Arsenal Transfer Talk: How much of a boost will Petr Cech bring? Who else is coming and going?

Article by Cameron Clark

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Unless you've been living under a rock for the best part of 2 weeks now, you'll have heard the news that Petr Cech is a medical away from joining up with Chelsea's bitter rivals Arsenal, and I personally cannot wait to see the day it's made official. This is the kind of caliber signing I was talking about in my previous article.

Cech is a 'world class' signing. What do I mean by that? I mean that he's proven. He's got years worth of Premier League experience, winning the league multiple times, has also won the Champion's League in recent times and with that experience, he really could help us out in Europe where we need the most help. He's not old either, at 33 years of age, that's a ripe age for a goalkeeper, he's easily got another 4-5 years left in him at the very top and for a fee, rumored to be in the region of £10.9m, I honestly do believe that this could turn out to be one of, if not the signing of the summer.

Roman Abramovich has shown tremendous amounts of respect to Petr allowing him to choose what club he goes to, because if it was up to Mourinho, this deal wouldn't be happening, and I wouldn't blame him either. This will really hurt Mourinho, which makes me a hell of a lot happier about it as I personally can't bare the bloke, and more importantly, it will hurt all Chelsea fans seeing him in that glorious new Arsenal goalkeeper shirt, which is even sweeter considering what happened last year with Cesc.

So with one world class addition through the door, who else could Wenger bring in? If you read my previous article, I stated that we only really need 2-3 players this summer, one of which being a goalkeeper, which is now ticked off the list, so really we're only looking at 1-2 world class additions. But the real question is who?

This week the papers have been linking us with the likes of Benzema, Aubameyang and Jackson Martinez. Jackson has recently moved to Atletico Madrid so that deal is completely out of the window, personally, I don’t see Aubameyang as a Wenger type forward so the one left there is Benzema. This man would be perfect for us. He's similar to Giroud in the sense that he has the physicality, but he's better on the ball and more direct, also 10x more clinical in front of the goal, he's French and we all know how much Arsene loves a big Frenchman up top, so this deal really does make sense...if he becomes available. There's talk that Real are looking to free up space and accumulate funds to push through a deal for Man City's Sergio Aguero, but at the moment this is all pure speculation...but it does add up to a certain degree.

Also this week the news outlets have been strongly linking the Gunners to Southampton's Morgan Schneiderlin. Now, not world class, but he's Premier League proven and there's no doubt that he's a talented holding midfielder. Ever since January, Arsene's men have been linked with a move for the Frenchman and at some points it's looked almost certain that we'd see him in an Arsenal shirt. I personally would love to see him come in and strengthen that position even further alongside Francis Coquelin and Jack Wilshere but whether it happens or not we'll have to wait and see, that's the thrill of the transfer window, right?

Finally, news on people who may be leaving the Emirates this summer with papers reporting that a £2.1m deal for Lukas Podolski has been agreed with Turkish giants Galatasaray, but Turkish media outlets have a bit of a reputation for 'making up stories' so you'll have to watch this space on that one. The really big news on outgoings however is Laurent Koscielny. The French centre-half has been outstanding for the Gunners in the past few seasons but now he's being linked with a £21m to Real Madrid. Now personally I'd hate to see this happen. I think Koscielny is one of the best centre backs in the Premier League right now and he puts in at least an 8/10 performance each week if not higher and I think we should do everything we can to keep hold of him. He's been with us through the lows of the Birmingham Carling Cup final defeat and the highs of the back to back FA Cups, so I hope he sticks it out even longer with us to achieve even more success, but like I said, we'll have to endure the thrills of the transfer window and find out for ourselves.