Arsene's homegrown

Well, after the angst that was the close of the transfer window with nary a goalkeeper to replace the ones that have lost our confidence in sight, what do we have for entertainment today? Not much, to be frank. Of course, yesterday was the deadline for submission of the squad list for the Premier League season ahead. There were no surprises to be had, as there were no surprises across any of the other Premier League clubs around the country. It's quite amusing to see the reaction of sections of the media, "The Nation's Favourite Paper", or whatever they call themselves now, reckon Arsenal have turned the squad list scenario into a "farse", do you see what they did there? Clever wasn't it?

Not really, no. It amazes me that after a summer when Arsène Wenger has been at pains to explain why he feels this squad system is stupid but, in the same breath, saying that it won't affect Arsenal at all, that the papers expected Arsenal to, er, be affected. But they did expect Arsenal to be affected and therefore the news that actually, Arsenal can submit a list of players that doesn't exclude any one of our stars sees fire and brimstone being rained down upon N5. We aren't affected, just in case you don't know and it seems the press didn't, because whilst you are only allowed to submit a list of no more than seventeen non homegrown players (for the record our total was 13), you can supplement your squad with as many players under the age of 21 as neccessary. And we've got a few of them, as I'm sure you've noticed. Now that's clever.

I don't think it's unfair to say that were we talking about Manchester United, we'd be applauding their planning and the fact that they have so many youngsters who can make the step up, but it isn't. It's the evil Arsenal with their band of Johnny Foreigners and so we must slaughter them, irrespective of the facts and even though it is not the Arsenal who make the rules. I must admit, at this point, that I think it's a bit weird that we can submit a list of "homegrown" players with not an Englishman amongst them, but as I said, they're not our rules, are they? This puts me in mind of Keith Dover's comment on the Up For Grabs Now podcast yesterday that Arsène would get grief for reading out the weather in this country. Check it out, if you haven't done so already.

Elsewhere, the aforementioned and much discussed (thanks for all your comments yesterday) failure to sign a goalkeeper sees the Mirror's John Cross in a bit of a tizz. I think his assertion that trust in the manager is at an all time low is pretty fair- although I think he maybe forgetting how bad things were in the aftermath of our Champions League humbling against Manchester United. I also agree with the fact that the failure to sign a new keeper is likely to prove costly and that we only have ourselves to blame. That said, I don't see how it can be said that we haven't strengthened this summer. We have better centre forward options than we did this time last summer and, without going over ground covered yesterday, I think the same can be said in defence too. I don't really care whether Tottenham signed Rafael van der Vaart, or whether Manchester United spent £7m on a player they could have had for free weeks earlier.

Whatever I think though, it's certainly true that there is unrest amongst the supporters of the football club and Arsenal are going to have to build on this quietly encouraging start in a sure fashion. The second it starts to crumble, it seems that sections of our support will too.

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