ARSENAL ARE NOW AT RISK OF MISSING OUT ON THE TOP FOUR

MANCHESTER City need a centre-back and at least one more fullback. Manchester United need a centre-back. Chelsea need a better back-up centre forward and so do Tottenham Hotspur. Liverpool look one body short, if not two, and are vulnerable to injuries.

And yet for the Premier League’s big six sides it has been a strikingly low-key January so far. They have made no progress on addressing the obvious flaws in their squads.

While teams from the bottom 14 of the league start to throw money at problems, and the Championship sides continue to punt on promotion, the big boys have kept their powder dry.

But why? They obviously have the money. City and United both spent hundreds of millions of pounds last year and will do so again this year. Arsenal are not afraid to swing the bat anymore and even Liverpool and Spurs signed 30m players in the year.

The problem is that money alone is not enough. The big teams also need to find players good enough to join them playing for clubs willing to sell. And the reality of football is that no-one wants to give up their best players in January.

Pep Guardiola was very open about how he needed another centre-back. With Vincent Kompany always injured, Nicolas Otamendi and John Stones are his only two fit specialists there, with Aleksandar Kolarov able to fill in.

City tried to sign Aymeric Laporte from Athletic Bilbao last summer and would dearly love Virgil van Dijk from Southampton. But why would a serious side part with their defensive lynchpin with the most important half of the season left to play? This is why City are scrambling around for a short-term fix, someone who can play a few games before the end of the season.

Bargaining

Their strengths and weaknesses are so globally known that their bargaining position is fatally undermined.

In the Championship none of these problems exist. Rather than focusing on the small pool of players good enough to play for a Champions League-chasing side, they can take their pick from a far broader range.

Their problems are less known and have not been flagged up to the world. And the incentives to earn promotion to the Premier League outweigh the limited costs at that end of the market.

That explains why Brentford, Leeds United, Newcastle United, Aston Villa and almost any club with a chance of promotion is willing to push the boat out this month.

They can still sign players who can improve them without fear of being taken for a ride. The big boys will be back in the summer, but this is the smaller teams’ time to shine.

Newly appointed Hull City manager Marco Silva believes he needs to add more players to the squad if the basement club are to survive the Premier League relegation battle.

Silva failed to name a full 18-member squad for Hull’s 2-0 League Cup semi-final defeat in the first leg at Old Trafford on Tuesday after midfielder Jake Livermore missed the game due to illness.

The 39-year-old manager dismissed transfer reports linking top scorer Robert Snodgrass to West Ham United, insisting the club will only look to improve the squad in January. “I don’t know. I don’t know about this (Snodgrass) offer. Of course, without doubt (we need Snodgrass to help us survive),” Silva, who replaced Mike Phelan last week, told Sky Sports.

“We’ll see, at the moment they are important players, we need to improve our roster with quality players, not only one, not only two, we need some players to improve our roster.”

The East Yorkshire club have managed 13 points in 20 games, having failed to registered a single league victory since early November. The Portuguese manager will prepare the side for his league debut at home against ninth-placed Bournemouth today before visiting leaders Chelsea on January 22.

Bournemouth have made an audacious bid to take Chelsea captain John Terry on loan for the rest of the season. But the veteran defender is unlikely to leave Stamford Bridge in this transfer window.

Bournemouth are in need of a new centre-back after Chelsea recalled Nathan Ake, 21, from his loan deal earlier this week.

Terry, 36, is out of favour at Stamford Bridge under Antonio Conte and only has six months left to run on his Chelsea contract. He is not expected to be offered a new deal but wants to play on and could move to THE MLS in the United States.

This week Terry lost his appeal against his sending-off in Chelsea’s FA Cup win over Peterborough on Sunday, meaning he will serve a one-match ban. He was shown a straight red card by referee Kevin Friend in last Sunday’s tie. – The Independent & Reuters ARSENE Wenger knew before Arsenal travelled down to Bournemouth last week that it was a mustwin game.

The story of this season’s Premier League, after last year’s shock Leicester City triumph, is that the top six are not dropping points to the bottom 14 teams any more. No one can succeed this season while throwing away points in games like that.

“What is happening in this league is that all the big teams are winning against the smaller teams,” Wenger explained. “The only moment where the (big) teams drop points is when they play against each other, but that can change. We have to hang on, try to win, and hope results turn in our favour.”

That is why that dramatic draw at Dean Court, which felt more like a win, was in fact closer to a defeat. The standards being set in this year’s Premier League mean that the big teams have no margin for error when it comes to beating the smaller ones. Even in games where they have the “big handicap” of just one rest day beforehand.

But while Arsenal and Manchester City can bemoan the fact that Chelsea are pulling far away into the distance, the reality of recent form is that both of those teams should be more worried about the teams behind them. Because for both Wenger and Pep Guardiola, their early-season title challenges are threatening to give way to long slogs for the top four.

Qualification

Arsenal and City went into the season seeing Champions League qualification as a given but they are now facing the facts, that Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur are hot on their heels.

United have the second-best winning streak in the country, having won their last six straight, their best record since April 2015, back in the first season of Louis van Gaal.

Having looked desperately dysfunctional in the first few months of José Mourinho’s reign, they have rediscovered that old Mourinho knack of grinding out wins and clean sheets again. They are only going to get better and suddenly Champions League qualification feels likely again.

Almost as surprising as that is the turnaround at Tottenham. They have won four straight games in the league, putting four past Southampton on December 28 and Watford on New Year’s day. They are playing their best football since Marchlast year having rediscovered that physical power that took them so close to last year’s title.

Since the last European round in early December, United and Spurs have taken 18 and 15 points respectively from six league games. The only team to beat Tottenham, in fact, was United, in a tight game at Old Trafford. In that time City have taken 12 points and Arsenal only 10, as they have struggled with rhythm and fitness.

City are hoping that slow process of learning from Guardiola, and the arrival of Gabriel Jesus, will help to stabilise the team in the second half of the season. But they will need to improve fast, and find a balance between defending and attacking that has eluded them recently. For City and Arsenal, there is a new danger in 2017, not just missing out on the title, but on the Champions League altogether. – The Independent