Fellaini’s £22m-£24m buy out clause can be paid by many clubs, luckily we are now in that list so if we wanted to slap down that amount on Everton’s desk then there is no reason why we cannot should Arsene want the player, the issue then becomes who else manages to trigger the buy out clause because there are a number of clubs who can offer higher wages than we can. I don’t see Arsenal

So what was the biggest news for you last night? Was it Ivan Gazidis shouting from the roof tops that we were rolling around in cash to spend on top players or was it the exclusive from Goal.com about an article in the Times? You know, like exclusively copying another news outlet. For those living under a rock, we have been heavily linked with a swoop for Everton’s Marouane Fellaini. I am guessing that part of the Emirates contract is to always have a player called Marouane on our books.

Perhaps these two stories have been intentionally linked, who knows but as I mumbled on Twitter last night, the Fellaini story could be somewhat believable only because we were rumoured to have shown interest in him a couple of seasons ago. The big Belgium bar steward doesn’t really strike me as an Arsene Wenger type of player, the type of player who is based upon a one touch, pass and move philosophy. As the deepest midfielder I do not envisage him using the ball as well as Arteta does. I certainly could not see him playing behind our main striker whoever that may be. Imagine if Giroud started as our centre forward with Fellaini floating behind him?

Szczesny, rolls out to Koscielny who taps it to Mertesacker…. *HOOF* [repeat until fade]

What I would like to see though if those two were in the same side would be our new corner kick routine that we changed towards the end of the season. Santi floating the ball into the near post for a Mertesacker flick on to Giroud, Fellaini and Mertesacker attacking the back post. We’d surely improve our set piece conversion.

Whilst scratching my head at the style differences there is no doubt that he is absolutely fantastic at what he is good at. With Diaby unfortunately crocked for some while, Arsene may want to add additional height and power to his midfield options. Fellaini is excellent at winning the ball back, not only great at attacking crosses but equally strong at defending them. Should Giroud find himself as a backup then his role will need to be picked up.

What I like about him is that he is a fighter, a player that does not want to lose. I am sure many players don’t want to lose and I hate going all cliche on you but he looks like he doesn’t want to lose games. I love that in a player and have been hoping Arsene looks for players with that attitude this summer.

All this said, I just cannot shake off the feeling that Fellaini is a Chelsea player, or at least will become one. His style, his attitude, everything about him strikes me as the type of player that Jose Mourinho would be after. His midfield version of Drogba if you like.

Fellaini’s £22m-£24m buy out clause can be paid by many clubs, luckily we are now in that list so if we wanted to slap down that amount on Everton’s desk then there is no reason why we cannot should Arsene want the player, the issue then becomes who else manages to trigger the buy out clause because there are a number of clubs who can offer higher wages than we can. I don’t see Arsenal offering Fellaini £250k pw but I can see Chelsea, City and Manchester United doing that.

We shall see how it all pans out I guess.

Back to the Gazidis Q&A, I thought he sounded more bullish than ever before about the short term as well as our future. In short we had moved into a different financial bracket, we had money in the bank and more money coming in.

This is something we as supporters have known about for some time, the club have openly been erm open about 2014 as the year where we can move forward yet there is a whole load of skepticism from a large section of the fan base.

The proof will be in the pudding of course but there is no reason to compare this summer with summers previous. I am no financial expert and neither do to I pretend to be but as far as I see it, since moving to the Emirates we have been just about breaking even minus profits made in the transfer market.

It could be argued that we could and perhaps should have spent more of our savings because we have encountered some rainy days but when commercial income is a relative pittance in comparison to other big clubs it doesn’t strike me as too strange to keep some powder dry as Ivan would put it.

Well today, there are less reasons why we cannot obtain our targets so I expect a busy summer, Ivan would be nuts to talk the way he has been talking if a plan was not already in place to make our squad stronger.

Update: Actual real life ITK (if you don’t know what that means, get yourself on Twitter) David Ornstein of the BBC has said that a release clause has not been met and that we are not interested in Rooney and Cesar. Jovetic is on the radar but not at the top which is interesting.

’till tomorrow.