Arsene has ‘won’ one battle to keep a supposedly unsettled ‘starlet’ (as the media like to call Arsenal players) with the re-iteration of Cesc’s determination to remain at the club,

My future belongs to Arsenal - it is the truth. It is always the same with my situation, always putting my name in another team. I have always said I want to play for Arsenal - it is the best team for me to be at

Now I know that the quote is probably from the weekend but it is a nice, upbeat way to start today.

The manager though fought back yesterday against some of the comments that have been flying around recently. He accepted that mistakes will be pounced upon and he must bear the brunt of the criticism,

You know you will be criticised for that. But you don’t need to accept everything. People say you make mistakes, well that is professional. When people say you don’t know what you are doing, that is a little bit disrespectful

Wenger has had criticism consistently throughout his Arsenal reign – too foreign, too dirty, too naïve amongst others – but it is only right that he is pulled up on mistakes. The trouble is that in doing so, very little of the criticism is constructive and is wide of the mark without a positive solution. Those who demand more Englishmen in the side overlook one major fault in their argument. The ones who can improve the squad are tied into long contracts that are overly expensive to buy out. Names regularly bandied around are Richards, Young and Agbonlahor; all have signed new deals in the recent past so where is the money coming from to buy them?

Arsene moved to lower expectations on that front,

There is money there but not as much as I read in the newspapers, because that is not true. However, with my financial package, the first thing I have to make sure is we keep the players we have at the moment. That is what people forget. The new rules put you under threat to lose your best players because after three years any player can walk out and after two any player over 28 [can leave]. So the rules and the structure of the wages bill is always under threat. It is not as simple as it looks when you read there is so much money available to buy players - that transfer budget also includes the improvement of the wages

The common mistake is to believe that the cash on the balance sheet is the transfer budget or indeed has much to do with it at all. It does not. Some of the money might be used for paying the initial tranche of a fee but the cash is there to fund operations at the club, which is why there is little point in saying that the two are the same or linked. This is not helped when Keith Edelman says that the money is there for him to spend because in the media world one and one is equal to whatever number they so desire.

Arsene is not going to make changes just for the sake of it, nor to pacify elements who believe that the club is their own fantasy football team,

Who we will buy in the summer is not decided yet, but I have players in mind. We have lists which we keep up to date, player number one, two, three or four in the positions were we look for - and you go of course for the number one. I believe at some stage you need to strengthen the team, but changing the team means kick some players out and replacing them. That is not the feeling I have. I feel this team has been absolutely tremendous

That is the crux. If last close season proved anything, the media fantasise about so many players, believe so much they read on the interwebthingy that you simply cannot believe anything you see until it is confirmed by the club. One look at any news aggregator at any point in the day will show at least five new players being linked with the club or their current employers denying any approach has been received.

The games are often as a result of an agent trying to flush out interest for a new deal or to extort money from a different potential employer; it is incredibly frustrating and tiresome to read the different headlines. It would be nice if there was a moratorium on speculation so that only genuine stories were printed but it will never happen so one can only ignore it all.

Of course, the entire conversation surrounding signings would be much clearer were the situation of the current squad known. Flamini is mulling over his reported offers and deciding on his future. Peter Hill-Wood did not seem to believe the player will stay,

We have made what we think is a pretty generous offer and we are waiting to hear whether he will accept or not. You just don’t know nowadays. You think players have a pretty good life but, somehow, someone persuades them the grass might be greener somewhere else. So I don’t know the answer, all I know is we think we have pushed the boat out

The problem the club has with this situation is three-fold. Firstly, the player obviously does not feel secure in his position and it is hard to blame him on that front. He has been here four seasons and only one of them has let him play in his favoured role. There is an element of him cutting off his nose to spite his face because he could have adapted to the left back role post-Paris but reportedly refused to do so. Secondly, the player is supposedly being offered more basic salary.

Lastly, and still money related, if he joins someone on a free, he will get a tasty signing-on fee. Arsenal cannot compete with the latter without making him the highest paid player at the club (or at the very least close to it) and to be honest, even though he has performed admirably this season, is such a financial commitment warranted especially if it means losing out on a player who is needed in another position?

There is the counter argument which rightly states that if he leaves, the transfer pot diminishes by having to buy a replacement for him. However, his salary savings increase the pot to not quite the status quo but certainly level of money available is not as deeper down to the bottom of the pot as it might have otherwise been.

The comparison to the manner of Edu’s departure is true. Both were regulars for the first team in the season as their contracts ran down; neither is linked with a club that is likely to guarantee them success – OK, Bayern have a high chance of it – yet it seems that money is talking louder than anything at the moment. Welcome to the wonderful world of the modern age of football.

‘til Tomorrow.