Two posts in two days? Yea Gods, it is enough to get some paranormal investigations going.

Arsene has had a ‘Shining‘ moment, chopping through the door of young Master Wilshere’s door with an axe and thrusting a contract through, promising only to leave if Jack signed it, which he duly did. Wenger calmed down and said:

We are delighted that Jack has signed a professional contract with us. Jack is a player with great potential, with an ability to find the final ball and also score goals.  Jack is a passionate and committed young player, he is not afraid of tackles and I am convinced he will have tremendous penetrative power in a few years.  We have already seen Jack’s qualities in both his first team performances and in training on a regular basis, and we look forward to Jack being an important part of our first team for years to come

The way things are developing in this transfer window, it may be the only signing that Arsene makes! Wilshere though is beginning to build a lot of hype around himself – unintentionally – and that is the aspect of his career that Wenger will have to manage carefully. The history of football is littered with prodigies who do not live up to their promise.

Arsene’s views on whom he will sign, if anyone, before the end of the month have attracted a fair amount of criticism and bemusement. Andrei Arshavin is widely presumed to have been the target of his comments that being cup-tied for the Champions League is not a dealbreaker. Equally though such comments could be directed at Yaya Toure, although in both cases, the dealbreaker will be the fees demanded by their current employers, especially if the reported £24m bid from Manchester City proves to have a shred of truth in it. They might well be consigned to the waste bin of Arsene’s ex-transfer targets along with Gorkan Inler. There are only two more left before everyone has to admit that they have no idea who Wenger is looking at.

And that is the crux of the matter in sifting through the stories that emerge concerning this or that player’s future. Where is the truth? Often you find yourself reading the bilge and questioning who has planted the story on whatever site or paper’s back page – is it a bored journo or the agent or a media hungry President or any combination of the three? It makes this a turgid time of year because too much is presented as the truth with the ubiquitous sources claiming to represent the player’s point of view when in fact it is nothing of the sort.

Theo Walcott is a prime example. Over the weekend, there were mutterings that lingered into this week surmising that he will leave for £350k unless a new contract is offered. This will no doubt filter back in one of two ways to supporters views. Firstly, the club is short of cash and cannot match Walcott’s wage demands, fuelling the ‘belief’ that the club is going to go under as ticket and marketing revenues dwindle because no silverware has been won. The second is that Wenger is off in the summer to Madrid or wherever the grass is reportedly greener. And so it goes until the point is reached where nobody knows their Arsenals from their elbows.

The FA Cup win brought an honest assessment from Wenger of the current situation that the squad is in:

I feel that we are not, at the moment, in a position where we can choose the competitions. If that happens we will do it later but at the moment I felt it was just important the team to go through.  I feel that slowly the team is coming up again and growing in confidence and I didn’t want to cut that confidence…We couldn’t afford to slip up here because we have had enough negative publicity…If you go through to the Champions League Quarter Finals and then to the Semi Finals, then you have a choice to make between the FA Cup and the Champions League. But, at the moment, we are not in that position

It is an honest assessment but reading between the lines of the paraphrased quote would be a hacks ‘wet dream‘. Not having seen the papers this morning, it could quite easily have been turned on its’ head to ‘Arsene admits that Arsenal are not good enough to win Premier League / Anything‘. Whoops, The Times has already done that one.

The danger with prioritising is that you invariably end up with egg on your face, unless the position held in one competition is uniquely strong. Whilst I do not disagree with his policy in the Carling Cup, I suspect that this time around the FA Cup might well receive a higher profile than in previous years simply because the Premier League title is nought but a vague dream at the moment. That said, a win combined with some inconsistency from those above would change the situation. However, there is too much reliance on four other teams to drop points on a regular basis for firm belief in a title challenge to emerge. It can be done but, to put it mildly, it will be tough.

’til Tomorrow.