Leper's Messiahs

The summer generally is a long ordeal for a football fan. After a season of having football on tap seemingly 24/7, the supporter is thrust into a three month wilderness with naught but transfer speculation to sustain them. This summer though has been a little bit different, firstly the Euros were sufficiently diverting to keep palates satiated for a little while even if the Arsenal players at the tournament seemed to be competing with each other for the "who can bollocks this up the most" award.(won hands down by Wojciech Szczesny for his utterly unredeemable performance in Poland's first game, honourable mention to Tomas Rosicky for banjaxing himself sufficiently to throw his participation in the early games of the coming season into considerable doubt). And now the Olympics here in Britain have come along with their strange ability to make fans of all sports take keen interest in the nuances of things such as archery, slalom canoeing and synchronised belching.

Not only that of course, but we even get a little bit of football and it has been surprisingly entertaining if you've watched a bit of it. For my own part, I'm surprised to find that my normal difficulty in getting behind England is not translating to the Great Britain men's team despite the fact that it contains Craig Bellamy. I can only assume that my enthusiasm to see Britain do well in our own Olympics has granted me the ability to overlook such an extreme example of why our American cousins inaugurated the word "douchebag" as an insult in the midst of our own team. A mention too for the women's team who are also blazing a trail toward the latter stages, both sides look like good medal prospects and the ladies this tournament could be an opportunity to raise the profile of the game in this country.

All of this has meant that transfer speculation this summer has been the side dish that it always should be rather than than the breakfast, lunch and dinner that it normally is at this time of year for football fans. Additionally and unusually for Arsenal fans, it has been pretty palatable all told. Granted, the saga of Robin Van Persie's needlessly acrimonious departure from the club rumbles on to pretty much universal irritation but I think even if Van Persie were staying it was important that Arsenal address the question of sourcing goals from elsewhere in the squad for the coming season. With about a fortnight and a half to go until the big kick off, Arsenal's summer work has been to sign two international-calibre strikers in Lukas Podolski and Olivier Giroud and now it looks highly likely that signing number three will be Spain's winger/forward Santi Cazorla.

Now, traditional conduct for football supporters in time of impending transfers is to pass themselves off as experts on the player in question regardless of their real level of knowledge of the man of the moment, especially if they are high profile as to be a regular fixture in a major international side but I'm going to break the mould a bit here and admit that I don't really know that much about Cazorla. I can show you a reasonably exciting YouTube montage of him with some annoying backing music and I can tell you that Wikipedia reports a decent return of nine goals for his current club Malaga last season with a fair number of assists in the mix as well but that's about as far as my knowledge goes. Nonetheless, he has the credentials to bring more goals into Arsenal's team and that's what interests me. Sometimes the question of what a team needs to improve can be complex and multi-faceted. For Arsenal this coming season I think it boils down to one major concern of "must score more goals" with possibly a side order of "stop conceding in such stupid circumstances." (score more goals and let in less, mindblowing idea is it not?)

The addition of Cazorla, when and if it happens (it looks more likely to be a case of when rather than if, with suggestions the player may have a medical with Arsenal as early as today) will make it three considerable signings for Arsenal this summer and I do think we might get one more before the end of the transfer window at the end of the month. There are a couple of rumours that look like they might be goers. Yann M'Vila has been the ongoing one this year, the France midfielder has been strongly linked with Arsenal since before the Euros and whilst the lack of recent news might be a sign of cooled interest from Arsenal, I wouldn't rule out the idea that this is one deal that the club is comfortable with taking down to the wire. If not, there's been creditable talk of our interest in taking Real Madrid midfielder Nuri Sahin on loan. The fact that he and Madrid manager Jose Mourinho don't seem to get on makes him immediately endearing of course. So, even with our third major signing of the summer imminent, I'm pretty hopeful that we can look forward to at least one more.

That will wrap things up for now, but I'm pretty sure you'll be hearing from me again before the big kick off. For now though, it's back to the synchronised belching.