WHY SAY ANYTHING?

It’s official! Arsenal are no longer a selling club. Having seen the likes of Samir Nasri, Gael Clichy, Emmanuel Adebayor, Robin van Persie and even Mikel Arteta head to Manchester, Arsene Wenger has now drawn a line under this whole sorry episode in the history of the Gunners.

Never again will Arsenal refuse to pay the going rate for a player, no longer will salary be an issue when talking to the world’s elite. Arsenal have come of age. They are now happily settled into the Emirates and, apart from not being very successful, they have no real worries, not of the fiscal kind anyway.

No, Arsenal no longer need to sell their best players for financial reasons. They now need to sell them because they don’t want to be there. The chances are that, come next season, Alexis Sanchez, Mesut Özil and maybe Hector Bellerin will all have found pastures new.

It seems that Sanchez has more ambition than Arsenal in that he actually wants to win things and is clearly not happy just to finish in the top four on an annual basis. As even that may not happen this season he will be off.

Mesut Özil appears to be waiting to see if Wenger extends his contract, which is a little puzzling as it is Wenger, according to the fans, who is holding back the club and is the main reason they are not challenging for anything other than the FA Cup. Maybe Özil IS quite happy with top four and nothing much else.

Hector Bellerin is flattered by reported interest from Barcelona and Manchester City. This usually results in the player ending up at one of the clubs where he is the subject of said flattery.

So here’s to the new Arsenal. With a manager who can’t tell anybody what he will be doing next week, never mind next year, and players who would rather be somewhere else, the future looks bright.

Manchester United don’t have a manager who doesn’t know what he’ll be doing next season. They also don’t have players who don’t want to be there. They just have too many average players and it is this that has cost them in the title race this season.

With the exception of Zlatan Ibrahimovic, none of the “strikers” have come close to double figures and only Juan Mata has a reasonable return from midfield.

The defence which is, in the main, makeshift, with wingers at full back and midfielders at centre back and, occasionally, centre backs at full back, has done reasonably well. So much so that David De Gea does not look likely to be the player of the season this time out.

If these minor problems can be solved during the Summer then United have a real chance of challenging for the title next season.

Manchester City score a lot of goals whilst also managing to concede a lot of goals. This is not because, like United, they have players playing out of position, no it is because their defenders are not very good.

Buying two full backs from Arsenal may have seemed like a good idea at the time but neither of the two are even worth a boo when they go back to the Emirates! Gooners fans were obviously quite pleased to see the back of them.

Vincent Kompany has a season ticket to the treatment table and Nicolas Otamendi is a yellow card on legs. Only John Stones is showing any promise and it is expected that wholesale changes will be made during the close season. If so, expect City to be closer to Chelsea next term.

Chelsea don’t need to do much really. Maybe Diego Costa will move on having discovered what everybody outside of the capital already knew. It is a terrible place and not at all surprising that, even with the amount of money he must have, he doesn’t want to live there.

There is a possibility that Romelau Lukaku will do a David Luiz and return to the club that sold him not too long ago. Another case of a mistake being admitted? We think not. Chelsea will be around the top again next season.

Due to restrictions in article size all that can be said about Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur is that they are, no doubt, proud just to be mentioned on the same page as the previous four and nobody really knows what they’ll do next year. We’ll just have to wait and see.