Lauren Gone

So Lauren has finally gone having not played a full game of football for over a year. Portsmouth is as good a club as any to go to I suppose but I always feel a little uneasy about players going to other Premiership clubs.

The general feeling among the blogs is that this is a bad move from Arsene. Personally I don't think it is especially as he hasn't played for over a year and there were a number of times during that period where there was serious talk of retirement. While I think loyalty is important we should also realise that it shouldn't get in the way of a decent decision.

A lot of people have commented that we should have kept various players for another year, the obvious one being Vieira. I have mentioned before that I think the real issue last year was losing both Vieira and Edu last year rather than just Vieira but what we need to ask is would we have won the Premiership last year had Vieira stayed? I very much doubt we would have but one thing that would have happened is the development of players like Faberagas and to some extend the improvement of Gilberto would have been delayed by another year, while this year hasn't been vintage stuff it's certainly an improvement on the start we had last term. One thing that Wenger and Ferguson have done is move their teams on, if you look at Chelsea this year it seems teams are starting to work them out and the squad isn't progressing.

People also comment on the young age of the Arsenal squad and often point to our failures as a sign of a lack of experience. Experience can only be gained by playing and keeping players for an extra year would only hinder that development.