So Nicklas Bendtner says he will have to leave if he doesn’t start when he is fit. Some are portraying this as more trouble for Arsene Wenger and Arsenal. Well fair enough I suppose, good news stories don’t sell newspapers as well as bad!
I think that whilst Bendtner’s outburst isn’t wonderfully positive, it isn’t bad news either. There were times last season when we had to play Arshavin as a lone striker because we had no better option. That was a real headache for Wenger. Now we have Chamakh and Bendtner fit, Van Persie ready for part of a match if not 90 minutes and younger players banging on the door. That’s much more the kind of problem a manager wants to deal with.
Of course Bendtner wants to play, what fit player wouldn’t? Personally I think his comments make him sound rather immature. He may be ‘fit and in the form of my life’ but Chamakh has made an impact since he came in and so Arsenal have options.
I think that there will be more of these stories in football. It is an inevitable consequence of the shift in the balance of power towards the players from the clubs. Managers are going to have to get used to it and work on their man-management skills.
We may see more frequent changes of club than we are used to in football. We may see more rotation of players in the teams, though that isn’t really what Arsenal want at the moment when they are finding their way back to consistent form.
I think that Wenger will want to make as few changes as possible for the game tomorrow. The team was better against Wolves and now they need sending out to do the same job again against Everton. So that may mean another session on the bench for Nicklas Bendtner.
The genuine big headache that Aresne Wenger has at the moment is the unknown extent of Vermaelen‘s injury. The doctors seem uncertain about the source of the problem and therefore don’t know what to do next. Wenger might of been considering a move for another central defender anyway, but the longer Vermaelen’s injury goes on the more urgent this becomes.
I think that Squillaci and Koscielny were both good buys and if Vermaelen wasn’t injured I would think that Arsenal had the position covered. But if we lose the Verminator we are short of class in that position.
All the name form the summer are back in the news – Cahill, Jagielker, Subotic etc. Personally I don’t think that Jagielka is any better than Squillaci or Koscielny so I wouold say don’t bother. Moyes says we were interested but didn’t offer eneough in the summer for a ‘full England International’. I think we probably got the same level of talent with the two purchases we did make. Jagielka being a full England International says more about the fitness of Dawson, King and Ferdinand than it does about him.
Cahill I do rate and someone like Subotic would be fantastic. But what I would most like to see is a recovered Vermalen.
Makes a change not to be talking about goalkeepers!
