REVEALED: How Arsenal can win the title (with Cech, Smalling and Schneiderlin)

IF Arsene Wenger has £42.4million to spend this summer, forget splashing out on another Mesut Ozil. He would be better advised to invest in 80,000 miles of bubble wrap and a glass of water.

Morgan Schneiderlin player profile

The former to keep all his players on the pitch rather than on the Arsenal treatment table. The latter to help swallow some more of the pride Wenger has had a brief taste of in the latter stages of this season.

Any team which, on average, is good enough to finish in the top four (as Arsenal will surely do again this season) is good enough to win the title. Likewise, a team with the ability and consistency to reach the knockout stages of the Champions League for 12 successive years also has more than enough within the squad to lift the trophy.

The only trouble is that at the crucial moments, the wrong player has been missing or Arsenal’s determination to play their own game has become unstuck.

It has not been the greatest season in the Premier League and, after the 29 games which Chelsea have played, the leaders have two points less than the average top side at this stage of the season in the past dozen years.

ArsenalGETTY

Could Arsenal win the title next season with Petr Cech, Chris Smalling and Morgan Schneiderlin?

It was a year in which any side could have grabbed the bull by the horns and really made a charge. Sadly, Arsenal’s current one – six wins on the bounce, 11 in the past 13 Premier League games – has come too late.

That post-Christmas run of results has coincided with the steady return to action of influential players such as Ozil, Olivier Giroud, Laurent Koscielny and Theo Walcott among others. Had they all been available all season, would it have been enough?

Yes, with the same sort of philosophical rethink that has marked Arsenal’s last two trips to Manchester.

The 2-0 win at the Etihad in the league followed by the 2-1 FA Cup win at Old Trafford showed that against the country’s better teams – City and United respectively – Arsenal are capable of grinding out results.

Arsene Wenger manager profile

Their possession statistics in each of those encounters were a paltry 35 per cent and 42 per cent, with Wenger abandoning his trademark keep-ball style to play more dangerously on the counter-attack.

If only he’d do it more often instead of insisting his side focus only on the way THEY play. Against teams outside last year’s bottom three, free-flowing Arsenal have picked up three points more than anybody else in the Premier League. However, against the better sides the Gunners have struggled; out-thought by better tacticians, out-fought by equal players.

Maybe, though, those results in Manchester can provide a key for more consistent performances in those tougher games next season.

Petr Cech Player Profile

The other option is to spend the money in this summer’s transfer market on the places still crying out for attention – a holding midfielder, a centre-back and a goalkeeper. There is already plenty of speculation in those departments already.

With Olivier Giroud up front really beginning to silence the doubters, who would argue against the current Arsenal squad – perhaps without contract rebel Theo Walcott – plus Petr Cech, Chris Smalling and, most important of all, Morgan Schneiderlin being genuine title contenders?

Possible Arsenal XI next season (4-2-3-1): Cech; Chambers, Koscielny, Smalling, Gibbs; Ramsey, Schneiderlin; Oxlade-Chamberlain, Ozil, Sanchez; Giroud.

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