Everyone was going mental last summer and in January, calling for us to sign a proper defensive midfielder. We didn’t. Maybe Coquelin was earmarked as that man, or maybe Wenger just didn’t feel we needed one. I do feel we need little bit steel in the middle of the park though, and would like to see us bring in a proper midfield presence, whether he’s an all-out defensive midfielder or not. Fellaini would be great, but I assume he’ll be following Moyes to United. Playmaker-wise

In light of everyone running around like a headless chicken speculating about what we need/what we don’t this summer, I thought I’d take a sensible approach (which is rare for me). The Premier League has a 25-man squad rule, so I’m going to look at who we have, who’s likely to leave & then what we’d need to fill that 25-man squad, and THEN who we might want to go for. Our current squad is as follows:

Goalkeepers (age in brackets)

Wojciech Szcczesny (23)
Lukasz Fabianski (28)
Vito Mannone (25)

Defenders

Per Mertesacker (28)
Thomas Vermaelen (27)
Laurent Koscielny (27)
Sebastien Squillaci (32)
Bacary Sagna (30)
Carl Jenkinson (21)
Kieran Gibbs (23)
Nacho Monreal (27)

Midfielders (Or, the ‘midfield 3’)

Abou Diaby (27)
Tomas Rosicky (32)
Mikel Arteta (31)
Jack Wilshere (21)
Aaron Ramsey (22)
Santi Cazorla (12)
Francis Coquelin (22)

Forwards (The front 3)

Lukas Podolski (27)
Olivier Giroud (26)
Theo Walcott (24)
Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain (19)
Gervinho (25)
Andrei Arshavin (31)

The first thing that stands out from this is the myth of us having a young squad. Only Chamberlain out of that group is under 20, when maybe five years ago there would’ve been quite a few more teenagers in there. It’s a squad packed full of experience that we haven’t really had before – notably international experience and I really think players like Mertesacker, Podolski & Cazorla have brought a level of professionalism across from their respective national teams that has really stood out.

The squad itself listed above only has 23 registered players, as Chamberlain (and Wilshere, maybe. The cut-off point for U21 players is his birthday…) don’t have to be counted within the squad. I’m going to count it at 24, largely because we usually like to include these guys to improve our homegrown quota.

Anyway, before you start, we know that Arshavin and Squillaci are off this summer. We can then make educated guesses at the other departures. Mannone wants first team football and certainly won’t be getting it at Arsenal, so he’s likely to leave. Coquelin’s grown frustrated & there’s been talk of him going too. I can’t believe I’m only talking about four squad players leaving, rather than our captain or another star player. It makes a nice change and highlights how refreshing it is to finally have some continuity. Assuming those four leave, we’d have a squad of 20. That’s 5 signings we can potentially make without offloading anyone else. There are three ‘maybe’ departures in Fabianski, Sagna & Vermaelen – with Fabianski looking most likely to go & Vermaelen the least. I’d personally like to keep both Sagna & Vermaelen at the club, as they bring useful experience & selling them would, in my opinion, unnecessarily upset this nice continuity we seem to have going.

Wenger likes his squads to have 3 goalkeepers, 4 centre-backs, two full-backs on each side, a lot of midfielders & some striking options. I can’t pinpoint exact numbers because he tends to buy versatile players who you can never put in just one category, so the attacking part will be my best guess.

Goalkeepers: We’re clearly after someone. If we do sign a good goalkeeper, I cannot see Fabianski hanging around. I also don’t think we’d sign a second keeper, so my guess with goalkeepers is that we’ll sell Fabianski & Mannone, buy one goalkeeper and promote Martinez or Iliev as our third choice. We’ve been linked with Begovic & Adler. I don’t really have a preference, but if that’s the calibre of keeper we’re after, I’m not going to complain.

Full-backs: One in, one out. Maybe. I hope we stay put with Jenkinson, Sagna, Monreal & Gibbs. If Sagna does go, I’d like to see us go for someone who offers a bit more going forward. There aren’t any real options out there, but given Wenger’s recent love for buying British I’d quite like to see us go for someone like Lowton from Villa. Knowing Wenger we’d get someone we’ve never heard of, resulting Twitter exploding in a sea of “I FOUND HIM ON FOOTBALL MANAGER FIRST”.

Centre-backs: I cannot believe we’re actually talking about choosing to sell our captain, after everything that’s happened in the last few years. Sure, he’s no longer first choice, but that attitude that had everyone praising his appointment as captain should hopefully mean that he’s even more determined to work hard & earn his place back. And as a 3rd-choice centre-back, I’m not sure we can do much better than Vermaelen. The other way to look at it, is that we’re going to have to buy at least one centre-back this summer. I want that 4th centre-back to be a big player. Let’s go into the season with four genuinely strong options, so we don’t end up crying in fear if we get two injuries. United won the league with five good centre-backs who all got games throughout the season. I know rotation isn’t Wenger’s style but it can be done.

Midfield: It’s an interesting one. Everyone was going mental last summer and in January, calling for us to sign a proper defensive midfielder. We didn’t. Maybe Coquelin was earmarked as that man, or maybe Wenger just didn’t feel we needed one. I do feel we need little bit steel in the middle of the park though, and would like to see us bring in a proper midfield presence, whether he’s an all-out defensive midfielder or not. Fellaini would be great, but I assume he’ll be following Moyes to United. Playmaker-wise, I think we have too many to even consider buying another one this summer.

Forwards: I’ve never seen a side with so many attacking players find it so hard to score goals. Given the number of creative players we have behind, it’s truly baffling. We need that one player who is just better than everyone else at putting the ball in the net. Someone who you know will be on the end of every cross, or in the penalty area when you have the ball wide. It’s so frustrating when Sagna gets the ball out wide and you see Giroud standing right next to him, or when Theo whips a low cross into the 6-yard box and Podolski’s having a cheeky pint down the Tollington & nowhere to be seen. The best sides have that one man who you know will get 20-30 league goals a season, and someone you can rely on when the team’s having a bad day to just be in the right place at the right time.

I also think we lack an attacking player with initiative. Someone who can take a slow game by the scruff of the neck & just do something out of nothing. Those players win you games and when games get slow, I often sit there wondering who’s capable of suddenly pulling a rabbit out of the hat.

For all our wingers, I don’t think we actually have a proper winger. And I want one. I don’t think we have anyone who’s good enough at taking a full-back on and turning him inside out, or who can lose his man & fire a shot in from outside the box. Theo is good out wide but best when he’s running onto a ball in behind. He still struggles when he gets the ball & has to beat his man. Gervinho is the closest we have, but I’d ideally like a player who can do this without tripping himself up. Is that too much to ask? I l
ike the links with Jovetic, but if we’re spending that much money, a player like Higuain or Lewandowski would make so much more sense. Depending on what Wenger wants to do with Sanogo, I can see us signing one big striker, with Giroud number 2 & Sanogo as backup. I’d actually quite like Nani, or a similar player, but I don’t think that’s a priority this summer for Wenger.

So there we have it. Leaving the club this summer we have Arshavin, Squillaci, Coquelin, Mannone, Fabianski and maybe Sagna. Add to that the players out on loan and you also have the departures of Santos, Djourou, Frimpong (leave it), Chamakh, Park Who? Young, Bendtner & Denilson.

That frees up the best part of £500,000 a week in wages and, if we’re lucky, £15-20m in transfer fees too. Add that to whatever ‘warchest’ we have, but it’s clear that for once, wages might not be an issue.

So we then have room for up to 5 new players in our squad. One goalkeeper signing, one centre-back, one physical midfielder, one striker and a right-back if Sagna leaves.

I’ll leave you to work out who that’s going to be.

That was easy, wasn’t it?

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