There are six weeks to go before Arsenal play there first pre-season game in Singapore, but there are a few other tournaments this summer to give us our regular fix of Arsenal players in action, and to take our minds of the interminable transfer rumours!
Obviously Sanchez playing in the Copa America is the big one, or the Womens World Cup which will have loads of Arsenal players, but we also have the U21 European Championship which starts in two weeks time.
The two Arsenal representatives,Calum Chambers and Carl Jenkinson, should be able to help the star-studded U21 team to go very far in the competition. I reckon this is one of the strongest young England squads I have seen for a long long time, with players like Harry Kane, Danny Ings and Jack Butland and I think I will be betting on them to win to win the trophy to give the games more interest for me. The last I heard was that they were over 5/1….
Chambers has not figured too much for Arsenal since Xmas so should be fairly fresh, and he is looking forward to testing himself in his first big international Fnals. “It’s going to be a new experience, playing foreign teams in a tournament,” Calum said. “and the way and style they play is different so it will be an experience for all of us and one that we can learn from going into the tournament.”
“It will be a big challenge, it’s a big competition and very well-known and there’s going to be a lot of quality there,” he said.
“The lads are all really excited about it and we want to do as well as we can in it.”
Here is the Final 23-man squad:
Goalkeepers
Marcus Bettinelli (Fulham)
Jonathan Bond (Watford)
Jack Butland (Stoke City)
Defenders
Calum Chambers (Arsenal)
Luke Garbutt (Everton)
Ben Gibson (Middlesbrough)
Carl Jenkinson (Arsenal)
Michael Keane (Burnley)
Liam Moore (Leicester City)
John Stones (Everton)
Matt Targett (Southampton)
Midfielders
Tom Carroll (Tottenham Hotspur)
Nathaniel Chalobah (Chelsea)
Jake Forster-Caskey (Brighton & Hove Albion)
Will Hughes (Derby County)
Jesse Lingard (Manchester United)
Ruben Loftus-Cheek (Chelsea)
Alex Pritchard (Tottenham Hotspur)
Nathan Redmond (Norwich City)
James Ward-Prowse (Southampton)
Forwards
Saido Berahino (West Bromwich Albion)
Danny Ings (Burnley)
Harry Kane (Tottenham Hotspur)
England face Italy, Portugal, Sweden in Group B and are likely to meet the favourites Germany in the Final.