Reflections of "PRE - Pre Season", what can we achieve? Unleashing the shackles of "safeness"! What will the new season provide us with?

Wow, the "Pre - Pre season" period (as I like to call it), the period we are now in, is always a very "interesting" one to say the least, especially for someone such as myself, and most of my "readers", who are a citizen in the "twittering world" (check me out @Mr_arsenal_blog if you’re a "twitterer"), as it seems that as I scroll through my "timeline" each day, it seems that we are signing ever player under the proverbial sun, people claiming that deals are "99% done" at times, "100% done" even and unfortunately it seems that we more often than not are jumping the gun, anticipating signings before they are done, and in some cases not even targeted by the people in the club itself, as it turns out!

But the facts are this is a very very important summer for The Arsenal in my opinion, we have to build on what we did last season, and have to make a few changes and a few additions to really push us on, to the next level which we MUST get to! First things first we have to hold on to our players, and keep them fit. I believe that the key for a successful team is simple COMPETITION FOR PLACES throughout the season! At times this season when we had players fit it brought the best out of them, that is because people have to fight to keep their place and fight to get into the match-day starting 11. This is really important, but for this to be the case more often we need to sign some quality. 

As many of you who follow my twitter account (@Mr_arsenal_blog) will know, I am always optimistic and I think it is important as a fan to be such, however I do like to put a realist spin on things at times, as we have to be honest and frank with our assessments of where the team and the club is, at any given time! The fact is, IF we add to the signing of Podolski (which, by the way, I am extremely happy about), with the rumored signings of Giroud to add extra goal threat, and M'Villa to add extra steel and strength as well as yet more technical Prowess to our midfield options, and definitely another CB option as well, I believe that we can really compete next season. IF we don't do this, then we will be stuck in and around where we were this season fighting it out for Champions League qualification for the next season, which quite frankly, (despite the fact that it WAS a great achievement to get there considering where we came from), is where none of us GOONERS want to be! We need to get OUT of the current trend of "competing" with the best; we need to actually BE THE BEST!! For the last few years we have not been as I would call it "ruthless" in the transfer market, and we need to be more like this. Again as I have mentioned before on here and on twitter, I don't want us to just go out and buy everyone because that is not the way to get success, we just need to get in the right players of quality and in the right places, and not be safe all the time, we do need to "push the boat out" - (apologies for the clichés'), to be the best, and this is something that over the coming weeks I hope the club does. 

Now on this theme of being "safe" I was chatting to a good friend of mine this week, who is not an Arsenal fan, but a man who does make some very good and true points on all football maters, and sees football in a non - biased viewpoint, which I have a lot of time for it has to be said. However he made the observation that everything at Arsenal in the last few years has been very safe, very cagey, basically lacking in ambition. Now this seems like a common theme, but he went deeper than the common perception, which I thought was interesting. He explained that he felt Arsenal were very safe off the pitch (in terms of players recruitment - uneasy to spend that extra few £million), as well as actually on the pitch - especially in the last season. Now, I can really see where he is coming from now, because as I said above at times we have not been "ruthless" in the transfer market, and a key example of this would be the Juan Mata scenario from this time last year. The club had the chance to sign him, to acquire his services, because Valencia CF said, offer x amount of money and he is yours' (effectively), however the powers at be reportedly kept going with what they saw to be his "value", and sure enough we lost him to the blue team (whose name escapes me)!! This is classic Arsenal case, as the fact is we are the 4th richest club in the world, and as I keep saying we therefore CAN afford to pay that bit extra on players just to get them through the door, this is what we need to do more often, and this summer for example if Rennes (M'Villa's owners) say we want x and we are offering a million or 2 less, just stump up the cash!!! That is how you are successful, as we cannot afford to keep letting other teams, other clubs leave us behind in the market, and it's the same with contracts for the players that we ALREADY own (RVP I’m thinking of you), if he wants 10 000 more than we are offering or an extra year, give it to him! You know, we have to push out a bit to get to where we need to be! 

That point went on longer than I thought it would, but on to the "on the pitch" issues. For years (in the Wenger days anyway) Arsenal has been seen the world over as a great purveyor of the "beautiful game", Arsene has always set his sides up to attack, which has received mixed responses as some believe we need to win ugly! However this season especially at times, we seemed to be content with the situations we got ourselves into, I’m thinking in particular Norwich and Wolves at home, where we got ourselves into the lead EARLY through great player, and then seem to step of the proverbial "gas pedal" and therefore allowed the opposition back on to us, and this is a point which I have made before, but one which my friend linked in with the whole "safe issue", we get the ball and unlike when we were in our prime we don't seem to want to kill off the opposition we seem to want to play it "safe", pass it round the middle not look to get players in behind, and when we don't have the ball to often (not always admittedly), we aren't ruthless to press and close the opposition down (which is something which I seemed to spent the whole time last season shouting from the stands), this needs to change if we are to be successful next year, we must unleash the shackles both on the pitch and off the pitch!!! We must look to kill off the opposition more, close them down be ruthless, and that is almost the same in the transfer market, we must hunt down the players we need, stump up the money and get them “through the door”, you see the two issues meet, we are too “safe” at the moment, this must change, and with the early signing of Podolski, it gives me hope that this is changing, we wanted him WE GOT HIM!! Hope this continues!!

COME ON THE ARSENAL – this is our year, we have got it, IF we do the right things now!!!!!!!!!!

UP THE ARSENAL!!!