Purgatory

Now that third place is all but assured and the transfer window is just around the corner silly season starts in earnest. Following on from comments made by Arsène Wenger that he is talking to his definitive transfer targets we can decipher two things.

Firstly he is talking to more than one person and secondly that one of them surely will be a goalkeeper. We should also hope that our defence won't suffer a repeat of the summer of 2008 which saw our midfield decimated and no ready made replacement purchased. Should William Gallas decide that things are greener on the other side of the fence, or channel tunnel in this case, then one could assume that Wenger is going to replace him. This would see Wenger change tack a little and buy 2 defensive players before he sets his mind on our attack.

As you will all be aware we have now been linked with just about every goalkeeper who is available and even some who have recently signed contract renewals. Pepe Reina, Rob Green, Joe Hart, Jerzy Dudek, David James, Kasper Schmeicheal, Hugo Lloris, Igor Akinfeev, Thomas Sorensen, Fernando Muslera, Shay Given, Gianlugi Buffon and Sebastian Frey have all been mentioned so I'm personally not expecting any of them. Outside of that between them could almost fill the quota of premier league first choice goalkeepers.

When names are so blatantly thrown around I like to read the article and then throw it away. I got my hopes up every transfer window since Mad Jens departed only to have them dashed and spend another 6 months nervously watching Almunia as he almost inevitably gave us a few hairy moments before putting us out of our agony, and probably another competition, by letting in yet another soft goal.

With the Chamakh deal allegedly sealed our forward unit seems fairly set. Robin van Persie for all his talents isn't the person to pin your hopes on over the course of a full season and the arrival of Chamakh coupled with hopefully the retention of the rest of our forwards we could hope to have at least one fit and recognised striker in our team at all times. It should make for a nice change for everyone to actually have options when deciding who starts up front.

Finally, our penultimate game of the season is next Monday night against Blackburn. As we all know Sam Allardyce likes to pretend it's the 1980's with hoof it up there tactics and a 'Johnny foreigner doesn't like it up him' mindset. I'm not expecting this to be a classic but with Blackburn now drifting in mid table obscurity we might get to see a few goals and even an Arsenal victory. It's been a while since we had one.

While it would be nice to let some of our world cup bound players off the hook a little early our injury list now almost decides who plays as well as who doesn't. Sadly I have given up on hoping that Wenger uses more than Theo Walcott and Eboue as impact players and releases Carlos Vela and Eduardo to actually have a kick around at the same time as everyone else. Keeping in mind Fabianski's comments earlier today that it is hard to stay match sharp when you don't get any matches I don't think we can expect much from wither of them on the extreme off chance they do get a game. How nice it would be to get pasted in the comment section of this article Tuesday morning if they stuck a goal or two against Fat Sam.

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