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So Who Are We Signing?

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In a season in which Chelsea’s half-hearted attempt at their title defence and half-term position in the league table is stranger than fiction, albeit familiar for teams with palpable “discord” amongst its staff, it is ironical that Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal are not just the league leaders but also about the busiest shoppers in the transfer market.

While the traditionally thrifty North Londoners had all but wrapped up their first major signing of the winter window in one Mohammed Elneny from Swiss outfit FC Basel, way before Wenger untraditionally announced to the world his intended ‘busy-ness’ in the transfer window – before the official opening of the said window on New Year’s day – with the same surgical precision reminiscent of their capture of a certain Petr Cech last summer, it appears, at least at this point, that we are about resuming our collective bout of somnambulism or worse still, slow ponderous sleep-inducing footdragging from where we left off last summer.

I don’t mean to swear but my word can someone high up help us wake the f*** up?! Or are we also going to intensionally botch this window to help Guus Hiddink fail, same helping which helped Jose Mourinho fail?

One day you hear how Roman Abramovich is willing, able and ready to break the bank for Paul Pogba, and the next you hear how we are chasing one 18-year-old unknown striker Breel Embolo from Basel; afterwards it is the 29-year-old Jackson Martinez that is reportedly in our cross-airs despite the Colombian increasingly turning out an expensive flop at Atletico Madrid having managed to plunder just 2 goals in 12 appearances for the Spanish capital club; and then it is Jamie Vardy, next Saido Berahino, Saido Mane, Charlie Austin and the list goes on…and on, eh, names and ‘targets’ that follow no particular pattern, reason or method other than the common denominator among them – that they are all human beings who play football.

And, blimey, all these after weeks and months of being inundated with ‘news’ of how we are in “pole position” to sign Shaktar Donesk’s Alex Texeira!

Which begs the question: who are we signing this window?

At least I am positive we need nothing less than three new bodies: a striker who isn’t averse to shooting outside the penalty area and one who can help Diego Costa keep his bib on without leaving us tactically or literally short a man up top; a proper No.10 who is strong on the ball and whose head doesn’t drop incessantly at inopportuned moments in a match and could be as bad as a Kevin De Bruyne, if not necessarily as mercurial as a Mesut Ozil, and; a no-nonsense tough-tackling swashbuckling defensive midfielder who is comfortable in possesion and can finally rid us of the necessity of having one of Mikel or Ramires around.

Now while we ponder and mull on this and, for the romantic, perhaps introspect a little and ask ourselves what in the world it is we want from this infamous season and what would constitute success or otherwise for our interim Dutch boss, we would do much worse than remembering how we ended up getting a washed up Fernando Torres late late in the January transfer window of 2011.

Happy New Year folks!

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