Up For Grabs Now

As the hour’s tick down towards the January transfer window (the start of which is celebrated around the world with fireworks and dancing, though I may have misunderstood this) and with no matches until Plymouth on Saturday, I thought I’d take a broad look at the transfer market and Arsenal’s position going into it.

I can’t remember a stranger market, nor one where a player’s value was so randomly ascribed. In a good deal, both parties should feel slightly uncomfortable – the buyer that he might have overpaid, and the seller that he might have undersold. What we’ve got right now is a seller’s market where nobody’s quite sure where all that money is coming from. And with Arsenal very much a buying club this January, that’s not good news. It means we’ll have to be pretty cunning to come out in February with a significantly improved squad.

Some good games for Portsmouth won Lassana Diarra a whopping £22million move to Real Madrid. Now, if you believe the Independent, Portsmouth are talking about £24 million for Jermaine Defoe, who moved in the opposite direction for £9 million not that long ago. Somehow if you throw in a goals record at Pompey which was essentially a continuation of his Spurs form when he was getting a game and add in the financial crisis, the player is valued nearly 3 times higher!

If that’s the going rate, what on earth would we need to pay for someone in the class of Ribery, or Aguero? This is only a few months after City bought Robinho for £30 million. How does Defoe plus £6million sound as a fair deal for him?

Klaas Jan-Huntelaar, a top class international striker covetted by all the major clubs in Europe and with Champions’ League experience, moves to Madrid in an initial £17m deal which could rise as high as £23million depending on performance. This seems like a fair price for such a talented player. What’s odd is that the second tier of Premiership clubs are expecting each other to outspend Real Madrid in exchange for inferior quality.

These are the sort of fees Arsene has never spent. In the past only players with international pedigree and good records at top clubs have been able to command these kinds of numbers. Now everyone’s doing it. Defoe’s a good player, but at best you’re probably signing 20 goals a season, for which you must now pay top dollar.

In one sense, I suspect the financial crisis is perversely responsible for this. You might have expected to see good players available for bargain bucks, but that simply hasn’t happened. Taking Defoe as an example, Portsmouth could flog one of their assets and they’d have a bit more money. In the past you’d just bring in a cheaper replacement and trouser the rest. The thing is that once they’ve flogged Defoe they’ve probably increased the risk of relegation quite considerably, and this is where the rub really comes. Mediocre Premiership clubs are now less interested in good deals than they are in avoiding the ruin of relegation at all costs. They are asking for such high prices exactly because they are so risk-averse right now.

This has a curious effect on the valuation of players from clubs like Everton or Villa. Say we tried to sign Arteta. You’d think about £10-£12 million would do the job, but Everton will naturally look for a replacement from a lower club, say Morten Gamst Pedersen. But when they enquire they’ll find Blackburn are charging a much higher premium than they are. So they won’t sell for anything less than a grossly inflated fee.

So where does this leave Arsenal, so evidently in need of ready-made reinforcements?

Exactly where we’ve always been with Arsene, that’s where. The best solution to such a market is simply to scout far and wide and well and early. If we get involved in rat races over average Premiership players we’re just going to end up throwing away money we don’t have, especially if we’re up against Man City (and who aren’t they interested in exactly?)

Sagna, Eduardo, Adebayor, Van Persie. All well-below £10 million and all right out of the top drawer. In the first 3 cases they came with enough experience to make a pretty immediate impact. It’s these sort of off-the-radar players that we need to be bringing in if we are to outperform the market this January and have a realistic tilt at the Champions’ League. What do I want Arsene to find up his magic sleeve? Ideally, another Vidic or Skrtel, relative unknowns bought cheaply who were ready to perform at the highest level at the heart of the defence. What price Vidic now?

Arsene’s said he wants experience and he also said he would look at loan moves. If he follows his established transfer strategy he might need to combine the two and loan in the experience. We may have to settle for someone like Olivier Dacourt. Yesterday I suggested we give Juan Sebastian Veron a six month loan contract, just in case he’s still got it in him (with apologies for all the United stuff on that clip, it made me feel sick too). I know he disappointed at United and Chelsea but they’re very different teams and he could be due a Larsson-esque swansong. Just an idea.

Intrigued, as ever, to know your thoughts on all this.

While trawling the net tirelessly in search of the sharpest Arsenal-related news, rumours and analysis, we occasionally come across other stuff that we want to share with our readers.

Here’s a selection of stuff that caught our eye:

Manu Chao sings about Diego Maradona in his new song ‘La Vida Tombola’.

You know when you suddenly remember how much you enjoyed watching an old football star? Well that just happened to me with Juan Sebastian Veron. It’s a shame he played for United, but by gum the lad could play. Wouldn’t mind us making a cheeky loan move for him in January. Just in case he’s still got it.

Tiny Malawi’s national team, The Flames, sensationally beat African Champions Egypt and DR Congo on their way to reaching the next phase of qualifying for the 2010 World Cup and African Cup of Nations (it’s a combined qualification system). Here are some grainy highlights of their crunch winner-takes-all game against DRC (Malawi are in Red). That’s the biggest attendance in Malawian football history right there and the place goes absolutely berserk as Chiukepo Msowoya (no. 4) bags the winner right at the death after Malawi had replied to Lomana Lua-Lua’s stunning strike early on. For me Msowoya’s cheeky victory dance is the joy of football in its purest form.

Unbeaten in six, back in the top four, Denilson hitting some form and with a run of nine very winnable games stretched out in front of us, right up until Roma in late February, perhaps it’s not so bad to be a Gooner after all?

It’s felt like a crap Christmas week from an Arsenal perspective, though I did get some sweet retro Adidas boots for Crimbo, which made me feel a bit better and will doubtless lead to countless hopeless Van Persie impersonations in the park. I always find that my legs aren’t quite bendy enough for this sort of thing.

But suddenly we’re eking out gritty victories over teams led by club legends and Arsene’s chuckling benignly and knowingly when asked about the prospect of us signing exciting, creative new players like Arshavin. Sure, he’s not naming names and for all we know he may actually have lined up Titus Bramble to bring a bit of sparkle to our attack (remember: a good player can play anywhere), but still, his flirty giggles and naming of no names has got us all going a bit, hasn’t it?

In that Sky interview, Wenger alarmingly pointed out that “3 points were requested today“. What? Does that mean that all this time we’ve been fretting away, all we needed to do was ask nicely every week and Arsene will pass on this request to the lads, who will grumpily oblige with a scrappy win? If only we’d realised sooner!

I’ve written a short play which explores some of the issues managers like Arsene must face at this testing, formative period of their lives.

Act One, Scene One

[The Emirate's Stadium at night. Arsene is wearing an inelegant puffa jacket and trying to avoid Geoff Shreves. The Arsenal fans' lines are shouted from off-stage in ghostly tones.]

Us: Who do you fancy, Arsene?

Arsene: No-one. I’m not telling.

Us: You fancy Andrei, don’t you Arsene?

Arsene: (blushing) No. I so totally do not fancy Andrei.

Us: Yes you do! Yes you do! Yes you do! [Sings] Arsene fancies Andrei! Arsene fancies Andrei!

Arsene: No I don’t! No I don’t! [Pause]. Do you think I should let him know how I feel?

[Blackout]

… to be continued.

Serious analysis: From Wenger’s manner and his comments to CanalPlus, I would bet the family cat that we are getting pretty close with Arshavin. Something in the Sky interviewer’s voice suggested that Arsene might just have told him something rather interesting immediately before the interview. BUT, the tabloid (and broadsheet) insistence on a £20million fee is, I believe, complete bollocks. If he was 23, had won the Euros for Russia and we were in a bidding war with Madrid, Chelsea and Milan, then I can see how he might command this sort of fee.

As it is, he had flashes of brilliance at the Euros, an impressive Uefa cup and has failed to win himself a move to a top European club despite openly prostituting himself on the market and sulking for the last six months. His contract’s up in the summer and nobody (apart from Tottenham, obviously) has shown serious interest in him. Get him for between £5-10 million, I say.

That said, my affection toward’s the family cat isn’t what it once was, and I still wouldn’t be that surprised if the whole Arshavin thing turned out to be tabloid bluster which Arsene playfully won’t quash any more (though he seemed to do just that last week). What his comments show for sure is that he’s after a creative midfielder. I’d throw Van der Vaart (who’s unpopular at Madrid) and Arteta (who’s way too good for Everton) into the mix, though it would have been better for us if Arteta hadn’t scored that brace yesterday, as he’s actually had a poor season by and large by his standards.

By most people’s reckoning, that leaves us with a defensive midfielder and a central defender still on the shopping list. Arsene has hinted at wanting another midfielder, but hasn’t mentioned a defender. Hmmm. Perhaps all we need to do is ask politely? Who should we ask for then? Upson?

Well that was a bit boring wasn’t it?

1-0, but we’ll take those points very gratefully, thank you. It wasn’t pretty to watch. We seemed to celebrate TA6’s return to the Emirates by agreeing not to threaten the Portsmouth goal at all, and occasionally gifting them the odd half chance.

The first half, particularly, was stultefyingly dull – aside from Crouch hitting the post and Adebayor managing not to score after rounding James there was nothing to talk about, except how useless Ade and Bendtner were together. We had lots of the ball, and seemed more comfortable at the back than recently, but seemed equally unable to do anything about it after that.

In the second half we were a bit brighter, after Nasri moved inside and pushed the Great Dane out wide, first on the left and then on the right after Carl came on, and Adebayor ought to have scored again when given about twenty minutes on the edge of the six yard box.

Still, they defended neatly (Campbell in particular looking like a player who’d get a game at the Emirates), and we were rarely threatened at our end, and there can’t be too many unhappy with the scoreline, none more so than LeGal, who came up with another of his timely headers to provide the only goal (from a very useful Denilson cross – perhaps he should do more set pieces…). Good for him, and good for the team too to have a reconfident LeGal.

When I got home Phil Thompson was wittering away about us buying a striker in January after Wenger seemed to thaw slightly on the transfer issue. It’s clearly not in his interests to announce he’s definitely looking to buy, but at the same time he admitted we look ‘a bit thin’. Watch this space, I say. But a striker? Hmm. I don’t think so. There was forlorn chanting for Robin van Persie during the second half, but I think that was more out of frustration with Bendtner than anything else (who was rubbish, and who can’t play with Ade at all). With a fit Eduardo (and Theo and Carl as backup options) I don’t see any need for any more strikers.

 No, like the proverbial 24 year old virgin, what we need is a bit of penetration. Not from strikers, but from people unafraid (and competent enough) to get past the man. Against lesser teams it’s less obvious, but Portsmouth were well-organised enough to show us up when we were passing around each other. Nasri was prepared to have a go, and Diaby too in his defence, and so was Carl when he came on. Cesc can do it with passing and movement, and Theo can do it with runs, but it’s where Denilson, Song and Eboue, not to mention Bentdner and Ade, look a bit vulnerable.

 More tomorrow, but I’m happy with the result. We haven’t lost for a while now, and that can only be good…

By gum, it hasn’t been so long since our last game has it? And here we are again, all hopes and fears as Tony Adam’s Pompey roll into the Emirates.

Having only a day in between matches could work in our favour. After results as frustrating as Friday’s, players and managers always want to have another chance to get it right as quickly as possible. You could argue the same about Pompey, I suppose, but after being obliterated 4-1 at home by struggling West Ham you’d rather think they’d need time to pick themselves up and regain belief. Instead of which they’ve had a day off and must now play Arsenal. 

Tony Adams (TA6) will rightly receive an enormous ovation, as such a pillar of the club deserves. Likewise Campbell, Ralph and Kanu, Invincibles all, should be made to feel right at home. Realistically, not Diarra.

That said, I don’t think Adams will be long for the Pompey job. Once an unproven young manager strings a run of poor results together (albeit his squad is crumbling around him), recent history shows that they always get the boot in favour of someone older and wiser (or sometimes just newer, as in Sbragia’s case), not because they aren’t necessarily good managers, but because most clubs’ budgets cannot countenance the blow of relegation and so extreme short-termism is the only option.

If he does lose his job, I’d love to see Arsene bring him in as a defensive coach. I’ve long thought that Arsene might benefit from basically not bothering to coach defending himself (in the same way that there are specialised goalkeeping coaches), and instead allow a specialist defensive coach to decide defensive strategy, especially things like defending set-pieces.

I know we defend as a team, blah, blah, blah. The thing is that there’s something painfully uncomfortable about our current back four which suggests they really don’t know quite what they’re meant to be doing. People bark on about new signings, but a new signing in the same defensive system can’t change all that much in my opinion unless they’re a massive ego in their own right who will insist on doing things their way, which sounds good in theory but a bit like Gallas in practice.

Arsene could still insist on having his full-backs galloping forward and maintain a certain style of distribution to the midfield. What I think someone like Adams could improve is the muddy bread-and-butter business of defending, which has always seemed to rather bore Arsene.

Back to today’s match. Adebayor returns after his ridiculous suspension. Djourou and Clichy may also come back, though I wouldn’t put the family cat on it, while Song misses out, apparently still injured – so I hope all those who suggested he got hooked by Wenger at Villa because he was playing terribly feel terribly guilty this morning.

Song’s loss is a bit of a puzzler for Wenger midfieldwise. I reckon he’ll put Nasri on the left, Eboue on the right, Denilson with Diaby in the middle. Diaby’s preference for aimless ambling in ineffectual areas of the midfield over things like pressing and tackling would put a lot of pressure on Denilson if this is the midfield today. An alternative would be to drop Eboue (Hooray!), put Diaby on a wing and Ramsey in the middle. The lad looked raw against Villa but it’s always tough to come into a game at the stage he did – the intensity’s high and nobody’s tired enough yet to give you any fitness advantage. Played from the start he might be able to get his teeth into the game a bit more.

Always interested to know your thoughts on today’s game and who you’d pick, so stick them underneath as always.

TRANSFER RUMOURS: No less a bastion of journalistic probity than the News of the World newspaper has today unleashed a three-headed Arsenal transfer-rumour monster which is clearly completely baseless and apparently intended only to worry frantic Geordies. They claim we’ll sign Shay Given, Steven Taylor and Charles N’Zogbia as part of Wenger’s big change of mind (which is itself a lie).

We’ve always been linked with N’Zogbia though I’ve never really understood why. He’s out of contract at the end of the season so it wouldn’t surprise me to see him signed in a sort of vague, Bischoffian manner. Taylor could be good I suppose, if given the right defensive coaching (see nods and nudges above), while Given would be a curious signing seeing as Arsene quite clearly rates Almunia highly. As do I for that matter. He’s another that seems to suffer simply because he wasn’t signed expensively as an established talent.

Allez les rouges!

Very frustrating, that, wasn’t it? I’d just come back from the annual family Boxing Day football match, in which I’d seen children of 5 valiantly holding off attackers four times their weight, only to watch Arsenal succumb pitifully, yet again, when it would have been much easier to hold on for a draw or a win.

What’s a bit consoling (yet also makes the draw even more frustrating) is that it could all have been so different. After they hit the bar three times in the first half, and then induced a spectacular clearance from Sagna (more on him later), I’d have taken the draw in a heartbeat. I might even have taken it at the start of the game.

But after Denilson slipped in and punished Reo-Coker for trying a bit of Pro Evo defending you got the feeling this might just be one of our days. Rare as they are, I was overcome by the sensation that this game might be the little bit of luck we needed, a turning point in the season. I felt this even more strongly after we got the second – two chances, two on target, two goals. Hilarious, like one of those CM games where you know the computer’s decided you’re not allowed to win.

I had real faith. After the goals we looked like a completely different side, with Denilson and Diaby looking not only sound defensively but fluid on the attack as well. What a difference a bit of confidence makes. There’s talent there, no doubt about it. They’re just not used to winning. They haven’t got that drive which says ‘right, we’re two goals up, we’re not losing from here’.

You couldn’t say the same about Ramsay, however, who I must say looked completely out of his depth up against Barry et al. I’ve seen a lot of chat online about how he and Wilshere should be given a chance in the first team, but I thought Song and Denilson both looked much better than they young Welshman yesterday. As grabs wrote so effectively the other day; just imagine if we’d just bought Song and Denilson for £9m and £6m, and think how much more patience you’d be giving them then…

Anyway, after the penalty (which was as obvious as they come and woefully incompetent from Gallas, who otherwise had a couple of good moments) went in you just felt like we could conceded again, and we dutifully did after we decided, presumably chasing the logical conclusion of attack being the best form of defence, to all hang around in Villa’s half during injury time when we didn’t have the ball. Zat Knight duly obliged when he found himself in acres of space, and a million boxing day sofas went ‘urrrgggghhhhhhh’ together.

I promised more on Sagna – what a champ he was yesterday. You don’t often notice him, but matches like yesterday make you realise that it’s basically because he never does anything wrong. Rarely injured, rarely booked, constantly running and throwing himself at the ball – how many others on the team would have got to that bicycle kick clearance? Not many, for my money. You’ve got to think that basically any club in the world would take him at right back at the moment. I hope he knows how important he is. We should think of a song for him, pronto.

As January approaches Wenger has one of the toughest months during his time as coach to look forward to. Who to buy? To sell anyone? How to convince the back four they are, indeed, a back four? He expressed this through the medium of getting cross about Villa’s assistant manager talking to the ref at half time. Honestly. What a lot of rubbish. Put it down to stress, I suspect.

Enjoy the dregs of Christmas, grabbos. And here’s to a better show tomorrow.

Well at least we can finally abandon all hope of winning the league. The pessimists did it months ago and now surely even the most optimistic of Gooners (like me) can also be released from that concern. Instead we can focus on something more befitting the players we currently have at Arsenal FC, like battling to pip Villa to fourth, which I still think we are more than capable of doing but which would be a real achievement for this team.

We should have been dead and buried by half-time. Villa came out with a big game and it looked like they were going to annihilate us in the first 20 minutes. They hit the post twice, clocked up almost 80% of the possession and, to be honest, looked like the top four team.

Instead, we hit the front after the much maligned Denilson carved open the surprisingly pliant Villa defence to slot past Friedel. One tackle, an intelligent touch and a calm finish was all it took. Moments later the never maligned Bacary Sagna executed a quite wonderful acrobatic overhead goal-line clearance which was effectively like scoring a goal. I certainly celebrated like he had done just that, and why not? Sagna had a tremendous match – another goal saving tackle in the second half on Young was really outstanding – and should be rightly proud of his efforts today.

The always maligned Alex Song limped off before the interval and was replaced by the too-young-and-British-to-be maligned Aaron Ramsey, who had good moments amongst the misplaced passes and loss of possession (though I do mean that sincerely, he is far far too young to be maligned and I shall not be the one to do so).

The first 10 minutes of the second half were probably the brightest of our season. Superb play from the oft maligned Abou Diaby in midfield freed the loudly-and-unremittingly maligned Emmanuel Eboue for a run at their defence, and his cleverly timed through ball was perfect for the about-to-be-hugged-enthusiastically-by-joyous-Gooners-for-once-rather-than maligned Abou Diaby, who chipped Friedel with typical Diabian nonchalance. Does he care about anything? Probably not.

There followed a superb passage of play, reminiscent of the Arsenal we used to see when we were any good. The sometimes maligned Van Persie was unlucky to strike the post before scuffing the rebound with his Toblerone leg, but I think deep down we have all been watching this Arsenal team too closely not to have known in our bones that having been presented with such an unlikely two goal lead and a dominant position, we would somehow contrive to piss away all that had been fought for and fortuitously gained up to that point.

We just love nothing more than the meek surrender of hard won two goal leads. Tottenham. Now Villa. This team has had something on it’s mind ever since McFadden’s penalty in that game in February. The demons went mad at Anfield, then again at Old Trafford and they’re not going to go away any time soon.

And so it proved. A rash challenge from the justly-maligned-’cos-he’s-a-stroppy-idiot Gallas when Agbonlahor was surely much too wide to pose an imminent threat to Almunia’s net saw Barry score from the spot with typical ruthlessness.

After that it was simply a matter of time and countless unnecessary concessions of possession in vital areas before we conceded the equaliser. The 4 minutes of injury time was simply farcical, but Knight scored in the second of those, forcing my analysis this morning that “he’s no use on the ground” firmly down my throat.

The result leaves me feeling physically sick. The equaliser was a gut-wrenchingly rubbish moment, but at least we knew it was coming, though I’m not sure that that makes it any better – in fact it might make it even worse.

Leave your thoughts, your shouts and exasperations below. At least the next game, against Tony Adams’ fragile looking Portmsouth, is on Sunday, though I don’t know how much I’m really looking forward to it.

What with the last 19 hours of frantic face stuffing with chocolate coins, chocolate oranges, ham, turkey, bacon, eggs, sausages, parsnips and, well, stuffing, you’d be forgiven for feeling far too fat to make the effort to even turn on the telly for today’s top-5 tussle  at Villa Park. Never mind actually managing to open your eyes for long enough to take in any of the action. Let alone travelling all the way to bloody Birmingham to witness our Cesc-shorn midfield in action.

Word up to the travelling Gooners today – you should be proud of yourselves. Let’s hope it’s well worth the trip.

A word of warning: a source close to Alex Song (he didn’t stay very close for very long) reports that Alex Song ate between 12 and 17 brussel sprouts all by himself at the London Colney Christmas Dinner, which means he’s likely to spend at least the first half attempting to conceal the inevitable blasts of nauseating flatulence from his team-mates (apparently Denilson HATES other people’s farts) and Sky’s microphones.

Let’s hope he can lay some potent, lingering efforts in the space in behind Sagna and Clichy. Lord knows if we play our defensive line as far up the park as we did against Liverpool, we’ll need something to keep Young and Agbonlahor away from the channels. Alex, you’re our man! Get busy.

The best news this week was that Villa’s defensive cornerstone Martin Laursen is likely to miss today’s game through injury. He’s a crucial player for Villa – an excellent defender in his own right who expertly marshals the rest of his back-line, and a real threat at set-pieces too, which we really seem to enjoy conceding goals from.

His obvious replacement, the excellent Carlos Cuellar, is also struggling, so they may be forced to start with the promising but erratic Curtis Davies and the unpromising and erratic Zat Knight. Both are very tall, but neither are especially adept on the ground, so it’s a combination which would have Van Persie (no Ade today remember) licking his slick-shaven chops.

I suspect O’Neill will realise this and risk one of his main men at the back, preferably Cuellar.

Our team: Almunia, Sagna, Clichy, Djourou, Galoises, Denilson, Diaby, Nasri, Song, Van Persie, Bendtner

No guarantees from this end, however, that we won’t see a 4-5-1 against such a strong Villa midfield. The problem with that is you’d either have to play Van Persie in a withdrawn role (which would mean there would be little defensive point in having the extra man in midfield as he’d be Rob and would also mean relying on Bendtner having a blinder) or else play him up top by himself (which he’s normally pretty bad at) or else drop him (which would be madness).

Very interested to hear your thoughts on who should start today. It’s a big game – who would you pick?

Whoever’s wearing the golden cannon on their shirt today is going to have to play out of their skin. A few of them have to start playing like Top 4 players, and today would be a great day to start.

Lose, and Villa will have 6 points on us. Not insurmountable by any means (and stand fast against the Sky-eyed gloom-mongers who would doubtless prey on any such result) but certainly it would be another big blow in a week of big blows for our season. Win and we’d sneak ahead of them on goal difference. So we’ll probably draw instead.

Come on you Reds!

A very good morning to you, and a very merry Christmas.

Yes sir, unlike some other (arguably lesser) Arsenal blogs we at Up For Grabs Now think that you deserve your slice of all things Arsenal 365 days a year, even if that means sacrificing a bit of my own valuable arguing with my relatives time – time I hold very dear indeed.

I hope you all get the presents you wanted. It feels to me that if Arsenal were a child, it must have been particularly bad this year to deserve what has been dumped on it by the world. Perhaps it killed another child. And then ate it. Or even worse some sort of religious figure. Maybe it punched a priest. Maybe that’s What Arsene Did Last Summer. 

Because just as it seemed things couldn’t get any worse, Cesc went and got out for four months. It was almost as if God wanted to remind us that there  always something worse than the current situation - a trick referred to in theological circles as the ‘Tottenham Fan Hypothesis’.

On the plus side it seems he won’t need an operation, which I suppose is better than needing an operation. The last person we heard of needing an operation was Tom Rosickly, and I need hardly tell you how poorly that’s gone for his presence in the team.

Talk abounds about what we should do next. Lots are saying Arsene will buy two new players in the interim, but I don’t think he will, necessarily.

The problem with no Cesc is not actually in finding a Cesc replacement, which is pretty much impossible, but in the creative strain it puts on our already-depleted wide areas. Getting Theo back will solve some of these, but we’ve already got lots of players who want to be central midfielders: Nasri came inside for the last bit against Liverpool and looked pretty convincing there for my money. Song and Denilson would probably like to be central too, as would a fit Rosicky.

But presuming that Arsene wants to stick with the Song/Denilson as holding players model, and I’m with Grabs in thinking that there’s nothing to suggest either of them couldn’t yet blossom into the Flamini figure we’d like them to, then the real midfield issue is a wide one, which feeds back in to the Arshavin Allusion of yesterday. Other than that I have to say I don’t feel I have much to add to the transfer suggestion pot. Some people on Le Grumble were talking about Cana, who I looked at on youtube and found pretty amusing, but that might be because I like the idea of having an Albanian enforcer. I suspect, as ever, that the boss has some chaps up his sleeve.

In other news Homer is off to West Brom for a bit. Good luck to him, I say, and get ready to come back in a hurry if Bentdner pisses off as he’s threatening to, to go and play first team football somewhere where they don’t mind having a twat-booted never-scoring striker, as opposed to at Arsenal where they only mind some of the time.

Right, I’m off to eat some turkey and bread sauce before arguing with everybody all afternoon and then losing at racing demon. 

Here’s to hoping some of the spirit of Christmas rubs off on everyone at the Emirates…

I think it’s fair to say that we Gooners have seen better Christmasses.

Of course we’ve also seen worse ones too, but I think I’m not alone in saying that hearing the extent of Cesc’s injury confirmed made me feel physically sick. Cesc, our new captain, our engine, and the most loved of all our players, effectively out for the rest of the season. With his time at Arsenal apparently limited to just a few more years it’s difficult to stomach any of that precious time being snatched away.

So in the immediate future we face what suddenly looks a massive game against in-form Villa, without Adebayor or Cesc. And in the longer term we face the rest of the season without any sort of midfield to speak of. There will have to be a lot of gritting of teeth, puffing out of cheeks, and squaring of shoulders from fans and players alike.

Arsene has great, great faith in players like Bendtner and Diaby. Now, more than ever, we need that faith to be repaid by these players. We need to see that they were worth Arsene’s investment of trust. You’d struggle to find an Arsenal fan who honestly believes they are, but we need them to surprise us – and soon.

Today seems to be all about the Great Cesc Replacement Suggestion Extravaganza. So far, we’ve seen names like Parker, Inler, Veloso, Noble, Arteta (an astute shout from the Arseblogger, that one), Barry, Senna, Alonso, Toure Yaya, Defour, Arshavin, Arda Turan and Mouyokolo. You can add UpForGrabsNow’s name to that list. We are willing and ready to fight for Arsenal… jusht ash shoon ash we’fe finished thissh mincshe pie.

Of course, some of these names would obviously not compensate for the loss of Cesc because they play in completely different positions.

The Arshavin saga will rumble on with the bizarre tabloid logic seeing him (a forward who can play on the wing) as the solution to our gapingly empty central midfield. Having heard Wenger yesterday, I think there’s definitely something going on with Arshavin and I wouldn’t be too surprised to see him arrive in January, though as a winger, not to fill Cesc’s boots. Arsene was very canny in the press conference on the topic, saying that it was not worth discussing “now” because it was not a ”realistic solution right now”.

To me this just sounds like he wants him but Zenit aren’t playing ball with a realistic price, holding out for an Abramovich-scale bidding war which just isn’t going to materialise. The good thing is that since he is in a big strop (saying he’d only be a Zenit player on paper if he doesn’t get a move in January) they have absolutely no bargaining power and no-one else (of any stature) wants him. If he does come in, expect it to be for a fee some way short of £10m, which is probably not much more than he’s actually worth.

In terms of actually replacing Cesc, I think Wenger will definitely bring someone in from outside the club, “internal solutions” or no.

There’s been some pretty perverse reaction from some of our fans. I’ve read people writing things like “Cesc’s injury is really bad, but at least it will force Wenger to spend money in January”. This is a totally warped point of view, twisted by hours spent impotently ranting against Wenger’s management, an activity which makes the ranter lose all sense of proportion and reason as their whole life-force seems to be channelled towards demanding big-money signings at Arsenal FC.

Forgive me for pointing out that the ultimate aim of football is not to force visionary managers into spending money at the expense of the outstanding footballers they already possess, and that maybe, just maybe, it would have been better not to have lost our best player and be forced into an unpromising market for a stop-gap solution. But at least the bleaters will get their signing at long last, which ought to quieten them down a bit (but probably won’t).

From the names being bandied about at the moment, I like the sound of Arteta in particular. Veloso and Inler are players who seem to be much admired around Europe and who would both be available at a decent price. I haven’t seen either enough to properly form an opinion of them, (and would be interested to hear the thoughts of anyone who has) but they are both still very young and I feel a more experienced player like Arteta or Alonso is more like what we need right now.

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts, though of course the only thoughts which really matter right now are those of Wenger and he’s probably got pretty different thoughts to the likes of us. He doesn’t regret selling Diarra. Gotta say I do regret that. A wee bit.

He also said he was looking forward to everyone coming over very “imaginative” in their speculation. So we can expect to see the Daily Mirror staging an open-air Nativity play in which a wise man, a shepherd and one of the cows are unmasked one after another as expensive South American solutions to Arsenal’s mid-season malaise smuggled into the UK by Arsene under the pretence of popular seasonal drama in order to avoid work-permit complications.

Of course the best thing would be if we could sign God Incarnate, who was rumoured to have been shown round London Colney last Thursday and who would certainly provide a bit of steel at centre-half.