I am not just writing this article because Arsenal have a central midfield crisis on our hands, with injuries and fitness issues making it appear that we could have no Jack Wilshere, Aaron Ramsey, Abou Diaby or Mikel Arteta available for the next two very important games against Galatasaray.
But it does highlight the fact that signing the France international Morgan Schneiderlin from Southampton this summer would have been a very useful piece of transfer business indeed. The 24-year old capped off a great season for the Saints by breaking into the France team and appearing at the World Cup finals and he has started this campaign in even better form.
A combative but also technically gifted player, Schneiderlin seemed to me to be the ideal man to come in and beef up the Gunners heart, but although we were heavily linked with him, it did not happen for some reason even though he made it clear he wanted to move on to a bigger club. I am fairly sure that a good offer and a real attempt to sign him would have made him an Arsenal player now and he seems determined to make Arsene Wenger regret that he’s not.
With a previous season best tally of five goals, the deep lying midfielder already has three so far and that is not really what his game is all about. Excellent stats for passing, tackling and work rate make him a top player to have sitting in front of the back four and if he carries on scoring goals as well, surely he will have proved beyond doubt that Arsenal should have signed him this summer. So how about January?