Welcome back Calcio, we missed you: Serie A is in it's best shape since 2006

I never thought I'd be able to write this post.

Since 2006 and the game-changing effects of the Calciopoli trial that sent Italy's most successful club into footballing purgatory for a year, the collateral damage for the rest of Italy was equally debilitating.

Serie A turned into a one-horse race for four years as AC Milan struggled to inject its ageing side with youth while Juventus began a long journey back to prominence that was filled with poor signings and consecutive 7th place finishes. Calcio lost stars almost annually from 2009 - from Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Kaka' to latterly Alexis Sanchez and Thiago Silva. All this while Premier League clubs were monopolising the transfer market and the latter stages of the Champions League - whispers around the rest of Europe were that Serie A was closer to the selling clubs from the Eredivise than the dominating clubs from England and Spain.

Ligue 1 and PSG began to strip Serie A for parts, taking Jeremy Menez, Equeziel Lavezzi, Marco Verratti, Javier Pastore and the aforementioned Thiago Silva and Zlatan Ibrahimovic(again) while Italian clubs looked to balance their finances - no longer able to fund the superstars that were so often associated with the once glamorous and envied Serie A.

But this summer, the tides have begun to turn back.

Instead of the book-balancing sales that have been forced on Italian clubs in recent years (Silvio Berlusconi famously saying rejecting a €42m bid for Thiago Silva would have been "irresponsible" in 2012) teams have been clever when the money waving clubs from England and France came knocking.

They have sold sparingly, sold big and immediately reinvested. No other club epitomizes this business strategy better than Napoli this summer; who after years of being asked about Edinson Cavani from Manchester City to Real Madrid to Juventus, it was PSG who finally came in and forced De Laurentiis to part with his star forward, but not before meeting the €64m buy-out clause his President had set for the Uruguayan that took Manchester City and Juventus out of the race to sign him.

De Laurentiis then used the money to immediately reinvest in his side - bringing in Gonzalo Higuain right from under Arsenal's nose, PSV's promising winger Dries Mertens and Madrid duo Raul Albiol and Jose Callejon. and it might not end there. Napoli lost their star player and got better as a team.

Fiorentina did the same when striker Stevan Jovetic left for Manchester City for the €30m price tag that they were resolutely standing by despite continuous advances from Juventus that included a motley crue of player plus cash deals but Andrea Della Valle and his board members stuck to their price and have continued to build this summer - adding Bayern Munich striker Mario Gomez to a team brimming with talent and promise. Gomez is set to partner the returning Giuseppe Rossi up front in what could be one of the best front-pairings in the league.

Juventus have proven once again that good players are available at good prices, adding Carlos Tevez and Fernando Llorente to a team with an frightening depth of ability already. Roma sold promising young defender Marquinhos for an astonishing €35m bid to PSG and added Kevin Strootman, Mehdi Benatia and former Inter hero Maicon and still registered a profit of around €4m or so.

While the Premier League's big clubs have scrabbled around for talent and squandered most of the time they have making unsuccessful bids for players, Italian sides have done their business quietly, quickly and relatively cheaply.

Manchester United have been ambling from club to club looking for that young, talented midfielder while Roma got Kevin Strootman for €17m, around €18m less than the bid that Barcelona rejected for Cesc Fabregas.

Arsenal need a striker, and after Napoli took advantage of their caution to sign Higuain they bid £40m on Luis Suarez, who is now set to sign an extension at Anfield. Weeks earlier, Fiorentina secured a €16.5m deal for 27-year old, Champions League winning striker Mario Gomez, who is now at a club that don't play in the Champions League who spent around half of what Manchester City gave them for Jovetic and nearly a third of what Arsenal were prepared to spend on Suarez. Makes you think, doesn't it?

No league has got better on the whole as much as Serie A, who have arguably turned the title race into a five-horse race (Juve, Milan, Napoli, Fiorentina, Roma) and added a much larger collection of talent to Italy than the one that has left it behind.

Additionally, the recent years of austerity has meant that Serie A has become a breeding ground for Italian youth - more and more top clubs in Italy are giving starts and prominent roles to younger players, a trend that is a silver lining to the cloud that has often hung over the Italian game. From Napoli's Lorezo Insigne, Milan's Balotelli-El Shaarawy-De Sciglio youth triumvate to Alessandro Florenzi at Roma, Serie A has gotten much younger across the board and has finally thrown the ageing stereotype off its back.

After years of clinging on to the famous faces of yesterday, Serie A has hit the reset button over the last 24 months or so and is finally making some headway. There is a long way to go yet before attendance figures and Champions League places return to their pre-Calciopoli heyday but things are closer than they've been for nearly a decade.

Welcome back, Serie A. We missed you.

Transfers that make so much sense they probably won't happen: Samuel Eto'o to Arsenal

In 2011, Samuel Eto'o shocked the footballing world by becoming the highest paid footballer in the world when he agreed a jaw-dropping £350,000 per week deal to leave Inter for the Russian side Anzhi Makhachkala. At the time, it seemed like that was all she wrote for Eto'o's time in the big leagues, and the Cameroonian would amass enough money to retire for three lifetimes by the time he and Azhi called it quits.

However, the 32-year-old appears to be back on the market as his club are going through what they called "a change in operation" but what the rest of the world call "running out of money" - Anzhi on the verge of a fire sale with the Russian's seemingly desperate to get the strikers gargantuan wages off their books.

It all seems a little bit too inevitable to be funny, but it does mean that a three time Champions League winner with probably 2-3 years of top class football left in the tank is available for cheap and this writer had a brilliant notion at 3am this morning that is so fantastic, so logical and makes so much sense I can GUARAN-DAMN-TEE that it won't happen.

But Samuel Eto'o should sign for Arsenal.

Think about it. Arsenal are in the market for a striker, a guy who can guarantee 20-30 goals a season and bring some solidity, reliability and leadership to a side that has lost it's footballing go-to-guys almost annually to their rivals. Being handed the captains armband is akin to a formal notice of eviction at the Emirates, and the Gunners really need someone to lead from the front who will stick around long enough to phase in a new generation of players, instead of being left high and dry by the absence of veteran stars.

Eto'o is a winner, a hard worker and a very talented footballer. Qualms about his age are actually irrelevant - his experience is actually a factor in why this move makes so much sense. Reports are swirling that he is willing to accept around £5m a year to bring his services back into mainland Europe and Anzhi will accept a cut-price deal for the player just to get him away from their finances.

Arsenal have a real opportunity to bring a winning, experienced player with big-game experience for relatively cheap player who won't be at the club long enough to be a hindrance. He isn't an "investment" for the future that Arsenal fans don't have to worry if Manchester City are going to steal him away every 6 months. He's here to win now, and that's what Arsenal need.

For Eto'o, he gets guaranteed starts in the most marketable league in the world, a fan-base that will adore him the moment he walks through the door and the prospect of spending any remaining rubles he kept from his lucrative Russian contract to spend on the London high-streets. Being in a league that has a more open attitude toward black players as well would be a welcome relief for Eto'o after his struggles in Russia(as well as numerous episodes during his time in Spain and Italy before that) who joins a club that always had a strong African contingent under Arsene Wenger.

Samuel Eto'o to Arsenal. It makes so much sense, it probably won't  happen.