Bendtner will be Arsenal's new striker

With 16 days of the transfer window left, Arsene Wenger still hasn’t signed a striker. Carlton Cole, who’s injured, is staying at West Ham. Marouane Chamakh, the French-born Moroccan, is seeing out his Bordeaux contract.

Arsenal will play the Bolton double-header with Eduardo up-front: the half-fit, half-frozen Eduardo, the lost Brazilian who can’t find his old self.

But, for once, Wenger’s money-under-the-mattress transfer policy is right. Why buy Cole, or Chamakh, when the best tall, young striker in Europe is at your club, and two weeks from fitness?

Nicklas Bendtner is 21 (22 tomorrow). At that age, Emmanuel Adebayor was throwing diamond watches out of his pram at Monaco, after scoring 20 goals in 100 games. Didier Drogba was at Le Mans, going a whole season (2000 / 2001) without scoring. Les Ferdinand, who had the best leap in English football, was playing for Hayes.

The point is, big strikers don’t arrive in top-level football like small strikers. When Wayne Rooney was 16, he danced round Arsenal and scored a 30-yard wonder goal. Michael Owen peaked - peaked - when he was 18, sprinting past Argentina at the World Cup.

Small strikers’ strengths - speed, movement, and agility - need young, unworn muscles. Big strikers’ strengths - leaping, muscle, and cunning - take age, and experience. Bendtner, a 21-year-old big man, is five years from his zenith.

Despite that, he hasn’t done badly. In 52 Arsenal starts, he’s scored 27 goals. Many of those appearances - and his 54 from the bench - have seen him stuck on the wing, out of place, like the tall kid in the school photo.

For Denmark, he’s scored ten goals in 30 games, and is their player of the year. Watch his goal at home to Portugal on You Tube: strength, touch, and perfect left-foot finish. He didn’t learn that from Adebayor. The African would have fallen at the first challenge, pleading for a penalty.

For more proof of Bendtner’s potential, how about this picture, taken while scoring the winner against Spurs? His feet are almost two yards from the floor! Even Les Ferdinand didn’t do that.

Bendtner frustrates Arsenal fans because he’s not a winger. When Wenger plays him there, his average touch, and average pace, are shown up. But if he played ten games up front, he’d score five goals, with at least two headers. And wouldn’t that add something to Arsenal’s one-dimensional, perfect-or-nothing attacks?

In 16 days, and without him kicking a ball, we’ll know where Bendtner’s Arsenal career is going. Let’s hope it’s onwards, and upwards.