Read Episode 1 here.

Crystal Palace (A), Liverpool (H) and Manchester City (A) are the three fixtures that greet Evil José on his return to the Premier League. Not ideal. Far from it. But then again this is Arsenal, where even Europa League matches against Vitória Guimarães are made as turbulent as possible due to the unique sense of ennui that has consumed the club, whole, like a lizard swallowing an egg. Or something. I don't know.

Regardless, Evil José is optimistic about the season ahead for a number of reasons. First amongst them is the fact, and it is an indisputable, ironclad fact, that his transfer business has been nothing short of sensational. How else could you possibly describe the additions of three former Gunners legends (Flamini, Djourou and Bendtner)... (yes, yes they are legends, fuck off), two former Inter Milan legends (Pandev and Lucio) and whatever Nemanja Matic is (a very large man who runs like he's trying to climb an escalator the wrong way) for less than £14 million?

Sure, they might have a combined age of 845 but all that #experience is invaluable. You just cannot put a price on it. And if you did, 14 million Great British pounds would be an absolute bargain. Boris Johnson spent over three times that amount on a bridge that genuinely doesn't exist, so yeah. I'd say it's good value. It has to be.

All that is made even sweeter by the gift-wrapped delivery of Granit Xhaka to Evil José's former employees Manchester United who will now surely, at some point, be forced to play a dual midfield pivot of Xhaka and Fred and consequentially break the record for most passes played straight to the advertising hoardings during a regulation football match.

Evil José obviously doesn't care much for the frivolities of his predecessor Unai Emery, however, who managed to spend £72 million on Nicolas Pépé, a player who seems to be staggeringly effective at kicking the ball whenever it is completely stationary and dribbling past Virgil van Dijk once, but apparently not anything else. That's along with an 18-year-old centre back he can't use for an entire season. For fuck sake, Unai. Evil José could have spent that money on luring Romelu Lukaku back from Serie A in January to shore up the Arsenal backline.

The other reason to be positive is that star striker Pierre Emerick-Aubameyang - who I can now confirm has been placed on a training regime to convert him to a right wing-back - was in scintillating goalscoring form during pre-season scoring 11 goals in just eight games.

Yes, we did play two semi-professional outfits from Hong Kong and one from Belgium and yes, nobody else scored more than two goals in those 11 friendlies other than Evil José's defensive midfield anchor David Luiz (who notched four in seven, somehow). Both of those factors do have something of a dampening effect on the Gabon forward's early performances, but it's all about perspective, you know?

Bring on the Eagles *cut to Evil José stood on the desk in his office doing the Vardy celebration*