PreSeason Football Returns: Arsenal Battles Barnet

The new season is upon us at last, as Arsenal get their preseason friendlies up and running today with the annual curtain raiser at Barnet.

The club announced a 22-man squad for the game yesterday and in my opinion, it's a fairly strong squad. The obvious omissions are the players who played at the World Cup and Aaron Ramsey, too, as he has a fair way to go before he will be playing again. Also missing is Denilson, as he has apparently suffered a relapse of the groin injury that kept him out of commission towards the end of last season.

Some of the more notable inclusions are our two new signings, Chamakh and Koscielny, and it will be good to see them in an Arsenal shirt for the first time, although I'm still not sure which one it will be. Another notable inclusion is Nordtveit, who has spent a couple of seasons out on loan in Germany, and is a possibility to step up to the first team squad if we don't manage to sign that other centre back that we are looking for.

Also included are Wilshere, Lansbury and JET—they are three players who have very limited first team experience between them on the Arsenal team, but they have impressed while out on loan. There comes a time when these youngsters have to be given a chance to compete with the first team squad, but it's still a huge step up for them.

Hopefully, they will all get some time today and go out to Austria with the rest of the first team squad as well. I always like to see how the youngsters fair when they play alongside first team regulars, rather than a team full of youngsters.

It will be good to see Gibbs back, as he has an awful lot of potential and a lot of people thought he would have gone to the World Cup with England if he hadn't been injured last season. Lets hope he can start to live up to that potential this season and put some pressure on Clichy at left back.  It might just be the challenge that Clichy needs to get him playing his very best football again and that can't be a bad thing.

Both Rosicky and Eduardo are included as well, and this is a make or break season for both of them, as they look to put over two years of injury problems behind themselves. If either of them break down early in the season, I think it could well spell the end of their time at Arsenal. At their best, both players have a huge amount to offer and would be a fantastic asset to the squad, but it's been far too long since we have seen either of them capable of playing at that level.

Unfortunately, the goalkeeping options today are the same as they were last season, and the game will probably be shared between Almunia and Fabianski. Like the vast majority of Arsenal fans, I have no confidence in either of them, and from what I saw last season, our defenders don't have confidence in them either. 

As far as I'm concerned, the sooner we sign a proper keeper, the better. It would seem that young Szczesny will be spending another season out on loan before he takes his place as our first choice keeper, and we need a stop gap to be signed between now and then.

No matter what, the outcome of today's game is we can't read too much into it as it's our first game of six in our preseason schedule. The only important thing in all of these games is that they lead us to a situation where we are raring to go in our first league game at Anfield. 

There isn't an awful lot happening in terms of transfers again today, but I'll attempt to bring you what I can on them.  We are again linked with 17 year-old striker Conor Wickham of Ipswich with a bidding war between ourselves and the Spuds supposedly going on.

We don't have a great record when it comes to buying English based players at his age, but the boss is very fond of signing them. I honestly don't know if we are genuinely interested in him or if it is just media speculation.

With our current goalkeeper situation obviously needing a remedy, we are linked with Udinese and Slovenia goalkeeper Samir Handanovic, but the player's agent says there has been no bid from Arsenal, even though he would be open to a possible move to us. I don't know how good he is, but he certainly has a good name for a goalkeeper.

Another player linked to us is Kevin Doyle of Wolves and Ireland.

Although I can't see Arsenal genuinely being interested in him, Mick McCarthy has put a price tag of £50 million on his head, and of course that is probably about four times his actual value, but I'm sure Wolves would be perfectly happy to keep him.

Not a day goes by without some talk of Cesc and his possible move from Barcelona, and today is no different. However, it is different so far, as Barcelona are apparently admitting that they might have to give up their chase for him this summer, as they realise that Arsenal will not change their stance, and we will not sell Cesc to them. 

However, their president did say that if he doesn't sign him this summer that he will sign him next summer.  He also said that Barcelona will only pay the transfer value of the player and will not pay over the odds for him. If they think that his value will fall in the next year, they are sadly mistaken as I'm sure Cesc will only get better.

If Barcelona think that by stating that they don't expect to sign Cesc, we will decide to drop our asking price, they are sadly mistaken. Publicly, we have no asking price as Cesc is not for sale, but I have thought for a while now that Cesc knows what price we would accept if he is to leave, and he also knows Barcelona don't value him that highly. I hope it's the end of all this Barcelona nonsense but I won't be holding my breath.

My fantasy league is up and running again for the new season and there will be a trophy if I can get 100 teams to sign up. When I last checked, there were 53 teams, meaning 22 teams joined in the last 24 hours, which points to 100 teams easily being reached in the next four weeks. The site can be found here and the code to join my league after you set up your team is 33954-12064. If you're taking part—good luck.

Finally, for today if you're lucky enough to be going to today's game, I hope you have a great time and enjoy seeing Arsenal playing again at last. If not, you can always pay your £3 to the club and watch the game, plus the next two friendlies live online.  My good friend LadyArse will of course be running her live blog during the match and you can join in here. It's limited to 25 entrants, and as usual those places will be snapped up very quickly. That's it for today.

Here's a few goals from George Graham.

See You Tomorrow.