Sooooo little to talk about in the Arsenal world right now. When headline news is the existing Arsenal ladies manager signing a new contract extension, plus Arsène Wenger saying how it wasn’t good news for Germany to lose Mesut Özil (well, duh…), you know it’s been a slow news week.

The Özil situation isn’t one I can say I’m unhappy about. The German press hounded him and now they’re hounding Leroy Sane. They apportioned nearly all of the blame for World Cup failure on a man who looks like he doesn’t “faaakin’ run araaand a bit more” and now that he has well and truly exited stage left, they’re realising that actually all is not well in the camp.

Fancy that.

So it probably won’t surprise you to know that I don’t really agree with Arsène Wenger that he will ‘lose a bit’ in reference perhaps to his competitive edge. If anything I have hope that the departure from the international scene will prove to be a bit of a one finger salute to Die Mannschaft. If anything he has a point to prove that he is world class and that Germany are worse off without him.

I think we’ll see that from Mesut. I certainly hope so. He’s such a fantastic talent that if he finds the right place in Emery’s team then it could happen. He’s good enough. The challenge is where he’s going to be used from, especially if Emery’s ‘two up top’ formation endures.

Personally, as I’ve said plenty of times before, I’d like to see Özil behind Auba and Laca in a 4-3-1-2 formation. I know it leaves us a little narrow but with Emery looking to use full backs to their maximum capacity going forward, it feels to me like it would work.

But for now we just need to wait for what feels like forever until our game. I even have a marathon to run in Amsterdam between now and then. If you fancy giving me a pound or two the link to the page is here.

Speaking of retirement, on last night’s radio show we spoke about Koscielny, who I find myself unsure of in relation to the role he’ll play this season for The Arsenal.

On the one hand i have firmly locked in my minds eye the player of four years ago; recovery pace, strength, last ditch tackles and a fantastic servant for the club in his time. But on the other hand he’s a 33-year-Old centre half who’s pace will be declining as he ages, who has just come off the back of a very serious injury, plus didn’t exactly have the best of seasons.

Now, admittedly, that can be said for nearly all of the players in the Arsenal team, but it feels like his ability to recapture the form of four or five years ago is probably unlikely in all honesty.

Is he still our best defender though? I suppose time will tell and the fact he’s just returned to training now is good for us. He may not be 100% ready for first team action but having an experienced pro who knows his way around the club is always valuable. In addition to that we plenty of games between now and Christmas and so Unai Emery will get the chance to slowly bed him in to matches in the coming weeks I reckon.

But the process needs to be slow. We don’t want him breaking down again, especially as we realistically only have three centre halves at the moment and we should probably be at this point in the season with four available.

Our current three have coped well so far and with Mavropanos coming back we might also find ourselves with a bit of competition in a couple of weeks time. That can only be a good thing for us and also for Emery too.

That’s yer lot for another day. Be well, friends.