Former Arsenal defender Lee Dixon believes the Gunners will be wise to recoup a possible £58m for wantaway players Cesc Fabregas and Samir Nasri.

The pair are set to exit the Emirates, leaving boss Arsene Wenger until the end of August to buy in replacements.

And though Dixon thinks they will leave a hole in midfield, any funds may also allow them to bolster the defence.

"You're better off getting £60m for two players who don't want to stay and spending the money wisely," he said.

"There is no doubt they are top quality players and they will be missed, but it is important that supporters and everyone at the club remembers that the cannon on the chest is more important than anybody."

Arsenal captain Fabregas has been linked with Barcelona for the last two seasons and is likely to join the European champions for about £35m.

Nasri is on the verge of joining Manchester City for between £22m and £24m as he enters the last year of his current contract.

If both move, it would rip the heart out of Arsenal's midfield, and Wenger has already said that it would be difficult to "convince people you are ambitious" after that.

But Dixon believes the French boss will still have faith in the players remaining to achieve success this season.

"The softening of the blow is the rapid emergence of Jack Wilshere, who is already an regular England international over a short period of time, and the fitness of Aaron Ramsey, so they have two young players who can step up and be as equally effective as Fabregas and Nasri," Dixon told BBC Sport.

"But there is still a hole in midfield that needs to be filled with a bit of experience, maybe with somebody like Manchester City's Nigel de Jong, although I don't think they can get him because of his wages.

"Arsenal certainly need to sign a centre-half and I'm sure the selling clubs of Gary Cahill [Bolton], Phil Jagielka [Everton] and Chris Samba [Blackburn] will all be waiting for the phone to ring."

Arsenal have already lost left-back Gael Clichy to Manchester City and midfielder Denilson has gone on a season-long loan to Brazilian club Sao Paulo.

But they have signed winger Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain from Southampton, and Dixon believes any further activity can help provide a fresh start for the club.

"There will be lot of people relieved the Fabregas transfer is over and we won't have to keep speculating. It is certainly one that you might look at and say very rarely does a deal happen where all three parties are more or less happy," Dixon added.

"Of course Wenger won't be happy he is losing him, but they are getting a good price for him. From that point of view, the fans will probably will be sympathetic and understand why he is moving and reflect they have had a lot of good years from him.

"They will angrier with the Nasri move because he is moving to rivals for the Premier League title. He had great start to last season and flourished when Fabregas was not there, but all of a sudden he has decided the grass is greener.

"It's ludicrous to allow his contract to run out and get nothing for him next year, so I don't think Wenger had any option. He didn't sell Fabregas or Nasri, they basically forced the moves themselves."

Let’s say Wenger started with a transfer fund of £20 million. I’m reckon he had more than that, but it is a relatively realistic figure. That is the fund for transfer fees and wages, as Gazidis made clear at the AST meeting.

“We have NOT spent our budgets in previous windows. Money is available but it covers wages and fees, although not to look at the two as separated, budget is flexible.”

This quote makes my guess of £20 million seem pretty low, but we’ll stick with that for the moment.

If there is one budget for wages and fees, you could split the budget however you want. Wenger seems to prefer to spend on fees rather than wages.

Now we are set to receive £25 million up front from Barca for Cesc (the rest of the payment will be received in the future) and around the same amount from City for Nasri. That’s £50 million in transfer fees, and we will stop paying the wages for two of our most highly paid stars. They are both rumoured to earn around £90,000/week, which equates to around £5 million/year if we include bonuses.

Essentially, if we lose Fabregas and Nasri, our budget will shoot up to £80 million (£20m + £25m + £25m + £5m + £5m).

We have already had six players leave during this transfer window. Denilson, Clichy, JET, Randall, Cruise and Wellington. Denilson and Wellington went out on loan. We know that Denilson is probably on a relatively decent salary, given the inability to sell him and his appearances in the first team. If he’s on £50,000/week, that’s around £2.5 million/year. Wellington might also earn a couple of hundred grand per year, so we can make that £3 million in wages for those two. JET, Randall and Cruise wouldn’t have had bumper salaries, so their wages might add up to anywhere between £0.5-2 million. Clichy is reported to have earned around £60,000/week at Arsenal, so that is £3m/year plus the £7m transfer fee = £10 million.

From those six players, our budget gain in this transfer window = ~£14 million

Therefore, before we look at the purchases of AOC, Gervinho and Jenkinson, the budget is at around £94 million.

Both AOC and Jenkinson can’t be on particularly high wages yet, but I’m sure they still have a healthy salary, probably over £1m each per year. Gervinho is likely to have a more lucrative contract, maybe around £50-60,000/week, which is close to £3m/year.

Wages for our three signings = ~£5 million (it was difficult to find figures for their wages, so this is pure guesswork)

Fees for our three signings = £10.5m + £1m + £7m (up front for AOC, rising to £12m) = £18.5m

For these three signings, our budget loss in this transfer window = ~ £23.5m

Overall, we will have around £70 million to spend in wages and transfer fees for the rest of the summer. This is on the assumption that we started with £20 million to spend and that Cesc and Nasri are sold. There will be plenty of other factors – paying money back from loans taken out in the past, paying/receiving money from add-ons from previous transfers, bonuses for players/agents etc. Of course these figures are up for debate, and please do debate them in the comments section, but you can’t argue that Wenger doesn’t have money to spend. Looking at it with numbers makes the conclusion even more obvious – we have money, let’s spend it.