Arguably Arsenal’s most perturbing signing of the summer was that of South Korean striker Park Chu-Young.
It was clear over the course of last season that the Gunners needed to bolster their forward ranks, with Bendtner and Marouane Chamakh failing to produce the goods on a regular basis and Robin van Persie forced to shoulder too much of the goal-scoring burden.
Indeed, the general consensus amongst Arsenal fans was that the club needed to sign a world-class striker to play alongside Van Persie. Arsene Wenger, being Arsene Wenger, however, had different ideas. Instead he signed Park a player, who was relatively unknown outside of French footballing circles, but who had a fairly decent scoring record. There’s every chance that he could grow and develop into a world-class player, but the feeling is that he’s not quite there yet, especially seeing as he’s not receiving regular first-team football.
Still, Arsenal fans were excited to see their young Korean striker thrown into action. After all, he had to be a step up from Chamakh. Well, unfortunately chances have not been forthcoming for Park, who has yet to feature for the club in the league.
The lack of action is surprising considering that due to his enforced military service, there’s a good chance he’ll be off to join the South Korean army in two years’ time. When Van Persie doesn’t score, Arsenal start struggling for goals, yet Wenger still doesn’t chance his arm.
Despite this, Park remains in a rich vein of form. He’s scoring regularly for South Korea and managed to put in a Man of the Match performance against Poland the other night grabbing a brace in South Korea’s 2-0 victory. Given that he’s in form, I don’t see why Wenger didn’t put him on in the dying minutes against Spurs. That was an opportunity for him to quickly establish himself as a club favourite and besides it’s not like there was too much inspiration on the pitch at the time.
If Wenger isn’t going to play him why did he buy a player that’s going to be scooting off to join the army in a couple of season’s time?
My fear is that Arsenal only bought Park to give him a few run outs in the Carling Cup and more importantly to rake in merchandising profits from the Far East. Despite him showing that he’s a natural goal-scorer on the International stage, the club seems content to treat him like a mascot. Quite frankly, that’s a pretty poor attitude to display from a club that should be promoting a type of meritocracy.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the Arsenal way lately.
Click HERE to see the original article. This article was first published on ThisIsFutbol
Written by Harry Cloke
FUCKING HELL, THERE’S STILL ABOUT 6 MONTHS LEFT OF THE SEASON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
6 months? for a player? leaving after 2 years? not buying parker or someone else for the future n call it careful buying? put your head bck into your head.
Wenger bought him because he knew Bendtner wanted to leave, and he knew Chamakh will be in Africa January/February for the Nations Cup, i think he’ll use Chamakh as much as he can now. Same for Gervinho, when he goes to Africa we’ll see Chamberlain and Ryo more
Still, i wanna see more of park.
Think we’ll see him in carling cup first though.
So basically you’re saying Arsene bought some players to prepare for the loss of other players in the ACN but isn’t going to play those players until the ACN comes around and then throw on players who have had very limited time to gel with the starting team in a competitive situation and then expect those fringe players to perform.
Yeah that sound like the lack of foresight from the Arsene Wenger as of late.
Please learn to write with better grammar.. The title doesn’t need the ‘for’ at the end unless you change why to what.. Simple.
For Heaven’s sake give Wenger a chance and respect his professionalism. He bought Park to strenghthen our attack, BUT allow the guy to train, gel and generally adapt to the English game before letting him loose on the Bartons and Shawcrosses of the world.
He didn’t seem to give Per and Santos that courtesy and before you say we have alot of attackers and not many defenders due to injury so they were thrown in early out of necessity, I will say we have alot of attackers, maybe only 3 are actually capable and only one is world class.
What’s the harm in having Park play? He can’t score less than the likes of Arshavin and Vela.
he only bought him to piss off lille and have an excuse not to buy hazard because they dont even wanna talk to us after that
i think Arsene Wenger is a gifted employee. when you make money for a business, who cares if you slept with my wife or sister or my dog. AW wants to prove the world wrong with his youth policy and buying the cheap only to sell it 10 folds. thats the reason for his non-30 yr old player policy. he wanted the oldies, the 30s to be replaced with raw young talent. that explains why he can never match Fergie with balance in the team. now that he has pampered the board this way with successive CL football, the board says why change it when we are making money loads? that explains why he cannot keep nasri even when he wanted.
i feel that those people who are saying that complaining is negative and causing further damage are those who are blind optimistic and secretly praying for a miracle. they do not understand that the problems this club is digging into will not go away even with a miraculous top 4 finish this season. it will continue this way until Arsene leaves with his aides, assistant, trainer, etc.
i hope the board n idiotic yankee gazidis leave. but you dont ask owners to leave. they will run when the debts piles up. maybe i will hope fir gazifuckingdis to leave.
get ancelotti or pep G. they are man enough to speak against the board unlike AW.
i think we will be in 8-12 place this season. in jan, rvp leaves n maybe 2 joins. one big name, one french, fried.