That player I hope is not Wanyama given his agents ridiculous comments about essentially using Arsenal as some sort of stepping stone to Manchester United. I am not quite sure what an agent has to gain from saying something so stupid. Is that supposed to inspire Arsenal to make a move? No

Happy Monday to you,

I bet the excitement of a new working week just sends you through the roof with joy. I had forgotten that the England match was on yesterday until about an hour before kick off which was a welcomed surprise after what was quite a busy weekend. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect before kick off, wasn’t sure what type of game to expect from either side.

Brazil whilst not their strongest ever team still had talented players in their ranks while England had many experienced and workman like heads in the line up.

The continuous long early balls from England during that first half was quite painful and embarrassing. In 2013 at International level you do not expect to see that type of football. Theo Walcott had quite the shocker in truth and I felt for him. It was one of those games where it looked like the previous mistake in either passing or controlling played it’s part on the next mistake. That continued to repeat itself as the game went on.

Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain came on and made an instant impact, the Ox tends to do that doesn’t he? His goal was beautiful, his body shape and technique to strike the ball was great but certainly not new. We know that he can strike a ball, he doesn’t need much in the way of back lift to do so and has plenty of punch behind his right foot.

Chambo is 19 but he looks very raw still. Players like Jack Wilshere seemed to iron out that rawness earlier in their Arsenal careers but there is something about Chamberlain that I cannot help but get excited about.

We have all watched the movie about the young talented player who everyone waxed lyrical about only at the end of the movie for that player to die in a not fulfilling potential accident. It is a sad story, in fact Denilson played a part in this movie. His Arsenal career died today after his contract was paid off. I just do not believe that Chamberlain will be heading down that road.

Chamberlain has everything in his locker to become a top class player. It seems a little too easy to look at a player, especially one so young and say ‘well he is good on his day but he makes the wrong decision or he lacks consistency’

Too many people make the mistake of assuming that player x will remain that way until the end of time and forgetting the progress that the previous player who ‘wasn’t quite good enough’ made. We are all footballing supporting goldfish at times.

Remember that left back who played for Tottenham who couldn’t quite settle, couldn’t find consistency and there was talk about him being sold off.

Well he is now known by some to be the greatest player that ever lived and stuff. I really hope to see some of the same development in Chamberlain but without the stupid heart celebration. I cannot tell you how much that angers me inside. Not sure why, it just does.

The way that Chamberlain can hit a ball and the way he can dribble past players, I see no reason why he cannot become a similar style of player to Bale. Driving past players and either playing people in or smashing it hard past an outstretched hand.

This brings me onto the topic I wanted to talk about today even before the Ox goal. It is a bit of a taboo subject so hold fire. Mention the words ‘youth policy’ to Gooners and be prepared to have your bullet proof vest tested.

It is tempting to say we have money in the bank now, there is no need to play young players or that they should sit on the bench and gain minutes here and there until they are ready for the first team. In some cases I would agree but I believe that Arsene has tied down a collection of young Brits to build the team around and not to sit on the sidelines.

It is a bloody difficult balancing act because the need for success has never been higher since Arsene arrived but going by how Arsene has built teams previously which includes his best teams, I cannot see him doing anything very different from what he has done in the past.

We have seen how important continuity is on our results, we do not function very well without continuity. We had lost our identity because of it and it took us some while to get it back. Adding quality is vitally important, I’d be a fool to suggest otherwise but at the same time I think Ramsey, Chamberlain, Wilshere and perhaps even Carl Jenkinson have to play and grow together.

I do not expect all those players to play every game next season or even start the season as first choice but in my opinion it will be in Wenger’s thinking that his young talents will need to develop and giving them a chance for a run of games will have to be incorporated in his thinking.

I think the idea of having £25m players in every position along with their back ups is fanciful. When I look at someone like Aaron Ramsey who drove up a massive upward curve in terms of performance and development in the second half of the season I find it difficult to see Arsene dropping him come the start of the season unless we find ourselves with someone very, very special from the transfer market.

That player I hope is not Wanyama given his agents ridiculous comments about essentially using Arsenal as some sort of stepping stone to Manchester United. I am not quite sure what an agent has to gain from saying something so stupid. Is that supposed to inspire Arsenal to make a move? No thank you very much.

I am in the minority here so don’t all attack me at once but I am struggling to see why everyone thinks we need a defensive midfielder as a priority so badly. Arteta is not getting any younger and shouldn’t be asked to do the entire season so I understand and agree that he needs help and a player to replace him eventually but I thought we did pretty well defensively last season.

We finished the season with the second best defensive record in the league even though it was a season of us trying to learn to play together. Mikel Arteta and Aaron Ramsey were fantastic in their contribution to our defensive success. I cannot think of many if any occasions last season when I thought ‘by gee, if we had someone big in the middle then we would have won that game’ should we bring in back up or competition then personally size and strength should be an added bonus but they need to be able to do all the things that a modern deep lying player can do, which is use the ball very well, intercept and position themselves well to win the ball back.

In my eyes, our offensive game is the area where we are in need of external quality. We need squad support for Giroud, we need to take the creative load off Cazorla and Rosicky. Two high quality additions in those areas and I’d be blinking over the moon. I would have been more than happy for Francis Coquelin to have been Mikel Arteta’s back up but it looks like I am in the minority, including Arsene so I expect a more defensively minded midfielder to arrive at some point this summer.

Anyway, that is all I have time for, plus I have waffled on long enough. You can let me know how much you disagree with me in the comments below.

’till tomorrow.