RvP set to re-sign

By: Martin | June 23rd, 2009

Sorry it’s been a few days. Frankly, there’s just not much going on in the Arsenal world that really needs much in the way of commenting on.

But it looks like some big news on the horizon, as The Telegraph is reporting that Robbie is getting very close to signing a new deal with the club. This is unequivocally good news, and hopefully the source is correct.

In other news, Wenger has come out and said that he doesn’t want to sell this summer. The gaffer said:

We lost Hleb and Flamini last summer and we have had to rebuild. But we have done that now and the future looks bright. We don’t want to have to rebuild again, so I want to keep all the players together for next season. I don’t want to lose anyone. I want to add to the squad and have identified one or two targets. But identifying players and buying them are two different things. Ideally I would like to bring everybody in before we start back in pre-season training in July. I don’t want to leave it until the end of August.

I think most of us thought that Arsene’s strategy was going to be to try to get rid of some of the guys who had caused disruption or played poorly down the stretch last season (Gallas, Adebayor), and replace them with new blood. But, if we take Wenger at his word here, he wants to keep last year’s team in place and just bring in some depth. Because frankly, with Arsenal’s limited budget, we can’t afford to splash out enough cash to bring in a real impact superstar player without first raising money by selling one of our regulars. Given that we’ve already spent £10 million on Vermaelen, I can’t see Wenger spending any more than another £10-15 million unless he raises the money himself through sales.

To be honest, I’m not sure what to make of this. We finished 4th last season, and we were not even particularly close to finishing 3rd. We didn’t win any trophies for the fourth consecutive season. Logic would dictate that drastic changes need to be made to win anything. Instead, Wenger takes the complete opposite approach, and doesn’t want any turnover at all. It’s no revelation to say that Wenger’s dominant trait over the last couple of seasons has been his steadfast loyalty to this group of young players. Whether that will turn out to be a great strength or great weakness will be determined by how the club fares over the next 2-3 seasons. But looking at a core group of players who have been together for several seasons now, have been consistent only in how disappointing they have been, and haven’t won anything, and insisting on keeping them together is undoubtedly a gamble, it only remains to be seen if it will pay off or not.

In other news, Wenger has backed Nicklas Bendtner as being an important member of the team. Which isn’t all that surprising, really. But regular readers will know I’m a fan of the Great Dane, and I think next season is going to be his coming out party.

Rumors continue to swirl around us making an approach for a physical holding midfielder. The most common names are Fiorentina’s Felipe Melo and Udinese’s Gokhan Inler. Another midfielder wouldn’t hurt, but frankly, I thought Alex Song was very effective towards the end of the season, and I really do think he could be the man to be Cesc’s regular midfield partner this season. And with Denilson getting a year of experience under his belt, and Diaby apparently working out and trying to get fitter and stronger this summer, our midfield could actually be in decent shape.

At any rate, I will post again as soon as anything actually happens, and here’s hoping for a good performance by the United States tomorrow.