Arsenal have many youngsters in the reserves or on loan for whom the time is ripe for them to be given their chance.

Kyle Bartley will have played the better part of two seasons for Rangers, the time is for Kyle to come back and be given a real chance at Arsenal.  In addition we have seen Ignasi Miguel this season at left-back, 2012 must see play at centre-back.

In midfield we need to allow Frimpong and Coquelin a real chance.  Wenger needs to play these two guys next season regularly.  Arsene needs to learn the art of developing and bringing young players through the ranks.  This means resting your regular players.

In addition to these two, is the precocious talents of Henri Lansbury.  This youngster has Arsenal running through his veins, he has spent the last two seasons on loan at Championship teams and he was a vital member of Stuart Pearce’s England under 21 team.  If Wenger fails to keep Lansbury and develop him, then Wenger can be discounted as manager who develops and gives youth its chance.

Another youngster who will be given his chance, next season or more likely this season is Connor Henderson.  His progress has been hampered by severe injuries for the last two seasons, but Wenger believes in the young Ireland winger.

The final person that needs to be given an opportunity is our other summer signing Joel Campbell. Campbell will develop into a good striker, only through Arsenal’s folly in applying for a special talent work permit for Ryo rather than Campbell, has the Costa Rica international had to ply his trade in France,

These seven youngsters along with Szczesny, Gibbs, Wilshere and Oxlade-Chamberlain will be the basis of Arsenal for years to come.  They will fight for Arsenal and feel Arsenal, every defeat will mean something to them, they will give heart and soul for the club.

This is the promotion from within that we failed to undertake for many seasons.  Too often our talent has been releases, only for them to flourish elsewhere.

The club then needs to invest in three top quality players.  A central midfielder, a creative player and  a world-class striker.  The argument that buying these players will curtail the advancement of the players mentioned above is utter rubbish.  Young players will thrive by training and playing alongside top players.  The youngsters will develop better and faster in a winning team.

This summer needs a clear-out of our deadwood, and we have a lot of deadwood, we need to promote and give young Arsenal players the chance to flourish and we need to invest in three world-class players.  This is the mix that Arsenal need to overhaul our squad and put us on the right track.

For a few transfer windows we have been expecting these players to be sold, but the ridiculous wages, for their limited wages has meant we have not been able to get rid of these deadwood players.  This summer the board and Wenger need to bite the bullet and clear them out.

Out must go goalkeepers Almunia and Fabianski.  How Almunia is still at the club is a miracle, Wenger’s refusal to pay Fulham £3.5M for Schwarzer and Almunia’s crazy wages of £50,000 a week, sees the clown of Pamplona still at the Emirates.  Lukasz Fabianski will leave as he needs to play regular football to enhance his international career.

In defence Sebastien Squillaci, Arsenal’s very own self-destruct button will be released in the summer if not earlier.  Squillaci would have left in the summer, but no club was prepared to pay him £50,000 a week! The other defender to leave must be Johan Djourou. As with his Switzerland colleague, Sendeross, after a promising start, everything he does turns pear shape, it is time for Djourou to find a new circus to perform at.

Mifdfield requires the biggest clearout.  Arshavin has failed to impress after his first six months at the club and every performance nowadays is an embarrassment to everyone. Roscky has never been the same since his injury and his time at the club must now be numbered.  The next player to depart must be Diaby, not because of his inability to perform, but because he spends more than 50% of the season injured.  He will never show his full potential at Arsenal.  Finally Benayoun should not be offered a permanent contract at the club. He provides very little to the squad.

Both our strikers, Chamakh and Park need to leave in the summer.  In the case of Chamakh, Wenger has done a great job in destroying the player by stating he is finding the going tough in the Premier League and then only playing him when we are chasing a game.  Park is a mystery and the cynic in me believes we was bought as a favour to Wenger’s old club or as a marketing ploy to sell Arsenal merchandise to South Korea.

In addition to these players we still have three “world class” players on loan who need to be sold this summer,  Denilson, Vela and Bendtner.

This shows us the mess our transfer policy over several seasons has created.

The fans booed the team off at half-time and were rewarded when youngster Nico Yennaris replaced the hapless and hopeless Djourou who becomes a bigger liability every time he puts on an Arsenal shirt.  Wenger was decisive with his first substitution, but his second left everyone at the Emirates, including his captain van Persie totally bemused and unimpressed.

Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain was causing the Manchester United defence problems with his direct and physical running.  Every time he got the ball there was a buzz in the ground and fear amongst the United defence.  It was one of these runs that Chamberlain passed the ball to van Persie which led to the equaliser.  Arsenal had the wind behind them and Oxlade-Chamberlain had the key to unlock the United defence. Then disaster.

Arsenal had been preparing to bring on Arshavin and Park, yes he does actually play football, but when we equalised the substitutions were put on hold.  Then Wenger played his card, Arshavin to replace Oxlade-Chamberlain.  As one the Emirates faithful turned on Wenger, boos echoed around the stadium and the boos were a sign of disgust for the decision.  Then the crowd shouted at Wenger “ you don’t know what you’re doing”, the only surprise is that this was the first time this was directed at Wenger who appears to have lost the plot this season.

Never have the Arsenal fans showed so open hostility towards Le Professor as today and they were justified, as within 8 minutes, Arshavin failed to make a challenge on Valencia and United took the lead.

Later Wenger refused to justify his decision “Oxlade-Chamberlain had started to fatigue, started to stretch his calf, and was not used to the intensity. He was sick on Sunday night during the week. Arshavin is captain of the Russia national team. I have to justify [substituting] a guy of 18 who’s playing his second or third game? “

This is the usual Wenger rubbish, players getting tired; I don’t think he understands sports psychology.  A manager’s job is to encourage his players not give them reasons to play below par.  This was the same man who claimed last season that Chamakh  was finding it hard to adjust to the Premiership, after scoring countless goals.  Following Wenger’s comments, Chamakh has been a pale shadow of the striker we signed last season.

Was it just the fans that were not happy, no van Persie, our remaining world class player, our talisman and captain  clearly showed what he thought of the decision too.

Wenger was losing the fans this season, with pathetic transfers in the summer, a lame start to the season, a series of away defeats and the same old excuses, but his substitution today has lost him the Emirates crowd too.  Whilst discontent was mostly restricted to internet forums, this has now spread to the Emirates, previously a bastion of loyal support for Wenger.

Arsenal fans are not content with merely qualify for the Champions League, Arsenal fans want to compete for the title every season.  Arsenal fans do not accept Champions League qualification in lieu of trophies; we want trophies and Champions League qualifications.

If Wenger and the board  believe we will settle for another trophy less season, and non-qualification for the Champions League coupled with mediocre football, then they will have a few nasty months coming up.

For 4-3-3 to work you need at least one of your three central midfielders to get into areas to support the striker.  At Arsenal this has not worked, this season nor for the past couple of seasons.  It is time Wenger to change back to 4-4-1-1 with the player “in the hole” being either a second striker or an attacking midfielder.

For this formation to work we need two work-horses playing in tandem in central midfield, a throw back to the Vieira and Petit partnership.  Song and Wilshere will work ideally in this formation, they both have energy, strength and stamina to get up and down the pitch.  People who say this is a suicide formation, I say look at Manchester City Yaya Toure and Barry or De Jong or Tottenham Parker and Modric (can anyone honestly say h is a tough tackling midfielder?).  It is all about a mindset, it also requires your central defenders to be solid.

Robin van Persie, a great striker that he is, could and will cause havoc if he played just off the main striker.  This will give van Persie greater freedom to maraud where he wishes.  He will arrive late in the penalty area for crosses and the opportunities will be endless for him.  Playing this formation will require the two wide players to track back and be more involved in midfield.  Arsenal’s great sides of recent years had good wide players, Pires, Ljungberg, Overmars and Limpar.  All were masters of the wing, great crosses of the ball and scored goals aplenty.

What Arsenal   lack at the moment is numbers in box.  How many times have we heard commentators state that there is nobody in the box for Arsenal? This is down to the 4-3-3 formation, van Persie is on his own, Ramsey is not in the box, and even if he is, his finishing is woeful.  A 4-4-2 formation should have both strikers, the other winger and one of your central midfielders all in the box, whilst the full-back will also be in support of the attack, whilst the second central midfielder will provide cover.

It makes no sense to play 4-3-3, especially against lower teams like Sunderland, Wolves, Blackburn or Leeds for 80 minutes, then when we haven’t made the breakthrough throw on another striker and start getting the ball into the box and hope 10 minutes of 4-4-2 will achieve what 80 minutes of 4-3-3 have failed to do.

It’s time Wenger woke and smelt the coffee and made a tactical change that will help bring success to the club.

Usmanov’s holding of just under 30% is a nuisance to Kroenke as this prevents him from passing special resolutions and doing whatever he wants with the club.  The Russian’s shareholding should entitle him to a seat or two on the board of the club, but such is the animosity towards Usmanov from the club’s old hierarchy that they would rather the club collapsed before affording this courtesy.

So where does this leave Arsenal? Kroenke has wealth, but the sort that will result in him writing blank cheques for an Arsenal manager to spend on players.  Kroenke has many sporting interests in America which means he will not get involved in the day to day running of the club nor will he sanction major transfers.  In effect Kroenke is running the club by remote, by Skype!  This at a time when Arsenal’s position as a top 7 club is being threatened.  Whilst other clubs have active hands-on owners / chairmen, Arsenal is being run like a major corporation with budgets set for wages and transfers, and regardless of the change in circumstances we will keep to those budgets.

Football is not like a “normal” business.  Unless a club spends big in the transfer market  it will not attract top players and without top players trophies cease to arrive.  Take a look at Wenger’s early years, top players came to the club, not top potential, top players and trophies followed, now look at the last 6 years, we have brought in potential every year and with that we have achieved nothing.  The model needs to change, but the board are powerless to authorise a change in this model as the owner is happy with our financial results!

The club is at a major crossroads and the ownership of the club will determine whether we enter many more years of trophyless seasons or the trophies and top players start to come back.  The continued ownership of Kroenke will see Wenger rule the roost at the Emirates, a frugal approach to the transfer window and many promises of potential followed by seasons of disappointment.  This in effect is the ghost of Arsenal seasons to come, but these can be changed.  Kroenke can sell his stake to Usmanov in the summer for a very good profit and then we enter into a completely new ball game.

Whether David Dein re-joins the board is another matter, but Usmanov will not only give Wenger a very  large transfer budget, he will insist that he uses it.  Usmanov will explain to Wenger that the club  needs to win trophies and if that means breaking the bank to bring in top players like Goetze or Hazard, then we MUST do this.  He will also explain to Wenger that UEFA Financial Fair Play rules are null and void.  There are too many big clubs, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester City, Manchester United, Chelsea and PSG too name but a few who are too big for UEFA to take any sanctions against.  In no uncertain terms Wenger will be told to spend to win trophies, for 6 season operation youth development has failed, and now is the time for change.

These are the options faced by our club, more of the same under Kroenke or a dash for gold under Usmanov.

With the loss of Santos and news that Gibbs had a further setback, Wenger stated that he will look at a full-back for a loan option as we do not wish to drop points because we are short of full-backs. This statement was made mid-December.  Arsenal have an extensive scouting network and great contacts throughout the world.  We are now mid-January, having dropped 6 points this year and still no sign of any defensive re-enforcements, neither  at full-back nor central defence and there will not be anybody arriving either.

Once again Wenger makes a statement of new recruits and the result is zero activity.  There are two reasons for no players coming back.

By the end of January Vermaelen, Sagna and Gibbs will all be back in contention for the starting line-up, so Wenger will try and patch-up the defence once more against Manchester United and Bolton Wanderers in the league and hope we do not drop any more points.

The second reason why Wenger will not enter the transfer market, is that there is no room in the squad for an overseas player.  In fact unless Wenger sells one of Almunia, Squillaci, Arshavin or Rosicky, there is no room for Henry in the squad!  So unless we have a minor clear-out there will be no new signings this window. The maximum number of non-home grown players is 17.

Arsenal Squad 2011-12 (Non-Home Grown Players)

Almunia

Fabianski

Sagna

Santos

Vermaelen

Mertesacker

Koscielny

Squillaci

Diaby

Arteta

Arshavin

Benayoun

Rrosicky

Chamakh

Henry

Park

Van Persie

Gervinho

Where do we start?  It is obvious that things went wrong in the summer with Wenger anticipating that both Nasri and Fabregas will not leave these were the hopes of a man living in a dream land.  The summer also saw not focus on any transfers other than Gervinho and Oxlade-Chamberlain, despite the fact we needed at least one central defender and another striker.

We have seen in recent weeks the paucity of our squad.  We have played Song, Arteta and Ramsey in nearly every game.  Wenger has alternatives, Frimpong, Coquelin, Rosicky and Benayoun, but he does not trust the first two and neither Benayoun nor Rosicky are up to the task.  Creativity is lacking in central midfield and Ramsey appears completely lost playing the attacking midfield role.  We have Wilshere and Diaby coming back from injury, but will that solve the problem?  Wilshere will have an impact, but isn’t it too much to have to rely on this young man, when all around him lack that certain edge required of Arsenal midfielders?

On the wings, Wenger has had three options, Walcott, Gervinho and Arshavin.  Walcott does not realise he needs to play to his strength, and he only has one – speed.  Theo is a speed merchant but is reluctant to run at defenders, to play the ball past the full-back and challenge him for pace.  Walcott’s finishing has been woeful, for someone who wishes to play as a central striker his shooting is pathetic.  What has the coaching staff been working on with Theo in the last 5 years?  Has he really improved since joining Arsenal, and if the answer is no, then why not, has anybody spoken to him about wing play?

Arshavin gave up playing for Arsenal some time ago, the only surprise is that Wenger hasn’t sold him.  What has happened to Arshavin, why does not take players on anymore, where are the little tricks gone or the on-target shots?  The answer lies partly in our formation.  Arshavin plays off the striker, he likes to attack the goal directly not via the wings.  Look at his first half-season, he played behind van Persie or Adebayor and he ran at players go left or right, now he does not have that variation.

Our forwards consist of one person, van Persie, end of story.  Chamakh started of really last season, then stopped, he does not even look like a player who score an open goal, why is a mystery.  One suggestion is that he does not get enough playing time, but when we only play one striker, he never will, so unless we change to 4-4-2 or 4-4-1-1, Chamakh will go the same way as Bendtner. Our third striker is a mystery to everyone, Park.  Why did Wenger buy Park so late in the window?  He knew Bendtner was leaving so another striker was always required, why not show an intent and go for Remy, Hunterlaar or Benzema, instead we opt for a Ligue 2 striker Park.  But then Wenger proceeds not to play him and asks the fans to give him a chance, but Wenger does not trust him! Is Park one of these mystery Wenger purchases like Kaba Diawarra or Tomas Danilevicius?  Whatever the reason, I doubt Park will be with next season.

Arsenal have struggled this season, narrow home victories over Stoke, Sunderland, Everton, QPR, draws with Fulham, Wolves and away defeats at Blackburn, Fulham and Swansea just emphasise in which direction we are heading this season.  This Arsenal squad must be the worse squad of players assembled by Wenger in his time at the club.  Wenger has stated that finishing in the top four is more important than winning a trophy, well I doubt we will finish in the top four or win a trophy this season.  The squad needed a major overhaul in the summer, quality players were required and that has not changed.  It is going to be a long and painful second half of the season for Arsenal fans, let’s hope that there is radical change in the summer, but I doubt it.

Let us look at the Financial Fair Play rules.  This state that a club over a three year cycle can only lose €15M.  What is excluded from the profit and loss are non-football related items.  Any profits from our property ventures or income from hotels that some clubs have are disregarded. Any interest payments that relate to the football infrastructure, i.e. stadium or training ground development are ignored.

The next aspect to look at is how are transfers treated.  When a club buys a player, say Gervinho for £10.7M, this £10.7M is charged to P&L over the duration of Gervinho’s contract (4 years).  This means that for the next four years we will charge the P&L £2.675M per annum.  This summer we spent £48M on players and our standard contract is 4 years, so for the next 4 years we will write-off the transfer fees at £12M per annum.

In terms of sales of players, the transfer fee is taken to P&L less any value in the balance sheet.  So when we sold Clichy for instance, his book value was nil, so the P&L is credited with £7M for the year 2011/12.  Our sales this summer amounted to £73M.  As all the players had a balance sheet value of nil, the 2011/12 accounts will show a profit of £73M.

Looking at the accounts for the year ended 31 May 2011, Arsenal’s football profit is £16M per annum before player trading, this position will not change until 2014 when our sponsorship deals with Nike and Fly Emirates expire. This means we can spend £16M per annum on transfers before falling foul of UEFA’s Financial Fair Play rules, in effect our purchases this summer mean we have used ALL of our allowable transfer expenditure for the next three seasons.

However, due to our profit on sales of £73M this summer we can spend a further £100M on players and still be within UEFA’s rules.

So assuming we have no transfers out (highly unlikely with the contract position of our players), Wenger has £100M to spend on players this January and the club will stay within the UEFA Financial regulations.

If we take another look at the accounts as at 31 May 2011, when some season ticket money have been received, but before any transfer money and also before the £25M sale of Queensland Road and before new sponsorship deals with Bettson, Indesit, Citreon, Thomas Cook, O2 and Carlsberg were agreed, Arsenal Football Club had £160M in cash at the bank.  Yes just to repeat that £160M in the bank.

Anybody who tells you the club does not have money is lying, we have more money that nearly all the clubs in the Premier League.

Wenger has the resources to go out and buy players in January and still stay within UEFA’s financial rules and  I expect he will.  The last two times we bought players in January was when we competing with Aston Villa for fourth place and we bought Arshavin and when bought Adebayor, Diaby and Walcott we were in fight for fourth place with Spurs.

Game one against Newcastle saw both Gervinho and Song pick up three match bans which affected us for the next three games. Against Liverpool, the game was heading for 0-0 when Frimpong got sent-off and Liverpool capitalised with a goal that should have been flagged for offside.  The Manchester United game was an nightmare which we have all forgotten.  Against Blackburn, a game that we dominated, we lost due to two own goals and an offside goal.  Moving on to the Tottenham game, a match that Spurs fans were rubbing the hands with glee, looking forward to a 4 or 5 goal hammering, Arsenal controlled the game but fell behind to a handball goal from van der Vaart.  We lost through a wonder goal from Walker, a goal that he will never score again.

This is the difference between a good start and a poor start to the season.  If the officials had spotted the offside and handball, we could be sitting with a completely different picture now.

Our luck has run out with injuries.  Out of 6 centre-backs, five are injured, Vermaelen, Koscielny, Djourou, Squillaci and Miguel, no other team in the league can suffer the same fate and carry on and still look solid.  Yes I say solid, because our weakness yesterday was with Sagna not tracking back, Song and Mertesacker played well.  Having announced that Wilshere will be out until February, we can now add Sagna to that list of long-term.

It is not all down to bad officially and poor luck, but success hinges on decisions being correct, it makes such a difference.

The media love to hit Arsenal at all times.  Look at last week’s Champions League matches.  Manchester United throw away a two goal lead and snatch a draw at the end and United are lauded for resilience! Chelsea lose a lead in the last minutes and nothing is said. Arsenal win a game, yet the emphasis is on the chances created by Olympiakos!

Arsenal are for a rough ride this season, even when we win the media will find a story to hit us with, look at last weekend, we beat Bolton 3-0, the headlines?  Van Persie will leave Arsenal for Manchester City!

Things have not been great, but we have the resolve to fight back and challenge for a Champions League spot, that I am certain.  Wenger will bring in two or three players in January, that is a guarantee, and we will kick on in the second half of the season.

Our problems have been rumbling under the surface for some time now, we have year after year papered over the cracks, but fundamentally we have been on the downward slide ever since we move to the Emirates. We have sold or lost good players and failed to replace these players, no team can lose the likes of Bergkamp, Henry, Pires, Vieirra, Cole, Campbell and Ljungberg and expect to maintain the high standards set by that team.  Recently we have lost Adebayor, Fabregas, Toure and Nasri and yet again the replacements have not been of the same standard.  As a team we have been getting weaker and weaker every season and this season all of our chickens have come home to roost.

We must ask ourselves how this has happened.  Think back to when we talking about moving to a new stadium, the rationale was that with the increased income streams we will be able to compete with the best teams in Europe.  The reality is that over the last six years we have spent £130M on players and received £185M in sales.  Whilst spending does not always equal success or mean attracting top players, which top stars have we bought in the last 6 years?

There are fundamental problems at the club in terms of attracting players or even in securing our main targets.  This summer was a classic case.  The club identified our weaknesses and decided upon targets to rectify these problems.  What actually happened was a farce.

Every Arsenal fan knew that Fabregas would leave once Barcelona showed any interest in him, we also knew that if Nasri had not signed a new contract by the end of June, then the club had to sell him, that is everyone except Arsene Wenger, who decided this was his summer of imitating an ostrich, stick his head in the sand and everything will be ok.

In Malaysia Wenger stated, “Imagine the worst situation – we lose Fabregas and Nasri – you cannot convince people you are ambitious after that. I believe for us it is important that the message we give out – for example you see about Fabregas leaving, Nasri leaving – if you give that message out you cannot pretend you are a big club. Because a big club first of all holds onto its big players and gives a message out to all the other big clubs that they just cannot come in and take [players] away from you.”

This statement was made on 11 July, within 6 weeks both players had left and by Wenger’s own admission we were not long a big club.

We spent the whole of the summer trying to negotiate the transfer out of two of our top stars and we neglected any replacements, why? Surely Wenger had a plan to cover the sales of Fabregas and Nasri?  Gervinho was not a replacement for either player.

The same day Wenger stated that Arsenal had no need to recruit a left-back following Clichy’s move to Manchester City. “The plan for left back is that we have Kieran Gibbs, Armand Traore and Thomas Vermaelen can play there too. So we have what we need,” said Wenger.

Everyone who had seen Traore’s development at Arsenal over the years realised early on that he was never going to be top left-back.  Yet Arsene thought otherwise.  In the same context  was it sensible to move our best centre back to left-back?

Having decided that we did not need to recruit replacements for Nasri, Fabregas or Clichy, our transfer policy for the summer started to blow up in our face.

Linked with Ricardo Alvarez we failed to land him for a reported difference of £1.7M.  We then moved on to Juan Mata, but we failed to make a bid for him before 31 July, so his fee went from £13M to £23M.  Centre backs were targeted, with Arsenal prepared to spend £13M on Jagielka yet not prepared to spend more than £10M on Cahill.  Wenger then realised, having stated this was the case all summer, than Bendtner was going to leave in the summer, so a striker became a priority.

Following total humiliation at Old Trafford, where not only were our defensive frailties exposed, but also the lack of players in our squad became apparent when you saw the bench.  Arsene or the board forcing Arsene, embarked upon a supermarket sweep style spending spree.  We recruited a left-back, Andre Santos, centre-back Per Mertesacker, striker Ju-Young Park and two midfielders, Mikel Arteta and Yossi Benayoun. Whislt it was good to see the club address the issues of defensive frailties, in-experience and sheer numbers, what Arsenal fans want to know and have a right to know is why weren’t these players bought in July, given a proper pre-season with the club and bedded in to the Arsenal way before the season started.

The further exacerbate the problem we decide to get Ryo Miyaichi an special talent work permit a player who has had only a handful of professional games instead of utilising this option for Joel Campbell a striker of greater promise and potential than Miyaichi.

This calamitous transfer window has led to this disastrous start to the season, the players did not know who was coming in and who was staying.  We started our pre-season with one set of players and all of sudden five more are brought in once the season has started.  This has been a completely disjointed transfer window and someone needs to explain how we got to this stage, when all the fans knew who was going and where we needed to strengthen.

The transfer disaster is one reason why we are where we are.