Beyond Yann M’Vila: Ignasi Miquel, Francis Coquelin and Marvin Martin « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade

By Tony Attwood

The demands of work took me away from this article after just describing Yann M’Vila. I also wanted to talk about the performance of Ignasi Miquel, Francis Coquelin and Marvin Martin

But first a general point about the signing of kids, that seems to get some people very worked up.

The simple fact is that unless you want to get a reputation for letting players rot in the reserves (and indeed unless you want to spend a fortune on wages for players who never play) some of the backup players needed must be players who are coming into the team for the first time.  If you don’t do this, they never get games, since you are always bringing in players ahead of them.

Of course this is the Chelsea and Man City way, and I am sure many people who claim to support Arsenal will be swapping to those clubs, as they deliver an approach that is more to their taste.  Personally I like, and have always liked project youth, so I am happy to see these young players come through and get the chance to be mixed in with the big boys.

Miquel needs little said, I feel – his appearance was very positive last season in the cup, and I thought he grew into the Liverpool game.  I suspect he is now very clearly our fourth central defender, and could quickly go up the rankings.

Francis Coquelin has been less in the news however.  But the fact is that on 17 August France lost to Portugal in the semi final of the Under 20 world cup and went on to play in the 3rd/4th place play off.  That was France’s seventh game in the series  – and Francis Coquelin played in all seven games.

In case you don’t know he’s a defensive midfielder who also plays right midfield or right back.  And double “in case you don’t know” Untold has been tipping him to be a first team player at Arsenal since we first saw him a couple of years back in the Austrian training camp.

He’s yet another Gilles Grimandi find, and he has played for France at under 17, under 18, under 19 and under 20 level and last season played 24 times for Lorient in the French first division.

Clearly he needs a bit of a break, but he’s there and ready to roll for Arsenal – unless of course we decide to loan him again to Lorient.  As you can imagine Lorient are desperate to have another season out of him.

Which takes us to Marvin Martin, a creative midfielder, who played for France’s under 21 team between 2008 and 2010 and is now a full international, playing with Sochaux in the first team since 2008.

He has the nickname Little Xavi,  and this year he  joined the full French team becoming only the 4th French international to score twice on his debut (one of the others was Zidane).

He has played 111 games for Sochaux and scored 10, plus has played 3 times for France scoring twice.