Morning all,
no rain today but still little in the way of the news. The players, for the most part, have gone off on little breaks before international commitments kick in, and some of it is a bit worrying from an Arsenal point of view. While there are World Cup qualifiers for most nations, there’s the ugly matter of the 2013 Confederations Cup to contend with.
Both Santi Cazorla and Nacho Monreal have been named in Spain’s provisional squad for the tournament which takes place in Brazil from June 15th – 30th. You have to laugh at the information posted on Wikipedia (yes, I know):
Uruguay, Italy and Spain will have the opportunity to become the third team (after Argentina and France) to win all three major FIFA tournaments: the World Cup, the Olympic football competition and the Confederations Cup.
While I can understand some vague glory being associated with the Olympics, simply because it’s the Olympics, does anybody hold the Confederations Cup in anything other than contempt? It’s a nonsensical, end of season, money spinning exercise, nothing more. It’s certainly not a major tournament. I doubt there’s a single player whose ambitions in the game include the Confederations Cup.
And when you consider Santi was the only Arsenal player to play in every single Premier League game, it means he’s unlikely to get the rest he deserves ahead of the new season. Sure, he’ll be given a few extra days off and will come back a bit later in July, but that’s a bother too. Maybe our reasonably easy run-in, in that we tended to have a week between games for the final part of the season, will stand him, and the rest in good stead, but it’s still frustrating because the spectre of injury looms over each game. Anyway, there’s not much we can do about only hope that Vincent of the Forest prefers other players for some reason and doesn’t use him that much.
In other news, Andre Santos is on his way back after Gremio declared him too expensive to keep on a permanent basis and with his contract expiring in July anyway, it’s hardly a big surprise. As we spoke about last week, it’s important that Arsenal work hard to find clubs for the loan players who, let’s face it, don’t have any kind of future at the club. Santos is one of those, along with Denilson, Bendtner, Chamakh and Park (although I do wonder if we only signed a two year deal with him because of the military service issue), and the club ought to be printing off the brochures as we speak.
It’s also interesting to note that we’re being linked with quite a number of young players. Yaya Sanogo, for example, is just 2o, there’s a couple of youngsters from Barcelona’s academy who have been strongly linked, and while the Lyon player, Grenier couldn’t be considered a stripling of any kind, there’s definitely a youthfulness about the names that have appeared in the early part of the off-season. Reading this assessment by Jeorge Bird of the players bubbling under might just be a clue.
While there are some whose potential gives them the chance of an Arsenal career (Gnabry, Eisfeld and Bellerin in particular), there isn’t one of them who you’d really consider ready for first team football next season. Perhaps Bellerin as a right back understudy, but he, along with most of the others, would get more benefit from going out on loan and experiencing real football. It’s very much a sink or swim world out there for them. They’re sent out with no guarantee of playing time, they’ve got to earn it. Then, when they do get into whatever team they join, they have to play well enough to stay there and then prove to Arsene Wenger, and the scouts that monitor their progress, that they’ve got a future at Arsenal.
How many have done that in recent seasons? Jack Wilshere went to Bolton, but that was more like finishing school. His talent meant he was always going to make the first team. I think Kieran Gibbs had spell at Norwich and Wojciech Szczesny’s season at Brentford was invaluable, but look at the names that have been sent out to a lower league ‘finishing school’ and never made it. Lansbury, Emmanuel-Thomas, Afobe, Watt, Bartley, the Hoytes, Simpson, Barazite, Merida, Sunu, Randall and it goes on and on.
The vast majority of them will never make the grade, and at the moment, with many youth players released (including promising players like Jernade Meade who saw Gibbs and Monreal ahead of him and decided elsewhere was the way forward), it leaves something of a gap between the first team and those pushing from below. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a few more youngsters come in this summer. That’s not to say we won’t sign more established, experienced players, I’m sure we will, but there’s an issue there that needs to be addressed (and one I don’t think has been helped too much by all the coaching comings and goings at that level).
Right, little else to be going on with. If you missed it, check out this fantastic Santi Cazorla compilation from his first Arsenal season. Something to wile away a few office minutes this morning.
Till tomorrow.
