Lack of depth?

Chucking in my two pence in the "we should have signed a striker and defender too" argument.

For a start, here's the list of players we've gotten rid of completely

Jordan Wynter - Free
Elton Monteiro - Free
Craig Eastmond - Free
Martin Angha - Free
Kyle Ebecilio - Free
Sanchez Watt - Released
Denilson - Released
Andrei Arshavin - Released
Conor Henderson - Released
Daniel Boateng - Released
James Shea - Released
Jernade Meade - Released
Josh Rees - Released
Nigel Neita - Released
Philip Roberts - Released
Reice Charles-Cox - Released
Samir Bihmoutinel - Released
Sead Harjovic - Released
Sebastian Squillaci - Released
Zach Fagan - Released
Vito Mannone - £2,000,000
André Santos - Free
Marouane Chamakh - Free
Gervinho - £8,000,000

In addition, the players currently out on loan are

Francis Coquelin
Chuks Aneke
Johan Djourou
Joel Campbell
Ignasi Miquel
Wellington Silva

Out of these players, the only ones who contributed anything at all to our season were Andre Santos, Francis Coquelin, Gervinho and Vito Mannone.

When you look at the players we have replaced them with, (Monreal, Flamini, Özil and Viviano) we look a lot stronger.

I acknowledge it's scary that we are currently an injury to Giroud or one of Koscielny or Mertesacker away from having to play someone out of position, which is a scary thought. It's also a bit of a concern that for the next few weeks we'll have Gnabry and Frimpong on the bench. However, having spent 3 years complaining about the side being full of "deadwood", did we really want to start bloating the squad again having managed to get rid of most of our dross?

Add to this the prospect of our bench if (And I know it's a big "if") everyone's fit.

Fabianski
Jenkinson
Vermaelen
Monreal
Ramsey/Wilshere
Chamberlain
Podolski

That leaves players like Rosicky, Diaby and Viviano out of our squad altogether, we don't even need to worry about Gnabry, Sanogo and Zelalem, some of the most exciting youngsters in the world, being near the team.

It's all very well saying "well we're always going to get injuries!" but is it justifiable to buy, say, Alderweireld, for £8-10m when he's going to be absolutely nowhere near the squad and will be doing the job Squillaci did for us last year 80% of the time? Or, even if he does get in the squad, pushes Jenkinson out completely? Ultimately the only area I think we could really do with a signing is up front, where we tried to sign a player and will probably try again in January.

All in all, and I know I'm going to jinx it horribly here, we need to have a worse injury record than last year for us to not have a stronger team at all times than we had before the window. The signings that have come in are much better than the ones we've lost, players like Rosicky are not thoroughly squad players, and we can expect our young players to improve, just look at Ramsey.

So to those of you happy with Özil but wanting another couple in, I see your point, and Wenger does as well, but when you play the long game and think about the averages, as Wenger will, any signing apart from maybe a "top top top" striker would either be surplus to requirements in a couple of years through lack of playing time, or cause a capable member of the squad to decline for the same reason.



Oh, and I'd also like to point out that Spurs, with all their "depth", are in exactly the same position as we are with the striker situation. 2 injuries away from having a in the team.