Take a note of these dates...

7th June 2013

9th June 2013

27th September 2013

17th October 2013

Anything significant about them?... No?

Well - let me inform you. 7th June 2013 Ivan Gazidis and his we have huge financial firepower story. 9th June fresh off the back of his rousing statement we have the fans Q & A session based mainly on his positive spin story a few days earlier.

27th September a rare an uncoincidentally timed story from no other than Stan Kroenke our "majority shareholder" if you live in the UK or, our "owner" if you live in the US.

So, for the last date 17th October? 11.30am to be precise... any thoughts? OK - well it's our AGM date, and after a less than inspiring performance in the last 2 AGM's it appears Kroenke has learned to play the game. Gazidis style. "Get a decent story out in the weeks running up to the AGM Stan, they'll think you know what you're on about, and go easy on you in the AGM". Sadly we're not falling for that one here at the BSM.

We are all too aware of the spin that comes out of that club. OK - we signed 1 world class player, and what a player we hope he turns out to be. But we let 20 odd players leave? Surely that's left us threadbare as a squad? 

I'm not going to dwell on the negative as we've had a great start. Ozil being attributed with laying on the goals but we were doing well without him so he can only help our cause this season. I'm loving the football we're playing. I'm loving being proved wrong about Ramsey, I'm loving being proved wrong about Giroud. I'm loving Matthew Flamini, and I would gladly pay the fine he probably got for that yellow vs Spurs. At 29 he's in his peak. He can share that "play breaker" role with Arteta all day long for me. 

A tough away game this weekend, but in the run of form we're in, why should we fear? Keep those heads held high, play for the crest on that shirt (although the cannon is arseways) and keep us proud gunners fans smiling. 

Come On You Gunners...   

Three months we had this summer. Three months and around £80 million to secure the services of a top-class striker. Make a statement a year after losing Robin van Persie. Don't lump ALL the pressure on Giroud. We'd cleared a load of dead wood which was great, but there was just the cling-on Bendtner to offload to one of the hundreds and hundreds of clubs who were after him. I mean, his dad had been saying for two years that plenty were after signing his son, so surely he was finally off?

Yet here we are approaching October with one recognised striker in Giroud, a couple of fringe player kids in the squad, and.... Nicklas Bendtner. Why is he still here?!

Before I go any further, don't assume I'm saying I hate Bendtner and have never rated him. Quite the opposite; a few years ago I personally thought he was a better striker than Chamakh and could offer more for the team; I wanted him taking Chamakh's place but for some reason, Arsene Wenger saw fit to play him on the wing. A baffling decision, totally Loopyville in my opinion. Unfortunately following this spell as a winger, Bendtner fell out of favour, out of the team, out of the squad, and out of the club, out of the country at one point... basically shipped out on loan to anyone who'd have him.

Since then we've seen talk of the player leaving us for this team and that... only for the deals to disappear and it then falls back to the fans on social media banging on about him being a "greedy bastard unwilling to drop his wage demands". Let's not forget, our manager put this player on weekly wages of £52,000 and signed him to a long-term contract. So ultimately whose fault is it that the player won't accept lower wages elsewhere? Ours. The buck stops with Arsenal, not the player.

So when the transfer window slammed shut and Jim White had calmed himself down in the Sky Sports studio, when the dust had settled... Nicklas Bendtner. There he was, still an Arsenal player. Okay, I thought - poor transfer window overall (aside from the one proper signing we made) and a balsa wood squad liable to break at any moment, but we'd have to make do. Our own fault we'd chosen to dawdle and keep dough in the bank, but Bendtner would just be a cling-on for another few months before we could try and get rid once more. Surely he wouldn't come anywhere near the team.

This is why I assumed that...

"I will never go back to Arsenal. If I can have it my way, I will never play for them again"

Who said those words? Nicklas Bendtner.

For me, any player who says something like that is no longer an Arsenal man. Yes he may be contracted to us but you can no longer play him. Doing so shows weakness and gives the player the upper hand. The player can say and do as he pleases.

"But we've got nobody else" ... "Who should we play there?" ... "Trust the manager's decisions" ... "Our options are limited" ... those are the kinds of arguments I've seen on Twitter. I'll ask again, whose fault is it that our options are virtually zilch?

Once more we have warring factions of fans. Those who can't stand the player and want him gone, and those who are willing to forgive and forget because it's a route our manager has chosen to pursue. I've even seen some going along with the manager's spin that Bendtner can come good and do a great job for us! And right here is where we've got the BIB (Bendtner Is Best) gang against the BOB (Bendtner Out Brigade).

Me? I want rid of Bendtner. I don't want him anywhere near our team ever again after what he said. Call me BOB.

Wow, that was one long and ridiculously stressful summer transfer window. Why did we think it would be any different?!

I won't go too much into what happened over the course of the last few months as it's been done to death by everyone, everywhere. The long and short of it is that we had 2,519 hours to spend some of the money that's been sitting nicely in the bank... and it took us 2,518.5 hours to do it.

Mesut Özil's  signing is big. It's mega. It's absolutely fucking HUGE in the grand scheme of things. In my lifetime and during my time as an Arsenal fan, I can recall three transfers that have got me excited; Charlie Nicholas (my boyhood hero), Dennis Bergkamp, and Sol Campbell. They were three major transfers that shook the football world and sent Arsenal fans wild. Özil makes it number four. He's a supreme talent and someone I've rated for a few years after seeing him ripping teams apart for Germany. I would have loved us to get him before Real Madrid but hey, we've got him now and as stats stack up, this bloke is on a different planet. Take the assist figures of any Barcelona player and this little genuis wipes the floor with them.

While Özil's arrival was a big statement of intent on one hand, the other hand is a bit like a seasoned wicket keeper's with joints out of place and mangled digits very apparent. We had (according to the AST) around £100m available to invest in the squad at the start of the summer and during the close season we brought in around £10m from outgoing player sales, then cleared a LOT of dead wood which freed up around £500,000 a week in wages. Even Stevie Wonder could see that our squad is lacking in a few key areas but despite all the money available to bolster our team we spent a net of around £35m. That leaves around £65m sitting there, unspent.

We're a handful of games into the new season and already have injury issues with key players. Podolski is gone for around 3 months, Arteta is another medium to long term absentee, and who knows when Vermaelen will be back? As it now stands we're relying on Olivier Giroud to stay fit up front as he's our only recognised striker. Yes Theo could be slotted in there but is he a "top, top top quality" centre forward? No, he's not. At centre back, if anything happens to Mertesacker or Koscielny, we'll have to rely on a right back providing cover. That baffles me given the riches we had available to invest, but at least it gives Uncle Ivan the chance to secure the hat trick of "powder dry" comments.

Oh yeah, there were some other players who came in. Sanogo fills me with no excitement whatsoever; the phrase 'injury prone and plucked from Ligue 2' doesn't say ambition to me, it says gamble. Flamini I've never been keen on re-signing mainly because I don't like backward steps (and Wenger never used to either) but also because he walked out on us five years ago. But he was freeeeeee!!!!!! We like freebies. Viviano I can't see as top quality goalkeeper backup, just another Fabianski or Mannone type. Some reviews I've read about him don't really fill me with confidence, and with keepers like Cesar and Begovic attainable over the last few months, someone who was turned down by Fiorentina warrants no more than a "meh" from me.

So overall, it's been a strange transfer window. Last night I asked my followers on Twitter if they'd consider it a successful window if Özil was the only player to come in (ignoring Viviano) and the response was a landslide. No, not good enough. The opinion was that we also needed a top quality striker and further cover at centre back. This morning I saw Tim Payton ask his followers to score our transfer window out of 10, and the result was around 6.

Last night there was a lot of smugness among some Gooners, and the old "Arsene Knows" line I spotted on more than a few occasions. Off the back of one signing. To that I'd say woah, woah, hold on there! One swällow doesn't make a summer so as major as Özil's signing was for this club, we still have a whole load of work to do with this squad, and we need to keep our fingers crossed big time on the injury front. Added to that, the comments I received about "We can spend in January" smack of desperation and are very much akin to Uncle Ivan's powder remarks. It's well known that Wenger doesn't like the January window; he sees no value in it as buyers are desperate... so surely if he really thought we were in need (and with shitloads in the bank) he would have spent this summer, wouldn't he?

Anyway, we are where we are. It's been yet another nightmare summer for Gooners seeing failed attempts at Higuain and Suarez, then Cabaye... ending with us having to wait until the final hour of the transfer window to do anything of note. There's nothing can be done now, so we have to plough on and hope we're up there challenging come January. Who knows, with both Manchester clubs starting the season in topsy turvy form, we could be in with a shout assuming we can keep people fit and keep a good run going.

So if you go to Arsenal games, get behind the team. Ignore all the WOB vs AKB stuff in the ground; don't get involved. Just put all your energy into cheering on the 11 players on that pitch wearing the cannon on their chest. 

Up The Gunners

'Highbury Harold'