I am prisoner to football. Hurt every week and come back every week, begging for more. It’s so unhealthy. Completely ignorant and inadequate as Arsenal are, there’s still a player who sweats more than the rest.
This time it’s not Alexis Sanchez, who even by his standards was largely ineffective all game, even though he scored, which is irrelevant because we throw away leads for fun, making any good performance from an Arsenal player seem irrelevant in the current grand scheme of things. But you have to find some sort of silver lining; and I’m just happy to have seen enough of someone else to warrant a player of the week, and one that is not dominated by our best, and quite possibly, only truly top-tier footballer.
Arsenal’s player of the week is Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, whose last two performances have risen to the top of a mediocre pile; however, unfortunately, it will be forgotten and overlooked because of the club’s weekly and weird fascination with self-implosion.
He’s been great for the last couple of weeks; and has been steadily growing into his game. His confidence is building. Although, the team implosion has likely smashed any snippet of confidence to smithereens. Jokes aside, (not really – our players are clowns, run by clowns, which are further run by clowns who want to buy more clowns. The Emirates is a circus full of weekly and increasingly bizarre acts.), he’s direct and incredibly powerful. In a couple of years, he’ll be monster of a footballer. He’ll be in the same mould as Sanchez, or even Bale. He’ll run and you’ll have to bring him crashing down to stop him, and it’s evident in the way he’s been playing recently. Once Chamberlain see’s a gap, senses he has the beating of the defender, he’s head down and off. It’s explosive football, and he needs to maintain this power every week.
He was our biggest attacking threat at Swansea, causing all sorts of havoc down the right flank. It was his snappy interception and driving run that led to the first goal, and he’d been doing this all through the game. Continue in that vain and he can be anything he wants. And its no coincidence that we’re seeing more of Chamberlain and with a steady improvement, whilst also witnessing the magnificence of Alexis Sanchez. You can see that Chamberlain is feeding off the Chilean’s energy, closing down, powering forward, and even notching a very good goal against Anderlecht, which showed the best of Chamberlain all in the space of a blistering few seconds. When Theo forces the despair and lost soul that is Santi Cazorla out of the team, Chamberlain can reclaim his spot on the left, and then we’re really talking about a front four that can destroy teams. I keep saying it (and even if I’m shouting for a change in manager), but we will see a different and more capable Arsenal as soon as Theo returns to his exhilarating best. Hopefully, Chamberlain can stay fit, and with a full season of regular football under his belt, and not 20 minutes here and there, we’ll se a much changed and responsible player come the end of the season. He is naturally gifted in all areas of the game. Even if we can’t field him on one of the wings, he should be automatic choice to fill a midfield role, because you need to fill the team with players like this: players who have the hunger and power to dominate games.