Morning all.

So, £173 million sat in the Arsenal bank before the summer transfer window, now there is £120 million according to reports and that’s not including the £30 million set aside to pay the mortgage. Disgraceful!

I’m not a huge fan of all these ex players who instead of getting on the football training ground and using all their so called knowledge of the game to help others, prefer to sit in the warm and cosy indoors and rip shreds out of the way teams play, but for once, Jamie Carragher has a point..

Whilst securing another handsome pay cheque writing for the Daily Mail, he has torn into Arsenal, well Arsene Wenger really:

For a decade now, Arsenal have been unable to contain opponents who go with a fast, physical gameplan. Everyone knows how to play against them.

When I watch Arsenal now, I get frustrated. They play the same way wherever they go — with their full-backs pushed up high and wide — and get caught on the counter-attack. They are the away team! They should be doing that to the home team when they go travelling.

Why don’t they learn? It is unforgivable that this keeps happening.

The penny needs to drop. When I played in Europe with Liverpool, the first objective was always to get a clean sheet: make yourself difficult to break down then, if a chance arose, pounce and pick up whatever you could. If the home fans didn’t like it, so what?

Yet Arsenal feel they can beat anyone. Anywhere. Playing their own game. It’s naive. The only team able to get away with such a philosophy in recent years was Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona — one of the greatest sides of all time — but even he wasn’t afraid to concoct different tactical plans.

With Arsenal, though, it seems there is one way only and you can’t help but wonder where it is all heading. Wenger is a legendary figure in our game; his achievements will stand the test of time but you sometimes question whether there is a negative to him being so secure in his job.

Of course it’s no coincidence that a decade ago, the Invinsible side started to fall away with players leaving one by one and it wasn’t long before we’d gone from being a big strong team at the back and in midfield, a team with pace and flair up front in abundance, to a side full of midgets, no midfield anchormen and our ruthless build up play and finishing has long disappeared.

It’s a sad situation to be in for all of us having gone from being great to mediocre over the last few years and I struggle to understand how a manager who really hit the ground running in the Premier League has sat back and allowed the change to take place in front of his very own eyes.

We all know when we moved, the purse strings were tight but I strongly suspect that not all players with power, pace and who stood over 6′ tall would have stretched the finances any more than signing yet another under-tall midfield midget would! And had he signed those kind of players, his ancient tactics might still work on the pitch.

He didn’t, he still hasn’t and I doubt things will change and perhaps that’s where Carragher’s view is right. His job being so secure is having a negative impact on the team and most importantly, the club and it’s fans.

So, as we head off to play an in form Aston Villa side, we can only hope Arsene Wenger learned from the performance and his kamikaze tactics on Tuesday and tries something a little different. Maybe he’ll try a bit of defending, send the team out to defend as if their lives depend on it and then perhaps try and catch Villa napping on a couple of occasions. However, new assistant coach Roy Keane will make sure that doesn’t happen and Villa have conceded just one goal so far this season. Steve Bould should be doing the same at Arsenal, but somehow I suspect his defensive knowledge and advice gets brushed aside….

After all, the best way to defend is by attacking isn’t it??!!

COYRRG’s  – do yourselves and our club proud…..

That’s it for another day…..