I am sure many of you listening or reading about the AW press conference that happened at 9am today will be very frustrated and angry. Personally I am still anxious about the state our squad is in, but the press conference was quite clearly used to give absolutely nothing away to the media. AW's smiling and laughing gave the game away today, he was quite determined not to give the media any ammunition at all and this is precisely what he did.
Why do I say this? Take the centre back situation, Arsene has spoken of our need for a tall commanding PL ready stopper and is in the market for one, as our bid for Jagielka confirms. Therefore his recent comments about not needing a centre back and the squad being big enough are not the honest truth, they are designed to keep his cards close to his chest and keep his bargaining position strong.
At the press conference today he talked of no one leaving the club this month, he talked of the squad being big enough, he talked of Cesc and Nasri being professional and gave absolutely nothing away. This is AW poker, he will say one thing but clearly this is not what he thinks. His comments on Arsenal.com from yesterday make this very clear. He spoke of the Cesc situation being sorted out quickly and the Nasri situation being ongoing:
"Ideally you want it sorted out before the season starts"
Arsene has made it obvious that Cesc and Nasri are both in the process of leaving the club, it would be utterly foolish of him to comment further on these deals at a press conference before they are done and dusted. I am amazed that some people out there expect him to do otherwise, it is utterly naive of them in my opinion.
I am not defending Arsene's transfer strategy by the way, leaving all this until the last minute has been a bit of disaster for us. However it is utterly naive of people to think that he is going to talk openly about transfer deals that have not yet been completed, Arsene has never done this and never will. He is playing his typical game of transfer poker and taking the Michael out of the media in the process, I would not be surprised by this if I were you.
Arsene knows we need reinforcements and that certain players need shipping out, he is quite clearly working on the case. He has some big decisions to make though as now is not the time for penny pinching, he must go out decisively into the market place or risk leaving us woefully short of strength for the season ahead. I hope he can do this, the problem is that there are so many people out there looking for any old excuse to vent their vitriolic spleens at AW and this is making his job harder than it should be.
