Arsenal.com has revealed that we have agreed terms with Manchester City for Samir Nasri. I have to say, I’m relieved. At the moment, everything seems negative about Arsenal. We have lost two of our best players, our rivals seem to be stronger, we can’t score, we can’t win, we can’t get through a game without a red card, and we aren’t buying anyone (yet). So why am I relieved?

Quite frankly, to let a player like Nasri leave on a free is ridiculous. The fact of the matter is that if City are interested, they will pay over the odds for a player of his quality. It is likely that a figure of around £25 million has been agreed. Financially, it would be a massive error to keep Nasri at the club for another year and then let him leave on a free. Essentially, we would be chucking away that £25m plus his wages. However, it is only a relief, IF we buy. We have now lost two of our best players. Earlier this summer, Wenger himself said that you cannot call yourself a big club if you sell two of your best players.

Let me remind you what he said:

“Imagine the worst situation – we lose Fabregas and Nasri – you cannot convince people you are ambitious after that.

“And even if you lose Nasri, to find the same quality player, you have to spend again the same amount of money. Because you cannot say, you lose the player and you do not replace him.”

Let’s quickly just address this point… to spend the same amount of money would be to spend £25 million on a player… Now, I do hope that Wenger will keep to his word here. It is essential that we buy, and not just rely on Gervinho.

“I believe for us it is important the message we give out. For example, you talk 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 away from you.

“We worked very hard with these players for years to develop them, and now it’s a time for us to keep them together.”

So apparently we are no longer a big club. Wenger has really shot himself in the foot here. Unless he replaces them with a few BIG players, he will look like an idiot. Frankly, if we don’t buy someone, I’m not even sure we need to worry about our trophy drought… we need to worry about not getting into the top four.

With the addition of Nasri, Manchester City now look formidable… David Silva, Aguero, Balotelli, Yaya Toure, Nasri, Joe Hart, Clichy… (the list goes on). But what do Arsenal look like since last season?

In my opinion, at the tail end of last season we lacked something. A certain drive to get us over the finish line and actually clinch a trophy. I thought we needed to buy two players to bolster the squad. This was, of course, assuming we were not going to lose the likes of Fabregas and Nasri. We have lost Denilson and Eboue and brought in Campbell and Miyaichi. I’m happy with that. We have got rid of some of the dead weight and replaced it with potential. We have brought in Jenkinson and gotten rid of Clichy. This is a slight downgrade, but not the end of the world. The same goes for replacing Nasri with Gervinho. Then we get to Cesc. Yes, we have brought in Chamberlain, but let’s not kid ourselves, he’s no Cesc Fabregas (at least not yet…). We need to buy at least two quality players such as Cahill/Parker/Gourcuff if we are going to challenge for anything this season, let alone get into the top 4.

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