Arsene Wenger has reason to believe that he has more leaders in his Arsenal squad this season than the previous one, after bringing in Per Mertesacker, Mikel Arteta, Yossi Benayoun, Park Chu-Young and Andre Santos in the final days of the summer transfer window – unlike last season when their challenge on all four fronts were halted due to lack of leaders.
The Frenchman said:
‘Sometimes we are reproached for not having enough captains in our squad — now we have plenty.’
‘Overall, we have more experience. This could be important should we have interesting challenges in March or April. That could have a big part to play.’
‘We were criticized a lot last season for not getting over the line. But I believe that we were so close, so, so close.’
‘Now we have added more experience, also, last year, we lost important players in March and April because we went for all the trophies. So, hopefully, we have the squad to do it and this time it will happen.’
‘My challenge is to prove that I made the right decisions.’
From what I can gather, it seems Wenger was on a mission this summer to add more players who are current or have captained their country in order to shut the pundits, who said we didn’t have enough leaders, up.
Yes we do have more leaders in the team than we did last season, but I don’t see them leading on the pitch. Take Mertesacker in defense for example, Szczesny is more of a leader at the back than he is. I know his Per’s English good, but a few shouts and hand gestures can speak volumes on a football pitch. Park has barely played for us yet, so we aren’t able to establish if he can stamp his authority on the pitch, while Santos is another person who leads by example. In general our players are too nice and respect each other too much, which is great in certain ways, but we need a player on the pitch who won’t be afraid to scold others for their errors and lead with an iron fist – I don’t think we have that player yet.
I hope Santos, Mertesacker and Park will be able to cope with the workload heading their way in the second half of the season, as Wenger sees our new ‘leaders’ as the people to help us push on.
They may have experience from where they came from, but we all know what they will experience in the Premier league will be far from what they’ve gone through and know about football in recent times.
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mr wenger is rigth we have more leaders..for example Arteta have taken away freekick from Rvp,per have brougth that stay back command to other defenders…the midfild is been well controlled by Arteta..he is the leader that i see in the team,,last season was ful of players wanting to lead…Nasir dmt take corrections but now Arteta tells Ramsey what to do
Just need to get 3-4 players back from injury. add a couple of quality players in Jan and maybe just maybe, we might be able to challenge for 4th.
Of course we have … this article is a no brainer. We have more players who have already captained club or country !!