Assets and Targets

Hands trembling, I opened the cheap, mustard-coloured folder and took out the few loose pages.

This was it. I was really about to see Arsenal's January transfer targets - information that I was never meant to see and that no other fan would lay eyes on. Without a moment's hesitation, I hurried across the room and scrambled through my stationery drawer. I took out a pen and notepad, locked my door, and returned to the folder.

I had a few minutes at most. I hastily flicked through the pages. Bureaucratic drivel about club contacts, information from the Premier League about player registration... The shortlist. I laid out the two pages of players' names on the table.

I pressed my pen onto the notepad, and quickly scanned the list. What was Arsene planning? Who was going to fill the void up front? Was he chasing a centre back to replace Senderos? Any back-up in defensive midfield?

My brow dropped.

No Edin Dzeko, no Mario Balotelli, no Brede Hangeland... who were these players?! I didn't recognise any of these names. No time to waste, I decided, and started jotting down the shortlist as quickly as I could. Maybe the big names were on the next page.

A player from Marseille, one from Partizan Belgrade, one from Celta Vigo, one from... Crewe Alexandra? Oh good God, we're signing more youth players. THIS is Arsene's big plan.

My attention was drawn to the bottom of the list. In the centre of the page, in bold, was our maximum expenditure for the window.

£4,200,000.

Absolute joke. I carried on copying down the names. Oh well, at least there's a few English and Irish names in the mix. I kept going and turned to the second page, hoping for the big names. Nope, more obscure French and Eastern European names. Wait...

That can't be right.

Arsene Wenger and a big name? More importantly, an international brand? Arsenal Football Club - in the market for this kind of signing?

That simply doesn't make sense.

...

The Arctic Monkeys?!

Was this some sort of gimmick? A ridiculous publicity stunt that could only backfire?

My heart pounding and my face flushing with fury, I awoke with a start and thanked God it wasn't real. In my post-dream daze, I at least figured out a relevant name for this shameless marketing ploy - the Arsenic Monkeys.

Anyway, the big news today will be the World Cup draw. England can (and therefore will) draw France or Portugal, and the likes of the Ivory Coast and Ghana make the third pot quite tricky. I'm just gutted that the US and North Korea can't be drawn together.

Back to club matters, and the amount of post-Carling Cup vitriol flying around the Internet is just laughable. This is the Carling Cup, where young players show whether they can hack it at a competitive level and where the likes of Cesc Fabregas, Gael Clichy and Robin van Persie have established themselves. Without it, our strategy of signing young players rather than trying in vain to compete for the biggest names with insufficient money (yes, insufficient - we might have money but we cannot afford to spend 25 or 30 million on anyone, let alone offer them a big enough contract to fend off the likes of Real Madrid, Man City and Chelsea) would be utterly pointless.

No team in the world with an average age of 20-22 would be able to win away at Man City, and most would lose by far more than three goals. But our young team has recorded some incredible feats in the last few years. For instance, they beat a pretty strong Liverpool team this season, and a couple of years ago they reached the final and came close against a full-strength Chelsea.

If we had won at Man City, some of the bloggers and fans who have been spouting nonsense over the last couple of days would have been swept along on the tide of euphoria. And when we got knocked out in the semi-finals by Man United or Aston Villa, they would have gone ballistic at Wenger anyway.

You and I both know that putting out a strong team in the Carling Cup would be utterly pointless. We most likely wouldn't win it anyway, especially with the likes of Man City, Aston Villa and Chelsea fielding full-strength line-ups when they need to. We would simply end up with even more injured first-team players, and would damage our chances in other competitions - I doubt we'd get all the way to the Champions League semi-final with a fatigued or injured Fabregas.

The Carling Cup also offers the opportunity for less well-off fans to go to games. At a tenner for the lower tier and twenty quid for the upper, not to mention dropping season-ticket-holder priority, the home games draw a capacity crowd consisting largely of genuine locals who can't afford to spend fifty quid on matches, but who have always supported Arsenal with a passion and have watched every single match by any other means possible.

Enough of that, here's hoping for an interesting World Cup tie, preferably with the undeserving France and the downright lucky Portugal getting lumped with Brazil, Spain or Italy. And here's hoping that at least a few of our first team can get through today's training session without any broken legs.

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