Let's see what happens between now and Oct 16. I do genuinely have a lot of sympathy for Arteta, Edu and Vinnai and the mess they've inherited - I don't think anyone expected Raul to get canned off so suddenly, at the start of our most important window for a decade, so that must have thrown a load of plans into chaos. And I generally think they've done a great job in putting out fires over the last 10 months and salvaging a winning side from the ashes. However, they won't be entirely blameless if we end up with nothing else to show for this window.

Edu in particular has put his neck on the block after ditching most of our scouting network in favour of a smaller, more centralised team that's built around smart data analysis. Whilst I totally support that move, and think it was 100% necessary to modernise in this way, you've still got to be asking "who are the other targets?" You can't tell me that Partey and Aouar are the only two players in the world that would improve us right now. We're not exactly peak Barcelona.

I totally understand the argument that we don't want to end up with another load of duds that we can't shift, but, you know... stop handing out stupid contracts and it won't be an issue! If these 'best in class' signings aren't available to us at the moment then we might need to consider a smaller step-change instead, with a view to an upgrade a year or two down the line.

Anyway, let's see what happens over the next couple of weeks - maybe we have some rough diamonds from the EFL lined up.