Archive for May, 2011
May 11th, 2011
Nicklas Bendtner has always been a divisive figure at Arsenal. For some fans, he represents a much-needed Plan B: powerfully built and good in the air, he provides an antidote to the tippy-tappy build-up we occasionally over-indulge in; a bulldozer in the box.
For others, he represents all that’s wrong with this Arsenal side: over-confident and seemingly lazy, his occasional outbursts in the press suggest a young man who would be better served by showing some humility and making the most of his limited ability.
The truth is probably somewhere in between. I think those who call Bendtner lazy are making a misjudgment. His bulk means that he’s never going to scamper about the pitch like a more sprightly player. However, he does get through a shift, especially when asked to play wide. Not many centre-forwards would chase back to support a full-back as often as Bendtner does.
When played through the middle, his ‘laziness’ is a misdiagnosis of something we rarely see at Arsenal: a desire to remain a focal point of the attack in and around the box.
We have, of course, already stumbled upon the principle problem with Bendtner: his deployment in the wide positions, to which he is plainly unsuited. In fact, it’s one of the main reasons that the big man could be on the move this summer. Speaking to Danish TV station TV2, he said:
“I need to have a talk with him [Wenger] because I’m not satisfied with playing on the right wing, which I’ve done more or less all season long.
I’m concentrating on getting our Champions League place and then we’ll do the evaluation at the end of the season.
It’s certainly not the best thing for me but it’s not up to me and sometimes you have to adapt to what the manager says.â€
It’s unclear as to why Arsene chooses to play Bendtner wide. It doesn’t seem to be part of a developmental plan, as with Theo Walcott. Arsene is still insistent Theo will end up as a striker, and that playing on the wing is in part a ploy to teach him aspects of the game which will benefit him when he emerges from his right-flank cocoon as a serviceable centre-forward.
Bendtner, however, is a pure box player. He doesn’t have the pace to beat a man. He doesn’t have the skill to outfox a defender. What he does have is the power and presence to make a nuisance of himself and get on the end of crosses. That is his game. Relative to the rest of the squad, he lacks finesse. He is, whatever he may think, more Andy Carroll than Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
That’s not to say he lacks ability. I’m always surprised that Bendtner is considered a bit of a joke by so many fans both within and outside the club. Perhaps that’s due to a couple of high profile misses, but his goalscoring record generally speaks for itself. Even this season, when he has struggled for form and fitness, he is a goal away from double figures. And that’s having made just 14 starts.
So why does he find himself continually out of position? Simple: there are better players ahead of him. Many scoffed when Arsene identified Robin van Persie as the man to fill the lone striker role, but he has shown he has the ability to be devastatingly effective in that position. Crucially, he also has the immaculate first touch required to bring other players in to the game. Bendtner doesn’t, and our passing game can occasionally break down when he is employed as the focal point of the attack.
Essentially, he’s a square peg in a round hole. He’s a centre-forward in a team who doesn’t really cross the ball. And when they do cross it, it’s the 6’3†Bendtner doing the crossing. Deploying him on the flank might make sense if we were to launch raking cross-field passes on to his head. But that just isn’t our game.
For his own sake, it may well be time to move on. For Arsenal too, it makes sense. At 23, Bendtner is still a promising international striker who could command a decent fee. With Marouane Chamakh now in the squad, we have another striker who can be a threat in the air. We might be better off replacing Bendtner with a pacy forward who can run the channels – and, if really necessary, play wide.
Bendtner says if he could choose where to go it’d be Barcelona. I’d like to play for them too, mate, but it doesn’t make it any more likely to happen. If he wants to fulfill his potential – and, if you listen to him, he’s got plenty of it – he needs to go to a club where he’ll play regularly. I can see him doing well in the Bundesliga, or at a mid-level Premier League club like Newcastle, who certainly need a new number nine.
Bendtner has the kind of personality that will enjoy proving his critics wrong, and I don’t doubt he’s capable of it. Just perhaps not at Arsenal. And certainly not on the wing.
May 9th, 2011
Stoke City 3 – 1 Arsenal (Jones 28, Pennant 40, Van Persie 81, Walters 82)
Highlights | Arsene’s reaction
The fight, in as much as there was one, is over. At long last, Arsenal are officially out of the title race. As ever, the end of a long battle against the inevitable comes with a certain degree of relief. But fans will mourn too for the passing of another trophyless season.
‘Trophyless’, the red spellcheck indicator tells me, is not a real word. And yet at Arsenal, it’s a prominent part of the vernacular.
For Stoke to be the firing squad who finally ended our miserable decline was horribly poignant. They are in many ways an anti-Arsenal. Ugly, classless, but undeniably committed. They beat us because they wanted it more.
That hurts. Arsenal still had plenty to play for this season. Pride alone should be a prize big enough to motivate a team of this stature. But our rivalry with Stoke runs deeper than that. One only needed to look at our starting XI and see the name of Aaron Ramsey on the sheet to understand that this game had to be about going there and imposing our footballing principles upon an inferior opponent.
Sadly, we fell short. Every time this Arsenal team are expected to make a bold statement, they instead unfurl a crumpled piece of toilet paper and stammer like Colin Firth fishing for an Oscar. When they fancy the occasion, they are fantastic – witness last week’s defeat of Manchester United. When they don’t, they are flimsy.
Our weakness from set pieces has reached an absurd level. Arsene said yesterday we have now conceded 21 goals from set pieces, and just 17 from open play. That is an embarrassing figure. It shows a complete lack of preparation. Arsene went on to say that our organisational weakness is “the easiest thing to correct in the game”. Which begs the question, why hasn’t it been done before now?
The manner in which Kenwyne Jones was allowed to nod in Stoke’s opener, unchallenged, without even needing to jump, was almost funny. I say almost, because even the best jokes wear thin over time. We have seen this again and again and again, and we’re tired of it.
After the match, Arsene said:
“This team has done well overall this season. This is not the best moment to analyse [the season] after a disappointing game. If you analyse all the competitions and how we have done, we have done well. Something has gone [and] you could see that today. We have to take a distance and make the right analysis of the season.”
To a degree, I understand where he’s coming from: in real terms, the season was over before yesterday’s game even kicked off. But this customary end-of-season collapse cannot be written off as an anomaly: it has now occurred in three out of the last four years.
Albert Einstein, who generally knew what we was talking about, labelled insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Unless real changes are made this summer, Arsene is in serious danger of falling foul of that definition.
May 3rd, 2011
With this season ending as soon as we fell to defeat at Bolton – if not before – it was probably inevitable that Sunday’s game against Man U would be looked upon as a marker for next season.
In the light of our victory, many armchair pundits have remarked upon the apparent ease with which Aaron Ramsey stepped in to the vacuum created by Cesc Fabregas’ absence. With Cesc still being heavily linked with Barcelona, it has even been suggested by some that the (re)emergence of Ramsey means Arsenal would have little to worry about should their captain depart.
What a load of tosh. Aaron Ramsey is a promising 20 year-old with a handful of top flight starts under his belt. Cesc Fabregas is the captain of Arsenal, a European and World Champion, and one of the best players in the world.
I won’t deny that Ramsey was impressive on Sunday. Seeing him I’m tandem with Wilshere provided a glimpse of a possible partnership that harnesses both Wengerish technique and British grit. But this is the first time since that horriffic injury that Ramsey has looked anything like his former self. It’s a great start on the road to recovery, but nothing more than that. Remember how good Eduardo looked in his first few games back? Ramsey will know as well as anyone that his target has to be rediscovering consistency in his game.
Naturally, fans enjoy hyping their players. We’ve all been guilty of suggesting that Ryan Smith was ‘the new Overmars’ or that Jeremie Aliadiare was ‘Trezeguet mk II’. But at this time more than ever, the club need to be realistic about the potential of the youngsters at their disposal.
If Cesc were to leave – and at this stage that remains a big if – gambling on Ramsey as a replacement would be madness on Arsene’s part. Arsenal do not have enough players of the calibre, character and experience of Cesc to lose one without replacing them with someone of similar stature.
If we are too quick to replace our old heroes with new ones, we’ll be stuck in transition forever.
May 2nd, 2011
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Arsenal 1 – 0 Man Utd (Ramsey 56)
Highlights | Arsene’s reaction
Not too little, but certainly too late…
Beating United is always an achievement, and after the nightmare of the last few weeks I’m loathe to be anything other than positive today. However, our victory mainly served to reaffirm a couple of things about this season: that this incarnation of United would be as weak a Champion as this league has ever had, and that we absolutely had the potential to be supersede them and be title-winners. That potential, of course, has been squandered. Yesterday we salvaged some pride but no more than that.
What a moment for Aaron Ramsey…
The original Rambo was a veteran of war. Ours is still a youngster, but has already some through a major battle after recovering from that horrific broken leg over a year ago. To score in only his second start for Arsenal since that day, against the club he rejected to become a Gunner, was a fitting reward for the Welshman.
When I saw that Cesc Fabregas was missing and that Ramsey was starting instead, I was both concerned and surprised. Concerned that we’d miss Cesc’s leadership and creativity, and surprised that Ramsey had got the nod ahead of the likes of Andrey Arshavin.
I needn’t have worried. Ramsey was superb, and provided a real reminder of his potential. He’s a real gutsy midfielder, in the Steven Gerrard mould. Like Gerrard, he’s prepared to take risks to make something happen: he’ll try the difficult pass, or have a shot from range. In a team full of continuity players, he provides something different. With a full pre-season behind him he could be a big part of next season’s squad.
Fittingly, our next game is away to Stoke. How symbolic would it be for Ramsey to take to the field there and show them how well he fought back from the brink?
The midfield trio of Song, Wilshere, and Ramsey were superb…
In Cesc’s absence, Arsene subtly shifted the system to accommodate this new trio. Usually, Wilshere and Song would sit deep, with Fabregas floating ahead. Yesterday, it was a more fluid trio, with Wilshere and Ramsey taking turns to bomb on. For such young players, they showed great maturity, and United’s 4-4-2 system meant we always had an extra man in the middle.
Arsenal showed some steel, at last…
Alex Song won 100% of his nine tackles, and was superb at shackling the in-form Wayne Rooney. A surprising enforcer emerged in the guise of half-time substitute Arshavin, who hared up and down the left-flank, buffeting off the opposition and launching in to sliding tackles.
Wojciech Szczesny gave the defence an air of calm…
Whatever your complaints about Arsene’s project, the emergence of Wilshere and Szczesny has saved the club about £40m in transfer fees. Even when Johan Djourou was withdrawn due to injury, the Pole’s preternatural confidence transmitted to his defence.
The one exception to that was panic-prone Gael Clichy…
…who was lucky not to concede a penalty for a late lunge at Michael Owen. That said, Arsenal had been denied a spot-kick in the first half for a handball by Nemanja Vidic, so in a way justice was done.
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In other news, Arsenal have unveiled their new home kit for next season, including a reworked crest. Check it out.
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