By 1970’s Gooner
I was very excited when we finally signed Arshavin. We needed a player of his type. A winger who could run at defences at speed but with the experience and nous to out fox them and more importantly score the goals.
And he did not disappoint. He has until the start of this season been terrorizing defenders putting in some scintillating performances, notably against Liverpool.
But alas all this has somehow now filtered out. I noticed this decline in all the pre season games. He looked out of touch, out of pace and uninterested. And he has carried on almost like this in the league and Cup games.
The game at Leeds is the latest example. The Leeds grounds men are still trying to retrieve that ball he hit out of the ground…
I was wondering during the pre season. Is he loosing it? Is he getting too old? He is almost 30.
I am still wondering. But I have my doubts. Players these days go way beyond this age.
It is obvious that he is unsettled somehow. His wife may have decided that it is too cold in London….He may be longing to go back to Russia (his old club Zenit are showing interest) or even in Italy (Juventus have been mentioned). Who knows.
Wenger is stuck in two minds. He needs a fit and interested Arshavin even if Walcott has now improved greatly and starts games. You do after all need two players for each position and who else can play the role of a pure winger in Arsenal’s squad?
Rosicky? Bendtner? Vela? Eboue? No contest really when Arshavin is interested.
Yet to be given a chance to recover a large part of the large transfer fee (some say 17 m) splashed out a few years ago, for a player who is near 30, may be a temptingly sound financial transaction.
Wenger is sensibly opting for the first option hoping that when the January transfer window closes in 10 days or so Arshavin will realise that he is going nowhere until the summer.
And then he will revert to his scintillating best, released form the uncertainty of making a move now but more importantly to impress his future employers that he has still got it.
And Arsenal will get the best out of him in the run in for the title.
Clever.
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19 comments:
he's fine, all players have a dip in form once in a while. arsh will be back, don't worry about that.
Well said i have been saying to myself for some reason Arsene keeps on persiting with him but last night if he was on his game we may have been 4 up by h/t with him having scored 1 maybe 2 goals if he can start firing every defence around will not like the idea of him nasri and rvp coming at them lets hope he pulls his head out of his Arsenal soon.
he's always been shit - he lives on the back of one good game against Liverpool - if you remember Baptista also scored 4 against them - and he was still shit
I have to say, Arshavin isnt just rubbish - he is our worst player, followed closely by Rosicky and Bendtner.
This anonymous guy on top of me is a really stupid.
Arshavin is an incredible player. Just give him games and he will get it back.
I realise that i'm also anonymous but what can i do.
WOW, calm down. He still produces, he just isn't flashy anymore. Your problem is that that is what you want, a flashy Arshavin. Let other teams nag and tease about his performances, we've got Arshavin. Look at his goal points. He is GREAT.
One thing everyone seems to neglect is that arshvin has always been played out of Position. He playsin athe pocket between striker and midfield for zenit and Russia. Maye he needs to be given that role for us. One thing for sure he will get better again. Gooners need to get off his back cos he's still a fantastic talent. Come on the gunners
what a crappy piece of article..
too cold in London for someone from russia?
ohh yeah.. btw, he is ranked third in assists in the league this season. the highest of any arsenal player.
learn to appreciate.. I strongly dislike you sort of 'fans'
The question Arsenal fans must ask themselves is whether they would rather have an Arshavin that excites more with less combined goals and assists or an Arshavin that isn't as exciting to watch but with a higher amount of combined goals and assists. Arshavin appears to be in the second category for this season. He hasn't managed to skip by defenders like he used to and doesn't score as many cracking goals, but if you look at the assists and goal he does make, they are always important and at a better level than a lot of other players. A more consistent and Arshavin would be fantastic, but we still have a great player in Arshavin, who deserves the respect of the spectators and fans watching him.
Your thoughts?
ANELKA
Ashavin plays like he is in the ballpark; not serious about the game. trying stuff that work would be great but more often than not, the ball goes awry. In the ball park nothing serious happens. His attitude needs to change. IMO, he have respect his opponent and his teammates. He thinksthat his flicks etc etc etc, will outfox any opponent. He should look at himself and analyse his gameplan, instead of blogging.
The guy has been played out of position and over-played during the first part of the season. Looks mentally and physically exhausted. If you treat a skilful player like him player like a carthorse he will end up playing like one.
He needs a rest. He needs time to rebuild his timing and touch of his game.
Crazy to sell him- kind of player who has the talent to score against anyone.
Yes players go thru a dip in form, but its AA23s lack of effort that is really annoying fans. He loses the ball and does not track back, its just laziness.
what a downfall from 2 year ago when he was nomintaed for Ballon D'Or. I hope he is embarrased about his performances this season, I can recall 1 good game against Villa away.
To be fair to him he had a better game against Leeds, but would only give him a 6/10.
Hope he can find it in himself to start putting in some effort and once again become one of the most exciting players at the club.
@ Larry, there is no link between putting in an effort and becoming one of the most exciting players on our team. You want him to be exciting, spectacular, give him a break, he deserves it, he creates so much, and so many goals. Of course you notice everything he does wrong, but he still does much right, very much.
Just like Song does alot right defensively, but still cant position himself to save his life and gets half his passes intercepted(!!!). And also the first time I saw him sprint towards his own goal was against Leeds just now. But people still consider HIM as one of our best..? Arshavin, if not for Nasri+Cesc, IS our best.
Great game! Too bad Arshavin didn't get a goal :(
I think Arshavin is a great player no matter what anyone says
He proves it on his team and he proves it on the Russian National team too
First let us get some facts straight. Arsenal is the only club in the EPL who is in for 4 trophies this season. Arsenal is still in the title race in the EPL, we play the final of the Carling Cup, we are still in the FA cup and we are still in the Champions League. I know some of those telling us our players are useless and Wenger knows nothing about football have given up on the Champions League. Well I’m not one of those. Every game has to be played. And a bad day for Barcelona can happen. And a good day from Arsenal can also happen. It will be the form on the days that will decide this game. So we still are in 4 competitions. Manchester United are not, Chelsea are not, Manchester City are not, and certainly our still nearby neighbours aren’t . No just the useless Arsenal manager and his no good players are still in it for 4. Yes, this make sense. Does it? And now let us turn our attention on today’s game against Huddersfield. Yes it was a scrappy affair. Certainly when Nasri got injured and then Squillaci got his red card. From that moment on it was a very scrappy affair. I will not deny this. But at the end of the day we won. And so our “useless” players did what they had to do: win. So instead of being happy some bemoan the performance. Well in the first half hour we were well on top. We missed the early chances and made life a bit difficult for ourselves. But as long as we were with 11 players on the field we had the game in control. We created chances, which we mostly missed. Let us compare this with the “benchmark” team, Manchester United. They were losing to Southampton until the 65th minute. And then they won in the end. Will the United supporters ask for SAF to be sacked? No they will say: we won at the end and that is what matters. Yes we have been spoiled. We want our players not only to win but to win it in style. We want to win and trash the opposition. And if our players don’t do it like that we start to moan and complain. And in fact we should be happy. As in the last season when we didn’t play at our best we just lost our games most of the times. So winning in the United way (I’m not saying United always wins like that but just look at their wins against Blackpool and Southampton) should make us feel happy. We can win games without playing our best football for a large part of the game.
I can remember some fans moaning about the fact that we couldn’t dig out results in the last seasons when playing not at our best. Well we just have done this. So why now suddenly demand that we play the opposition off the pitch each time? It just doesn’t work that way. Footballers are human beings. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes you have a great day and sometimes you don’t. And when you have a not so great day then the only thing we can ask for is a win. And a win we got. A win in the United way is as good a win as a win in the Arsenal champagne football way. It will only get us to 3 points or will in this case only get us in the next round. If we would have won 5-0 we still only would be in the next round against Leyton Orient and we wouldn’t be automatically have a place in the final already. And I would have liked us to win in style and with a high score. But at the end of the day we are in the FA cup in the next round and that is all that matters. For a large part the moaning is Wenger’s own fault. He has given us so many games with such great football that we take it for granted that we win all our games in that way. So maybe Wenger shouldn’t have given us such a great team and such a wonderful football most of the time. He should have played the long ball football and hoof it in the air style. If that would have been the case in his reign we would have just enjoyed the win and forget the rest.
So yes Wenger is to blame. But not for a bad game. Wenger is to blame for spoiling us with great football. And maybe we can blame Wenger also when he can field 8 fresh players against Everton who haven’t played today or only a small part of the game. Maybe we should remember when we start on Tuesday with players like Szczesny, Sagna, Djourou, Clichy, Cesc, Wilshere, Song, Van Persie, Walcott who have had a rest this weekend. In fact this is 9 players but as Cesc and Song have played a bit I will count them for one. Also take note that Arsenal is yet again the ONLY team that has to play their games with only one day full rest in between matches. This is the second time we have to do this (also Chelsea had this last time, not now) and I wonder how the FA and EPL can explain this. Once can be a coincidence. Twice? Well this looks a bit much. So Wenger had to take a gamble on one game. He did this today. And it worked out and would have been a comfortable win if Nasri would have stayed fit. So this Gooner is a happy gooner. Still in 4 competitions. My fellow Gooners, what do you want more?
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