Wilshere/Rooney, Transfers, CL draw, Rosicky

Bonjourno folks,

Another day in the world today, which sees the confirmation of Tomas Rosicky's hamstring injury. Wenger said that to win the battle, Rosicky would have to get through the first two months of the season injury free, clearly the battle has been lost, but in a war with injuries I do think that Rosicky will come out on top. 6 weeks out will be absolutely gutting for the guy and I feel for him. It's sad and along with the injury to Nasri, may leave us a little light for attacking options in the midfield trio, but it's not the end of the world. We'll see them both towards the middle of September and they'll be eased into the squad a little bit later than we had hoped for. Will this move Wenger into the transfer market? No, he's already there, but not for a replacement for Rosicky and Nasri.

"We can still make do with one or two players more. One could be in the defensive areas, and one in the attacking areas. We make a few enquires for players, but we are nowhere near to signing anybody at the moment."

The attacking signing is likely to be Chamack, seeing as we've increased our bid to 7.5m, although if Bordeaux don't go for that I don't think Wenger will increase the bid so we may see Kalou in for 8m instead. I would personally rather have Kalou seeing as he has premier league experience and that I actually know something about him. They'll both be going to Africa in January for the African Cup of Nations and will do so every two years so long as their countries qualify and this, should the Chamack deal fall through, may prompt AW to forgo the signing altogether. And at the end of the day I'd rather that happen so Vela and Wilshere can be given the nod instead.

The defensive option is a slightly trickier prospect. I'd like to say that Senderos deal looks just about done and dusted but with the papers commenting on David Moyes being upset with Man City about their pursuit of Jolean Lescott and the Mancs responding with Sparky Hughes basically saying 'Here's 22m, take it or leave it', Lescott may remain at Everton, which may see them retract their interest in Big Phil the Swiss. Should Senderos stay then the defensive signing would surely be a defensive mid. It won't be Patrick Vieira as l'Boss has essentially dismissed that option. It could be Matuidi, but I haven't heard anything about that recently.

Wenger goes on to speak about Senderos as well as having monitored a possible replacement with Hangelaand:

"At the moment there’s an interest from Everton [in Senderos] but he is still our player. He has an opportunity to go because he has one year to go on his contract. We will see what happens in the next week. If he goes, and if there is an opportunity, then we will look. But we still have…five centre backs. We’ve had a look at him. We have not contacted Fulham or contacted Hangeland. We have not made our choice so it is difficult to talk about names right now."

In other transfer news, Wenger has decided to let Fran Merida join Levante in the Spanish second division for the year, a strange piece of business considering his form in pre season and the injuries to Rosicky and Nasri. We do have Ramsey in that position for cover so I suppose we'll look forward to seeing him play a bigger role this season.

There's a little bit about Jay Simpson possibly going out on loan for another year, which would suit him and probably do him some good seeing as we have 96 attackers and are looking to bring in one more. Birmingham have tried to borrow Traore but Wenger shut the door on them until the end of the window so he can properly assess his full squad as he plans on changing his policy and doing business until the window closes,

"We make a few enquires for players, but we are nowhere near to signing anybody at the moment.

"Usually the transfer market only speeds up from August 26 up to midnight on August 31 – and especially in the last two hours."

Our squad now as it stands, I feel is quite full, minus that hard man. We have a plethora of talent up front, although no seriously proven goalscorer besides RVP, but even he only got 20 odd goals in all competitions last season. We've got a good set of dudes for the midfield trio (except for the hard man of course) good options at fullback and with Phil still at the club fine cover at CB. And in September we'll have two additions to the team in Nasri and Rosicky and while they're likely to play squad roles for the first month or so of their re-introduction, they'll be essential members of the squad by the end of the season.

Moving on there is stuff in the papers about Wenger saying that Wilshere is similar to Rooney when he came on the scene, throwing the boy under the bus a little bit, but he knows how to manage talented youth so I won't say anymore.

We've drawn Celtic in the Champions' League qualifier. I think we should go through but that away leg won't be easy for our youngsters, the atmosphere will be intimidating and you know they'll be physical. Remember the days that you would look ahead at the fixture list and not have a worry in the world? You'd be comfortable in the knowledge that Vieira, Petit, Overmars, Bergkamp, Adams and the rest would take care of business. Weren't those days wonderful.

Highbury86