Pre season on going!

Arsenal are currently in Austria preparing for the upcoming very decisive season. Two friendly games have already taken place but honestly I haven't watched any not even a highlight to say anyting about them. At this period, only the money grabbing low class clubs are trying to make these games look serious. Thank GOD we are not one of them. Arsenal are known for their rather traditional approach to pre-season. We usually gather at Colney with the kids and some first teamers then we play with Barnet before heading to Austria/Hungary for a couple of weeks and then back to some tournaments (Amsterdam or Emirates plus another friendly or two).

I love to think of Arsenal as the ideal student at school who is always on time, does his home work, respects the teachers and the rules and gets the best marks. They won't always be the most successful in life afterwards but they will always get a decent living and pride from what they did and how they did it. At the other end you will find the cheating, coward, selfish and opportunistic ones who may end up with a lot of money and power. I know which one I would prefer my son to be.

Enough with the philosophy and pictures, let's talk about the football even though there's little of it for the time being. The transfer window has been opened for over six weeks now, we have signed one defenderr Thomas Vermaelen that is, from Ajax for 10 MP. We have also sold Adebayor to Manchester City for 25 MP. Armand Traore and Philipe Senderos are back from loan. We are linked to a host of players and every man and his dog seem to know who Wenger should buy, who he should not buy, who he should sell who he sould not sell...

Unlike many supporters I tend to believe the man knows what he has and what he can get. I think in this climate that's more important than knowing what you need. The simplistic one will tell us we need a central midfielder they call defensive minded midfielder more than anything and that we have been needing it since the Flamster and Lassana Diarra and Gilberto left the club. The importance of knowing what you have and what you can get is that it allows you to distance yourself from going crazy looking for every player that looks like one. You need to assess if the tareget player is going to fit in your team and is better than what you have and can add something subtancial.

Wenger has gone into a road in which it is so important to get really good players and no average signings. Look at Sylvestre, here is an average experienced player we bought. Compare him to a player like Djourou who is an inexperienced potencially good defender. With his inexperience he is just as average as Sylvestre and while he can progress to become a very good defender Tweety will stay average. Tweety was at a big club so we knew he was average but if he was at Fulham or Stoke we would think of him as good. No offense to Silvestre, Fulham or Stoke, it's just an example.

When you want to buil a young team you only should buy super players. I would rather buy an Arshavin for 20 MP than a Cana + Upson + Scott Parker for 10MP.

In the last january window we got Arshavin and there were a lot of eyebrows raised. He wasn't something we needed apparently and look at what he did and how he is now looked as one of the positive things at the club by those who were crying for their DM.

If I have a swipe for le Boss it is the way he failed to hold on Lassana, Flamini and Hleb. Even if I can understand the situation with all of them it is not forgiveable to lose them all in the same year as far as I am concerned. For Flamini he was on his way out before blossoming but we needed to tie him up in January at least before letting Lassana go.

Abdoulaye NDIAYE