Thank Football its Friday, Arsenal v the weekend

Morning all, its Friday and we rock & roll into another weekend. There is no football this weekend from an Arsenal point of view and we still have six days until we play Bayern Munich. We would have had a match this weekend against Everton but due to them playing in the FA Cup the match has been rearranged.

In terms of news, Arsenal youth Afobe has suffered a cruciate knee ligament injury which will see him out of action for 9 months or so. It is bad news for him as he has been gaining some experience away from the club on loan. Frimpong had similar injuries at the same point of his development and he has still to prove himself at the top level. Good luck to Afobe, we wish him a swift recovery.

There are all the usual transfer stories too but I will leave others to waste their time writing about that. We still have 10 league matches and at least one champions league fixture before the summer and transfers can happen.

So staying with our player analysis I decided to write about our midfield. I thought I might do a piece on our central midfielders then tomorrow we could write about our wingers then sunday strikers. But Nooooo as you have probably seen on the Arsenal website, we only have midfielders and strikers. Now, I’m cool with that, they have divided it up into defenders, midfielders and strikers. BUT, Having Poldi, Walcott, The Ox and Gervinho in the “strikers” section is maddening! It is as if the club were putting the website together and thought “hang on a minute, everyone is going to know we only have one striker, Giroud, and he is a bit of a donkey, the fans are gonna be pissed” “I know what we can do, lets lump some of our midfielders into that category with him, that way it doesn’t look so obvious we sold one of the best strikers in the world and did nothing to replace him” “great shout”. Here is what it looks like. I shouldn't let myself be wound up by a website so easily but I have...



So I will write about half of our midfield today, I have chosen our: Fringe / squad / broken / developing, players. Here we go.


Diaby: I feel sorry for the big guy, I really do. When we signed him he had a promising career ahead of him. He had played for and captained the French under 19s and under 21s national teams. At 20 years old he joined Arsenal and was lauded as the next Vieira. Only five months into his time at Arsenal a horrendous Dan Smith tackle practically ended Diaby’s career. Diaby has had repeated surgeries and comebacks but has never really had a long run of matches as he is ever present in the injury room. No doubt he works hard on recovery and having his foot almost kicked off was not his fault. However we must be at the end of the road with Diaby. 



Rosicky: Like Diaby, when he is fit and has had a number of matches under his belt he is an excellent player. Rosicky has the ability to split defences with his passing. He plays with pace and his vision of the game is excellent. However he has spent so much time in the physio room and that has hampered what might have been a great player. I like Rosicky but it has got to a point where we have to let him go as we can’t rely on him even as a sub anymore.



Coquelin: I think he has a promising future. He is versatile and plays like he cares about winning. Wenger obviously has a lot of faith in him, many other players have gone out on lone but Wenger opted to hold onto his Coq this season. He is young and a bit raw but I hope he develops and turns into the player Wenger sees in him.



Arshavin: When we signed him he was a very highly rated player, a creative attacking midfielder, who was like a magician with the ball at his feet. What happened? who knows, but he has taken a huge fall in stock. Last season he was shipped back to Russia on loan. This season he hardly even makes the bench anymore. Some people say we played him out of position on the left wing, and I can agree to a certain extent. Maybe we could have got more out of him through the middle. The reality is that the manager picks the team and the players should be fit and able to play in the matches. It seems like our little Russian is neither fit or interested in playing for us anymore and the manager feels the same about his player. A sad waste of talent. Must bin him in the summer.


There we go, a quick over view on some of the fringe midfielders. I think three of them should probably be moved on this summer, meaning space will be available for able bodied players to fill.

Back tomorrow

Pumpkiii