Edging closer but still short

There are some signs of promise, Gervinho and Jenkinson have signed, a young pacey striker in the form of Joel Campbell looks to be following close behind. Denilson has been shipped out to Sao Paolo on loan, Nic Bendtner looks to be on the way out too, unfortunately there does not appear to a great deal of other movement in the direction of the exit door.

The close season is certainly not a completed chapter, the big tales of Nasri and Cesc may well have a lot more left to run and I cannot believe that either would leave without a replacement being lined up. I find it very hard to believe that it makes sense to keep Nasri when he will walk away for free next summer, the only reason I can think for keeping him in this situation would be if Cesc goes and is not replaced, meaning that Nasri would have his central role in the side, still this would be storing up big problems for next summer.

Overall the squad is not looking too bad but there are still two big problems from my viewpoint. Firstly we have too many central midfielders and not enough wide midfielders, it would be nice to see this balance improved. Secondly I am not happy with the way the centre back situation is being managed. Squillaci is not up to it in my book and should be jettisoned. Bartley should definitely be given games ahead of the hapless Frenchman, while another strong aerially dominant centre back would be very useful for the long campaign ahead. It does not make sense to see Bartley left at home while Squillaci puts in yet another dismal shift in our first team.

I am happy with Gibbs getting his chance at left back, Szczesny is capable of being out no1 keeper, Jenkinson adds depth in the right back slot, Ramsey and Vermaelen being fit is some bonus, Lansbury can hopefully be given a chance to prove himself, Frimpong should not be forgotten. The young Japanese Miyaichi excites, Vela may perform now he is in the last chance saloon, while Gervinho can add a bit of pace and guile that we have lacked at times in forward areas. The squad is definitely taking shape but I really hope that there will be some more significant changes before the season gets underway in August. Come on you Gunners!

Woefully short: do or die

Now is effectively make or break for Arsene Wenger, there is simply no getting around this fact. As things stand we have a squad that is simply not capable of challenging for the title, and he has to change this around before August.

Looking through the squad for the Asian tour shows this fact. There is no doubt we have a great first eleven and a hell of a lot of talented kids providing some depth. The problem with our squad is that we do not have enough experienced players to provide competition for those first XI places. I think you need approximately 16/17 high quality players with experience and we do not have this at the moment. Players like Vela/Denilson/Squillaci/Almunia are neither experienced quality or talented youth, they are a waste of space.

The Nasri situation is a joke and personally I do not want to see him put an Arsenal shirt on again given what has gone on, sell him for the 20mill and bring in a big named replacement. The left back situation is of concern given Gibbs' erratic fitness record, if he can stay fit then I see no problem, that is quite a big if though. The other major area of concern for me is the centre back situation, we need a commanding aerial player and don't have one yet. We are also short of strikers, personally I would keep hold of Bendtner but if he is sold then we are looking a bit short up front too.

Now is the time Arsene, we need to properly address the flaws in our squad or we are looking at yet another season of nearly but not quite and that is not good enough for Arsenal Football Club. I am not saying we must win trophies this year or else, it is just essential that we give ourselves a chance by strengthening the squad and bringing in a bit more depth and experience. Come on you Gunners.

Martin Samuel: shut it you ill-informed fat slag!

I don't often highlight particularly low quality pieces of journalism but today's Dail Mail has some of Martin Samuel's excrement within, and it deserves a closer inspection and ridicule. It starts off badly by falsely assuming that Arsenal have made a habit of buying in ready made superstars, in fact nothing could be further from the truth and by starting off from this false premise, Samuel's foundations of sand soon disintegrate to reveal no logical or coherent argument.

The truth is that Arsenal have never purchased superstars, as a club we have brought in top players who have been struggling for various reasons (Bergkamp/Overmars/Henry), young talent to develop (Anelka/Cesc/Clichy) and some slightly lesser known established players (Lauren/Pires). Arsene has always sought value and consequently we have never gone out to buy a big name superstar who would have commanded anything like a top whack fee.

In fact very few English clubs have purchased the very cream of top world talent in its prime. Most of the so called 'galacticos' of the modern game have tended to go to Italy and more recently Spain, as opposed to England. The history of the world transfer fee record makes interesting reading and demonstrates this point perfectly, the last eight record fees were paid by Italian or Spanish clubs.

Samuel ignores the fact that Arsenal are one of the few top clubs that isn't actually being bankrolled by a sugar daddy(City/Chelsea) or racking up massive amounts of unsustainable debt (Barca/Manu). It is no surprise that we cannot compete in the transfer market with some of these reckless charlatans, it would be suicidal to do so. Samuel than attempts to dismantle the signing of Gervinho, stating that he's not even a regular for Lille, yet another poor error from the bearded one, Gervinho was about as much of regular as it was possible to be, 32 starts for Lille in the league alone last season.

Samuel distorts reality in order to paint the negative picture of Arsenal then he wants to paint, this is just bad dishonest journalism. The truth is that Arsenal now are probably a relatively bigger club than we have been at any point previously in our history, and as a result we are capable of bringing in some pretty substantial players if we chose to do so. Certainly we can't compete financially with those who have an infinite supply of blank cheques, but frankly it would be madness to even try. Samuel would do far better to concentrate his anger and aggression towards clubs that are driving this reckless wage inflation with their unsustainable and reckless financial practices than pick this weak fight with Arsenal.

The good, the bad and the ugly

It may be an immensely well worn cliche, but one discovers very little about oneself during the good times, it is during the harder times that one discovers one's true make up and metal. This is well worth bearing in mind given the current goings on, or apparent lack of them, at Arsenal Football Club.

One of my key thoughts from last season was that I do not want to see us fail to win games when it is abundantly clear that the players are not giving their all to the cause, this happened far too often last year, it revealed a deeply worrying rot in our squad that has yet to be properly cleared.

Winning is not the be all and end all for me, what I cannot and hope I never will come to accept is players not being fully committed and motivated when playing competitive games for the club. I can accept a lack of ability, I can accept being outplayed, I can even accept errors of judgement, but what I will not accept as a fan is a lack of effort and desire. I want to see eleven fully committed players giving their all every week, I want to see us fight for every single second that the ball is in play and if we are to lose games or drop points, we must never ever lie down.

If they are really Samir Nasri's words in the newspaper today then they really upset and anger me. They are demonstrative of a deluded and arrogant player who seems unable to see just how critical his own failings were in his teams inability to finish off the season with a trophy or two. Nasri's disappearance in the cup final sum up his poor second half of the season, he had the chances to be a hero, instead he choked and was no winner.

Nasri's alleged comments have a lot in common with Denilson's words from a couple of months back, they both clearly want to win things but it is simply not good enough to talk about wanting to win trophies, one has to back this up with consistent performances and the right attitude. Although both players are different in many ways, they share one thing in common, they have had important roles in our lack of success in the last couple of seasons. Both of their sets of deluded comments show a complete lack of insight into their own failings as players, as if they have not had anything at all to do with our recent failure to win trophies.

I do not feel it appropriate to divert my anger towards the club, the majority of our frustration and anger should be angled towards some of our highly paid players who are not fit to wear the Arsenal shirt. Indeed a new particularly unpleasant, greedy and avaricious breed of player has been created by the current footballing environment in which certain clubs are immune to any semblance of financial sustainability. Football is losing its soul and the players are becoming more mercenary and soulless by the year.

Close season so far- my thoughts

I haven't wasted my time in writing on the various pieces of dross that has been peddled in the media in the last few weeks and I don't regret my stance for a minute. The vast majority has been completely made up and has not been worth wasting my pseudo-ink on.

In fact things have been so very slow and tiresome that a lot of people have been getting very excited about a certain jilted ex-board member's comments on Twitter. I wouldn't trust someone who has so many clear conflicts of interest.

One thing that hasn't changed is the fact that Barcelona are a steaming pack of c*nts, like the world being round or gravity tugging one's belly down to the ground, some things will never change.

Transfer rumours: utterly baseless tripe

It's been interesting reading some of the recent transfer stuff in the last few weeks, not because I believe anything I read in some of the so called 'news' papers, but because so much of it has been either completely contradictory or completely made up. One of the worst things about all this guff is that some rather angry fans have been launching into attacking certain Arsenal players for no good reason, just because they have believed the ludicrous spin of a dishonest or inaccurate news story.

For example one paper has been running one story saying that Nasri is going to stay and then another saying that he is demanding 160 grand a week, utterly nonsensical stuff. The Gervinho nonsense has also taken the Michael, one gutter radio source claimed he had signed for Arsenal, then moments later the Lille chairman is quoted as saying that they have had only one bid for the player, which has been quickly rejected.

Some people need to wise up, there are a lot of people out there peddling utter rubbish in order to sell newspapers, generate hits and advertising revenue. It is so transparent and predictable. The rage that has been vented a two players in particular, Nasri and Diaby, has been so very misplaced and misguided. These idiots who shoot off without engaging their brains would do well to realise that this kind of behaviour is completely counterproductive and likely to harm the club that they support.

We have made one signing, Carl Jenkinson, and he looks like a useful addition to the squad, the fact that he is a big Gooner is also a bonus. I have this little suggestion for Arsenal fans, how about we think before we cast judgement, how about we use our brains to separate the invented from the reliable? There is no point getting carried away with the fictional drivel floating around at the moment, let's wait for reliable concrete information before letting loose.

Transfer insanity catalysed by silly UEFA rules

I hate to be depressing at a time when our hopes and dreams should be running wild, at that time of year when expectation can be completely disproportionate to the reality of a situation, when everyone thinks their club is going to be the one next season. Frankly it is better to never expect too much, doing so leaves one invariably disappointed, and this is certainly the case for the majority of us football fans, whatever team one supports, whichever country one hails from, come the end of the season. I can't be arsed with the transfer rumours, it's largely just hot air made up by agents and journalists, I'd prefer to stick to the concrete.

Certainly the early hints of what is happening in the transfer market are concerning. The new UEFA rules that put an increased incentive on having more 'homegrown' players in squads, just to recap a homegrown player is one who has been at a club for at least three years by their 21st birthday/21st birthday season end, irrelevant of nationality. Essentially we have a limit of having 17 non-homegrown over-21 year old players at the club, then we can only have eight more over-21s if they are 'homegrown' to take it up to 25 players, while the under-21s don't count. Certainly the UEFA rules have led to a more ruthless culling of some of our older domestic talent, and this cannot be a bad thing.

The big concern I have over these UEFA rules is that it is threatening to make a bad problem far worse, that problem being the massively over inflated domestic transfer market for young English players. It was bad enough before the rules came in, clubs have long paid over the odds for domestic talent, and this has long favoured the richest clubs who are the only ones able to afford the top young domestic talent. UEFA's rules are making this situation a whole lot worse, young players are now even more disproportionately valuable and consequently the market has been inflated to an even more ridiculous degree.

The end result is a less exciting and a less competitive Premier League. The small and medium sized clubs have less chance of holding on to their best young talent, this week we have seen two young English lads go for massive fees given their lack of experience, Jordan Henderson and Phil Jones, age 20 and 19 respectively, both going for fees of not much short of 20 million pounds. Of note Jones had a serious knee injury last season which may well cause him more trouble in the future, lateral meniscus repairs are often not the end of the story. The best young players are now being snapped up so young, their clubs are getting so little out of them in terms of playing time, it just cannot be good for the game.

Perversely UEFA's rules are having the very opposite effect of what was intended, they were meant to protect young talent, they are doing nothing of the sort, they are resulting in the best young players being accumulated by a smaller number of rich elite clubs at an even younger age, they have also inflated the transfer market yet further. It is also perverse that the actual 'homegrown' talent at clubs like Manchester United is getting even less of a look in than before as multimillion pound teenagers are shipped in from elsewhere. UEFA's homegrown rules have been a step backwards. The problem has been exacerbated in the UK because our domestic rules make it so hard to bring in young players from outside the EU, putting even more of a premium on our own domestic talent.

I sense UEFA's financial rules will not do anything to help increase the competitiveness of leagues either, it is likely the super wealthy clubs with big sugar daddies will find ways around the regulations, the regulations may sound good but are likely to be utterly toothless. The best thing UEFA could do is to do something about the routine dodgy tapping up of players who are under contract and about the dodgy underhand behaviour of various agents who have no eye on the long terms interests of their clients. This would be the best way to help the smaller clubs compete, as things stand those clubs which splash the cash have things even more stacked in their favour, and this cannot be good for the game we love.