After Kieran Gibbs’ latest setback ruled him out for a month Arsene Wenger has admitted that he may be forced into making an unplanned January signing. The problem for the manager is that he already has two players for each full back position so if he spends money on a quality deputy, he will inevitably be forced to let a player leave in the summer as opportunities will be restricted once our bizarre injury flare up has eased.
His other option would be to bring in a player on loan, which explains the rash of rumours linking Wayne Bridge with the club. However, the ex-Chelsea left back is a primary example of the problem with this kind of signing: They are likely to be of substandard quality if a club is willing to let them go on loan until the end of the season. If we could only sign a player of Wayne Bridge’s calibre then we may as well persist with finding solutions from within the current squad. The injury situation has seen Ignasi Miquel feature more regularly and he has been solid whilst Wenger also opted to field Francis Coquelin at right back in the Villa game. The Frenchman was not at home in this position but he was by no means a disaster and has much more motivation to perform than a player who rejected a move to Celtic in the summer, where he would have played every game, in favour of his lucrative contract to train with Manchester City’s youth team.
It will be interesting to see which option Wenger decides upon as none are ideal. Ironically, in an area where we were theoretically well covered for injuries, we have still been caught out so little blame can be attached to the manager. A position where he could improve our alternatives is in our threadbare striking department. Any injury to the Robin van Persie and our lack of quality replacements is brutally exposed. The manager is in a position where he can rectify this situation so an attacking signing may make more sense to Wenger in January.