Tuesday, March 6th, 2012 « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade
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By Walter Broeckx
There has been so much to talk about following the Liverpool game that Untold didn’t get to do its usual round up of what happened to our players on international duty. Perhaps because some of us are still floating on air because of the Tottenham game, some perhaps because for once nobody got injured.
But we should look back, even now with the Milan game about to happen. A few of our on loan youngsters shined a bit. Henri Lansbury and The Ox (who is not on loan of course) scored the last of the 4 goals for England against Belgium in the U21 game. One of the Lansbury goals went a bit around the world, or at least the Gooner world, with an effort from the side line that flew in the top corner. Still don’t know he intended it or not but what the hell, they all count.
The Oxlade-Chamberlain was a penalty. He lost the ball, like he did against Sunderland the other week, ran after the defender, took it back and then was brought down. He then stepped up and converted it himself. The best part of his performance came after the game. Because on twitter he told that he was happy with the win but not happy with his own performance. Loved it. Win 4-0 and not being happy with yourself. That is the way to improve. That shows that he is not that easily satisfied with himself. And this means that he has that drive to get better. I like him more and more and not just for his football skills. He seems just a very down to earth person and not that easily satisfied with himself.
Another on loan player that made a few headlines was Joel Campbell. The Costa Rican striker who is at Lorient in France for the moment scored the only goal against Wales. A nice finish from the youngster who has a rather amazing track record in international football. At youth level he had a record of almost one goal in each game. But with the first team of Costa Rica he has a record of 1 goal in 2 games. So not bad for a 19 year old. Not bad at all. The biggest regret I have is the fact that by not getting a permit last summer he cannot be developed at Arsenal for the moment. But with the current games he is playing for Costa Rica he surely should get a permit next time around. Let Wenger get him in his hands for a few years and he could be the new Van Persie in a few years time.
There was a bit of a scare this week when Van Persie stopped a bit earlier in training but he said he was okay and he played on saturday (as you may recall). For the first time in a long time Vermaelen played in the centre of the Belgium defence. Finally the Belgium manager is starting to see the light about Vermaelen.
The off the pitch moaning however has not stopped by some part of the fans. There just are some people out there who needs to moan about something. The newest fashion is to moan about the players wages. Yesterday they said we don’t spend the f*cking money and today they complain we spend too much f*cking money.
And the strange part is that they come up with saying player X is on 50K a week. But they don’t know if this really is true or not. Someone throws in a number and after repeating it a few times it becomes ‘fact’. But true or not, they just keep on repeating it and telling us what an idiot the manager is for paying that money for that player.
They have said this about Van Persie in the past years. But can you find anyone out there now who will admit they have said it about Van Persie? But I do remember when he signed his contract a few years ago and how people reacted on this and said: get rid of him. Always injured. Not world class.
Rosicky is also someone who made them angry when Wenger gave him a new contract. And they should have loved him in fact. Because Rosicky was what you could call an untypical Wenger signing. He was experienced. He was a well known player. He was a very well respected international player. Until his injury cost him almost 2,5 years of his career. But Wenger gave him a new contract and some people went mad. Always injured, get rid of him. Some blog even talked about the Rosicky list when talking about the injury list. And this season I think Rosicky is showing why Wenger trusted him. I think he is showing that he still is a very good player and with his experience can bring something extra to the team.
The last player on the favourite: “get rid of him-list” is Diaby. I know he is injured a lot. But can’t people see that he got his injuries because of playing for Arsenal? Time and time again he has been kicked to pieces without any protection from the refs. It started with his broken ankle in his first season. And from then on he has never completely recovered. Last season against Bolton I even wrote an article about it. A terrible tackle from Robinson on his shin just not snapping his leg. You could see his leg bending. Just recovered we went to Chelsea and Dancing Dean just stood there as once again his ankle was targeted. No fouls being given but the damage was done once again. And when he then recovered we got that game at Newcastle where Dowd let go a terrible tackle from Barton on Diaby that was the start of the Newcastle come back.
Last season alone he could have had his leg and ankle broken 4 times. 4 times that I can remember from the back of my head. We can’t blame Diaby for being injured. We must blame the poor refs who let all those attacks take place unpunished. 4 times he barely survived those attacks and 4 times the refs did nothing.
The disgrace is not how much we pay Diaby for always being injured. The real disgrace is how many times the refs have let those bad tackles go that lead to Diaby being injured that much. But unfortunately for Diaby those bad tackles never got the exposure that the Ramsey and Eduardo tackles got. I think they did not even showed his broken leg on MOTD in those days. But because of the Ramsey and Eduardo leg breaking was live on TV it kept more hanging in our heads. Did anyone question Arsenal playing £50K (“fact”) to Ramsey or Eduardo? No because we know that they were victims of criminal attacks. So why do some moan about Diaby? I think Diaby is in the same category as Eduardo and Ramsey. The only difference was the media exposure on these incidents. And maybe the fact that despite his injury problems his bones didn’t break (apart from the first time) that easily.
The Diaby witch hunt from some part has always amazed me a bit. It has made me sad in fact. I’m sure that Diaby would have loved to stay fit. But I think he is the player that has had the most assaults to endure in the last 4 years of all the Arsenal players.
Is Diaby paid too much? I don’t know and in fact nobody knows. Should he be sold? I don’t know and nobody knows for now.
But what I do know is that Diaby is a great player when fit. I do know that he sustained most of his injuries from bad kicks and tackles in his Arsenal career without protection from the refs. And so I do know that he doesn’t deserve all this shit being thrown at him.
Van Persie came good (understatement of the year), Rosicky is coming good. Who knows maybe even Diaby can come good. And if he does it just like Van Persie shut them up, just as Rosicky is doing right now it will be great not just for him. But also for Arsenal. We can but hope that he will come good but please let us not abuse a player that has been kicked to pieces when playing and defending our colours.
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