For the first time in about 10 years, we’ve managed to hold on to the important players in our squad and finally recruit a world class player to strengthen the team from the season before.

And the result of that is on December 18th, we are top of the Premier League table – somewhere most of us could have only imagined we’d be during the long summer months.

But Arsenal recently have been slightly off the boil. We have had a lot of tough games, both in the league and in Europe, and the tiredness is beginning to show. There’s no doubt that spending in the January transfer window is a necessity if we want to continue our already excellent season, as players such as Ramsey and Giroud look in need of a rest.

Then I starting thinking, what if over the last 5 seasons we didn’t need to sell one of our players?

What if the circumstances were slightly different, and we didn’t need to sell one player over the last few years? Which player would you have picked?

Below, I have created a poll and I thought it would be interesting to see which former Arsenal player Arsenal fans would gladly see back at Arsenal, and why.

You can cast your vote below, and leave your thoughts in the comments section:

Andre Villas Boas was sacked yesterday in the aftermath of the heavy defeat to Liverpool at White Hart Lane. Tottenham Hotspur have spent £107 million this summer and I assume that the Tottenham board feel like the team are under-acheiving.

While the situation down the road is hilarious, I do raise a serious question – did Andre Villas Boas deserve the sack?

I ask because while they’re having a terrible time of it at the moment, they are only 8 points behind league leaders Arsenal, and his win percentage has been well-publicised as the best of any Premier League Tottenham manager.

He was hugely successful at Porto, winning the Europa League, Portuguese league and Portuguese cup. Since then however, he’s had disastrous spells at Chelsea and now Tottenham.

The problem is he’s never been at a team for more than 2 seasons. He was at Academica for one season, Porto for one season, Chelsea for less than one season and Tottenham for a season and a half. He’s never built for the future.

And critics of AVB always find flaws in his Europa League success. On the road to the title, he never played a side from England, Italy, France, Germany or Holland, and only one from Spain.

And others will point out that they only “almost” achieved 4th spot in the Premier League this season because of Gareth Bale.

So what do you think? Is he a talented manager who was shown the door too early?

Or is he vastly overrated and too young to be considered a top manager?

Well today the draw for the Champions League was made and the round of 16 fixtures were confirmed as follows:

Manchester City v Barcelona
Bayer Leverkusen v Paris Saint Germain
Arsenal v Bayern Munich
AC Milan v Atletico Madrid
Olympiakos v Manchester United
Zenit St Petersburg v Borussia Dortmund
Galatasaray v Chelsea
Schalke v Real Madrid

There are some truly mouth-watering ties in their, including of course Arsenal v Bayern Munich.

There was a lot of negativity surrounding Arsenal’s qualification from the group stage, with a lot of Arsenal fans miffed that we didn’t have a more disciplined approach, which would have been required to get at least a draw in Naples. Because of the lack of ambition on the night (or tiredness in the squad) we didn’t have enough not to lose. Because of that, we finished second in the group and looking at the draw now, could have faced Zenit St Petersburg and had a reunion with Andrei Arshavin.

As it stands, we face current European Champions Bayern Munich, who are still the best team in Europe for many people, including myself. I would have much preferred a tie against Barcelona, Real Madrid or Paris Saint Germain.

But if you’re going to be philosophical about it, this is the Champions League (not the Europa League) and this is the place where the truly best teams are. The massive games are the games we wait for and it’s a cliche, but if you want to win it you have the play the best teams eventually (unless you’re AVB winning the Europa League with Porto).

Even if Arsenal do get knocked out to Bayern, at least we can say that we have had a very good European campaign. In the group stages we’ve had to face Napoli, Marseille and Dortmund, and now Bayern. In there alone there are 6 blockbuster fixtures we’ve been involved in.

Whereas when you look at Manchester United and Chelsea, their campaigns have been boring and lets be honest, a bit of a joke. They’ve faced teams such as Olympiakos, Galatasaray, Bayer Leverkusen, Shakhtar Donetsk, Real Sociedad, Schalke, Basel and Steaua Bucuresti. You can hardly claim they had and “blockbuster” ties that people were flocking to watch. In fact you would probably have a difficult time finding anyone bothered to watch those games unless they were United or Chelsea supporters.

Yesterday we lost 6-3 to Manchester City, and since then Arsenal fans have been panicking, saying that Arsenal are on a downward spiral. People will say we can’t beat the top sides and that we are going to fade over the next few months.

However, I would err on the side of caution before writing Arsenal off, and below are 5 perfectly reasonable reasons why we lost how we did against Manchester City, and why we shouldn’t quite panic just yet.

1. Manchester City are “Invincible” at home

Manchester City have spend the most money it shows in the quality of the squad. At The Etihad Stadium, they have already beaten Tottenham Hotspur 6-0, Norwich City 7-0, Newcastle United 4-0, Manchester United 4-1 and Everton 3-1. At home, they are ruthless and unstoppable – and have some of the best attacking players in the league. Aguero is world class, Negredo is an excellent player and they have players like Jesus Navas, Samir Nasri, David Silva and Yaya Toure would have assists and goals in their locker as well.

But the season is based on you performance, home and away, over 38 games. Manchester City look phenomenal at home but so far we have both played 16 games and we’re still 3 points clear of them. We have a chance to level the score at The Emirates in March, and while we suffered a heavy defeat, any win (even 1-0) would make things even.

2. Arsenal had less time to rest

We had to travel to Naples and had a tough game against a side that wanted to progress to the knockout stages. Manchester City meanwhile, played a day earlier against a team who had already qualified. We didn’t get a chance to train before travelling to Manchester and City came back from Europe with a home fixture. These things make a difference, and if yesterdays game was at The Emirates, then you can bet it was a different game.

3. Arsenal are “not negative enough”

If Arsene Wenger has a weakness it’s that in every game (Napoli aside), he will try and play for the win.

Any other manager yesterday would have played Arteta and Flamini in the middle and tried to keep the game tight. We’ve already seen Jose Mourinho, against a weaker United side at Old Trafford, park the bus this season. We knew that Manchester City would play attacking football in their own back yard and instead of playing a tight game like we did in Dortmund, we went toe-to-toe with City and tried to score goals.

We scored 3 goals at The Etihad Stadium and the only other side to do the same this season was Bayern Munich. We allowed the game to be wide open with our approach and you can’t deny that the goals we conceded were sloppy. Unfortunately the potential to increase our lead at the top of the league was too tempting for Arsene to pass up and we ended up going into the game with the wrong approach.

4. It was a bad day at the office

There was no doubt that the performance from some of the players was below par but over the 16 games in the Premier League and the 6 games in Europe, overall, we’ve been excellent. We played poorly against Aston Villa, Manchester United and Manchester City and lost. But that only gives us 3 defeats in the league so far and that’s the same amount as Chelsea and Liverpool, and less than Manchester United, Manchester City and Tottenham. Hotspur. The only team to have fewer defeats is Everton, although we are still 4 points clear of them.

5. We were unlucky and didn’t get any decisions from the referee

If you are going to get any kind of result against Manchester City away, then you need a couple of decisions go your way and it’s safe to say we got absolutely nothing yesterday. Nicklas Bendtner and Olivier Giroud had goals disallowed for offsides that never were, we had a lot of harsh decisions go against us and when it came to taking chances, we just couldn’t go it. Olivier Giroud had a golden chance to score from a fantastic Bacary Sagna cross but he flashed his header wide of the post. Of course, City had chances they didn’t take as well but with a bit more luck, we could have scored more and conceded less.