IN: Armand Traore, from Monaco. One potentially very exciting prospect is this teenage defender. Early reports caused a little puzzlement, till everyone sussed that it's not the Liverpool player but instead a coup that's been touted as being possibly of Fabregas proportions. But he's only 16 so let's not count our chickens. We may never see another 16 years old of Cesc's class.

We asked our French correspondent Philippe about him, and it all sounds good. Traore is a highly-rated player from the French international youth sides. He's of French-Senegalese descent, and was coached at Racing in Paris before switching to Monaco for a season. He was highly thought-of there, and nicknamed "the new Evra" (Evra is another French-Senegalese left-back at Monaco, who's broken into France's senior set-up and who has himself been linked with Liverpool). But Monaco were slow to snap Traore up on a proper contract, and Wenger (with prompting from Gilles Grimandi, apparently) pounced.

Traore is an attack-minded left-sided defender, and is expected to be number 3 in that position behind Cole and Clichy. He's signed a 4 year deal. Some reports, incidentally, have suggested he plays at right-back or in the centre of defence, but Philippe's usually spot-on with these things. Mind you, one never knows where young players will end up once Wenger gets hold of them.

I see that some sites are saying Traore's arrival is still not certain. We checked with Philippe and he seems sure it's done and dusted. Also, note that Traore is currently named on the official Arsenal site's first team squad list.

Of course, the arrival of a new left-sided player, even of such a young age, raised questions about who might be leaving us from that side of the pitch. But soon after Traore's arrival came the news of Ashley Cole...

STAYING: Ashley Cole. What more needs to be said about this? Whatever the full truth may be regarding events of earlier this year, we can only hope that a few more fans have learned the lesson that newspaper reports saying there are "irreparable differences" between a player and the club are not to be trusted. Ash got himself into a pickle, but he said he didn't want to leave and he hasn't. Instead, he's signed a 1-year contract extension which takes it up to 2008.

IN DOUBT? Robert Pires The appearance of a new player on the left does however inevitably make one wonder about the Pires rumours that fail to die. He has one year left on his contract and the stories say that he wants a 2 year extension while Arsenal are only offering one. His agent has denied any possibility of his moving to Galatasaray, but hasn't denied the latest rumour that Juventus are hoping to team him up with Vieira again. Juve are said to want him on a free, but it seems unlikely that Arsenal will let him go for nothing unless they can help it. More likely they'll get a few million for him, or just let him play out his contract a la Wiltord/Edu. But naturally we're all hoping he signs that extension. Pires had another storming season, finishing 4th in the Premiership goal-scoring table, and few players would be more missed.