Wenger rules out Arsenal summer departures

Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger has said that he won't be selling his top stars this summer as he plans to build for the future.

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Arsene Wenger: Keeping faith with his side.

It has been suggested that the Gunners would cash in on Emmanuel Adebayor to help fund squad strengthening, but Wenger claims there will be no repeat of last summer when Mathieu Flamini and Alex Hleb both left the club.

"We lost Hleb and Flamini last summer and we have had to rebuild," said Wenger. "But we have done that now and the future looks bright. We don't want to have to rebuild again, so I want to keep all the players together for next season. I don't want to lose anyone.

"I want to add to the squad and have identified one or two targets. But identifying players and buying them are two different things.''

Arsenal have already bought Belgian defender Thomas Vermaelen from Ajax for £10m and Wenger is also expected to sign a defensive midfielder, with Brazilian Felipe Melo and Barcelona's Yaya Toure linked.

However, the French boss won't be caught short before the start of the new season and plans to complete his summer transfer business as quickly as possible.

"Ideally I would like to bring everybody in before we start back in pre-season training in July. I don't want to leave it until the end of August," he added.

"We are at a stage where we need to convince people that this team does a lot of things right. It does not need to be transformed. When you go on a long unbeaten run in the Premier League and reach two semi-finals, common sense should tell you that.

"We have to take encouragement from what we have done in the season just gone.

"I am fed-up with people who think I have £100m in the bank yet don't want to spend it. How can people think that? "The pride of the club is in having moved to a new stadium while maintaining the club at the top level.

"The policy of the club is that they have backed me in what I do and the way I do it. We now have to be strong enough to stick to that. We cannot pump £100m into it, so we must keep faith in what we are doing."