Consider a mid-field that looks like this…. « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News, supporting the club, the players and the manager
By Tony Attwood
Consider a midfield that looks like this:
Cazorla Oxlade-Chamberlain Diaby
or
Diaby Oxlade-Chamberlain Arteta
or
Oxlade-Chamberlain Arteta Wilshere
or
Oxlade-Chamberlain Wilshere Cazorla
or
Wilshere Arteta Rosicky
or
Wilshere Diaby Ramsey
or….
It goes on and on, and I have not even put the fast developing Coquelin in there yet nor come to that Arshavin – who I know is not the favourite of many, but who did have a fine season out on loan in Russia.
My point however is simple. I can’t recall a time when we had so many choices in midfield. At the moment I can’t see the equivalent of the Vieira-Petit combination, or the Gilberto-Vieira combination of the Invincibles but what I do know was that during the Invincibles season we did not suffer the sort of injury run that has bedevilled us in recent years.
Which is why there is a new game: a much bigger squad with huge flexibility to allow different selections for different games and different competitions.
So in midfield we have in alphabetical order…
- Arshavin
- Arteta
- Cazorla
- Coquelin
- Diaby
- Oxlade-Chamberlain
- Ramsey
- Rosicky
- Wilshere
Of course Coquelin is just learning the trade, Rosicky can’t play every match, Wilshere’s recovery is taking a long time, but as a range of choices it is extraordinary.
Put Oxlade-Chamberlain in the centre of the midfield and he becomes a box-to-box player. Play him with Arteta and Wilshere and we would probably have the most powerful midfield in quite a while. And if Diaby continues his growth, you have another powerhouse, strong on the ball, always finding space. Play Cazorla along with Oxlade-Chamberlain and Arteta and you have one hell of a combination.
Now, if you accept any of this, then the departure of Song suddenly becomes perfectly reasonable, because we have such a collection of midfield talent. It also suddenly begins to question whether we actually need any more midfielders at all.
So where does that leave Sahin? I am having problems fitting the nine players we have into 3 slots – so why bring in a 10th?
The papers in the UK have been saying that Sahin is in fact going to Liverpool, although yesterday the German papers were saying that Sahin had just had a medical at Arsenal. But I genuinely cannot see why we would want another player in mid-field.
Maybe we were just muddying the waters for Liverpool and making life tough for them. Who knows, but here’s another little range of figures…
- Arshavin (31)
- Arteta (30)
- Cazorla (27)
- Coquelin (21)
- Diaby (26)
- Oxlade-Chamberlain (19)
- Ramsey (21)
- Rosicky (31)
- Wilshere (20)
That is a very fine mix of ages. Four players in the 19 to 21 age range, two at 26/27, three at 30+. The mixture of youth, and experience, what every team should have.
It raises the point as to what a huge range of talent we have to take on different types of club – for if we are covering for injuries we are also looking at ways of beating rugby teams like Stoke, 12 man defences like Sunderland + ref, and football playing teams (if we get to find any).
I’m actually feeling rather good about our mid-field.
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