I’ve had my head under the parapet this last week, not daring to raise it above the no-man’s land of international football. Finally it’s safe to go over the top with only three days till the Arsenal play again.

I don’t know about you, but for me it feels like it’s the close season already, and it has done for weeks. Yes, we’ve got third or fourth to play for, but all the talk at the moment is not of that, but of how we can improve next season, who we might sign, and who we might sell.

We’ve even got the players thinking to their nice breaks – well, Fabregas has been anyway – and in a way, who can blame them? The players who were in their world cup squads have had next to no break since summer 2005, so it’s only natural. He’s played over 40 games this season, a lot for a 19-year-old.

Takeover talk

Just a thing: when there was a rumour of a takeover in September ’06 the board was mighty quick to quell it by releasing a statement.

Now the rumours are back with something verging on a vengeance, with the price of shares going up faster than gas bills and the trading of them going on willy nilly, so it’s nice to see the board quell the rumours again. Ah, hold on a tic. Where’s the denial this time?

The silence is as good an indicator as any that something is afoot. There’s plenty of time to chew this one over when something concrete happens, but suffice to say I’m not in favour.

More about it in today’s Telegraph.