Summary and hibernation

So that concludes the 2011 Silly Season.

Arsenal have had the busiest summer for a very long time. When arsenal.com write the club's own summary, nine players have been signed or loaned and twenty-one sold, released or loaned out.

Predictably, the English press are mostly unimpressed by Arsenal's acquisitions. The prime argument is always that a player lacks Premiership experience. In Mikel Arteta's case, the problem seems to be that he isn't Cesc Fàbregas.

Still, Arsène Wenger's record of bringing in players from outside the Premier League is next to none. He's earned the benefit of the doubt. Especially when the doubters freely admit to rating England fringe players as better than, say, South Korea's international captain or Germany's most capped current international defender.

I think every manager would prefer the transfer business to be concluded by the start of the season. Arsène Wenger left it late this Silly Season, and regardless of the reasons, in Arsenal's current setup that's his responsibility. However, things haven't worked in his favour.

The obvious problem was deciding if Cesc and/or Samir Nasri were to be sold, and then awaiting proper offers. There were reports during the summer that Wenger had decided to let only one of the players leave Arsenal. Whether or not that is to be believed, they both ended up leaving for vast sums of money, but by then the club's preferred targets were harder to sign.

Are reports of the summer to be believed, Phil Jones chose Manchester United over Arsenal for first-team opportunities, or whatever sporting reason. Ricardo Alvarez preferred Inter and Italian football. Juan Mata chose Chelsea over wages. Phil Jagielka made it clear, like last season, that he doesn't consider Arsenal that much better than Everton, not enough to move his family, anyway.

Later on in the window, Gary Cahill may have wanted the move but Bolton's price tag stopped the negotiations before they began. Yann M'Vila was seen as overpriced, France international or not.

As for Scott Parker, Stewart Downing, José Enrique and Marvin Martin, they weren't necessarily targets for real, even if several papers linked them with Arsenal several times.

The final entries on my Summer 2011 rumours page were a couple of extra mentions for Eljero Elia, the Dutch winger signed by Juventus on deadline day, and French midfielder Yoann Gourcuff, who Lyon claims Arsenal wanted to sign on loan. With that, the Silly Season is concluded on my part.

This blog will now be in hibernation until the rumours gather pace for the January 2012 window.  Thanks for all of your feedback so far.