Michael Essien is not on Arsene Wenger's shopping list. The Lyon midfielder was heavily linked with Arsenal in the past week but, according to the manager, such stories can be filed under the label of "paper talk".

"I was never interested in him," said the manager. "It is a complete invention. I don't know where the news came from but they are wrong."

In fact, following the acqusition of Emmanuel Eboue, he expects no transactions during the window.

"It's quite even mathematically," Wenger commented. "There are zero players coming in and zero players going out. Zero plus zero equals zero."