Lukasz Fabianski hopes that he has done enough to become Arsenal's first-choice goalkeeper.

The Poland international has been prone to high-profile blunders, most notably in last season's UEFA Champions League against Porto and in the Premier League against Wigan in April.

But Fabianski appears to have edged ahead of Manuel Almunia in manager Arsene Wenger's plans after playing ahead of his team-mate in pre-season.

Arsenal have been linked with moves for Fulham shot-stopper Mark Schwarzer and Cagliari's Federico Marchetti, but Fabianski hopes that he has the faith of his boss.

"I hope it will be a breakthrough season for me," he said in the Daily Mirror.

"I have a double task. I want to be the No.1 in the Arsenal goal and that would help me realise my second target, to be No.1 in the national team."

Loic Remy has urged Nice to drop his price tag to allow him to make a move to Tottenham. Spurs are reported to be interested in signing the striker, given that Nice drop their £13m asking price.

West Ham, Sunderland, Stoke, Arsenal and Liverpool are also reportedly interested in Remy, but the 23-year-old striker has set his sights on a move to White Hart Lane,

Remy told L’Equipe:

“A move to Spurs would be interesting,”

Stoke is not the move that I want. Nice is in real need of money and it should be adaptable with the price to help sell me.”

It is understood the only club close to offering the fee that Nice are asking for are French side Rennes, but Remy would prefer to make a move across the channel.

The Arsenal coach Arsene Wenger thinks that moneybags Man City will be involved in the race for the Premiership title, but Arsenal will also be at the top because they have the “belief”.

Roberto Mancini’s team have once again showed their intent by being on course to spend more than £100m in the transfer window again, while the Gunners investment so far has come out at a total of 4m euros, but Wenger has said that the Arsenal investment comes in other forms. “I am very confident we’ll do better than last season,” he said last week. “We know in England that the Premier League is the biggest league in the world and everybody invests a lot of money.

“We invest in our work, in our beliefs, in the quality of our behaviour and I am confident that will pay off.”

But having said that, he thinks that this coming season will be the most competitive for a long time, and yet again emphasised Arsenal’s “belief” in their ongoing success.

He said: “What changed in England last year is that everybody could drop points, it was the first season that really happened. So it will be more open this year.

“You expect Manchester City, who invest a huge amount of money, to be one of the contenders as well.

“And Tottenham, if they can confirm what they produced last year, Aston Villa as well. You could have six or seven teams because Everton for me has a strong squad too.

“I believe we have a good chance. The most important thing is that we have that belief.”

Can “belief” take the Gunners up the “two extra stairs” to the top?

Arsenal could be set to end their long-running search for a goalkeeper after Mark Schwarzer handed in a transfer request, according to the Sun.

The report claims Schwarzer has handed the request to new Fulham boss Mark Hughes in order to force a move to the Gunners, who had a £2m bid turned down for the Australian stopper before the World Cup.

However, Hughes isn’t prepared to let his No.1 go without a fight and will either turn down the request or demand £4m for Schwarzer’ services.

Although the Sun is hardly the most reliable of sources, it’s believable that Schwarzer would hand in a transfer request in order to play Champions League football for Arsenal. He is 37-years-old and could feel this is his last chance to play at the very top level.

He couldn’t be considered a long-term solution to our goalkeeping situation, but Schwarzer would be a decent stop-gap until Sczesny is ready to take over first team duties. I fully expect this transfer to go through before the window slams shut.

Fulham have dismissed claims that Mark Schwarzer has handed in a transfer request after the goalkeeper was again linked with Arsenal.

Schwarzer has been a summer-long target for the Gunners, who have already seen a £2million offer for the Australian turned down.

New Fulham boss Mark Hughes revealed at his presentation last week that he is determined to hang on to Schwarzer due to his importance to Fulham.

But reports have suggested that the 37-year-old has asked to quit Craven Cottage in order to link up with Arsenal for the chance to play UEFA Champions League football.

The Cottagers have moved to quell rumours that the former Middlesbrough keeper could leave the club by insisting Schwarzer has not asked to go.

A Fulham spokeswoman said: "The club has not received a transfer request from Mark Schwarzer.

"Mark is under contract with us until the summer of 2011 and the manager has underlined his commitment to keep hold of his best players."

Werder Bremen's Germany international centre-back Per Mertesacker had pledged his future to the Bundesliga club, ending talk of a move to England.

The 25-year-old has been heavily linked with interest from Arsenal in recent weeks, but says that he has no intention of leaving Werder just yet.

Mertesacker told Bild:"I'm staying at Bremen.

"There have been so many rumours concerning me, but I've never had to be concerned because none were concrete."

Mertesacker is currently under contract with Werder until the summer of 2012, having moved to Bremen four years ago from Hannover and has featured for his country at the last two World Cups and the finals of Euro2008.

He has won 69 caps to date, having made his debut in October 2004 in a 2-0 friendly win over Iran.

For England, that was the Golden Generation.  Actually the last two world cups and the euro thing in the middle were the tournaments of the Golden Generation.  England were about to win everything.

After it was all over in South Africa, Sir Trevor Brooking, the FA’s director of football, made a statement.  He comes across to me these days as a charming old buffer.  Not always 100% but generally at least looking roughly in the right direction (as opposed to investigating ways to cheating the Italian tax authorities like others I could mention).

Here’s one of Sir Trev’s forays….

“There is an immediate void in the standard of the team. World Cup 2014 will be difficult for England,” he said. “I don’t think there are the obvious quality coming through who can replicate what we have currently, unless we can fasttrack one or two of the younger ones – and that’s asking a lot.”

England at the world cup sent their oldest squad in history.  No one was impressed.

So the world cup is over and we prepare to play Hungary at Wembley.  Fortunately for me I shall be in Italy, trying to catch up on what the Milanese papers are saying about their situation.  Mr Cappuccino however is still earning £6m-a-year managing England.

Meanwhile we know why England is rubbish at football – and two simple changes could resolve the problem.

In saying this I reject that England’s problems go back to 1992 and the fact that the FA lost control of the top flight of English football.  That really is irrelevant – the issues are quite different.

First, we have only about 10% of the number of top qualified football coaches in England as they do in Spain, Italy, Germany and France.  Even Holland out do us.

Second, we refuse to let top clubs enter reserve teams into the lower leagues as they do in countries such as Spain and Germany.  I don’t say this is a panacea in its own right, but I do think it could help.

The reason for both failings come from the earliest days of footballing history in England.  The FA, responsible for England was founded as a gentleman’s amateur club, and such groups never have much interest in the clever-clever ideas of proper training. Indeed to them, training was almost cheating – they revered natural ability.  As the game spread they gave the coaching of young players over to school teachers, who may well have been well meaning awfully nice people, but generally their expertise was elsewhere.

As for the non-appearance of the reserves in lower leagues, if you keep up to date with Arsenal’s history on AISA’s Woolwich Arsenal site, you will know that after being banned from playing other London teams, and having turned professional, Arsenal tried to start a professional Southern League.  This failed, and Arsenal joined the Football League two years later.  But then the Southern League came into existence and Arsenal applied to put their reserves into that league.  The league management committee found the idea “insulting”, and it has been banned ever since.

So that’s why international football is such a mess and why it will stay that way.  Even the great god Rooney ended the world cup swearing at fans and refusing to speak to the media!

And the other excuses continue. Rooney wants a winter break.  Everyone wants a pop at Arsenal for playing foreigners.  But really we only need look within.  While Sir Trev worries about our youth team coming through Mr Cappuccino is so dedicated to his task that he refused to go and watch the European Under 19s championship this summer – where England managed to get to the semis.  He was busy playing golf.

It was also a shame the FA were not out in force to watch the France Spain final of that competition.  The game was great, the kids were great, and quite honestly France under 19s could have swamped England’s first team.

Actually the too many foreigners bit has now had its day, quite simply because England has shown just how much it hates Arsenal by picking only one of Arsenal’s real golden generation for the under 19s – Tom Cruise.  There were two Arsenal players in the final – Coquelin and Sunu, and as you might know, Sunu scored a brilliant goal.  Problem is those are the only two Arsenal players at that level who don’t play for England.

So now we enter a season where we have the “homegrown” list, but where England’s under 19s don’t want to know about Arsenal’s homegrown talent.

And what do the FA do meanwhile?  They manage to lose a chairman and a chief executive in the space of three months, following a stream of other defections.  Oh and they get worked up over the Cappuccino Index.

And they worry about Wembley.  £757m it cost, with the FA churning out £20m a year to keep the loan repayments going.  The TV deal is up for renewal in 2012 – anyone fancy buying it?

But of one thing we can be sure. Just as one defeat (or even a 6-5 win) is enough for the Anti-Arsenal Arsenal to say “this is a disaster” so one win (that is all it will take) one win, for England and the press will be talking of England winning the Euros, being “up for it” and “ready to take on anyone” and we will be looking at the new “golden generation”.

Billy Wright, Stanley Matthews and Alf Ramsey… we’ll be back among the greats, forgetting that those three all played in the team that was knocked about 3-6 by Hungary.

Hungary revolutionised football tactics in the 1950s, just as Johan Cruyff and the Netherlands did in the 1970s, and just as Wenger has done at Arsenal in the last 12 years.  But we don’t like revolutions in England, we don’t like radical ideas, we don’t like lots of professional coaches, we don’t like the Arsenal style…  We want to keep it the English way, even in defeat.

And this is the problem for England. They don’t have many young players they are willing to pick.  They won’t pick Arsenal players (despite all their obvious abilities) because they are now seen to be not purely in the England tradition.

Being traditionally English is what we are after, it seems, even though it doesn’t actually win us anything in a world that moved on 50 years ago.

Spain: sun, sea, sand, corrupt planning officials and the scumbag football clubs otherwise known as Real Madrid and Barcelona.

Harsh? Maybe. But my patience for all things Spanish evaporated this summer with Barca's relentless tapping up of Cesc Fabregas - a cynical campaign that continues despite Fab 4 committing to the Gunners for  at least the season ahead.

So while Holland have given their World Cup final squad the night off from this evening's pointless international friendlies - meaning Robin van Persie can continue his recovery from the tournament - Spain have selected a near-full strength squad for a friendly in Mexico City.

That squad features players from both Barcelona and Real Madrid, but La Liga doesn't kick off until August 29, whereas our first game is a mere 48 hours after Cesc gets back from a trans-Atlantic flight.

Obviously the timing of these internationals could not come at a more stupid time, but while Arsenal showed some balls in standing up to Barca this season, maybe following it up by ruling unfit players out of travelling overseas on the eve of the new season would add some steel to that stance.

Man United boss Alex Ferguson does it time and time again, even when players are patently fit - just ask Fabio Capello. So why the hell does Arsene Wenger allow Fabregas - not only our captain, but our most influential player - to travel thousands of miles for a meaningless game when he's been telling us Gooners that Cesc won't be fit for the opening game of the season?