The Warm-Up: Arsenal's August Misery Bingo

It has been a chastening 24 hours for us morally upstanding citizens who have the dignity to involuntarily shudder whenever apparently self-respecting people and news organisations call professional footballer Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain “The Ox” with a straight face.

It’s bad enough that Arsenal fans insist on implying personal familiarity with their heroes by referring to them using only their first names (Santi! Jack! Theo!), but “The Ox”? Come on now. We’re not 11-year-olds.

Yesterday, though, brought more Ox talk than Black Friday at the cattle market. The England star, you see, is leaving the Emirates for Anfield, with Liverpool stumping up a fee that should rise to £40 million for his services.

On the surface of it, this feels like another number ticked off in Arsenal August Misery Bingo. One of the Contract Three, scuttling away to strengthen a direct rival rather than pen a new deal: not a good look.

Ignore the rumbling background crisis, though, and it’s actually a fairly decent bit of business for the Gunners. Oxlade-Chamberlain is not a first-choice in any single position. His versatility is useful, but he has never seized a starting berth with any great conviction. He had 10 months left on his contract and they’ve bagged £40million. In isolation – sweet, sweet isolation – it’s really not bad going.

So what are Liverpool getting? A player who posts solid 6/10s in pretty much every category and realistically won’t get in the starting XI if everyone is fit – and that’s even before Naby Keïta arrives next summer. A new James Milner, then, only with a soul-crushing nickname. Cool.

While Liverpool were flexing their muscles and Arsenal making sure the PTSD therapist is ready to go on Friday, two other Premier League clubs were putting the finishing touches on loan deals for midfielders that Jürgen Klopp and Arsene Wenger could and perhaps should have considered.

No, you weren’t dreaming: Grzegorz Krychowiak really is a West Brom player. No, you didn’t accidentally mainline a load of LSD: Renato Sanches really is joining Swansea City for a season.

Great stuff from both teams, and The Warm-Up is already looking forward to finding out where this trend goes on deadline day. Kevin Strootman to Burnley? Sami Khedira to Huddersfield? Here’s hoping.

Deep breath and… Manchester City are probably going to go nuclear in their pursuit of Alexis Sanchez; Serge Aurier should join Spurs after some nice people at the Home Office gave him a work permit; Liverpool have a 50:50 chance of signing Thomas Lemar; Chelsea are after Fernando Llorente, Ross Barkley AND Danny Drinkwater; Newcastle could sell Dwight Gayle; Arsenal could go back in for old favourite Julian Draxler; Spurs and West Ham are battling for André Gomes; Jonny Evans is still wanted by a number of top sides.

It’s going to be a busy one.

This is a genuine story on the website of a national newspaper. You can even click on it and read more, although The Warm-Up would really advise against that. We don’t want to encourage this sort of thing.

“What could it mean,” you ask? Nothing good, friend. Nothing good.

Excellent. Just excellent.

“I’m not a charlatan.” No professional football manager really wants to have to utter that sentence, but The Warm-Up fears it’s creeping up on Slaven Bilic’s teleprompter after another PR blow on Wednesday.

Robert Snodgrass plays whistleblower in this one, recounting the story of his debut against Manchester City last January: “I was coming on against City and he said: ‘Where do you want to play, on the left or right?’

“That was my debut and alarm bells were ringing right away. I found it very strange and I realised from the off that it wasn’t going to happen. Every time I played, I was on the left. I don’t know why he did it… I’d only filled in on the left on a couple of occasions. I hate that position.

“When I eventually did speak to him I said I thought he would have known I wasn’t a left midfielder and that he must have watched me after signing me for that type of money. His answer was basically that when people are confident they can play anywhere.”

And confidence, of course, always flows when the results are posit… oh.

A cascade of Arsenal transfer shenanigans made for a busy day for the BBC’s David Ornstein. And a busy day for David Ornstein set off fresh fireworks on Arsenal Twitter, home of the internet’s most unrelentingly befuddling – and oddly endearing – football meme.

All together now: ORNSTEIIIINNNNNNN!!

Well hello, World Cup qualifiers. Good to see you again. France vs Netherlands (7.45pm) is probably the pick of the European games this evening, with Portugal vs Faroe Islands and Belgium vs Gibraltar options for fans of cruelty.

Those who wish to spread their nets a little wider would do well to check out South American qualifying, with Uruguay vs Argentina (midnight) and Brazil vs Ecuador (1.45am) the key matches.