MY apologies for branding those who do not back Arsene as “morons” in my previous post. It was childish name calling borne out of frustration.

But I can’t for a second back your arguments though.

Why? Because were you Man United fans you’d have got rid of Fergie three years ago.

Some perspective is needed.

GOODPLAYA.COM readers have kindly furnished me with two new Goodplaya quotes.

The first is Arsene saying of Aaron Ramsey:

“I believe he has the ingredients to become a good player”

and the second:

“I find Barry a good player. the problems with players who are 27, 28, is that you pay big money but you get nothing back, no resale.”

They, like the 42 other Goodplayas, will continue to rotate constantly to the top right of your screen. Just press refresh to get a new one.

The link in the title is tortuous but nonetheless apt.

Long term readers may remember how I never bought into the pessimism spouted by so many a year ago. They continue to spout it, blindly forgetting how wrong they (that’s both the TV pundits and some readers of blogs such as this) got it.

What really annoys me now is that with great reluctance, I share some of their pessimism. And the most annoying thing is it should be easily curable.

By my reading, we have a perfectly decent (if admittedly not world class) goalkeeper. We have brilliant full-backs (Sagna and Clichy) and more than acceptable cover at full-backs (Silvestre and Comrade Eboue).

In defence, I’d personally like to see a big beanpole, particularly as Arsene appears to be going cold on Senderos and Djourou. But Gallas and Kolo are not terrible, Song is improving and we have, in fairness, signed the slightly lankier Mikael Silvestre.

On the wings we have a good mix - Nasri, Rosicky (injury prone, but hey, didn’t Clichy used to be), Walcott and that man Comrade again all bring something different. RVP can play there too and even young Wilshere could be thrown on in a tight situation to try and make something happen.

Up front you have Adebayor, RVP, Eduardo and Bendtner, not to mention Vela too and Theo in theory as well. On paper they look good and their goalscoring return last year affirms as much.

So you will notice I have left out central midfield. At the risk of sounding like a very broken record, we have:

-Cesc
-A 20 year-old who barely played last season and is getting a chance now not because Arsene sees anything great in him, but because we have no other options.
-A lanky Frenchman who, given our complete refusal to play him centrally last season, will get a chance there when he returns from injury again out of necessity rather than choice.
-Comrade.
-A 17 year old who by Arsene’s own admission is not yet ready for the first team.
-A bloke called Bischoff, who has previously been injury prone, was injured when we signed him, is still injured and shows little sign of stopping being injured.

Even Arsene has never claimed the latter two have been bought as replacements for Flamini, Diarra or Gilberto.

And that is what is making my blood boil. If we had the players and they were simply not performing then fine, that happens, that is football.

But when you go into a season so obviously understaffed in such a crucial position, it’s just inexcusable. And it’s not like this has suddenly been dropped on us.

I am part of the school of thought that says we came incredibly close last season, have a largely excellent squad and can do great things this season.

But we simply have to replace three players who, if we’re honest, were all very good but hardly irreplaceable.

Of course Arsene Wenger should not go. The people saying he should are morons frankly, because forgetting all the trophies and the doubles and everything that went before last season, the job he did last year was a fantastic one and no club in their right mind would sack a manager after that.

Thus far, he is guilty of not buying a couple of players and losing one solitary game. There are still six days left of the transfer window and 36 games left of the season, so get a grip.

But he could do with being more of a football manager and less of a cost cutting chief exec.

THAT was sobering, wasn’t it?

We may as well start with the goal. While I don’t buy into the forensic psychoanalysis that seems to accompany every William Gallas cock-up, there can be no excuses for his feeble attempt to track Brede Hangeland.

You’ll see more commitment in a Vegas wedding chapel and it was galling to concede the kind of cheap, crappy aerial goal that has become our speciality under the Gallas and Kolo partnership. There was something fitting about us being undone by the type of beanpole player we could really do with ourselves.

We may as well move onto the midfield. Now, I don’t for a second buy into the argument that we have to spend incredible sums on dozens of new players. For me, football is more about getting the best out of the players you do have. Look at last season’s improvement. It was based more on less on exactly that.

But you do have to at least have enough players. We don’t.

The bare facts are these: we have lost three midfielders in 2008 and bought none. It’s totally preposterous frankly.

How on earth do we expect to compete? We have one brilliant midfielder, one youngster who hardly played last season and an injury prone guy who we avoided playing in the middle at all costs last season.

Even in the best case scenario where they are all fit and playing well we are still a man short.

So we were left yesterday with Denilson and comrade Eboue. Comrade was the dutiful foot-soldier and as individual is not playing badly. But he is not a central midfielder.

Denilson, like Alex Song in the same fixture two years ago, had a woeful time of it.

Midfields are meant to have bite and teeth and to scare the opposition. Our current one quite patently does not and the number of times we went long, bypassing central midfield, told you everything you needed to know about the confidence the rest of the side have in the men in the middle.

We, essentially, are trying to operate without a central midfield. What a joke.

As I said, Denilson was awful. But he should not be the fall-guy: everyone, right down to the normally excellent Sagna and Clichy, was off their game and frankly I’m not going to do player ratings because it was just all rubbishy.

What frustrates me is that I am not one of the people who thinks we are hopeless. I, unlike many people, remember us coming four points off first last year and after 26 games being five points clear.

83 points was no fluke and we still have some really very, very talented players and nearly an excellent squad.

I say nearly because while we have replaced Alex Hleb properly, we simply haven’t done that in the middle of the park and until we do, we inevitably look very, very short there. And the thing is that with due respect to Flamini, Gilberto and Diarra, none of them are exactly what you’d call irreplaceable.

At the moment it’s a body thing as much as anything and that is highly, highly frustrating.

I suppose there is also the “up front” issue. We’ve managed a solitary league goal this season against two relegation candidates and that is obviously not great. But we should probably wait a little before rushing to judgment on that I guess.

As well as qualifying for the Champions League, what we need now is firstly for Cesc’s return to action to go smoothly, secondly for a midfielder to arrive, third for a beanpole defender to arrive (very unlikely) and finally for people to calm down a little bit.

We were terrible yesterday and I’ve said how our personnel failings contributed to that. But we were also terrible because normally good footballers had a real off day and that can happen.

LAST year it was Lassana Diarra, the year before William Gallas.

Now Mikael Silvestre could be our shock, Frenchie, rival club, near transfer deadline signing of 2008.

The crude maths of it is that he is better than Justin Hoyte. Older, admittedly, but vastly experienced and probably still a better player.

And whereas Hoyte specialised at right-back where we have Comrade Eboue as back-up to Sagna, Silvestre is most comfortable at left and centre-back, where we are arguably more short.

The most intriguing line comes from the Guardian’s man in Manchester who says:

“Another surprise for Arsenal’s fans is that Wenger does not regard the former Internazionale defender merely as a squad player, or as a back-up for Gaël Clichy at left-back, but as a first-choice centre-half alongside William Gallas, primarily as a replacement for Philippe Senderos.”

He is certainly tall enough. Whether he would be that hulking presence many feel we need remains to be seen. And I know he’s a United player, but if you want experienced players with Premiership experience then at some point you’re bound to have thought them a tosser.

Big Sol arrived and thrived (for a while), so I don’t see why Silvestre would be a step too far.

As well as the future of Senderos (who has been linked with leaving at various points this summer), there is also the question of Kolo.

Could this mean we see more of him in midfield, where he started for us in 2002?

I say all this and no doubt the deal, a la Woodgate, will not happen. But we shall see.

Under the neat headline “Samir loving… happened so fast”, yesterday’s Mirror reported Arsene likening Samir Nasri to both Marc Overmars and Robert Pires.

Apropos of absolutely nothing, it occurred to me that our new left winger also resembles a morphed version physically of the two he has been compared to footballistically. Or at least according to the Mirror’s photos he does.

Talking of Bobby Pires, it occurs to me that we never got to say goodbye to him and nor has he been back to Arsenal since. It would be good to see him some time.

What occurs to me this morning is that while we are young, we are not necessarily inexperienced.

Almunia has been at Arsenal four years, Gallas is clearly experienced, Kolo and Clichy are in their seventh and sixth years respectively, Senderos has played in two international tournaments, Sagna is hardly Callow, Cesc has played for four years and in the two summer tournaments, Rosicky is experienced, Eboue has been here a while now, RVP is ditto as Cesc and anyway, you get my point.

Clearly, unless Diaby is going to step up and stay fit, we are in desperate need of a central midfielder.

And clearly, we do not have United or Chelsea’s experience. But I think we do have at least some to call on.