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Wenger’s Summer Shopping List: Jovetic, Gotze, Capoue & Begovic

By on February 28, 2013

It could be an exciting summer ahead Gooners. Well, if you believe what the Telegraph are reporting today, then it certainly should be!

After years of losing our best players and failing to compete for the best players, it seems we may finally be ready to break our strict wage structure and pay what it takes to sign some top talent.

The Telegraph claim that Arsenal are now willing to pay up to £140,000-a-week in wages, quite the jump from the current ceiling of £100,00-a-week that Walcott and Podolski are believed to earn, and Arsene Wenger is understood to have drawn up an impressive list of summer targets.

Armed with a £70m transfer budget, the boss is believed to have his eye on Fiorentina striker Stefan Jovetic, Borussia Dortmund playmaker Mario Gotze and Toulouse defensive midfielder Etienne Capoue. A new goalkeeper to compete with Szczesny is also said to be on the agenda with Stoke City’s Asmir Begovic and Liverpool’s Pepe Reina on the shortlist of targets.

Arsenal recently announced their latest financial figures that show we’ve got cash reserves totalling £123m and the accounts will be further boosted by the new Emirates deal as well as other commercial contracts, so the boss has no excuses not to spend some serious cash this summer.

To make room for the new talent, we’re going to try and offload more of the ‘deadwood’ with Nicklas Bendtner, Andre Santos, Marouane Chamakh, Johan Djourou and Park Chu-young all being made available for transfer while Sebastien Squillaci and Andrey Arshavin will leave on free transfers when their rather expensive contracts expire at the end of the season.

If the boss can pull this all off, we’ll have a squad capable of challenging for trophies next season. Shifting the average squad players out and replacing them with the likes of Jovetic, Gotze, Capoue and Begovic would transform the squad. No doubt about it.

But it all sounds a bit too good to be true if you ask me. The only thing that gives me hope is it’s coming from the Telegraph. I respect their journalism more than, say, if it was written in the Sun newspaper!

Could we manage to lure that quarter to the Emirates though? Capoue and Begovic should be within reach, even if we fail to finish in the top four, but I think we’d struggled to persuade Jovetic or particularly Gotze to come to north London if we can’t offer them Champions League football.

I can see this being a defining summer for Wenger. He’s finally admitted he has money to spend, we’re clearly well short of having a squad capable of challenging for trophies (surely even Arsene can see that) so he has no excuse’s left for not going out and signing the players we need to get us back where we belong.

If he fails to do so,  I’m afraid I can see another frustrating season next year with more and more fans turning on the boss.

Do you think Wenger will sign some top quality players this summer? If so, who would you like to see come in?

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