Vela, Bendtner, Chamakh and Park could all seek pastures new. Benik Afobe may not yet be ready after his injury this season, Joel Campbell has not been able to establish himself in the way that Vela has for example and moving to Arsenal is an obvious step up in quality. So with four strikers possibly leaving and one supposedly arriving *pulls out high tech

The Champions League semi final gave many viewers a few semi’s of their own last night as Bayern Munich finally overcame Spanish Giant Real Madrid on penalties, in a fantastic game of football.

The game was very open and end to end. Not really what you expect from *insert cliche* a German side  *end cliche* and a Jose Mourinho side.

I was very impressed with Bayern I must say, when Ronaldo made it 2-0 to Real Madrid, I thought there would only be one team to go on and win it but not only did the Germans improve defensively, they scored, took control of a majority of the possession and took the game to Real in their own back yard.

I like most Gooners will become a temporary Bayern Munich supporter when it comes to the final in May. I suspect Chelsea will wash the windows, oil the engine and hoover inside their blue bus ready for another on pitch parkage.

Watching the game last night I wondered how we would fair against one of the two if we were on our game with our full strength team. How far are we away from those two if at all? Would we have had more of the ball than those two heavy weights? would we have been able to penetrate as well as repel their attacks?

Answers are subjective, it depends on how much you rate or do not rate the squad I guess. For my money is all depends on which Arsenal turn up, as is the case for us against most top teams in Europe. When we are on our game we have beaten the likes of Manchester City, Chelsea, Manchester United and Barcelona all within the space of 12 months but as you are well aware of we have lost to Wigan, QPR, Birmingham City and Bolton within the same timeframe.

Consistency over a season remains our holy grail and I suspect trophies will follow once we finally acquire that consistency.

Our number one pole believes that we will be chasing trophies next season as we have been one of the best teams in the league over the last few months. I tend to agree with him. This season has been a bit of a breaking and reassembling job which looked awful initially but now you look at the team and say ‘Ah yeah, almost a masterpiece’ hopefully the last bit of moulding and shaping will finish early this summer.

Before that can happen, we need to end the season in the position we currently sit. Chelsea defending their way into the final now means that pants are getting stained a little more by the teams in search of the remaining CL places. If the unthinkable happens and as James Stokes put it, a suited John Terry lifts up the trophy in Germany then two will become one. Only the third CL spot will give you an opportunity of playing against Europe’s heavy weights as well as the tons of filled suitcases of cash.

Cash that either take you forward as a club or if you miss out, can push you backwards. This is why Stoke City on the weekend is gigantic for us. Gigantic because we have lost our momentum and fluency in the last few weeks and we have to make sure that we do not lose it for the rest of the season. I cannot think of a time where we have gone to Stoke and been able to play the football that we want so this one at the very least needs to be a battling result. Preferably a victory but a draw isn’t the worst result as long as we win our last two against Norwich City and West Brom.

I think I need to change my pants after writing this.

In an ideal world, this is how the rest of the season will pan out. Arsenal win our last three games, with Robin scoring a couple of hat tricks along the way to hand him the golden boot. Tottenham continue to crumble into oblivion finishing in 6th. Chelsea rest key players in the remaining games and finish 5th also losing heavily in the CL final. Newcastle finish fourth and have Cabaye, Ben Arfa and Cissie declare their undying love for Arsenal as well as exposing their £2.5m release clauses.

I’d be pretty happy with that but if Chelsea had to win the Champions League then I’d be kind enough to allow Tottenham the pleasure of finishing 4th.

Something tells me that it will not be as straight forward as that though and I am not sure if we are going to be able to coast through the last three games and finish third.

We could do with a striker on the bench who has scored 11 goals in 31 games as well as creating a further 7 for team mates. That mysterious striker is Carlos Vela and his current stats this season for a team who are 14th in a 20 team league.

I disagree with the assumption that Vela can only do it in Spain and is not suited to English football. He has had scattered appearances at Arsenal, mainly off the bench and the odd Carling Cup game. It wasn’t too long ago when Tomas Rosicky was in the same boat. He was written off as no longer good enough then he got a run of games and voilà. I am pretty sure that Carlos Vela has not started more than three consecutive games for Arsenal in his career. Vela has 31 appearances so far this season.

I love Vela’s quality and I am sure he will become a top player in a few seasons time he just will not be given the chance to develop at Arsenal because we have players further forward than he is and if the rumours are to be believed, his attitude may not be that of a fighter. Hopefully we will get a decent sized transfer fee from him after his good work this season. I suspect that I will be clicking my fingers and saying ‘drat, he used to be on our books as a youngster’ when he is in his mid-twenties.

Nicklas Bendtner is also undecided about his future, stating that he wasn’t sure if his future would remain in the North East of England. He is a player that I do not see in the same boat as Vela although he is further ahead in his development. I am guessing that he will be off early this summer. Well I hope it is early rather than later.

It is quite crazy really, a little like our usual season injury infection, where it all spreads in the same area at the same time. We could well be left with one established striker after the summer, well excluding Podolski.

Vela, Bendtner, Chamakh and Park could all seek pastures new. Benik Afobe may not yet be ready after his injury this season, Joel Campbell has not been able to establish himself in the way that Vela has for example and moving to Arsenal is an obvious step up in quality. So with four strikers possibly leaving and one supposedly arriving *pulls out high tech calculator* we could be three forwards down. I won’t subject you to any random names but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see more than one forward find their way to Arsenal this summer.

Hopefully Robin van Persie can find his form again because we need his goals, especially without Theo for the season, A goal at the ugly Stoke City would do nicely.

Anyhoo, I guess I will talk more about that in the preview which incidentally will be my last post until Tuesday as I am off to Amsterdam for a long weekend and will be without my trusty laptop.

Back again this evening at some point.