Player-by-Player Season in Review, Part I

Here it is, the annual “calculating of the ratings.” Like the Running of the Bulls or Airing of the Grievances, this annual event draws spectators and thrill-seekers from far and wide. Well, not really, but let’s have some fun with it, okay?

First, some caveats. This is a list of the players who played enough to get rated at least 5 times this season, in ascending order (so, theoretically, from worst to best in order of average performance). Now, note that we did not rate a player every time he played — sometimes if he came on as a substitute in the 88th minute, there was just no basis for a rating, and some games we just didn’t get a chance to watch. So please don’t start in with the “well, actually, x player had 4 more appearances than that.” We know. We’re talking about appearances where the player got a rating.

And finally, as I am leaving the site very soon, this will basically be your last chance for you to do my very, very favorite thing commenters do, which is complain about infinitesimally small differences in ratings between players. So don’t miss your last chance to call me an idiot for having a player’s average rating .03 off. Enjoy.

Without further ado, we start at the bottom, and Arsenal’s least valuable player this season is (drumroll please)…

Denilson (20 starts, 12 substitute appearances, 0 goals, 0 assists; 25 ratings, 5.96 average rating, 0 Man of the Match awards): Who else? All that can really be said is that, in what seems virtually certain to be his final season with Arsenal, Denilson was basically a dead weight that actively harmed the team’s chances of getting a favorable result each and every time he was on the pitch. Then caused one of the controversies of the season by publicly questioning the leadership of the team. A shadow of the player he was just a few seasons ago. At just 23, he still has time to salvage his career, but unless something miraculous happens, it won’t be in an Arsenal shirt.

Ramsey (5 starts, 3 substitute appearances, 1 goal, 0 assists; 5 ratings, 6.00 average rating, 0 Man of the Match awards): Ramsey is down here due to low sample size as much as anything. He came back during our end of the season slide, was just recovering fitness and form before the end of the season. Nothing that happened with him this season was too surprising – we knew when we saw the extent and severity of the Shawcross injury that he was going to lose at least a season of his career, and he did. But I thought he put in some fairly decent performances there at the end, including the game-winning goal against Manchester United. He certainly did enough to show that with a full preseason of training, he’ll be a very important part of our first-team plans next season regardless of who goes and who is brought in.

Rosicky (21 starts, 15 substitute appearances, 1 goal, 4 assists; 31 ratings, 6.10 average rating, 1 Man of the Match award): Rough season for Super Tom. I feel bad criticizing him too much because I think he’s a genuinely good guy, and a good teammate who likes the club and works hard. But all that doesn’t win us games, and the fact of the matter is that Rosicky was generally pretty useless this season. He’s an attacking player who can’t shoot, can’t score, and can’t pass forward, and that’s just not what we need. It seems like his freak injury, and long lay-off, really robbed him of many of the attributes he once had — remember, many thought we had found the next Pires when he first came over, but he’s nowhere close to that now. If he stays, I doubt he’ll be anything more than a squad player next year, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he decided to move on with his career this summer.

Squillaci (26 starts, 2 substitute appearances, 2 goals, 0 assists; 30 ratings, 6.12 average rating, 0.5 Man of the Match awards): Bought right before the season started from Sevilla’s bench for just a few million, many of us were certain Wenger had found another bargain. A French international who had a lot of experience at the highest club levels, including being one of the defensive lynchpins of the 2004 Monaco team that made the Champions League final? Instead, he played like a veteran you can get for a few million pounds who can’t get a game at Sevilla. Just didn’t seem to have any defining strengths — was not overly big, or fast, and his positioning wasn’t great. Even his organizational skills, which seemed to be his main selling point, were lacking, as we seemed to have many more defensive calamities with him on the pitch than off it. A massive disappointment on the level of Silvestre, and a guy who probably doesn’t have much of a future at Arsenal, although it wouldn’t surprise to see him stick around for a couple of more seasons as our fourth (or hopefully, fifth) defender.

Diaby (17 starts, 3 substitute appearances, 2 goals, 3 assists; 17 ratings, 6.12 average rating, 1 Man of the Match award): Ah, Diaby. The white whale to Wenger’s Ahab. It’s frustrating to see Diaby this low on the list — again — because he is quite a talented player and one capable of making an impact on a game. The caveat, though, as always, is “if he stays healthy.” Which he doesn’t. Ever. Whether it’s due to his severe ankle injury a couple of years back or not, the fact is that over the last few years Diaby seems utterly incapable of playing more than a few games at a stretch until he gets injured again. Was responsible for what I still think may have been the turning point in our season, when his stupid red card left us vulnerable to Newcastle’s soul-crushing 4-goal comeback. I suspect he’ll stay, if for no other reason than because I can’t see any other teams being that interested in him, especially at the wages we’re paying him, but I wouldn’t say he has the brightest of futures at the club.

Bendtner (14 starts, 18 substitute appearances, 8 goals, 5 assists; 25 ratings, 6.14 average rating, 1 Man of the Match award): You all know Bendtner has been somewhat of a pet project for me, as he’s a guy I’ve always backed to come good. But he didn’t do me many favors this season. I do think part of it was being played out of position — Bendtner will never be anything other than a true # 9, and never really looked like making much of an impact out wide, which is where Wenger deployed him much of the time. If Wenger sticks with the current system, there just doesn’t seem to be much of a place for Wenger, at least as long as van Persie is playing. One of the season’s biggest “What if?”s for me was “What if Bendtner hadn’t played hurt throughout the World Cup, and had come back fit and ready to play at the start of the season?” If he had, I think it might have been he, and not Chamakh, who got most of the starts in van Persie’s absence, and I think if he had gotten a run of starts in the striker role he could have settled in and proven what he is capable of. But he didn’t, and he didn’t. Now he seems to be publicly angling for a move away from Arsenal, and I think there’s a better than 50/50 chance he’s suiting up for someone else next season.

Eboue (20 starts, 9 substitute appearances, 1 goal, 1 assist; 19 ratings, 6.16 average rating, 0 Man of the Match awards). For me, Eboue had a pretty disappointing season. I guess I’ve been a bigger supporter of his than most the last couple of seasons, but I had always thought that Wenger did him a disservice playing him in a more forward role, where he was really a right-back. I said that he was one of the best 7 or 8 right-backs in the Premiership, but hadn’t gotten a chance to show it. Well, this year he played mainly as a right-back, and for the most part, he was pretty bad. Bad positioning, no real support to the attack, and a continuing shall we say lack of proper decision-making skills make him a liability most of the time. There is reported interest from abroad, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Eboue took an offer to go to Italy or Germany or somewhere if he was offered a chance to start there.

Almunia (14 starts, 1 substitute appearance, 18 goals conceded; 14 ratings, 6.25 average rating, 1 Man of the Match award): Not sure what there is to say about Manuel that hasn’t been said before. He’s a decent enough guy who’s given the club some good years, but at this point, he’s just not good enough to play for Arsenal. Pretty clearly 3rd (at best) amongst our current keepers, and a guy who was only brought in when we had no other option. He wants to go, Wenger wants him to go, the fans want him to go — the only question is whether or not we can find a team willing to take on his relatively massive wage bill.

That’s it for Part I — stay tuned for Part II tomorrow…

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Category: Aaron Ramsey, Abou Diaby, Arsenal News, Denilson, Emmanuel Eboue, Manuel Almunia, Nicklas Bendtner, Sebastien Squillaci, Tomas Rosicky