January Transfer Plan to Guarantee Arsenal a Top-Four Spot in the Premier League

January 3 is a day that Arsenal fans have eagerly been anticipating for months: the start of the January transfer window.

Arsene Wenger splashed the cash this past summer—no one can accuse him of being his usual thrifty self. The purchases of Alexis Sanchez, Calum Chambers, David Ospina, Danny Welbeck and Mathieu Debuchy represent Arsenal's biggest outlay in a single transfer window by some margin.

But Wenger inexplicably left two of the club's most pressing areas unaddressed.

Arsenal clearly needed a defensive midfielder, with Mikel Arteta beginning to slow down and Mathieu Flamini unable to prove that he can be a consistent option.

Arteta has been surprisingly good this season when he has played. But a series of calf injuries has kept him out for a significant portion of the season, and the Gunners have had to rely on the volatile (and not particularly good) Flamini.

Whereas Chelsea have Nemanja Matic anchoring the midfield and allowing the rest of the team to flourish ahead of him, Arsenal leave themselves open at the back and have been exceptionally prone to counterattacks this season.

Paul Gilham/Getty Images

Then, of course, there are the well-known defensive woes. For some reason, Wenger thought there was nothing wrong with going into the season with two center backs—unsurprisingly, Laurent Koscielny quickly got injured and the defense derailed.

Arsenal are remarkably worse without Koscielny anchoring the defense. His dynamism and pugnacity allows Per Mertesacker to sit back, and he snuffs out attacks better than any of the full backs that Wenger has tried in the middle.

You do not need a sportswriter to tell you that an experienced center back can do a better job than a right back or left back who has no experience there. Wenger surely knows this, too, but did not buy for whatever reason and is therefore largely to blame for many of Arsenal's dropped points this season.

So Wenger's project this January is to finish the job he started in the summer.

There are other positions in which the squad is relatively weak, and given the manager's history of making odd January purchases, it would not be extremely surprising to see a winger or creative midfielder come in.

Michael Steele/Getty Images

But fans will probably be content with just one or two purchases because the right men will go a long way toward solidifying Arsenal's place in the top four.

First and foremost, the club needs to bring in at least one central defender and preferably two. But the latter is almost certainly too much to ask for, so who should the reinforcement be?

It's very difficult to determine who is available and who is not, and which rumors are credible and which are not. Rather than regurgitating the gossip du jour, I will say that Wenger needs to find someone more like Koscielny than Mertesacker; a mobile, proactive, versatile, experienced player.

It just needs to be someone who can confidently cover for Koscielny when he is out (he is known to have a niggling Achilles problem that has been plaguing him for the entire season) and can give Mertesacker, who has played almost every game for months, some rest.

That's the minimal requirement for this January. But a capable defensive midfielder who serves as a metronome and the first line of defense is almost equally important and should be on Wenger's radar.

Unlike center back, the defensive midfielder market is saturated with talent. Morgan Schneiderlin of Southampton seems an obvious choice, and Metro (via Marca) report that Arsenal are interested in Atletico Madrid's versatile Mario Suarez.

Schneiderlin and the Bender twins—Sven and Lars—would be excellent choices, as would Christoph Kramer (though he is tied up on loan with Borussia Monchengladbach).

Wenger loathes the January transfer window and frequently complains that top-shelf players are unavailable in the middle of the season. He's also said (via the Guardian) that he's targeting central midfield when the window opens.

But even if he has to compromise, Wenger must act to reinforce these two badly depleted areas, especially center back. Failing to do so is a potentially disastrous gamble that could keep Arsenal out of the Champions League next season.

Follow @charliemelman