This needs to reiterated

As much as I am happy with our recent victories, I can't help but voice my concerns about our over reliance on Robin van Persie. We rely on him way too much and when he's not playing, we have the ineffectual Chamakh on the pitch.

Now - I know that Chamakh has some quality and he proved it until December last year. But he is a confidence player. After all, he has his strengths; like his aerial ability, his hold-up play, his movement. But also, what people also fail to realise is the minor things he does which can make the bigger difference and I don't even know if Chamakh himself realises this, but when he drops deeper, he can create space for our forwards and wingers to move into. And not to mention, he is fantastic at defending set-pieces.

But - the fundamental issue here is that he is not reliable and when the going gets tough and when we need someone to step up to the plate - we don't have anyone.

As for Chu-Young Park, I'm all up for giving him a chance, but there are rumours about him being bought as a commercial buy to increase our market growth in Asia. I'm hoping that isn't true....

I have to say though that from what I've seen of him, he does look like a player that could do a good job for us up front and I know that he has an incredible work-rate and will run round tirelessly for the team, which is the exact type of player which we need. But there must be reasons for why Wenger has only given him one start and why he's not giving Park enough time on the pitch. Personally I feel that it's purely down to match fitness or maybe he's just not up to the task of playing in the Premier League just yet.

However, we have not seen enough of him to judge and so it is an unknown, inexperienced player in the league.

I am happy we have an attacking spearhead and a talent such as van Persie, who not only provides us with goals and finishes of the highest quality, but also has a lovely first touch, great close control & agility and incisive quick passing.

Van Persie is not only our main striker - he's also our most creative player. And it's scary that we are relying on a man who has world class quality, but has a well-documented injury record. So if (touch wood that he doesn't) he gets injured, who can we play up front?

Walcott's been absolutely dreadful for the last month or so, after the blistering start he had to the season, and I don't feel he's up to it. So who else is there?

The simple fact is - and it's probably been mentioned on here many times before - we need another striker and perhaps another creative midfielder. We should also revert to a 4-4-2 system because that's how we seemed to do better in the past. And if we are going to acquire another striker, we have to ensure that he won't sulk when he gets dropped to the bench for a player that's in-form and is scoring goals for fun.

If we did not have van Persie on that bench yesterday, the match was destined for a stalemate. We need to be doing better and we need to learn to cope without him, for when he's not around.

I am hoping that Wenger persuades the parsimonious board to give us some money to reinforce our attacking options, but I can't see it happening. And if our season goes into freefall, there is no doubt that he will be rehearsing the ''we had injuries'' speech again.

For our own sake, I hope van Persie does not feature against Bolton in the Carling Cup because I want to see how our players can cope without him. If we are going to play someone in the lone striker role, we should try Park, with maybe Oxo or Arshavin just off the main striker, perhaps?

Either way - whether you agree with the last paragraph or not - we must all surely agree that we need a back-up plan for if our catalyst runs out of steam or is on the injury list again.