Although it is a bit like waiting for a gunfight at High Noon for Arsenal fans and our transfer action at the moment, complete with tumbleweeds, nervous silence and the trickle of sweat down the top lip, there are still some Arsenal transfer rumours doing the rounds.
A few in the football media were reporting last week that Arsene Wenger and the transfer team were keeping a close eye on the Napoli and Algeria international star Faouzi Ghoulam and The Mirror went as far as suggesting that the Gunners had already made an offer of around £10 million for the 24-year old.
I thought at the time that seemed odd, as Ghoulam plays as a left back and that is one of the positions in which we are strongest, with Kieran Gibbs and Nacho Monreal fighting hard over the regular starting role. The theory was, however, that the Napoli defender would be a replacement for Monreal who was possibly set for a return to Spain and La Liga with Atletico Bilbao.
Now though, The Mirror reports that Wenger has no intention at all of selling the Spaniard and he backed that up yesterday by starting Monreal in the first game of pre-season, which would be unlikely if the player was close to a possible transfer away.
The 29-year old has just a year left on his current contract but rather than look to sell, the paper says that the boss wants Monreal to sign an extension to keep him at the club for longer and who can blame him after the Spaniard had a fantastic season and kept Gibbs, who did nothing wrong, out of the team for much of it?