Entrance music please...

The Arsenal are back.  Well they will be on Saturday anyway. 

I always hate the 'interlull' but like most Gooners, I would imagine, have hated this one a bit more then the others. 

Who doesn't want the team to come straight back out and right the wrongs of that disastrous Sunday - and it was disastrous - but maybe we've done something better.

This Summer Arsenal have spent approximately £50,000,000 on signings and brought in (and I'm only mentioning players here that can be of use now to the first team):

Gervinho
Alex Oxlaide-Chamberlain
Mikel Arteta
Yossi Benayoun
Per Mertesacker
Andre Santos
Park Chu-Young
Carl Jenkinson

That's eight players that we could use right now, that's over two thirds of a team.   Arsenal have strenghened the depth of the squad.  We occasionally purchase a new player but normally it's one maybe two and they go into the first team straight away. 

This time we have cover for a number of players.  I also feel that Frimpong is like a new signing as is Ryo but I don't mention either in the list above because they were Arsenal players some time ago. 

I think we've already seen what Gervinho can bring to the team.  He has genuine attacking flair and like Henry looks like he wants to float here, float there and just be everywhere.  He could be a beast for us.

Alex has shown what he can do for the England under 21's in the last week.  3 assists and 1 penalty earned in one game alone.  That's impressive.  Will be interesting to see if he can bring that same flair to the senior Arsenal squad. 

I think most of us know Mikel Arteta from his time at Everton but he's always been one of their best players and is happy to play anywhere in the midfield, though you would think his preferance would be to link with the Attack as much as he can.

Yossi was great for Liverpool but through injury has hardly featured for Chelsea and in a double whammy we signed him without a proper medical.  Now who's gonna be laughing at that?  Arsenal or Chelsea?  Time will tell but if he finds that Liverpool form he will add lots of experience and quality to our attack.

It's a shame this week that Per Mertesacker has been singled out a bit for a dodgy display for Germany but I have been informed by several very cool tweeps that there was a lot of people missing in that game and we shouldn't make any impressions on him based on that.  I'm not going to anyway, 75+ caps for Germany, played in World Cups, European Championships and more, he will add something to Arsenal it's just a shame Tommy Vermaelen has an injury and operation as Per arrives.  We'll have to wait a bit for that pairing but I imagine that will be our new back two central defenders once he returns.  Just a shame Tommy can't show him the ropes.  Please don't let SebSquil be the one to teach him, I'd rather it was the Emirates Groundsmen. 

I don't know a lot about Santos but he has 22 caps for Brazil and is heading towards his late 20's so I can only hope he brings some Brazillian flair and trickery and can be the one to slowly nurture Gibbs.

Park had a stormer for South Korea in the last week, scored 4 goals, I'm hoping to see much more of that.  I've watched the goals and he can finish.  This guy knows where the net is and fires with deadly accuracy.  Whether he will start straight away I can't answer but with Robin van Persie and Park both scoring 8 or so goals between them in the last week internationally surely the signs are good.

Which brings me to Carl Jenkinson and I feel a bit sorry for Carl.  He's going to be brilliant in the future you can see he has the work ethics on the pitch to succed but right now he's gone from conference to premier league to champions league in a matter of weeks.  He's got a steep learning curve in front of him but the bonus is this...  he gets to learn for Bacary and how often do you have a bad word for him? 

So how will we line up against Swansea?  I can only guess but I can't imagine that he's gonna change formation/tactics too much straight away.  We could play a nice 4-4-2 right now with the added depth we now have.  It's a shame Wilshere is out at the moment but Ramsey was very good for Wales this week and deserving of his man of the match award against England.  I found myself cheering him on more then once and I'm an England supporter. 

So I'd go with something like this:
Szczesny
Sagna, Mertesacker, Koscielny, Santos
Ramsey, Arteta, Rosicky
Walcott, van Persie, (either Park or Arshavin)

This line up will dramatically change when Wilshere, Gervinho, Song, Frimpong, Vermaelen et al return but a great chance to see several new signings with maybe a sub appearence from Benayoun and hopefully Ryo as I really wanna see this kid play - he is highly rated.