Arsenal's Andrey Arshavin believes the club needs to bring in more players if they are to continually challenge for silverware. Manager Arsene Wenger frequently opts not to dip into the budget to purchase players during the transfer windows and has recently sold players without replacing them and Arshavin is of firm belief that this type of behaviour cannot go on if the Gunners are to be successful.

"I am still of the opinion that to win trophies Arsenal needs more players," the Russian ace said.

"There is the simple fact that last summer we sold two players (Emmanuel Adebayor and Kolo Toure) and bought only one. So there is an obvious deficit of at least one.

"Then we lost Robin van Persie, Kieran Gibbs and Aaron Ramsey for a long time, obviously until the end of the season. So for me it is natural that we need new players.

"Without the variety of players we have less diversity in attack. That allows our opponents to read our combinations more easily.

"Finally, it results in less ball possession for us and our defence comes under more pressure.

"The English Premier League is very interesting for me, at least as long as we continue fighting to win it.

"But without new experienced players, real stars, it will be difficult to achieve success.

"Ideally we need three or four such experienced players and then among our youths there should be guys who are not only playing good football - but have real character."