A quick Saturday round up for you, since I have exactly 432 things to do today, and I’m behind schedule already.
First up, Arsene Wenger was a lot more magnanimous in his response to Florentino Perez’s reported comments about Mesut Ozil than I was yesterday:
Real Madrid made a choice they had to let one player go. In the end it was Ozil, but I think he chose us for many reasons.
One of them was he had the choice to come here before he went to Real Madrid (in 2010), and I had a contact with him from that moment, so maybe it was fate. It was between Madrid and us (then), and this time it was us.
I know Perez well and I am surprised by this statement. Honestly, I didn’t read what Florentino said.
I spoke to Ozil about it and he was surprised as well. He said he is not sure that Perez said that completely.
I don’t know Perez at all well, but I really wouldn’t be that surprised if he did say it (and I’m not sure how Arsene can be surprised by the statement and also not have read it, but perhaps he means someone told him about it). Perez is currently Snake King over at Real Madrid’s viper pit, and after half his team, the fans, the media, assorted respected ex-pros, and Ozil’s current international manager publicly questioned the decision – Joachim Low called it “incomprehensible” – you can imagine and see why Perez might be feeling a bit sensitive about the whole thing, so I remain sceptical that he didn’t say something like that.
Continuing with Ozil, Amy Lawrence writes about how the manager expects the club’s record signing to take some time to adapt to the physicality of the Premier League. He recalls Bob Pires’s first game (so dreamy), coincidentally also against Sunderland:
I remember the first game at Sunderland, I said to Pires, ‘Today you don’t start – you sit next to me.’ And, after half an hour, he said to me: ‘Is it always like that?’ And I said: ‘It can get worse …’
It didn’t take Ozil long to settle against Sunderland, of course, setting up Olivier Giroud within 11 minutes, and creating several good opportunities that on another day would’ve seen Theo score a couple of goals. It is worth bearing in mind how big a change it is coming from another league though, and particularly into the Premier League where the pace is so much faster than Spain, for example. It’d be good for the manager to have the option for Ozil to be eased in, but the injury situation – particularly to Santi Cazorla – just doesn’t afford that luxury. I’ve no doubts about Ozil whatsoever though, and you don’t pay £42m for a player to sit on the bench.
In the same article, Amy highlights a surprising statistic, which is that Nicklas Bendtner is the club’s longest serving player, which just seems absurd. Arsenal have obviously wanted rid of him for some time, the player himself having said he also wanted to leave as long ago as 2011, and had we been able to complete the deal for Ba to come on loan in the summer, Bendtner would’ve gone to Palace. That didn’t happen, of course, and the manager has left the door open for the Dane to come back into the team, suggesting he’ll be in the squad for the Capital One Cup game against West Brom:
He is a good striker. He could play against West Brom, he will be in the squad for sure.
It is a fantastic opportunity for him. Honestly, he was supposed to go, but he stayed and once he stays you have to consider him as a full player of the squad.
If he deserves to play in front of [Olivier] Giroud, he plays in front of Giroud. That is as simple as that.
He lost his way a little bit, but he is not a bad boy. He is a good guy.
He took the easy way a little bit but now he realises there are some [signals] in your career when players think that is the moment for them. He has got the message.
Bendtner feels like a relic from a bygone era – a project that didn’t work out (depending on your perspective, of course) – but if we can get something out of him, all the better. With all due respect to Sanogo, centre forward is the position I feel we need cover for most, and Bendtner’s never really had any kind of sustained opportunity in that position. It’d be a massive surprise were he to turn it around now, but we’re not in a position to ignore the limited options we do have.
Finally for today, Carl Jenkinson has been talking about a variety of things in an interesting interview which is well worth a listen. In particular, he talks about what it’s like being a player at the club where you’re a fan, his prospects of playing for England, and Aaron Ramsey’s incredible start to the season, calling him “the most in-form midfielder in the world right now”, an apt description for a player with six goals in seven appearances.
That’s your lot for today. Tomorrow we can start looking ahead to lunchtime’s visit of the Orcs.
431 things to do.
