All kinds of stuff

There's been lots of talk around Arsenal about all kinds of stuff, should we have sold Adebayor, who will replace him, will we replace him, can we replace him or are we broke, what's going on in the board room, is Nasri's injury going to cost us the league, blah blah blah blah blah. This just shows how little is happening at the moment. With few players moving, despite two big clubs being relegated and two other clubs going on shopping rampages, there's not much to print and subsequently not much to discuss.

As far as Nasri's injury is concerned, as Gunnerblog said, it'll hurt him more than Arsenal. He is a good player, and I'm happy we have him and he'll add good depth to the team but loosing his place to injury for players of Rosicky's and Walcott's quality to step in won't help him one bit. When he's back he'll ad depth and quality in depth so he'll be usefull but I don't see him gaining a starting place back. And his injury certainly won't loose us any games. Saying otherwise is moronic.

I'm still undecided about Adebayor's replacement. Unless we're willing to spend big I don't see how we'll be able to adequately replace him without finding a player we'll need to culture for a couple of seasons first and to be honest I doubt we'll sign any forwards. We really quite badly need a center mid and there hasn't been much talk about that at all this summer. We obviously had some interest in Melo and had we been given time to do so, we may have been in to negotiate his price down, but Juve stepped in and swooped him away. We haven't spoken of a new potential center mid and there has been little speculation. We won't go in for Inler again, if we were going to sign him we would have done last season. I've spoken of this before, so I'll skip it if it's all the same. What I mean to be getting at is that now that Juve have signed a combative center mid for 21million euros, what happens to their other two. I don't know much about Christian Paulsen, only that Juve signed him over Xabi Alonso. I thought that alone would have spoken his quality but he's now on the shopping list for some crappy mid to lower table clubs, so who knows about him. The one that I'm really interested in is Momo Sissoko.

We tried to sign in ahead of Liverpool a few years ago and failed and when they signed Mascherano, despite Sissoko perfoming very consistently and very well, he left for Juventus. Now that they've bought Melo I can't see there being a place for both of them. I'd imagine that they'd plan on starting their 21m Euro signing ahead of Sissoko and so maybe that'll leave some room for us to go in for him again. He's a good player with a great ability to tackle and win balls in the air. He can move the ball forward and is similar to Yaya Toure in that way. His passing is decent and while he's not the fastest in the world, he's a very good midfield anchor. He's still only 23 and the closest thing to Patrick Viera that I've seen. He went to Juve for 8m pounds and I'm guessing we could snap him up for around twice that. I doubt we will and that makes me want to fly to London and scream in Wenger's ear, but like religious people in their Gods, I have to trust in l'Boss.

Some might argue that the improved form of Song and Denilson and the apparently improving Diaby would warrent no need for a new defensive center mid. I'd say that's wrong. Diaby hasn't materialized, he used to complain about not playing enough and to his credit he was often played out of position, but only on rare occasions did he ever really perform. Not to mention the fact that he's always injured. If he comes through pre season without an injury, I'd be surprised. I like both Song and Denilson but I'd like to see them coming off the bench as cover until they develop enough to hold a place in the team.

Yogi Warrior over at A Cultured Left Foot (I have to say the most eloquent and maybe my favorite Arsenal blog) talks about depth being more important or at least as important as the quality in the starting line up and claims that our depth in midfield is of better quality than our rivals. I may dissagree but this question requires deeper consideration and so tomorrow I will begin my rival analysis.

Highbury86