Tick, tock, four days to go

There might not be any more signings in this Silly Season.

Marouane Chamakh, Laurent Koscielny and Sébastien Squillaci are three elite signings, strengthening the defense and replacing Eduardo in attack.

A new goalkeeper, though high on the supporters’ agenda, will have to be moved to the list of New Years’ wishes – if there are no surprising developments before Wednesday.

There are still murmurs about Mark Schwarzer, the dead Shay Given rumour still has a post-mortem following on websites like the Metro, while Federico Marchetti looks like never having been in the running. If there ever was a “running” to be in.

Three multi-million signings are still a few more than most clubs. The transfer market this Silly Season has been tight, and the manager has publicly complained that the deals he has made all have been difficult to complete.

But can we trust Arséne Wenger, seasoned wheeler-dealer in Europe, when he says that the market is dead? There are still four more days to spread the rumours.

[updated] Dead market or not, the Daily Mirror proclaims that Arsenal WILL finalise a deal for Schwarzer before the transfer window closes. So both extremes are being reported as news…