The £50million pound gamble… + the duo we’re battling it out for.

So, the summer transfer window is proving to be as frustrating as finding a closed pistachio nut in your nut bowl. For once, I think most of the Gooner faithful appear united in what we need… a centre midfielder of beast like proportions and a centre back who has good defending at the top of his C.V…

The subject of my ramblings today is strengthening through weakening. Are Arsenal banking on a weaker top 4 to compete next year?

So far this summer we’ve watched Chelsea grow another year older without really recruiting anybody that special. I’ve read about the white Ronaldinho… Jerk-off… and to be honest, I reckon he is overrated. Arshavin is the only Russian who is allowed to set the Premiership alight this season and that is a fact… Pirlo is too old to be trying his luck in the Premiership. His signing reminds me of the Deco signing last summer. Fat Frank is single and ripping up the club scene and Drogba is very injury prone these days. Having a coach without Premiership experience can be as much of a gamble as having a player without it.

Manchester United have lost a winger who they could bank on scoring 40 goals and grabbing ten assists… they’ve replaced him with players of poor calibre if you ask me. Sure, Owen could score a few… I don’t think his signing was as poor as many people made out… Obertan would get me about as excited as a day pass to the library and Valencia has never impressed me.

Liverpool have just lost a superb player in Alonso and Mascharano is making all the right noises if you are a fan of the other top four clubs. Replacing him with an injury prone Aquiliani doesn’t really impress me. Stevie G and Fernando Torres are superb players, but keeping them fit is a harder task than breaking into that pistachio nut I was talking about earlier.

Then we have Arsenal… we’ve let Adebayor, Toure, Senderos (Nice to see Arsenal.com first to let us know as usual) and possibly Eboue move all in one summer. That’s 132 starting appearances disappearing off our books in a month, if that isn’t a shock to the system I don’t know what is. My problem with the sale of the said players isn’t so much to do with them leaving, more to do with a comment Wenger made about Real Madrid,

‘In my opinion, to recruit more than three players in a transfer window, as Real plan, is taking a technical risk.’

If recruiting 3 players is a technical risk, surely selling 3 players who all put more than 30 overall appearances is an even bigger risk. Especially if you don’t replace them…

This leads me to believe that perhaps Arsene has looked at the other top 4 teams, seen that they’ve been weakened and decided that the odds on his gamble will be a little better this year? It’s not the strong getting stronger for once… it’s the weak. Will this mean that the Premiership sees the most unpredictable campaign in its short history? Quite possibly. Does it make the thought of us not signing any more players that little bit more irksome… most definitely.

This summer shouldn’t be the time for taking another massive gamble on a season in the hope it all comes good… this should be the summer we strike while our enemies are wounded, build on our weaknesses and train harder on our strengths. If we do that, this could be our season… our chance to assert dominance on the Premiership and maybe Europe… our chance to wrestle the mantle of prettiest footballing side away from Barcelona… our chance to put Arsenal FC back on the map!

I think our season rests on the decisions the coach is going to make this week. He’s got £50million to gamble with… here’s hoping he’s going to twist… not stick.

Update: Since writing this last night, the rumour that we’re after Kalou has reemerged. Whilst the obvious thing for me to do would be to curse him as a poor player… I wont. He’s not a world beater, but I’ve got a few Chav mates who rate him and I think he’d definitely offer us something with regards to flexibility, skill and workrate. Chamakh looks the more talented of the two… I can’t help but think maybe we’re moving for Kalou to force the French club into selling… I still find it odd that we’re chasing a right sided attacker with the options we have… but I suppose if Eboue is off, it makes sense experience wise.

So… plenty to mull over today Grovers!

See you in the comments!