Thomas Eisfeld, the new ice man on the field? « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade

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By Walter Broeckx

So we only welcomed one really new player in this transfer window. Well it couldn’t be the August 31 every transfer deadline day.

Thomas Eisfeld is the name of the new player we have bought. If you translate it in English his name would be Ice field. So what do we know about him? Well… nothing in fact.

But who knew Koscielny before we signed him? Who in fact knew Cesc when we signed him?  But still sniffing around at the internet and on some German football sites I did find a few things about him that we can mention.

First of all that he was born in Finsterwalde and that is in the former East Germany part of Germany.  He played first for what I think will be a very local team called SV Quitt Ankum and the only sensible thing I can say about that is that SV is the short for Sport Verein or Sport Association if I  would translate it in English.

He then went to VFL Osnabruck in his youth career. And do you wonder what VFL means? Well it means Verein für Leibesübungen or in English Association for Physical Education. Well I stick to the VFL Osnabruck because the APE Osnabruck doesn’t sound that good to me. Maybe because I speak German that the VFL sounds more familiar.

Anyway he left them around the age of 13 to go to Borussia Dortmund. And he stayed there well till yesterday.  He played for the U19 at Dortmund and in the first 12 games he scored 6 goals and had 6 assists. He is a right footed player and plays as an attacking midfielder. He is 5ft10in or 1,77m. Not as big as his compatriot Mertesacker but a rather good size for a football player I think. Or does size matters?

Now for the moment the Dortmundd youth academy is a little bit famous in Germany. As I have said when we played them in the CL this season a few years back Dortmund was as good as bankrupt after spending too much money. They then went for their youth project and it is that project that brought them back the success we have seen last season. Lots of their first team players are educated in the Borussia Dortmund youth academy. Just need to say Gotze and people will know what I mean. And he is not the only one.

He had his first interview on arsenal.com that you all will have watched I think and if not I can tell you that he speaks a nice bit of English. But who am I to judge how a foreigner speaks English. He looked a bit impressed I think but well I think I also would look a little bit impressed would it have been me sitting there. He was in the stadium when Arsenal went to Dortmund this season (so was I Thomas) and he also was in the Emirates on Sunday (I wasn’t Thomas). And he said he was very impressed by the events. Well I think we all know what you mean by this.

I think Arsenal will have been keeping an eye on him for a while because we usually do it when we sign someone. So I think that we can be sure that they will have monitored his way of live and how he behaves on a football field an in training.

What can you expect from German players? Good technique, good physical fitness and a never accept a loss attitude. If he possesses those 3 clichés we have about football in Germany he could be a nice and cheep buy.

He did play his first game with the reserves last week against Swansea. He then played alongside Serge Gnabry another fine young German talent we have at the club who just went from the youth ranks to the reserves during this season. So he will have someone to help him around a bit at the club. And he only played 45 minutes in this game but he seemed to do very well if I can believe the images I have seen and the words said about him. They took him off after 45 minutes because he got a knock on his knee. But Arsenal won comfortably with a very young side on the field.

He has done a first interview on Arsenal.com and at first he looked a bit overwhelmed I felt. But he did seems to be a young man who is confident of himself and his skills and who is looking forward to the big challenge in front of him. His English was rather good (certainly compared with Mertesacker the first days in London)  but I do hope he can find some decent cloths?  (Okay this is the older person speaking who knows nothing about fashion but believe me in the middle ages when I grew up we would throw away a trousers that has more holes than I have money in my pockets).

The scouting people did their job, Arsenal did their job. Now we let Arsène do what he is usually good at: turning a young promising player in to a great player. And then it is up to Thomas Eisfeld himself to finish the job. Here at Untold we tend to be very open to new young players coming over to Arsenal. This time it is no different. We will welcome him at our great club with open arms and wish that he will fulfil the potential that Arsenal and Arsène Wenger has seen in him.

So welcome Thomas at Arsenal London (this is how we are called in general in Germany by the way – they always add the name London for some reason – I really don’t know where it comes from to be honest).

Viel Glück and let us hope  you can score a goal for Arsenal soon and then we will shout: “Tooooor”.