Arsène Balboa did the right thing for Arsenal
It looks like Arsenal players have come away from international duty relatively unscathed to the relief of Gooners everywhere.
Arsenal arguably have two players for every position but in some areas we do look woefully thin and this has been the cause of much negativity towards the manager.
Arsène Wenger has taken a lot of punches over the years for his philosophies and transfer activities. Wenger has taken more hits over transfers in the past few weeks than Sylvester Stallone took in Rocky IV so I wouldn't be surprised if he suffered a few brain injuries. Maybe if we don't finish fourth and get into the Champions League he could make some brain injury claims and get us some compensation. Battling back from verbal assaults and avoiding a complete twitter meltdown Wenger ended January by bringing in Nacho Monreal ahead of schedule due to the injury to Gibbs but also saw a couple of other targets, rumoured to be Capoue, Jovetic and Villa, slip through his fingers for one reason or another. This wasn't deemed good enough by a lot of people and he has been derided for "failing to see the weaknesses of the team".
Isn't this a little ironic? Hasn't Wenger been castigated for years for buying sub-par players? Wenger is faulted retrospectively for purchases that don't work out like Squillaci and Chamakh despite the former joining with a CV that read like Sol Campbell's and despite the latter fizzling out after a super start. You never know how a player will react to a new league and Wenger is faulted for the ones that don't work out yet is castigated for not buying Yanga-Mbiwa, Sissoko and other such Newcastle purchases.
Do we not want a team that can challenge? Then why are we upset at not buying players that at best will propel NUFC to Europa League spots? Don't get me wrong, they are all very good players but they're not significantly better than the players we have and that is why I applaud Wenger for his recent transfer policies.
Nowadays Wenger seems to buy experienced players that will compliment the exciting British core we have and is only now looking at players that are better than what we have already. The so-called misses could have become the players that are now labelled deadwood and just because they perform well for Newcastle or QPR or another lower team doesn't mean they would have performed well for us.
By the same token, just because they play for those teams doesn't mean they aren't good enough to play for us but the question is "are they better than what we have?" and I don't think they are.
I'm glad we are aiming for a better quality of player and think in hindsight we will all thank the boss for not spending this January and going for better players in the summer.
Goonersphere
