Koscielny, can he become even better? « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. 800,000 visits last month

By Walter Broeckx

Who can still remember the laughter and angry reactions in some parts of the Arsenal fanbase when Wenger paid a nice sum of money for Laurent Koscielny now two summers ago.  Another unknown and unproven young Frenchman.  He was too short, too small, too thin, too not good at  all. We should have bought Samba or Cahill or any other giant PL centre back that was available.

In his first season I found him all right. You could see that he was a different defender from the others I mentioned. Again not the defender that chops attackers in two with wild and rash challenges. No, a defender who is strong in anticipating what will happen. A defender with an eye on intercepting the ball before it reaches the attacker. People who had tried to find out a few things about his football past in France knew that this was the way he defended in France. People who wanted a big lump as centre back were disappointed.

The more I saw him play the better he became in that first season. He had to fill the gap that was made because of Vermaelen being out all season virtually. And he did rather good.  Until that lost Carling Cup final. Where he and Szczesny messed up in the final minute of the game. A costly mistake. But what followed showed he is made out of the right stuff. Just like donkey Adams in his younger years he came back stronger.

Last season he was by far our best defender. Well that is my opinion of course. But he has shown that he can defend in his own way. And I think a lot of strikers don’t like to play against him. He has already a big collection of famous centre forwards that where safely held in his pocket during the games.

One of the things about Laurent Koscielny is that he is a player that is ready to still learn and not wanting to rest on his laurels.  And that is very important if you want to play for Wenger. Wenger will have identified the fact that Koscielny is a player that can adapt and learn before he signed him. And that is exactly how it turned out in the two seasons he played for Arsenal.

If you compare him with Vermaelen he is more a defender than Vermaelen. Vermaelen wants to join the attack more. Koscielny is sitting more at the back.  You will see Vermaelen break forward a few times in a game, Koscielny maybe once or twice. Koscielny is happy to sit back while the others go out to attack. But despite that he managed to score 3 goals in each season so far. Not as much as Vermaelen but it shows that when he goes forward he can score a goal.

He has played more than 40 games in his first two season (43-42) so he is not very injury prone and that is not a bad thing. I just hope I didn’t jinx him with mentioning this.

And after being involved in the worst goal of two seasons ago, at the end of this season he made the goal that gave us third place.  It was him who put the ball over the line against West Bromwich Albion. So I think it was not just a great success for Arsenal but also a nice personal victory for him.

This summer he went with the French team to the EURO 2012. He mostly sat on the bench. And when he finally got his chance France went out against Spain. But he played a faultless game. The goals from Spain were more due to mistakes from other players. And I know that rather a few French people and journalists wanted to see more of Giroud and Koscielny. Maybe a next French coach would give him more playing time. I somehow don’t go wild over that idea to be honest.

What do I expect for the coming season from Laurent? Well just more of the same. I think he will be one of the 3 first choice centre backs from which Wenger will pick his central defence.  When Koscielny, Vermaelen and Mertesacker are all fit I expect that Wenger will rotate them depending on the team we are playing against. Let us say when we play a rather slow big striker like Carroll I think we will see Mertesacker playing.  When the strikers are small but fast we will see the Koscielny-Vermaelen combination.

Koscielny can play with both of them. When Vermaelen was out last season he showed he could play with Per after a small adoption period. His partnership with Vermaelen has also been rather good.

Buying Koscielny at the time looked a risky move. But once again Wenger knew what he was doing when he gave his blessing to this purchase.  We got a very good defender. One who has shown that he can take on all kinds of opponents.  One who is fast, can play the ball.  Not a shouter. A  player not with the big mouth in the media but one who wants to speak through his performances on the field.

He doesn’t have the killer look of Vermaelen but he is as determined as Vermaelen is on the field to do his best. I think if all goes well this season from the injury front he might in fact play lesser games. But the last two seasons we had a lot of injuries. Just imagine if we wouldn’t have had him to hold the fort in those two seasons….

———————————————–

 Some other stuff you might like