The Glorious Heart-Break Kids, Nasri Update and GSSRP3

I am back, battered, bruised and a glorious victor. My 6-a-side team just won for the first time in ages, 3-1 against Scope in my university college's tournament. This means that if we win the next 3 games, we should qualify for the knock-out stages!

Anyway, back to more Arsenal-related things, according to J. Sanderson over at Young Guns, Samir Nasri's agent has confirmed that he is in contract negotiations with the club, but is holding out for more money, claiming that other teams are in the running too. To me, it just sounds like an agent trying to boost his client's (and thus his own) paycheck. Hopefully we'll here confirmation that the transfer is complete in the next few days.

and now, the moment you've all been waiting for...

Gooneriffic's Super Season Summary

Part 3:

What lessons have we learnt from the past seasons? What problems are there at the club and how can they be addressed? Obviously, a 20 year old guy with absolutely no information from inside the club that everyone else has, limited football skills and no coaching/management experience knows what's best for the club. To me, the main problems at the moment seem to be:

• Centre-back pairing.

• Lack of depth in midfield and defence.

We know that Wenger plans to buy a tall, powerful defender in the summer, which should help in defence – we often have problems dealing with high balls into the box, as both Gallas and Toure are 6'0” or less, and an experienced player over 6'2” should see this problem solved, whilst also giving valuable advice and guidance to the likes of Philip Senderos and Johan Djourou, who are both tall and strong players, but maybe don't quite have the experience yet to be first team regulars.

The most pressing problem, which was especially notable towards the end of the season is the lack of depth to our midfield and defence. With Flamini and possibly Hleb leaving, we not only need to replace them, but also bring in another couple of players. Whether this should be done through buying new players or promoting some of our youngsters I don't know, as I haven't seen enough of the likes of Merida, Randall and Gibbs to tell if they are ready yet. As we seem to be on the verge of signing Samir Nasri, we either won't need to buy a replacement for Hleb, or we will be one midfielder better off. Even if Flamini didn't leave, we would still have needed another central midfielder; effectively, for us, him and Cesc (with occasional help from Gilberto) were doing the same job as Anderson, Scholes, Carrick, Hargreaves and Fletcher at Man Utd, Ballack, Lampard, Mikel, Makelele and Essien at Chelsea or Lucas, Gerrard, Mascherano and Alonso at Liverpool. Again, I don't know if Denilson or Diaby would be able to fill this role next season, but I hope so. We really need more than four or five top-class players, who we would be happy to see in the line up against any of the big teams to compete throughout the season. This year, especially with the injuries to Rosicky, we have too often had to play not great players (Eboue!) in important matches. A versatile defender to provide cover across the back four would be very welcome too, as would a genuine winger (though it looks like Theo Walcott could be just this). One position we don't need to strengthen is striker, as next year we will have Adebayor, Eduardo, Bendtner, Van Persie, Walcott and Vela.

I hope that we will not have to actually buy in too many players during the summer, that our youngsters will be ready for the step up to the first team, but I don;t know whether this is the case. If not, it would be foolish not to bring in a couple of faces to remedy what was our biggest weakness last season. I don't necessarily want to see big name players aged around 22-26, but rather a couple of older heads, maybe 28-30, who will be good first team players but who will a) cost less and b) be a bit past it in a couple of years, and so not prevent our youngsters getting a game when they're a couple of years older.