and years of drifting aimlessly and being also-rans, a new Arsenal golden age is firmly in the offing. I’ll try to cover it as best I can, here on TremendArse.com.

See you soon and COYG.