Szczesny, Coquelin and the Theo Walcott saga

You wouldn't have to be a terribly avid follower of this blog to know that the posts have dried up the past couple of weeks. Or months.

Incredibly, The Arsenal have chosen to move on without me.

Jokes aside, these past few months have seen plenty of developments take place. The emergence of Coquelin and Bellerin, the falling out with Szczesny, the goals of Giroud and the whole Theo Walcott saga. There was also the customary falling out of the Champions League and the possibility of reclaiming the FA Cup.

Because I haven't had the time slash interest to carry on for a while (wait, hadn't you heard?), the Arsenal part of me was exploding inside. And since I'm too selfless to keep my deranged thoughts to myself, here I go.

Let's start from the back shall we?

The Szczesny-Ospina situation...
Look, I entirely get why Szczesny tends to rub people up the wrong way, but in my mind he's the better keeper. Even if he's not, the portrayal of him being a Flamini or an Almunia is ludicrous. It's almost as if fans reboot their thinking at the dawn of a new season and forget the immediate past, because Szczesny was ace last season. There are no two ways about that fact.

I do not doubt Szczesny's quality. Even though he's had a hiccup this season, for me he retains the frighteningly exciting potential to be Arsenal's David de Gea. To an extent, I don't even doubt his attitude. True, I would be loathe toward a player who has all the cockiness but none of the skill (a la Nicklas Bendtner), but at least Szczesny has the accolades and the talents to justify that.

And as long as we're being perfectly honest, I felt his errors against Southampton were way overblown. Sure, for the first one he was almost entirely at fault, but I didn't think the second one was down to him. Upon watching the replay of that goal again, it becomes apparent that there was nothing Szczesny could do apart from kick the ball away in desperation. There was chaos in the box, and Szczesny did not have the time to collect it. Sticking a foot at the ball was more of a last resort.

Now look, if Arsene Wenger decided to drop Szczesny for Ospina purely on a disciplinary level then that's grand. That's his stance and a really good one. But please, don't confuse his goalkeeping skills with his smoking ones is all I'm saying. I really think we should stick with Szczesny, especially after seeing what's gone on with David Ospina.

While I was all for giving Ospina a chance, I must say that his performances have been significantly overrated. Yes, he's a decent kicker of the ball and dives really well. However, his parrying technique is all wrong and he simply cannot instill calmness during set-pieces. He doesn't have the height for the game either. Moreover, I cannot be the only one to think that his dives are way too Hollywood. There are times where he unnecessarily leaps into the air to push around the post a strike that a goalkeeper like Szczesny would simply collect.

The only advantage that Ospina seems to have on Szczesny is that he doesn't muck about and try to dribble players before hoofing the ball halfway.

Ospina's not a terrible keeper by any stretch, but him getting the confidence of the Arsenal supporters was more down to a settled defence and the "a new option is always better" mentality than his actual quality.

Szczesny responded brilliantly for more than a season after being dropped for Lukasz Fabianski two years ago. I am firmly of the opinion that should Wenger find a path for bringing Szczesny back into the foray, we could see a Pole performing at that similar ilk.

Francis Coquelin's emergence...
I'm not going to rehash all of the "well if you had told me this lad was barely playing at Charlton over three months ago I would have called you my drunk uncle's wife" stuff because while I'm over the moon for the guy, it's getting boring to hear of people bleeding out his resurrection.

I know we wanted a combative DM, but this is ridiculous!

What I will say about Coquelin is this - he was exactly what we needed. We didn't need a complicated player, we needed a straightforward one. Essentially, what we needed was someone to do the dirty work who would spare no chance in welcoming his opponent to the British way of playing. Arteta is too nice to lose his cool even if someone ruffles up his hair. Flamini was a great short-term solution until he just, faded away.

If I have a worry about Coquelin, it is that there yet exists the real danger of him fizzling out like Flamini did, should opponents get wise to him. We have to make sure that Coquelin's form, as welcome as it has been, is not the big all and end all in terms of Arsenal's defensive midfield woes. Buying an extra defensive midfielder is yet mandatory, because Arteta and Flamini aren't getting any younger, and there are doubts over the Ramsey-Wilshere pair in central midfield as well.

We have the resources, so I don't see a reason why Francis must be shown the light of complacency, if that makes any sense.

Is Theo Walcott Arsenal quality?
What I found really typical about this whole Theo Walcott issue was that several pro-Wenger fans (sorry for the labeling) knee-jerked their opinions too quickly the moment it became apparent that Arsene Wenger does not rate Walcott anymore.

Look, I try not to attack portions of Arsenal's fanbase directly but these levels of hypocrisy irk me.

When Arsenal oh-so predictably ceded the title last season, Wenger spared no expense in shifting the blame to injuries, injuries that wouldn't have happened if he hadn't overplayed the likes of Ramsey, Ozil and Koscielny until they could barely walk. Overrating the absence of pace (why not buy in January, then?) meant that people could overstate the importance of Theo Walcott to the team. Suddenly Theo was the Robert Pires of past - an indispensable cog to Arsenal's attacking engine.

Fast forward to this season, and people have already made their peace with Walcott's potential departure because, let's face it, Arsene Wenger has. Don't get me wrong - while I think Walcott is a good player, he is by no means absolutely essential to the success of Arsenal Football Club.

What bugged me, however, was the blind following toward Wenger akin to original logic.

When Francis Coquelin was loaned out to Charlton as a death sentence, no one really rated him. However, when he was forced to come back after four injuries and did excellently, no one was willing to eat humble pie, but were instead praising the manager's "unbelievable" faith in the Frenchman. What tosh. To add to the aforementioned debate, most of the reason Wojciech Szczesny gets a lot of undeserved stick is not because he's a terrible goalkeeper, but because he has quite obviously lost the faith of Wenger.

Again, don't get me wrong. My argument is not related with the quality of the player, - it's to do with the supporters adjusting their thoughts to suit their basic "Arsene knows all" argument. If Lukas Podolski was not on loan to Inter Milan and was getting games at the club, I truly doubt people would be giving him the amount of flak they do now.

Theo Walcott typifies this situation. Opinionated websites like Arseblog are not ashamed to point out his deficiencies in his overall game now (and rightly so), but where was all this analysis a year ago when Arsene Wenger was bigging up his absence? No Arsenal fan could be delusional to such an extent that they yet believe that before his injury, Walcott was not bang-on average when he wasn't scoring or assisting?

For the record, I'd like Walcott to stay. In fact, to add a little spice to my argument, I'd like Arsenal to try playing him as a center forward, if there are issues about his defensive workrate on the wings. It's about time we try to adapt to an attacking approach with a faster striker, because while Giroud's improvement has been terrific (before you get all "I told you so", I was one of his backers), I still think he should be a Plan B option. I'm not a fan of the traditional-target-man approach with build up plays involving pivots and back-to-goal hold ups, because it does not guarantee a huge goal output. Olivier Giroud may be huffing and puffing and scoring goals, but Arsenal will always remain offensively static with a limited striker like him up front.

Part of the reason I was excited about Danny Welbeck's signing was because I felt he could herald a new beginning to a more fluid, dynamic Arsenal. In that respect he has disappointed, because his finishing is pretty mediocre. If we want to score more goals and find a proper use for Theo Walcott's pace and finishing, playing him as a lone striker wouldn't be a bad idea. Obviously he's no Thierry, but Theo's pace means that he may be an acceptable surrogate.

And of course, if it should work the black lining to the silver cloud would be having to tolerate the "Arsene Wenger is a tactical genius" comments from the same people berating him right now.

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Right - I understand that there have been way more developments over the past months than I have touched upon, but the international break means that I have the liberty to spread my opinions throughout this following week of torture. And I intend to take advantage of that.

Finally, apologies for being absent for most of this season. 2014/15 for me has been a real blur at times and I haven't quite been myself with respect to my Arsenal life. Hopefully all that claptrap ends soon.

Until then, cheers, enjoy, laugh at the awkward ending of this post, but don't watch the Cricket World Cup finals. It's not interesting now that India's shown the door.

Later!

-Santi [Follow me on Twitter @ArsenalBlogz ]

(How) can Mesut Özil regain his Arsenal spot + Coquelin thoughts

Santi Cazorla was outrageous on Sunday. There's a reason he's my favourite player, and that's not entirely down to his general teddy bear-ness and his India connection. Sprint speed and aerial ability aside, this guy has everything. He can pass, he can shoot, he's ambidextrous, versatile, tricky and robust. It's worth mentioning that he started all of Arsenal's Premier League games two seasons ago yet never got injured. He may give out an Arshavin-esque feel, but he's far ahead than the Russian in terms of workrate. Give him pace and he turns into a more effective Alexis Sanchez.

His form has come at a very inconvenient time for a certain wide-eyed German. Mesut Ozil was, in my opinion, wrongly criticized for his performances leading up to his injury. He was poor against Manchester City and Dortmund, yes, but followed that up with three very good performances against Aston Villa, Galatasaray and Tottenham. Against Chelsea he was poor, but people seem to overlook that he was injured during most of that match. Wenger overplayed his hand with Ozil's knee injury and lost.

Ozil may be on the verge of producing big things for Arsenal, but are we sure that we are willing to sacrifice Santi Cazorla for that? I know I've just come to Ozil's defence and all that, but I'm very much of the opinion that when on top form, Cazorla offers more than Ozil in that attacking midfield position. Ozil is, merely, a marginally better passer and has superior ball retention to Cazorla.

Santi, however, offers goals, tracking back, unpredictability (with both of his feet) and proper versatility. He won't stink the place out as much as Ozil does when they're deployed on the left. And I know that Ozil is a bona fide world-class player and has excellent movement and is rated highly by just about any footballing personality in the know, but that doesn't hide the fact that Cazorla has done nothing to merit a dropping from the squad.

It's mooted that Ozil will get the nod in the weekend's FA Cup clash against Brighton away, but that's not a match which would speak volumes of Ozil's ability lest he performs. With all possible respect to Brighton, Ozil would have to perform on much higher stages to prove his mettle to make it in the Premier League. A convincing performance against Brighton would only half-convince me.

Even so, it would be nice to see if Mesut has learned anything new since his time out. Footballers tend to analyze their game during a lengthy injury layoff and assess their flaws. Olivier Giroud did something of the sort and came out a lot stronger, using his physicality and scoring important goals against important teams.

What I especially liked about Ozil bulking up was that it showcased a certain degree of commitment to making it at Arsenal. When he came into the club, for the first season or so I got the impression that he didn't care much about the successes and failures of Arsenal Football Club. Hell, that may still be the case, for Shad Forsythe and Arsene Wenger may have forced him to build his muscularity. However, I'd be surprised if that was the truth.

Clearly Mesut Ozil is the long-term option in the No. 10 role. Even a player as energetic and buzzing like Tomas Rosicky must be thinking about his retirement plans sometime soon, and Cazorla has reached that dreaded age-30 phase. However, if we want to attain maximized outputs from Ozil, we need to "stick him in there more often", so to say. How could we do that and not displace the mercurial Santi Cazorla?

The only possible solution, to my mind, is shifting Cazorla's position. Footballers tend to experiment in deeper positions in order to prolong the twilight of their careers. Steven Gerrard went from attacking midfielder to defensive midfielder. Wayne Rooney, once a lone striker, is now seen pumping lobs from the centre of the park. Two of hundreds of examples.

I don't reckon shifting Cazorla to a central midfield position, alongside a defensive midfielder is a bad idea by any stretch. It's a point to note that when Arsenal's central midfield crisis was ongoing, Rosicky and Cazorla were asked to play in that role periodically. It turned out to be an enforced masterpiece, so to say, because Santi in particular truly impressed me in that role.

I am of the opinion that we can get something out of Cazorla in that deep-lying playmaker role. Ramsey is having his ups and downs and Wilshere is perennially injured, so what's the harm in trying? Cazorla has already proven his willingness and adeptness at dropping deep to win the ball back. In addition, this also allows Mesut Ozil room in his preferred No. 10 role to spray passes to Sanchez and Walcott and give us all orgasms.

When Ozil first came to Arsenal, plenty couldn't wait to see how Cazorla and Mesut would link up. As it stood, having Ozil in the centre and Cazorla on the left yielded inconsistent results. Perhaps moving Santi Cazorla closer to the DM rather than away from it may bring more creativity and solidity to our defence.

Final note for today - Francis Coquelin. Look, I'm over the moon for the lad and really happy for the club as well as the player, but Coquelin isn't a specialist in his role by any stretch. In fact, the exaggerated praise that he's receiving is the result of Arsenal being used to not seeing a proper DM since the days of Gilberto Silva and Patrick Vieira. Coquelin is walking and talking proof that all Arsenal needed was a proper defensive midfielder, not the half-moulds of Alex Song, Mikel Arteta and Mathieu Flamini.

Obviously I would not be averse to handing Coquelin a new deal and would want him at the club, but if Arsenal really want to be like the Bayerns and the Barcelonas, they need to get in a defensive midfielder specialist in his position, like Morgan Schneiderlin. Francis has done a job and has probably proven that he can fill the gap until the summer comes. He's done a huge favour for Arsene. I hope he realizes that that favour has a rapidly approaching expiry date.

-Santi [Follow me on Twitter @ArsenalBlogz ]