Arsenal "Transfer Targets" According to BBC Gossip Column Since the End of the Season- UPDATED

Suarez                  (mentioned 23 times)
Higuain               (mentioned 22 times)

Rooney                (mentioned 14 times)
Williams              (mentioned 10 times)
Cabaye                (mentioned 8 times)
Jovetic                 (mentioned 7 times)
Fellaini                (mentioned 6 times)
Fabregas              (mentioned 6 times)
Michu                  (mentioned 6 times)
Cesar                    (mentioned 5 times)
Di Maria               (mentioned 5 times)
Gustavo                (mentioned 5 times)
Benteke                (mentioned 4 times)
Ozil                      (mentioned 4 times)
Grenier                (mentioned 3 times)
David Villa          (mentioned 3 times)
Benzema              (mentioned 3 times)
Bernard                (mentioned 3 times)
Mignolet              (mentioned twice)
Wanyama             (mentioned twice)
Mendy                  (mentioned twice)
Barry                    (mentioned twice)
Mata                     (mentioned twice)
Draxler                 (mentioned twice)
Flamini                 (mentioned twice)
Kondogbia            (mentioned twice)
Krul                      (mentioned twice)
Dzeko                  (mentioned twice)
Guaita                  (mentioned twice)
Cabella
Aurier
Skretl
Capoue
Gundogan
L.Bender
Ahmedov
Nani
Papadopoulos 
Corchia
Deulofeu (loan)
Torres
Brown
Ngoy
Gourcuff
Salvio
Rami
Patricio
Ginter
Alli
Perez
Capel
Andrade
Lichtsteiner
Turan
Bakkali
Richards
Kiko Casilla
Viviano
Guilavogui
Kaka

Just to clarify, that means on 23 different days this summer, at least one national paper has written a different story about Arsenal and Suarez.

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2012/13 Season Review: Keepers

Goalkeepers

Lukasz Fabianski:
Renewed hope. Easily the most consistent spell he has had in his 6 year spell at the club. Brought in for the Munich game, to replace the “mentally tired” Szczesny, he did a superb job. While the decision was probably more to ensure Woj knew that he was droppable after a few suspect performances, Fabianski stepped up to the plate and did his job for the rest of the spell in the first team. He kept 2 clean sheets in his five outings, being undefeated in all of them. It was only injury that brought Szczesny back into the team for the Everton game. The elder pole has been waiting on the wings for the majority of his career, and in his most recent attempt, proved some of his critics wrong. However, a club like Arsenal should not be surprised when the second choice in a position as important as the keeper can come in for five games and not make a monumental cock up. Fabianski’s performances were encouraging but not remarkable.

Wojciech Szczesny:
Mentally tired. While he didn’t have any notable calamitous moments, his general performances were not as good as they could/should have been. Confidence got the better of him. It is understandable for such a young keeper to get complacent, and I think Wenger himself would admit that it is perhaps the fact that he has been over-used in the earlier parts of the his career that he became complacent with his ability and perhaps stopped working as hard as he had done earlier in his career. Looking at someone like De Gea for united, you can see how Ferguson ensured the Spaniard did not get complacent, despite the huge responsibility that came with being the club’s number one and the most money an English club had ever paid for a keeper. He got off to a slightly ropey start, and Ferguson responded by dropping him in favour of Lindegaard. Whilst it was obvious to all that De Gea would always end up starting for the club for years to come, it was important that he was shown that he could be dropped. While there are obvious differences in the ways that Ferguson managed and to the way Wenger does, you do feel that the Spaniard has become a better ‘keeper this season than his Polish counterpart as a result of increased competition.  The lack of faith that Wenger had in the alternatives may well have been part of the problem as to why Szczesny was overplayed. With various reports of the boss attempting to get new keepers in, this can only mean increased competition and force all the keepers to improve their game.

Vito Mannone:
3^rd choice. Despite the season where he played the most games of his Arsenal career, he did not manage to cement his position down as first choice keeper. He did not even manage to keep his position as second choice keeper, with Fabianski’s performances in 5 games doing more to secure the second choice than Mannone’s 13. Keeping clean sheets at the Brittania and Anfield both impressive feats, but not quite enough. His part in Grant Holt’s goal against us in October probably secured his role as third choice for the rest of the season. He was not, however given the same consistent defence that Fabianski had to support him. It would be surprising if he was still an Arsenal player by the end of the transfer. At the age of 25, he does not want to be the back-up to the back-up.

Defenders

Nacho Monreal:
Better than Santos. That is pretty much what he was bought for. It was clear that Santos was not good enough to be even a back-up left back, let alone for a perpetually injured Gibbs. The financial crises regarding Malaga meant that Monreal was available, relatively cheaply. It is hard to see who Wenger could have got that would have been a better LB at the time. He has proved to be a clearly competent member of the squad. A slight mix up with Vermaelen early on in his Arsenal career can be put down to a language barrier in the heat of the moment. Overall, looks to be  the right player to give constant competition for places with Gibbs

Andre Santos:
Not good enough. Last season, it was just about possible to blame some of his performances on lack of fitness, or adapting to the English game. After a year at the club, this clearly was not a valid excuse for him anymore. He simply did not know how to play the role in which he was assigned. He would just wander forwards and leave all defensive responsibilities behind. When he did attempt to track back, he was too slow and too easy to turn. His appalling performance at Old Trafford was far more damaging for his Arsenal career than that stupid shirt swapping incident. Judging by reactions of players/his twitter he seems to have filled the void that Eboue left in terms of a “character” in the dressing room. Unfortunately he also took up Eboue’s defensive ability. Hopefully (for everyone involved) he can make his move to Brazil permanent this summer.

Kieran Gibbs:
Getting there. His injury record has never been something to be proud of, and while it is still there, seems to be getting better. Starting the season as the obvious number one choice a left back, this was shaping up to be the best season yet for the 23 year old. It was his best, but he will be hoping for more. His continued progress was rewarded with the long term contract signed at the end of 2012. This campaign was perhaps the first one where he showed that he could consistently do a better job than his predecessor Gael Clichy. He managed to pick up his seemingly customary six week injury in January, leaving Wenger no choice but to buy Monreal, rather than trust the haphazard Santos. This season Gibbs has played more Premier League games than he has in the previous three seasons put together and is looking all the better for it.

Sebastian Squallaici:
Not worth the time/effort/recycled jokes.

Laurent Koscielny:
Absolute boss. He has been the face of the renewed form in the Arsenal camp. He was man of the match and the goal scorer at the Allianz and since then has led the defence. He has found his perfect defensive partner in Mertesacker, with the team being undefeated with that CB partnership this season. Koscielny has come a long way since the harrowing Carling Cup “incident”. The combination of his pace and Mertesacker’s judgement and height helped Arsenal pick up the best away defence in the league. After a difficult first season, which built on last season, he became one of the most important players at the club this season. He was unlucky to be dropped early on in the season, and had issues with injury, but seems to have come out of it a much better player.

Thomas Vermaelen:
Captain Average. If Arsenal did not make top four this year, one of the key reasons would have been Wenger’s second big decision of the season; who to choose as captain. The name on a lot of the fans lips was Wilshere, but after a 15 month absence, giving the armband to the then 20 year old was unthinkable. Arteta had only been there one season and with a fully fit, in form Diaby present, his starting position was not guaranteed (we saw how that panned out). Vermaelen had been our most consistent defender, clearly one of the few leaders on the pitch. An obvious choice… that backfired. Last season he was often played out of position at LB, but this year he could not blame that for his poor form. The fact that he was captain meant that there was added pressure on Wenger not to drop him unless he had no other choice. The single decision that probably saved the season was deciding to drop the captain in Munich. The games in which he has played since then he has coped well with the small amount of game-time he has had. With increasing reports that Ashley Williams will be signed in the coming days, there could be an increasing competition even for third choice CB… if the captain stays at the club.

Per Mertesacker:
BFG. After a mixed first season, he stormed it in this campaign. Many were saying that the pace of the premier league would be too much for possibly the slowest player in the league. However, his reading of the game proved to easily compensate for it… most of the time. While he is the CB that is least comfortable with the ball at his feet, having cleared the ball 160 times this season, (30 more than anyone else) he also had the highest pass percentage of any defender this season, at 92%. One of the reasons for this is the fact that he is always willing to play the simple ball, more often than not a 10 yard pass straight to Arteta ahead of him.

Carl Jenkinson:
Massively improved. The young Englishman picked up enormous criticism last season for some of his performances, namely his sending off in the infamous 8-2. This season he has been called up for the England national team. His work rate is something that has never been in doubt, nor has his commitment to the team. Filling in for Sagna at the start of the season, he showed how much he had come on as a player in the previous 12 months. His best performances were probably against Manchester City and Bayern Munich at the Allianz. He was constantly pressing players, calmer on the ball and always there to cover the centre-backs if needed. It was not a perfect season for him, there were dodgy performances, as to be expected, but overall, proved that he was a valuable member of the squad, and if not yet, will soon be ready to be the first choice RB at the club. He has benefitted from Sagna’s injury at the beginning of the season, and would feel perhaps a little hard done by not to be played more after Sagna has had possibly the worst season of his Arsenal career.  Let’s not forget this interview with Geoff Shreeves.

Bacary Sagna:
Worst season yet. As it turns out, two broken legs is not ideal for the career of a professional athlete. Nor is constant speculation over your future at the club. Nor is seeing everybody that you have enjoyed playing with leave and win trophies. It is understandable, to some extent, as to why Sagna’s heart hasn’t really been in it this season. However, most of those things were true this time last year (bar a couple of departures and one broken leg). His fault for the United goal at the Emirates was a moment that typified how far he has fallen, he completely misjudged the tackle on Van Persie and gave him the opportunity to draw level. Any other season and it would be hard to imagine Sagna having showed such a lack of composure. His most noticeable good performance was, oddly enough, playing as a centre back in the Sunderland game. With current French champions PSG keen on getting him to play there, it would not be at all surprising if he were to be tempted by the offer of money and success. He has been our most consistent player of recent seasons, but perhaps his time has come.

Power Shift or Timetable Deception: North London

Tottenham are getting better. Arsenal are not. This is seemingly the case every year, with articles being written saying that “this year” is different for Spurs, and the power has shifted. The phrase “mind the gap” springs to mind. Being effectively 13 points behind in February and clawing it back was one of the biggest highlights of last season for Arsenal fans. Spurs always seem to find a way of choking one way or another, whether it be due to fatigue from Redknapp choosing the same team every week, or some dodgy Lasagne. Arsenal seemed to hit their best form in the last push for top four (3^rd needed in the end) last season. Last season the bulk of the responsibility came down to the captain and best player, Robin Van Persie. Comparisons are easily made (as far as carrying the team) between Bale and Van Persie. Bale could conceivably be the difference for Spurs and drag them over the finishing line to finish above Arsenal and make Champion’s league.

Tottenham Hotspur had their longest ever unbeaten run come to an end. It was 12  games long (only 37 away from the invincibles). Looking at it game by game, they only faced 3 teams in the top half of the table (Arsenal, Swansea and Manchester United), all of which at home. Looking at the last 13 games, where Spurs have been “in form”, and compare them to the Arsenal results in the same fixtures (including being home or away, and Arsenal vs Spurs at either ground as the fixture), you will see that Arsenal are yet to play three of the games, have won 7, drawn 1 and lost 2. That is 22 points. Spurs have won 6, drawn 3 and lost 1. That is 21 points. This is an Arsenal that have not been performing as well as in other seasons, admittedly, and the selling of RVP has had much more of an immediate impact than any other recent departures. Of the recent games that have been played, it is difficult to suggest that Spurs have become the dominant team in North London.  Here are the games mentioned broken down by Arsenal’s results:

Arsenal lost to: Swansea (Spurs beat), Norwich (Spurs drew)

Arsenal drew to: Sunderland (Spurs beat)

Arsenal beat: Aston villa (Spurs beat), Stoke (Spurs drew), QPR (Spurs drew) Newcastle (Spurs beat) West Ham (Spurs beat) Arsenal/Tottenham (Spurs beat) Liverpool (Spurs lost)

Arsenal have not played: Reading-home (Spurs beat)  Man United-home, (Spurs drew) and West Brom- away (Spurs beat)

“The table doesn’t lie” is technically true, but not always reflective of form/ likeliness of finishing in that position. Looking at Spurs’ remaining fixtures, they have to play 5 teams in the top half of the table, including Chelsea, Everton, Man City, and Stoke away. They also have more Europa League to play, increasing the likeliness of crumbling under number of games. Arsenal have to face just 3 teams in the top half of the table, including Man United and Everton. Arsenal have one game in hand to overturn a 7 point deficit. Winning the game in hand would take it down to a 4 point gap, with an easier run in.

It is also highly conceivable that both teams will manage to make Champion’s League, with Chelsea falling out of the top four… just like last season. (Chelsea also have a difficult run in, also facing 5 top half of the table teams, including Tottenham, Liverpool, Man United and Everton, while still being in the Europa League) The main difference between this and last season is that, bar a crazy Champion’s League second leg in Munich, no English team will win the Champions league this year. The difference between third and fourth is more insignificant than it was last year. However, having to perform 2 more qualification matches is a needless risk for both teams, who are striving for 3^rd, but would take 4^th.  With 30 points left to fight for, there is nothing to say this year can’t be the same as all other recent Wenger seasons, leaving Arsenal ahead of Spurs and in the Champions League. Mind the gap.

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Needed 3 Points, Got 3 Points: Aston Villa

Arsenal went into the game four points behind Spurs and only five behind Chelsea. Anything other than three points would not have been good enough if we were to keep aiming for top four.  With Chelsea playing City on Sunday and us playing Spuds next week, we went into the game knowing how important it was not to drop points. Villa went into the game in a pretty shoddy run of form, which went with their pretty shoddy team to be honest. I was personally disappointed not to see them relegated last year (partially just because of McLeish relegating Birmingham the year before).  Apart from a good result last week against Everton their recent spell of poor matches included going out to Bradford in the League cup, I mean honestly, who does that?

The game could not have started much better, with a goal coming after 6 minutes from the little Spanish magician. He hasn’t been at his best for a while now, with lots of people citing the lack of winter break as a reason for his fatigue. This seems to have gone now, with a brilliant performance today. After his one two with the defender he scored second time round, to get the game off to a flying start. It seemed to ease off bit after that, with Villa building up some pressure.  Defence never looked like it would hold out for a clean sheet. Quite soon after our goal, a decent save from Szczesny off an Agbonlahor chance showed how the game could have progressed if we did not score at least once more. Another chance, this time from N’Zogbia, emphasised this a little further.  We had a couple of chances as we began to build up a little bit of momentum and start gaining more possession.

As it stood at half time, we looked the better side, but not by much. Arsenal should have been creating more, with an incredibly young Villa defence, which was also without Vlaar. To their credit, it was not the Villa side we have seen in recent seasons, they did appear to want to attack, not putting 38 men behind the ball, as some of our recent opponents have done (namely Stoke and Sunderland).  At the back, we weren’t looking dreadful, but never fully confident. There was one play which I feel summed up Jenkinson perfectly as a player; he received the ball near the half way line, not in much danger, fannied about with it for a bit and misplaced a pass. Straight after doing so he sprinted down the entire half, nabbing the ball off Agbonlahor on the wing, then dribbled back to beyond where he lost it and gave off a great pass. His inexperience showed in him losing the ball, but never stopped working to get back and make up for his mistake.


We started the second half with a more dominant attitude, rarely giving the ball away and pressing them down in their half. Anxiety was, however, starting to build. Notably at Giroud and Diaby in particular; both players had below par games. For Giroud, it was the usual criticism of his lack of conversion, which is pretty crucial for a CF. Even when he is playing well, I never fully trust him to bury a chance. A good one-two with Cazorla followed by a spliced shot from about 8 yards out was the worst of it. It was the type of shot that Van Persie would have scored 9 times out of 10, and Giroud would not. Directly comparing them, however, is pointless. I remember reading when he signed for us, that in his last time at Marseille, he scored a lot, but it took him lots of shots to do it. He was far from clinical. That is pretty much what he was like today. His hold up play is still some of the best I have seen from an Arsenal player in years; it’s just incredibly frustrating to see him miss chance after chance. Diaby did not look at his best, he slowed the game down in a way that cost us time on counters and when we were trying to build up our tempo. Also, he got booked just before he was subbed off in an entirely pointless and petulant way that we thought we had got rid of when we sold Song.

Frustration starting building even further after a series of corners and Arsenal over-committed players. After yet another Arsenal corner got cleared, they found themselves outnumbered 4 to 3. Then Weimann got the ball on the half way line, ran virtually straight forwards and shot just off the keeper. Everyone should have done better. We should not have squandered so many corners, we should have closed down the ball when we did and Szczesny should have done more to save the shot that he got a hand to. Overall quite sloppy play to concede, what seemed like an inevitable goal. We had just over 20 minutes to get a goal otherwise we would be in serious trouble. Hints of Blackburn all over again. The next 10 minutes were a bombardment of corners and half chances, with namely tame efforts from Giroud and Walcott. Finally, after some great link up by Wilshere and Monreal then Cazorla, a cross finally went in and put the fans minds at ease, with five minutes to play. The rest of the game was reasonably nervy but was over soon enough.

3 points were exactly what we needed, no injuries or stupid suspensions also a good sign. Not quite enough to paper over the cracks of some poor recent performances, but promising never the less. Come on West Ham and City!

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FFP: "Regulating a little bit better"

The most basic analysis would be to say that Arsenal, the most profitable club in the premier league, would not be too largely affected by FFP.  The reality is quite different though. First of all, the source of Arsenal’s money is something that may change with FFP. As I am sure many of you know, Arsenal have been accused of being a selling club , while I don’t personally care about the opinion of an ex united keeper, but it is something that could has an effect on the club. A brilliant piece by swissramble  shows that one of the reason for Arsenal’s continued financial success is that we always have the option of selling our players if the right amount of money is offered; and continue to do so. If clubs are forced to live within their means, then surely Arsenal will no longer have the option of selling the Hlebs of the world for £15 million. We will no longer be able to generate such huge profits from the artificial money of others.

The quote in the title is from Gianni Infantino on UEFA's video on FFP. Clearly not the most ambitious words on the topic. One of the interesting things about the introduction of FFP is to see how easy it will be for the biggest clubs to avoid. The most obvious precedent Manchester City's dealings with Etihad, as I am sure most of you will know, City's owners have essentially bought the naming rights of the stadium for £400 million. This is a ridiculous amount of money, and is a mockery of the FFP's nature. It is not "breaking even" if your income is coming from your owners. While it has been looked into by football's governing officials, nothing has happened yet. Other examples include PSG doing an incredibly similar thing with Qatar National Bank and Real Madrid selling their training ground. It almost makes a mockery of the ideas of FFP and punishes the clubs that do try and break even by normal measures. It will be interesting to see if either UEFA or FIFA end up punishing actions that clearly undermine their own policies.

One of the primitive clauses of FFP that is currently existent ensures clubs deal with unpaid wages and transfer fees. This is where clubs either do a Portsmouth or something like this. Neither of these would really affect Arsenal, with the only on-going transfer fees coming from Barcelona’s purchases of Song and Fabregas over the last two years.  This is one aspect that is already regulated… badly.  UEFA withheld prize money for 23 clubs in 2012 due to “overdue payments”. Two months later and it was overturned for 16 of those clubs. This seems like completely irrational actions for UEFA, to punish teams financially for not having enough money to pay players. The biggest team to be punished due toshoddy finances is Malaga. Their ban was from dealings with other teams or their players, rather than for making losses, and failing to keep up with the “break even clause”. There is an argument that UEFA are too scared to anger any of the huge European teams.

Gael Kakuta: Most of you that have heard of him will have done so due to the trouble that Chelsea got into for signing him rather than his handful of premier league appearances. Only Chelsea didn’t get into trouble for signing him, yet again, a governing body backed down on its punishment (it was FIFA this time). I find it incredibly difficult to believe that the governing bodies would properly enforce any punishments that it did give to “big” clubs. They simply cannot afford to have a Champion’s League without the likes of Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, AC Milan, etc. All of these clubs have massive losses, and no real way to change it. Another example of hypocrisy from Barca is their criticism of Madrid’s financial aspect of only buying superstars, while ignoring players like Fabregas, Villa and Ibrahimovic, each bought for over £30m. This is similar to United mocking City. All four clubs have phenomenal amounts of debt and make losses each year. If FFP were to be a realistic change then it would involve all of these clubs drastically changing over the next 4-5 years.

Man City’s pricing for Sunday’s game against us proves an interesting preview of the potential effect of FFP. Manchester City are charging £62 per ticket for our game against them on Sunday. This works out at roughly £180,000 for this game. A large number of their squad will be on more than this every week. As a result, a number of fans have decided not to go and they have had to return 900 of their 3000 allocation. If FFP is actually effective then huge ticket prices will become the norm for clubs wishing to spend huge amounts on transfers and wages. Clubs will see their ticket prices rocket if they are truly made to be sustainable. This has one of two effects, either making football less accessible to most people and forcing only the financial elite to attend, or simply to stop people turning up all together. Arsenal already have the highest ticket prices in the football league, so high that I think the club is on the verge of losing many loyal fans if it either continues to rise prices or fails to win trophies.Something’s gotta give...

As far as players go, I think Wenger hopes Arsenal will be in a position where long term we are sustainable, and have the players to achieve success with the club. I think the British core has not been created by mistake, with Walcott's contract to be announced any day soon. Having 6 young players committing themselves to the club in an effort to build a squad rather than buy one is hopefully a good sign. Also having Szczesny in the mix is a brilliant thing for the future, the young Pole is a self confessed "gooner" and has stated that he wishes to end his career at Arsenal. Chelsea clearly need to spend £20m+ to replace Cech, much as United did. There is no need for us to splash the cash in this particular region. Gibbs being from the academy, Wilshere's obvious love of the club, Jenkinson's childhood of supporting Arsenal and Chamberlain's dad being a gooner are things that probably mean nothing in reality, but are nice little nuggets for the fans to cling on to when it comes to players staying.

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Five Yeses and a No is Still One No: Contracts

Wednesday 2^nd of September 2009, Arsenal secured a 4-5 year new contract with one of the most promising young players around. He had captained his country for all ages from under 15s. He was our most capped player of the 2008-09 season and had already scored a screamer on the opening day of the 2009-10 season. All people at the club were excited to have him playing for the club until 2013 at the very earliest. Arsenal are still paying (a proportion of) his contract to this day, despite him not playing for Arsenal in over a year and a half, being almost fully fit. That’s right ladies and gentlemen, Denilson is alive. For two seasons in a row now, Arsenal have decided to let Denilson play for another club, without getting any money for a transfer. Arsenal are still paying his wages because he simply doesn’t want to take a pay cut with another club, and no other club wants to pay him what we are paying him. It is harsh to blame him for not being good enough for the club, nor for wanting to take a pay cut after he was issued with this bumper contract in 2009.

Handing out contracts binding players for too long is a risky move, it’s not just Denilson, but players like Bentner and Carlos Vela are further examples of players who have been sent out on loan for two seasons in a row, despite being of an age where they should be playing regular first team football. Admittedly Vela is now gone, but Bentner, Denilson, and Park are all deploying their services for another team, with Arsenal paying some of their wages. Not only the loanees, but the likes of Chamakh, Djourou, Squallaici that are being paid a full wage, from a contract that they signed when they showed some degree of promise, which is now just money wasted.

The news of the 5 British players who have been awarded new contracts is almost definitely good for the club. Each of them has shown their potential and how they can improve over the next few years. However, simply “learning from mistakes by offering players new contracts” is an absurd idea. Giving players new contracts is not something that is new to Wenger, and is something that happens incredibly often, rarely making the news for more than about 3 hours. Of the players that played in the game against Wigan, only Sagna and Walcott have not signed new deals in the last 15 months.  The decline of Ramsey, which has spanned from the end of last season to the first half of this one (essentially 2012), is a difficult one to deal with. Wenger obviously feels that it is a run of either form or confidence that is holding him back rather than unfulfilled potential. The death of his national manager and the removal of his captaincy can’t be a good thing for any player, and maybe Wenger is giving him the benefit of the doubt. Drawing comparisons between Denilson and Ramsey might be a bit harsh to the Welshman, but could still be proved to be valid.

Whether or not Ramsey is part of a set is something that remains to be seen. While the recent transfer policy has been guided towards experience over potential, these players’ contract is a sign that Wenger has not forgotten about the idea of developing a team from youth. The last generation of youth players was officially terminated with the sale of Alex Song.  Clichy, Denilson, Diaby, Song, Nasri, Mannone, Djourou, Bendtner and Fabregas were all supposed to be part of another “golden generation”, playing together for years and winning trophies. Now these players are all 24-26, in the supposed prime of their careers. None of them play regular football for the club, and they have mostly all split up into different clubs and countries. You can see Wenger’s rationale by tailoring his new generation to be mostly British, giving an extra incentive to stick together at the club. It helps that both Wilshere and Szczesny have said that they have intentions to spend their entire career at the club and Jenkinson is a massive Gooner. I know this means little in the current era of football, with agents and their relationship with the oil rich clubs; however, with financial fair play hopefully coming in reasonably soon, maybe a cohort of other British players will help the likes of Oxlade Chamberlain to stay at the club.  Whether or not that will help Theo pledge to stay or not is another matter.

Robin Van Persie, Gael Clichy, Alex Song, Samir Nasri, Theo Walcott, Mathieu Flamini (I like lists o.k.): all of these players have failed to work out a contract with the club with one year remaining on their old one. Clichy and Song were in a different category, the speed of the transfers and the lack of media coverage about Arsenal pursuing a new contract shows that Wenger did not value them as highly as they valued themselves, and was happy to grant them a transfer when the right offer was made. When it came to Nasri and Van Persie, it was obvious that those players did not want to be part of the club anymore. To generate £49 million for an injury prone 29 year old and a player who has proved his worth for ½ a season out of the three years we had him is phenomenal business sense. I think that even if Nasri had 4 years left on his contract, Wenger would have been forced to listen to a £25 million bid.

At the end of the Wigan game, Jamie Redknapp said “Arsenal haven’t got anyone but themselves to blame” about players being in the last year of their contract. That is bollocks. For anyone who genuinely believes that Arsene Wenger would let Van Persie, a player who he has always shown a great deal of faith in, run down his contract out of choice is just plain stupid.  For Van Persie, as much as I hate to say it, it was about winning things before he retired. Signing a 2-3 year extension would have been the last big contract of his career. He felt that we could not do that, and that is the most depressing thing about the whole saga. With Nasri it was different; it seemed much more about the cash than success, as it normally would be for a 23 year old. When Nasri would have first been offered a new contract, Wenger would not have thought he was worth the same amount that he did. Arsenal had control over Nasri, and chose to not give him the huge wages. We did not have control over Van Persie.

Wenger will know at all times how long each player will have left on their contract, and constantly be thinking about renewing it. The idea that it was in this summer that Wenger first came to Walcott about the idea of signing a new contract is unfathomable. Walcott has been saying no to a new contract for probably around 2 years now. Why that is, however, is an odd one. Whether it is about money, success or his position it is hard to judge. He says he wants to be played as a centre forward, but it is more than that. He has been played as a forward for two games in a row now; Wenger is willing to listen to the idea of playing him there. He has also said that he is willing to pay him the “money he deserves”, whether that is a discrepancy in what he thinks Walcott deserves and what Walcott thinks he deserves is probably part of the problem. I think his agents would have seen what players like Nasri are doing, and seeing what he could get paid elsewhere. If financial fair play is coming in, that might provide Theo with extra incentive to try and get as much money as he possibly can from this contract, as he probably won’t be able to command such a high fee when clubs have to be more responsible. Hopefully Walcott will look around in January and come to the conclusion that Arsenal is where he should sign, I think that is much better in the long run than him signing before he knows how much (or how little) he would get elsewhere. If he were to go in the next few weeks it is difficult to see what Wenger would do. That, however, is a different topic for a different blog post, but just putting it out there, I am a huge fan of the potential of Ryo Miyaichi.

While it is a good thing that these players have signed new contracts, it would be worse than awful if any of them refused because they thought they were too good for the club. It is bad enough that Walcott thinks he might be. Personally, I hope that it will humble him to see that he isn't THAT good, and the likes of Madrid and Barca will not be falling over themselves to get his signature. He has been playing better this season, scoring as many goals as he did last season already, but he is by no means a finished product, and hopefully won’t get too carried away with that. Hopefully he will sign, the whole squad will gel and Arsenal will win every available trophy for the next decade at least. Why not?

That's it from me, thanks for reading; don’t forget to follow @studentgooner