The Robin Double: what it means for Wenger, the player and the club « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News, supporting the club, the players and the manager

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While it would take a journalist of such utterly blinkered proportions to ignore the sensational achievements of Robin van Persie this season, there is always an opportunity in every great story for journalists to cast doubt.

So it is with our Double Player of the Year man.  He’s won the awards, but immediately some hacks are looking for excuses to throw in the negative.  Is this it?  Is he off?  Is Mr Wenger so stubborn that he won’t buy anyone, or give Robin a pay rise?

Indeed the negativity started long before the awards – as Robin started knocking the goals in this season the press and the AAA were out there saying that this was a one man team.  “What happens if he stops scoring?” was the cry.

Amidst all this, a little of the magnitude of both Robin’s and Mr Wenger’s achievements are overshadowed.

Robin van Persie moved into the Feyenoord first team when he was 17 and became Dutch Football Association’s Best Young Talent at the end of the 2001-02 season.  But he also got a bit of a negative reputation and so the Feyenoord manager, Bert van Marwijk, sold him to us for £3m.

In the past year Mr Wenger has made two unexpected moves – moves which at the time were highly criticised by the AAA and their journalist pals – making Robin captain, and making him the main striker rather than the Bergkamp II.  In an interview Robin explained how the move to centre forward happened:

“I actually never played there before – I did it a couple of times at youth level, but it was nothing really special. The boss didn’t buy someone else [when Emmanuel Adebayor left] because he was convinced I could do it. I wasn’t so sure. Then, in pre-season, we had a game against Inter Milan. I scored a good goal, played well and he told me after the game, ‘You see? It will work’.

“Sometimes, you just question yourself, if you are good enough at it. Those answers came. I have been for a while now convinced I actually can play as a main striker.

“Let’s see where it ends. Let’s see how far I can push myself, see where my maximum lies.”

So Robin has two awards and has equalled the Arsenal record for goals in a year, and could also get the Golden Boot for goals in a season.

Of him, Mr Wenger said:

“Robin has a very healthy life, very focused on football – he takes care of everything. He is like Thierry Henry in that. When you look at great players, they are on the move, everybody else stands and watches the ball. That is the difference. It’s not the way you finish, it is the way you move that gets you into the position. Robin is world class.”

Joe Mercer was the first Arsenal player to win the award, in 1949-50.  After that we had Frank McLintock and Dennis Bergkamp, before the golden era

• 2001-2 Robert Pires
• 2002-3 Thierry Henry (also Players’ Player of the Year)
• 2003-4 Theirry Henry (also Players’ Player of the Year)
• 2005-6 Theirry Henry

I am reminded today of the Robert Pires award – you may recall that Pires was injured and could only hobble onto the pitch to get his award.   He walked up very slowly, with all the other players bowing down to him.  Pires had had an average first season, but sprung into life in the second, changing his style of play totally in order to give that amazing Pires / Henry axis, and became an utterly, utterly brilliant player.

Robin has followed this route, also changing his style of play  – and now we see the reward.

But back to the press: already there are comments that buying Podolski will not be enough and we need more players.  Already the AAA are saying we won’t get these players because they won’t want to come to a club that is “treading water” as one correspondent put it.

If anything I think this will make a little difference in a positive way, but not much.  Footballers thinking of moving talk to each other, they know about the clubs, the managers, the stadia, the fans.

But it does add one more mark of excellence to Mr Wenger, who was quite probably the only man to believe that Robin could be a centre forward.

As for Robin, of course we don’t have any extra insight into what he thinks and what he will do about his contract.  But let’s hope that he will have noted what happens to people who move clubs to seek trophies, and let’s hope he remembers that it was Mr Wenger who saw what he could do.

Just one little thing to add: lots of newspapers are talking about this being a landslide victory.  If you have a source of the voting numbers could you post it in?