Arsenal News » This was the best thing that could have happened to Fran and Jack.
By Walter Broeckx
Great was my expectation when I saw the names of Fran Merida and Jack Wilshere on the team sheet. I have seen them play a few games in the Carling Cup, the Emirates Cup, in the reserves and even in the Champions League.
When they play in the Emirates cup, which after all is just a friendly like all the other in preparation of the league, they play at home and the pressure is not that big. When they play in the Champions League they normally are surrounded with other seasoned youngsters or they play in the Carling Cup team when nothing matters any more.
Playing in reserves is not the same thing as playing in the first team. Playing at Underhill is not the same as playing in front of a hostile crowd at Upton park.
When these young players go out to play in the Carling cup there is a little bit more pressure. But at the end of the day Arsenal doesn’t really care for that cup and it is considered as a training ground so that these kids can get used to playing for big crowds and against bigger and stronger opponents.
So there is pressure but no one will get shot if they are out of that competition. It just is a competition in which younger players can show them selves and let us see what the future can bring for The Arsenal.
So in these games Jack and Fran really played some good football and show us bits of their talent. I admit that I have high hopes for those 2 in the future. I think that Jack could be a kind of Dennis Bergkamp player and Fran looks like a playmaker in the making. Both have excellent technique and skills, good vision, a good ability to dribble and they can each add something to the team.
So high expectations from my part and… it didn’t work out for them at the day. Playing in the FA Cup is a next step for those youngsters. The FA Cup is pressure. No team really likes to go out and not at this early stage. The fans from both teams are up for it so you really get a tough game to play no matter who the opponent may be. The players will fight till the last second for every ball. It will be hard work.
So with over an hour gone Jack and Fran left the field with Arsenal 1-0 down. And neither had produced much.
Jack had some good moments, some nice ideas but it just didn’t work out. Fran had some good things to show in the beginning but the further the game went on the worse he began to play. At the end almost every pass went lost, corners were badly delivered. It was almost turning in to a nightmare. I had visions of Eboue last season.
Diaby and Nasri came on and despite their young age, they know what it’s all about. They have been there and they took over and from that moment on you could feel that the game had turned in our favour. We had some good assists from Vela and a very strong finish from Ramsey, plus and the best of headers a centre forward can deliver from Eduardo to turn things around. But I really think that we could have scored 5 or 6 goals from the moment Diaby and Nasri came on.
But what will this do to Jack and Fran ? I think it could be the best thing that happened to them. If we had won by a large score they could have thought : “hey this is easy.” And next time around they would have walked on the field thinking that it will be another walk in the park.
No I think they will be aware of the difficulty they face in such games. And I am sure that Arsène Wenger will have some fatherly words with the two players.
I think that he will say to Fran that if things don’t work out he has to play some easy balls instead of trying to do the difficult passes all the time. In this game Fran was trying so hard to deliver the killer ball that at the end he even couldn’t make the simplest of passes because his confidence had gone after all those missed passes.
I think he will tell Jack that he doesn’t have to dribble all 11 players before releasing the ball. Dribble and then pass it to a team mate and if that works out he can try more. He doesn’t have to produce some kind of magic every time he touches the ball.
I ‘m not going to slaughter those two youngsters for this game. They have the potential to become great players but they still have a lot to learn. And the only way they can learn this is by playing in those games. Yes it can cost us at times but that is one of the difficulties of being a manager. Bring the young players and have the risk that they make mistakes or not playing them and be sure that they will learn nothing.
All our older youngsters have had such games and some of them were written of after one such game – as with Song. Even last year he was written off by some and now those same people demand Wenger to buy at least 2 backup players for the month Song is going away for the African Nations Cup.
So let us just be patient and give them another few games and I am sure that they will come good and deliver what Wenger has seen in them.
After all will we take the risk of losing another Song ?
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