Great news for Arsenal. Seven players set to fight for two positions?

Morning all.

What a difference a change of manager can make. From not really focusing on the defence for the past few years, it appears that most of this summers signings are all about defensive players. We’ve already signed a keeper and a right-back and now Sokratis Papastathopoulos is on the verge of becoming our third signing and not far behind him seems to be Caglar Soyuncu who Sky Sports report could also become an Arsenal player if the defender gets his way. Interesting really considering the number of central defenders we’ll have in the squad should both the above signings materialise. I make it seven, two Englishman, one German, one Frenchman, a Turk and an young Greek and a more experienced Greek too. Seven central defenders in one squad just isn’t going to work I’d have thought so something has to give surely? Thankfully, that’s not something we’ve got to try and juggle.

How lucky were Argentina last night eh? If only Nigeria had a player who can put the ball in the net, they’d have breezed through that game, walked away as winners and through to the knockout stage. Instead, like Germany, Argentina scraped through, largely thanks to Ever Banega, another player who according to the media, is heading to Arsenal. All tournament so far the midfielder has been left on the bench while Argentina have been poor, yesterday though, his linkup play with Messi particularly was very good. He was behind much of the good stuff on show, not that there was much. Iwobi played a few minutes at the end but for him and his team-mates, his World Cup journey is over.

Today sees the following fixtures take place with other nations are fighting for a place in the knockout stages.

GROUP E
Serbia v Brazil
Switzerland v Costa Rica

GROUP F
South Korea v Germany
Mexico v Sweden

• Mexico need just a point against Sweden to qualify as group winners. They will go through regardless if Germany fail to beat South Korea.
• Sweden are guaranteed to qualify if they better Germany’s result. They will top the group if they beat Mexico and better Germany’s result.
• Germany will qualify if they win by two or more clear goals.
• If both Germany and Sweden draw their games, then the team in the higher-scoring game will finish second. If the matches finish with the same score, then Germany will finish second because they beat Sweden.
• South Korea can qualify if they beat Germany and Sweden lose, and finish with a better goal difference than those two teams.

The crux of that is that Germany could go out and they probably will if they continue to play as poorly as they have done so far in this tournament. Good news if they do though as Ozil will head of for a break before pre-season although the cynics amongst us might be tempted to suggest he doesn’t really need one. Switzerland and Brazil look certain to go through to the next round unless one of them have a disastrous result later.

Tomorrow of course it’s the big game in Group G with England and Belgium fighting it out for top spot. Either way, from what I’ve seen so far, it matters not whether they finish first or second in their group, their opposition in the next round won’t be too difficult.

Finally a bit of great news for Arsenal fans and that’s Marouane Fellaini is set to sign a contract extension with Utd. Phew, I thought for one awful minute he might just be moving down south to North London..