If Arsene works this way then it is no surprise as to why players like Sagna, Vermaelen, Koscielny, Arteta, Chamberlain, Arshavin and countless more from previous squads managed to hit the ground running. But like I say, I cannot state this as a fact, this is my opinion. The closest thing to facts though is the result of the transfer window. Have a look around at other clubs and the business they have done. At this point, I imagine a few people saying ‘well this is not about them, we are in a position where we need the top four.’ My response to that would be that every club has their own aims and goals and that Liverpool and Chelsea have the same aim as we do.

The transfer window has closed for another year and the only person to put pen to paper has been a 19 year old prospect from Germany. As expected the booing and hissing has reemerged. Currently we are in seventh position in the league and have a real fight on our hands for that elusive fourth spot. A spot that is very important to our short term future you would imagine.

I can understand the frustration, it would be difficult not to understand the position of fear from our supporters. We are used to the CL place and none of us want that to go elsewhere.

In an ideal world, Arsene would have gone out and signed three quality players who had experience and talent. They could lift the likes of van Persie, Alex Song and Theo Walcott who are yet to secure their long term futures. They would ‘send out a message’ to other clubs that we ‘mean business’ etc .

With the form of Chamakh and the seeming lack of trust in Park, at least an additional forward would have made some sense. I started that with an ideal world and not from a position of knowledge as I like many Gooners have no idea of what is happening behind the closed doors of football clubs during the transfer window.

As supporters, we only have our imagination and the imagination of other supporters to play around with. Our views, opinions are just that. A vast majority of us are not in the position to back up our views, well without displaying our collection of trophies gathered on the latest copy of Football manager.

We look at a lack of signings as the club failing to do what we wanted them to. Once again this is our opinion. Someone told me that at least Tottenham had showed ambition by bidding for Loric Remy why didn’t we do the same?

Once again this isn’t necessarily based on reality just opinion. Clubs fax, phone, email, meet, send letter via pigeon all the time and I would bet that most of the communication is never picked up by the hungry media. I guess part of that reason is because Arsene Wenger doesn’t spend half his time leaning out of his range rover talking to Sky Sports News with his dog Rosie in the back.

I am going to give you my guess as to how Arsene does his business. Many of the clubs scouts watch hundreds of players all the time but Arsene has a list of players in each position which he feels are ready, suited and closest to playing for Arsenal. Whether that be, maturity, experience, physicality or talent. If those players are open to joining Arsenal and their club are willing to do reasonable business with us then ‘we will do it’ as Arsene would say.

If those players are not available due to being priced out, wanting to wait until the summer due to the Euro’s, squad restrictions or having another player who can do that job then he won’t buy the player. What I imagine Arsene won’t do is go and buy an available player purely because he can. I don’t think he would take Wayne Bridge on the basis that he was available if he thought he was an awful footballer. I get the feeling that many other managers work in this way, a space needs filling so whatever agent calls them up then they will just take the player after watching a few highlight clips and hope for the best. If Arsene works this way then it is no surprise as to why players like Sagna, Vermaelen, Koscielny, Arteta, Chamberlain, Arshavin and countless more from previous squads managed to hit the ground running.

But like I say, I cannot state this as a fact, this is my opinion. The closest thing to facts though is the result of the transfer window. Have a look around at other clubs and the business they have done. At this point, I imagine a few people saying ‘well this is not about them, we are in a position where we need the top four.’ My response to that would be that every club has their own aims and goals and that Liverpool and Chelsea have the same aim as we do.

Arsenal are questioned as to why we wait until the end of the window to do our business. Manchester City either chose to wait or had to wait until the end of the window to bring in David Pizarro on loan. Why has a team with so much financial backing only managed to bring in one player on loan when they are going through a drop of form with Toure away at the ACN.

Chelsea who like Manchester City are being backed by a billionaire owner are actually going through a rebuild of their squad. Surely a club with billions behind it should invest heavily in their squad when the transfer window is open. Is Gary Cahill the only first team player that Andre Villas-Boas thinks he needs to make Chelsea, young, talented and vibrant again? I think not, I think not.

Manchester United have been screaming out for a top quality central midfielder and no, I don’t mean bringing back the retired Paul Scholes. Yet Fergie ‘sat on his hands’ Surely he was able to find one quality midfielder in world football better than Michael Carrick.

Liverpool FC, the club that everyone has forgotten hasn’t won a trophy in six years and have spent more than most clubs in the league. They have been out of the CL for two years and like us are fighting to get back into the top four. They have had their best forward suspended and yet they failed to bring in another striker. Why?

And lastly our dear neighbours who are addicted to spending large sums of cash. Did you know that apart from the bank rolled clubs, they have spent more net, on transfer fee’s than any other club in the league? They have ended up with Louis Saha who has a terrible history of injuries. They have him on loan until the end of the season. They are third in the table and are in their best position to make a title push since the 60’s, so why did Arry not invest to give them that final push?

I use those clubs as a reference because we football fans tend to ignore reference on the whole unless it backs up a negative point. Like, Tottenham are a bigger club than us because they have a higher points total. That would ignore our history.

I digress. My opinion which means little but the actions of other clubs means a little more and it tells me that good players at affordable prices were not available during January. You may disregard Arsene’s word on that but other managers have said the same. Alex Ferguson said so himself recently at a press conference.

He said, good players are just not available right now or words to that effect. Many other managers have said the same so I am inclined to believe that this is the case.

“What can you get in January? What do you do? Do you take a second-rate player? No, of course you don’t.” – Alex Ferguson (6th January 2012)

“There is no-one going in or out of the club before the transfer window closes, there is nothing happening here.” – Kenny Daglish (30th January 2012)

““The January window drives you mad. You get phone calls from agents without a clue, offering you useless players” – Harry Redknapp (11th January 2012)

Lukas Podolski is out for months, Eden Hazard has said that he will not be leaving until th
e summer and Mario Gotze is not for sale. These are a few players that have been linked to us and a few that no other clubs have managed to prize away from their clubs which makes me wonder once more, why on earth not?

As we are not privy to the goings on at Arsenal, we as football fans tend to speculate to justify the situation.

• ‘Arsene is an ego driven man who wants to win things with kids’
• ‘Arsene treats the money as his own and is too tight to spend’
• ‘Arsene cannot handle big name players so he buys kids’

There are indeed many more of these fabricated myths, or is it that all of those responses are fabricated apart from the one that you or I have selected? But given the amount of varied opinion, how can they all be right or wrong?

Jump back in time to 2008/09 when we were in a better position than we currently see ourselves in, only Aston Villa were in our path for a Champions League spot, why did a man who (select fabricated justification) decide to break our transfer record for Andrey Arshavin? At the time a world class creative talent. Why didn’t the ego driven, not being able to handle big players who wants to win things with kids not stick with the players he had?

I don’t have the facts, I can only Eden a guess here. Perhaps, Andrey Arshavin was an Arsenal target, perhaps we had watched him several times and Arsene wanted to bring him to our club. Perhaps Arshavin wanted to sign for Arsenal and leave Zenit. Perhaps both Arsenal and Zenit could agree a fee and lastly which could also be firstly, Arshavin agreed our wage offer. Had any of those check boxes remained unchecked then Andrey Arshavin would not have said ‘I am Gooner’ and absolutely no doubt about it, Arsenal fans would have been screaming.

“Why didn’t Arsene buy Arshavin?! He would have been perfect. All this ego driven man wants to do is try and win things with kids”

That of course would be purely opinion, guess work and not fact. But unless one of three parties explained the situation to us, we would be none the wiser. Perhaps we would be wiser if Eden Hazard’s agent spoke out about Arsenal and if there were any links to his client and our club. If we are really interested in the player then that would do us no good and the same applies with any other possible target.

Listen, I fully expect to get frothing Gooners really mad at me for not talking about how the world is about to end so let me just clear one thing up.

If Arsene could have signed Mr wide forward who can also play center forward and would hit the ground running and score plenty of goals from now until May without any adaptation period, and he failed to sign that player purely because, erm he didn’t want to then. Arsene? You’re an idiot. What are you doing? Why are you trying to win things with project youth!! (minus Mertesacker, Koscielny, Sagna, Santos, Arteta, Gervinho, Rosicky, Vermaelen and the rest)

That would be irresponsible and unnecessary but I have trouble believing that a manager who hates losing would purposely not want to make his squad stronger. I have trouble looking at a manager who is visibly getting more and more stressed out would pass up an opportunity to buy another ‘January Arshavin’ or a world class player.

But I am only speculating. Who knows, maybe that was his plan and he goes home chuckling to himself about our current league position. A manager who built the invincibles got bored of winning and fancies annoying Arsenal supporters by going the other way.

A pet hate of mine is supporters thinking that Arsene has turned this club into a club that doesn’t buy big any longer. That he is so obsessed with ‘project youth’ that a quick fix would be to sack him and go back to buying big.

I need to be corrected here but hasn’t this club always been run this way? Well at least as far back as I can remember which is before Arsene Wenger.

George Graham bought a fantastic winning team that won the league in 1989 for the first time since 1970/71

Well minus a few players like Tony Adams, David Rocastle, Paul Merson, Michael Thomas, Perry Groves who were all brought through the youth system. Look further back and it will be mostly the same. We have always been a sensible, self sustaining club. That is not me defending any of the current management, that is our history. Agree with this article or not, that is our history.

This is where we are right now and I am not expecting anyone to be content or joyous about it. In my eyes our current state is a result of our club running within its means against clubs who have not. Teams like Tottenham and Liverpool have had money pumped into the club for transfers and wages. Arsenal have not. Manchester United are the richest club in the world and have continued to spend like it until recently where they quite visibly have had to slam on the financial brakes. Manchester City and Chelsea live outside of reality and even Chelsea have slowed down somewhat.

If Arsene Wenger joined Arsenal today then his environment would be very different from back in 1997. Richer clubs would be all over his targets. Petit, Overmars, Anelka, Henry. Vieira, Pires, Ljungberg etc etc would have Manchester City and Chelsea on the phone to their agents as soon as they had a sniff that Arsene was interested.

The goal posts have clearly been moved and Arsenal FC are not prepared to throw the kitchen sink at chasing glory, That is the reality of the situation.

Another club may well be willing to fork out £20m+ for a top player when he became available and then hope to recoup that money at a later date by selling players. Where as I get the feeling that the Arsenal board would want a CL place tied up and money recouped by offloading x,y,z before allowing Arsene the cash to make that move. The Mata non deal springs to mind.

That could all be gobbledigook, that is just a hunch and not fact.

Cesc Fabregas, Samir Nasri, Gael Clichy, Denilson, Nicklas Bendtner, Emmanuel Eboue and so on have been moved on, that group of players did not do what Arsene had hoped. That is clear. We can all speculate as to why that is and it looks as if Arsene is rebuilding once more, probably mainly for his replacement rather than his own benefit.

It is a long process and it could go the way of our previous team or we could turn things around in time. Who knows. I look at our league position and current form and fail to expect that a squad with Szczesny, Sagna, Koscielny, Vermaelen, Santos, Song, Wilshere, Ramsey, Chamberlain, Gervinho, van Persie and others do not have a bright future. A lack of squad strength, an awful summer, injuries to every available full back and poor form reflects where we are in part but we are better than where we are, that I am convinced of.

I am not blind to the short comings of our squad. I know that Squillaci, Almunia, Park (at present) and perhaps a few others either haven’t or are currently not working out. That is football, every club has players worse than their best. It’s logical but at the same time I don’t believe that Arsene has finished rebuilding this team. He has a job on his hands to keep our best, we know who they/he is and to fight off rival competition to get the best from elsewhere.

I do not claim to know the facts, all I know is that we are in this together and there is not much we can do right now. It was easy to support when Pires struck at White Hart Lane to win the league, now we have to face the reality of today. It is still our Arsenal and all we can do is hope we have reached our lowest point. With players coming back and who are already back I do not see why we cannot snap out of this funk and fight for fourth so we can start again properly next season.

In my opinion.