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By Tony Attwood
There’s a game that goes around at this time of year in which people nominate their best team, in terms of individual players who have done well this season. I’ve seen one or two of these, and they include Saka and Rice in them, but then I got a surprise and found such a list with Granit Xhaka listed. (And yes I do know he’s no longer with us).
In one way, it is a bit annoying. One wants Arsenal men to be recognised, but the fact that these journalists go around selecting Xhaka, who was I fully admit, a great player for us, shows just how much a player can go up in the recognition of journalists once he leaves the club. Although such a selection is of course, also a way to get readership, and cause arguments.
It is also a way of avoiding the issue of the transfers (often for lots of money) that have not worked – something that is embarrassing for journalists since, as we’ve noted before, 97% of their tips as to who Arsenal are signing each transfer window, never come anywhere near Arsenal. And of the 3% Arsenal do get, not all turn out to be game changers for the better. Of course, if pushed, the journos then blame Arsenal for being too slow off the mark, or too mean in their offers, or perhaps in the case of Xhaka, not actually seeing the player’s worth.
And this argument can be maintained very readily through two important facts that they tend not to discuss.
The first fact is that journalists tend to focus on individual players, rather than the whole team and how it works together. A player might indeed be superb playing in one lineup but not another, quite simply because of the fact that this is a team game, not a game based around one player. The problem here can be not only ball skill but also positioning on the pitch and the ability to get on with others, including the manager.
This is why so often we see a player do poorly at one club, is then let go at a modest price, and then does well at the next club. The chances are he simply couldn’t play the way he wanted to at the first club because of others around him and their preferred position.
Indeed, it doesn’t take much looking back at Arsenal’s history to find some of our own examples. To Arsenal’s benefit was Thierry Henry’s move from Juventus. I seem to remember a lot of mumbling and annoyance when he first played at Highbury, and this of course was boosted by the media, always happy to find some odd Arsenal fan ready to whinge. But Arsène Wenger knew what he could do, and of course he was right. The media and those in the crowd who were convinced that Henry was hopeless, tend not to admit their error over the man who is Arsenal’s all-time leading goalscorer.
Going thje other way was Serge Gnabry who played ten times for Arsenal. At least Arsenal wanted him to stay – Tony Pulis at West Brom said he wasn’t good enough for the Premier League and virtually gave him away to Werder Bremen, who in turn couldn’t believe their luck and sold him to Bayern Munich, where he scored 75 goals in 205 games. He also got 25 in 57 for Germany.
Or there was Dennis Bergkamp, whom Inter Milan couldn’t see the value in keeping. They sold him after 52 games – and he stayed at Arsenal to his retirement, 315 games later. Does anyone want to argue that he was useless?
Of course, one of the things that helps a few clubs is having a regular supply of brilliant youngsters coming through the ranks. We can see them now of course, but we should also remember that in the past Ray Parlour, Cesc Fàbregas (whose environmental concerns have never left him), Kevin Campbell, Martin Keown, Tony Adams…. the list goes on. We may take it for granted that there are always some new youngsters coming through (as of course there are now) but not every club has that luxury.
Some will look at the current under-21 league table and see Arsenal in the lower half of the league, and thus suggest that the club has lost its ability to find youngsters, forgetting those who have moved up and have already played for or been on the bench for the first team, despite their youth.
It is also interesting that a recent article from ESPN produced a list of four of the five best players in the Premier League this season as Arsenal men: William Saliba, Bukayo Saka, Declan Rice, amd Gabriel Magalhães.
Not bad for one club.
