Thomas Vermaelen has come in, and looks like he’ll be replacement for Kolo Toure. All early indications of his performance in Arsenal colours look good. He’s very strong, and very determined. He is good in the air-at least as good as Kolo is

The long summer wait is over. Our boys are back and hopefully ready for what will be a massive season. Arsene Wenger has already said this will be a decisive season for this very talented crop of players. If we have a half-season as disastrous as we had last term, a new direction will be taken. The season wasn’t disastrous overall but November was a dismal month where everything collapsed.

Very few people think we can win the league this season. We sold Adebayor who, whatever you think of him, still scored more goals than all but 4 Premier League strikers in his ‘disastrous’ last season. Kolo Toure, who has been a constant for us for 5 or 6 seasons, has been sold meaning we lost more experience and years.

I won’t pretend those are not big losses. The question really is whether we will miss them. As always, the answer of course depends on what squad we have on September 1st and how well they were prepared pre-season. It is easy to say we might not miss Adebayor. Eduardo, Bendtner & Vela are more than capable of scoring enough to cover what Ade did before. Eduardo especially will be key. If he has an injury-free season, we’d barely notice Adebayor is gone.

In defence, Thomas Vermaelen has come in, and looks like he’ll be replacement for Kolo Toure. All early indications of his performance in Arsenal colours look good. He’s very strong, and very determined. He is good in the air-at least as good as Kolo is. His distribution is impressive, and what’s very positive about his game is his ability to direct the ball to team mate directly from a tackle.

TV5 might need time to adjust to the English game. It’s quite different from Holland, and young Thomas wouldn’t have played many teams like Stoke City.

Johann Djourou will be key this season. Johan is an Arsenal academy graduate and has been at the club for 6 years now. He has benefited from the likes of Keown, Campbell, Toure, Gallas and even Steve Bould. With Kolo being sold, Djourou really has to step up his game. Johan has everything he needs to be a top class centre half. He needs games and he has to do well because so many are, and so much has been, invested in him.

It still looks like Big Phil Senderos will be off. Everton has been reported as the likely terminus. If that happens, we will be down to 4 centre halves not counting Alex Song who is also a midfielder.

Mikael Silvestre looks like he will have a big part to play this season. Silvestre has never played brilliantly in an Arsenal shirt, and has been dismal numerous times. To avoid the probability of Silvestre getting more than a few cameos and starts in meaningless games we’ll certainly win, it looks like we need a centre back.

We also need a goalkeeper. Lukasz Fabianski will be a top keeper in the future, virtually everybody agrees. The problem now is that he’s not pushing Almunia. It should be that when your reserve keeper comes in, he should shine brighter than the first choice. Almunia looks comfortable in his position, and he is the only player in the squad, apart from Cesc who has nobody pushing him. Vito Mannone is not pushing Fabianski either. He needs to go out on loan and have a long spell being first choice. It’s the next logical stage in his development.

A goalkeeper at the same level as Fabianski, on the midnight side of 30 might be a good bet. Just such a keeper’s age and experience will make Fabianski step up as older players tend to be considered for starts and younger players have to work harder to get games.

We have a very talented crop of central midfielders. There’s little informed doubt about the quality of Diaby, Denilson, Song, Ramsey and Fabregas. We could count Wilshere and Merida as part of that crop.

A look at the aforementioned players’ passports would reveal that the oldest in that department is 22. Youth can be an advantage because of hunger, quick physical recovery and enthusiasm to improve. Wenger is right, if you’re getting into semi-finals with players that young, you can be sure the future is very bright.

We also have to think of the presence. In some of the big games, the players did not know what kind of game to expect. In one of those semi-finals we were completely bullied by players at their physical peak in strength.

It seems like we need one more midfielder anyhow. Song will be gone in January. Diaby continues to be injury prone. One of the lessons I picked from the last 4 recent Arsenal seasons is that it takes just 2 or 3 injuries in one area for a squad to look paper-thin. With Song off to the ACN, it’d take injuries to Denilson and Diaby and we might have to draft in Jay-Emmanuel Thomas in a crucial must-win game at Stamford Bridge!

The specification for the midfield vacancy would be; mature, genuinely experienced (Champions League, international), and close to his physical peak. i.e. not players still filling out.

We are being criminally underrated. If you took the Top 4 teams and drew up first and second elevens that is likely to be the impression you will get:

Liverpool:

1st 11: Reina, Johnson, Carragher, Agger, Aurelio, Kuyt, Mascherano, Aquilani, Rieira, Gerrard, Torres

2nd 11: Cavalieri, Degen, Skrtel, Ayala, Dossena, Spearing, Lucas, Babel, Voronin, Ngog

Manchester United:

1st 11: Foster, Rafael, Vidic, Ferdinand, Evra, Valencia, Carrick, Fletcher, Nani, Rooney, Berbatov

2nd 11: EVDS, Neville, Brown, Evans, Fabio, Tosic, Scholes, Anderson, Giggs, Owen, Macheda

Chelsea:

1st 11: Cech, Bosingwa, Carvalho, Terry, Cashley, Essien, Ballack, Lampard, Malouda, Drogba, Anelka.

2nd 11: Hilario, Belletti, Ivanovic, Alex, Ferreira, Mikel, Deco, Zherkov, Cole, Sturridge, Kalou

Arsenal:

Make your own conclusions.

My own conclusions are that we have the personnel to compete. People say we are weaker because we lost 2 players. That won’t be completely true. We’ve lost Adebayor and gained Arshavin who only played 12 last term. We have lost Kolo and gained Vermaelen. Eduardo & Rosicky WILL feature this season. You can actually make the case we have more numbers.

We will definitely get more points than we did last season. If we improve defensively as I think we will, we will be in the Top 2. Nobody knows how much we have improved yet. There were worrying signs in pre-season, but there were also encouraging signs.

The main reason for a positive evaluation of our chances is that the other teams are weaker.

All of the Top 4 has weaknesses this season. Manchester United have lost Ronaldo. Giggs, Scholes and Van der Sar are model professionals, but they are very much at the last stretch of their careers. Neville looks well past it. They don’t have reliable goalscorers. Their midfielders score very few goals. Foster will be number 1 this season but is not yet at the level of Edwin Van der Sar. Valencia has only scored like 10 goals in his entire career though he defends better than the fake Ronaldo. They still have a squad of players who are in general above average but they lack ‘something’.

Chelsea have lost nobody and have all their key players fit and in form. They thus immediately look like favourites. They are rather old though. That’s 11 players over 31. Then they have another 9 or so with an average age closer to 29. Does anyone reca
ll a team that old winning the title in a major league in the last 5 or 6 years? They have a very strong squad however, and are very hard to beat. They never outplay you. You never outplay them. But you’ll struggle to beat them.

They will be in the title race because of that characteristic. But they have serious problems with players firing managers, Captains choosing players, a squad that resists any manager trying to make them play other than in a certain way. Just like in the last 3 seasons, they will fade in mid-season. They have had the strongest squad for 3 seasons but not won the league. There is a reason for that. Another manager in his first year looks unlikely to change the underlying dynamic. The heart of the matter is that if you looked really closely, you would find that they have quite a few players who haven’t played brilliantly for a few seasons.

Liverpool have the best striker in the world. Steve Gerrard playing at his best linking up with Torres will be a handful for any team. However, they have the weakest squad in the Top 4. They have sold Xabi Alonso whose creativity from deep offered fantastic balance to their team. I simply can’t see Liverpool winning the league. They are not strong enough. They had a fantastic season in 08/09, starting with a string of lucky victories in games they deserved to lose or draw. Some say that’s a mark of a winning team. They do not have enough match winners. It is clear to everybody that Liverpool will struggle without Gerrard & Torres, whether for short or long spells.

Arsenal have it all to prove. Arsenal’s style of play will always guarantee a certain number of points every season. The problem is that we simply have not defended will for a couple of seasons and also struggled with creating at times. It is a team at an earlier stage in its development in comparison to Chelsea and Manchester United, which have established squads. This makes a huge difference because confidence comes from just that.

Once the season starts, all these analyses and judgements will fly out of the window. The Premier League never goes according to script.