Put yourself in his shoes. I'm sure most of us want to be successful in whatever it is that we do, so why should RVP be slated for wanting the same? If you were RVP, when you looked back at your career, would you want to see yourself happy that you scraped through a CL spot or would you want to see yourself winning titles? This should be a chance for the fans to stand up to the board and the club's transfer policy. Over the years we have lost Henry, Flamini, Hleb, Toure, Adebayor, Fabregas, Nasri, and Clichy (don't really care about him). Henry moved on to win titles too! Why put on a pedestal? Wasn't he in the exact same

Once you've thought about it, its a shrewd move. RVP is 29 next month meaning he's approaching the twilight of his career. Come 30, his body will start to be tested physically and we know how solid he is physically! Theres also the FFP consideration, even the likes of City dont want to pay over the odds blecause they are currently looking to stay in line with their laws hence it would be difficult to gain a large transfer fee of him anyway. Finally, with RVP, arsenal have a deadly front 5. Assuming Theo Walcott signs on (which i think he will, but thats another story), Giroud, Podolski, RVP & Gervinho (who is expected to have the second

It's somewhat crept up on us but if we keep van Persie then we have four top strikers if you include Podolski, Giroud and Walcott. Yes, Walcott. Podolski and van Persie are our complete strikers, the ones that are as effective playing deep as they are on the shoulder of defence. Everyone had Robin down as the next Bergkamp but it turns out he is a bit of an Henry as well. These two will contribute most of the goals and probably be the most played throughout the season. Giroud of course will be the target man that we need. 'Chamakh with feet' if you will. He will be vital against those sides hell

Dude came in highly recommended, and having just put on quite a show for Russia at the Euros, even paid his own bus ticket to reach London just in time to sign for us... the January 2009 transfer window slammed shut seconds later, almost maiming his right hand in the process! Some still insist he actually signed through the ventilators, thnx to some high power called David Dein. That half season, the fans adored him, courtesy of that four goal salvo at Liverpool- the only time ive known

The controversial bit, three at the back. With the discipline of M'Vila and Arteta in front of the CB's, as well as the defensive ability of the wide men I really feel we could pull this off. We are blessed with quick defenders, Koscielny and Vermaelen really do have pace and that's exactly what they would need sweeping up balls at the back with Song biting at attackers, breaking up play much like a DM but deeper. Song gets a hard time sometimes from fans but without the burden

Some might say that M’Vila isn’t necessarily the answer with questions regarding his quality and temperament still in doubt. I haven’t seen much and the most I have seen of him are youtube videos. But the stats do back up the fact that defensively he is more solid than Song. The margin isn’t much but football is a game that is decided by the smallest of margins. With 3.1 tackles a game and with 2.5 interceptions, M’Vila’s stats are better than those of Song who has managed

Our current squad do have some quality, and a lot of depth - some in the form of deadweight & ghost workers. I reckon if we could just bring in another 2 or 3 more fine players like Podolski, while keeping hold on our current key players, we could really, truly, finally challenge at the highest level with sufficient quality depth. Many fans are yearning for new quality names at the back of their jerseys, and others waiting to jump on the bandwagon when Arsenal go out to show more

I'll talk about the players we WON'T sign this summer, the players I think we should and could buy, and finally what I think will actually happen. So to get one thing straight, we will not buy any player that other clubs of similar or bigger stature to us are interested in buying, we won't go into a bidding war with the likes of City, Utd, chelsea ...etc. so Hazard won't be coming, the likes of Falcao, Cavani, Gotze won't be coming and I don't think Yan M'villa will be as well. I know there has

Watching the game on Saturday reminded me of our game against QPR away, particularly Dikhate’s goal, in other words, the absence of our midfield. In football, defending isn’t only carried out by the defenders, rather it should be done by every man on the field, from the strikers pressuring the opposition’s defenders to the goalkeeper sweeping up any balls that drop behind the defence. Saturday’s game highlighted how important it is for the midfielders in particular to carry out their defensive duties, many a time in Saturday’s game the middle of the park was vacant only for the opposition to attack, which they did, leaving us embarrassingly exposed. For the first goal, Benayoun allowed Norwich’s full back to make that