October becomes Rebotco, Keown’s son plays, as trends reverse at Arsenal « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. 800,000 visits last month
Arsenal Reserves are not having it all their own way in the new under 21 league (they are currently second in the league by my calculations – the Arsenal.com league table page won’t load on my machine so I can’t be sure) but they are certainly gaining more interest than ever before.
Part of the added interest comes from the under 19 Next Gen where we’ve won one and lost one of the European games so far, but it is also because of the team. Here’s the team against Reading which won 2-0
James Shea
Bacary Sagna, Sead Hajrovic, Ignasi Miquel, Andre Santos
Thomas Eisfeld, Francis Coquelin, Jack Wilshere Emmanuel Frimpong,
Serge Gnabry, Chuba Akpom
Even the subs are starting to look familiar, the bench being
- Reice Charles-Cook
- Jernade Meade (80)
- Nico Yennaris (74)
- Kristoffer Olsson
- Hector Bellerin (61)
Akpom, in case you have not tracked him, is an England under-19 forward.
It was Sagna’s first game since his second leg break, and he played 61 minutes. This is where the arrangement of the new league really scores for us, because it allows returning players who are over 21 to get games.
Meanwhile Wilshere and Frimpong came back, Frimpong playing the whole game.
Such was the interest that even the national press have covered the match – the Telegraph for example raving over, “One especially delightful backheel (from Jack) to Thomas Eisfeld also seemed to suggest that he has lost none of his confidence during more than a year on the sidelines….
“Another positive for Arsenal was the performance of Serge Gnabry, a 17 year-old winger in the mould of Walcott or Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain. With Wenger watching, Gnabry opened the scoring in the 42nd minute following a move that involved both Wilshere and Frimpong. Arsenal’s second goal was scored in the 59th minute by Chuba Akpom.” Arsenal.com have Wenger calling him a “star of the future”.
Arsene Wenger is quoted as saying,
“Jack is doing extremely well, the situation looks very good. We have to be cautious, not crazy, because of his talent you are always pushed in a situation where you would like to rush him back, and we have to resist that.”
So it is just possible that Jack and Bac will play in the league cup match against Reading at the end of the month. There is also talk of Frimpong trotting back to Wolverhampton, where he was on loan when the injury occurred.
And just to add to the fun Reading had Stuart Taylor in goal and Niall Keown (son of Martin) in their team.
So while October is traditionally the moment when we lose half the squad, this season it looks like being the month when we get some rather important players back.