Up For Grabs Now

Finally a temporary break from the relentless tedium of half-baked speculation and ill-conceived transfer suggestions (see UFGN, last 2 days), and back to the real business – a steely, gristly, belt and braces, coal-face home game against the razorish elbows and looming studs of Bolton Wanderers. Yum

It’s as important a game as all our games are these days. I’m now pretty firmly in the habit of listening out for the Villa result, and so (at least for now) it feels like it’s them we’re vying against on a week-by-week basis. Bigger aspirations can wait for us to finally string a credible winning run today.

That said, I sense that today is especially important for us because with the FA Cup last weekend and the time away from the League since the Boxing Day games, our squad has had quite a long lay-off from intensive duty. In that time, we’ve heard a lot about corners turned, of fighting spirit questioned and reinvigorated, of newfound determination to prove the critics wrong. Which is all great… except if it all goes a bit Darren Bent against Bolton today.

A good win would build on a fluid showing against Plymouth and could signal a change of tone to our season, and a positive shift in belief, something we desperately need over the next few months if we are to play our way through our horrendous injury list. Of course a signing or two are also important (and clearly on Wenger’s agenda from his comments in yesterday’s press conference) but arguably what we really need is for the players we already have to bond into a decent unit and find some form at last.

Team news: expect to see Almunia, Sagna, Clichy, Djourou, Toure (c), Eboue, Nasri, Song, Denilson, Van Persie, Adebayor – though we might well see some Out-Of-Position Diaby thrown into the mix as well. If the game’s not going well, it will be interesting to hear how quickly the crowd start shouting for Vela and how soon Le Boss brings him on. He probably isn’t ready to start, but it’s good to have a game-changer on the bench, at any age.

Bolton: Unfortunately Bolton’s asshole-in-chief Kevin Davies looks like he’ll make the game. His asshole-lieutenant and midfield clone Kevin Nolan is suspended (as he surely always ought to be). Expect a customarily heroic display from Jussi Jaaskelainen and vague mutterings from a few discontented souls about how they’d take Fabrice Muamba back if it meant we didn’t have to play Alex Song. Muamba’s a good player, and it will be interesting to see how our players get on against him, but he isn’t Arsenal quality.

The only other player I’d pick out as a potential threat would be Matty Taylor, who likes to hit exactly the kind of long-shot which Manuel our Spanish waiter goalkeeper enjoys waving a vague paw at as it flies into the roof of the net. He’s also got a pretty decent goalscoring record against us, if memory serves, so we should try and keep him quiet. Their defence is shocking, frankly, and if Van Persie can keep up last week’s form, he should be able to cut them to ribbons.

WordsOfWenger: A wee transfer overview. Gossip is addictive, after all. Yesterday’s press conference provided a few insights into current squad and transfer strategy. Nobody’s leaving, including Kolo. And yes, that would seem to include Gallas. Arshavin’s probably on his way. Arsene’s obviously interested and it just remains for Zenit to realise that their bargaining position simply doesn’t exist and he’ll be posing in a brand new number 13 shirt.

Arsene called a defensive midfield signing “a priority”, which calls for a pretty ridiculously loud sigh of relief, if you ask me. I won’t pretend to know any more than anyone else about who this might be, although I’m always interested to hear your suggestions.

Less sigh-of-relief inducing was his ambivalence on Matthew Upson, and though he refused to say anything about him (as he did with Arshavin) he also said he wasn’t looking for a defender “at the moment”. The shred of hope is that he’s got a target who is currently looking unlikely but whose situation could change. That could be Upson himself, if not then I hope it’s Christian Zapata, a player we were certainly interested in in the summer and who I’ve been really impressed by whenever I’ve seen him play for Udinese. Apparently Milan and Juve are interested too. He’s been injured for much of this season, which is a drawback, but with others establishing their first team credentials, it might make Udinese more open to offers.

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We’ve languished five whole days in the transfer window. Five. Seemed like longer than that, didn’t it? Arsene has ducked and dived and the many Arsenal fans who have been holding out for a hero to arrive on whom they can pin all their hopes are still waiting for that man. Some are becoming desperate, pleading for Arsene to spend many millions on players like Stewart Downing. Any signing, they cry, is better than no signing at all.

Arsene says he wants “super-class” talent or nothing. That was the approach in the summer and that got us Nasri and a cavernous hole in central midfield. By the way, could people please stop saying that we “didn’t sign anybody” last summer? Nasri was quite clearly a signing, as was Ramsey. What you mean is that we didn’t sign the right players or that we didn’t sign enough players or that we didn’t sign players for the right positions. But we definitely signed players, so don’t pretend otherwise.

Yesterday saw us tie down Young Jack Wilshere to a reported 8 year contract. Wish they’d give me one of those. He’s the sort of talent that is very very hard to find, and it’s interesting that almost exactly ten years on from Arsene saying it would take ten years for Arsenal to start producing young players of adequate technical ability, along comes Young Jack. Shows you he has a fair idea what he’s talking about. Hopefully there’s more coming too – I hear Ashley Young’s kid brother Kyle is pretty useful.

Speaking at Jack’s signing, Arsene said (not for the first time) that he thinks Jack has “tremendous penetrative power“. Crumbs, and only just turned 17! Along with the importance of defending set-pieces assertively, Arsene has never really grasped the British obsession with innuendo, has he? Perhaps someone should have sent him Carry On for his Christmas in order to school him against pulling out such cracking gags in public.

One team who has been very active in the transfer window is Sp*rs, who look like wrapping up Defoe for £15 million. That’s a real bargain when you consider that Bent was £16.5 million, but when you remember that Bent is amongst the worst footballers on the planet and that Defoe is very, very average, and that Sp*rs only sold him the other day for much less than that, the whole thing actually appears to be a scandalously poor piece of business. Why do they keep trying to re-buy players they only just sold? Or sell players cheaply that they only just bought expensively? It’s like they’re short-selling in reverse, seeing how much of a loss they can make. Kaboul is another classic example. Hell, if we really want Luka Modric why not make a cheeky £2 million bid for him right now? At Tottenham it’s instant impact or you’re out the door and they don’t care how stupid that makes them look as judges of footballing ability or how perenially shite it has made their football team. Those Gooners getting antsy about Wenger’s apparently inexhaustible patience with players like Bendtner should thank their stars he at least has some pride and some stubbornness about him and that we’re not as hilarious or as crap as Tottenham with their insistence on massive player turnover year after year.

Redknobb has done a fine job at his recent clubs – Southampton, Portsmouth, West Ham – but it’s interesting, isn’t it, that they are now languishing financially and having to sell (or having already sold) the very players who brought them their success under Harry. Hopefully the Levy-factor will limit his success at Sp*rs and when he is sacked 7 games into next season he will leave his traditional legacy of financial meltdown and relegation struggling, something I think we’d all like to see more of at Sp*rs, if only to provide an amusing side-show to fretting about our own problems.

A cursory round-up of today’s transfer guff, with the tabloid hacks already wearying of their task.

Man City to buy Yaya Toure for £24 million! Folly, sheer folly.

Arshavin to buy out his own contract! Ok, go on then son.

Kranjcar to Arse! Fine. Probably won’t happen but wouldn’t mind if it did. A vanilla-flavoured gobbet of gossip if ever I licked one.

Bendtner + £5m = Matthew Upson. If this is anything to go by, The Sun’s journalists obviously weren’t any use at algebra when they were at school, which is possibly why they ended up writing Arsenal fetish erotic fantasies with no basis in reality and publishing them in that foetid abcess of a newspaper. The might as well have written 1 + 5 = 16, which as we all know, simply isn’t true.