Wenger Will Fight For Cesc To Stay; RvP Offered New Contract

By: Sairax | May 19th, 2011

Just a few days left before we say goodbye to the 2010/2011 Premier League season. Wenger held his final press conference of the season today ahead our last match of the season away to Fulham on Sunday.

Wenger said the usual things about us being very close this season and not being effective at the decisive moments. I’ll spare you the rest, but I think you can fill in the blanks. I really can’t tell anymore if Wenger is just putting up a guard in his press conferences, or if he really believes everything he says about the players learning from the season and their ability to bounce back after a tough loss. After enduring the last few months of a slow, painful downward spiral, I think we can all see that instead of making that last definitive step up to winning a trophy proved beyond this squad of players and overall, we have reacted quite poorly in the face of adversity. Orbinho just tweeted a stat the other day that said “A league table of results following our defeat to Birmingham, Arsenal would be 13th in the table”. Clearly there is something wrong when we collapse to this extent after losing a cup final. The one area I do agree with Wenger, to an extent, is that we can still keep our style of play. What I mean by that is our attacking philosophy and our passing game. Obviously, the defensive side to our game needs much improvement, but the general style of our play is a good one and one that I enjoy watching as a fan. We just need to become more aggressive and ruthless when employing our style, if that makes sense. We need to find a way to win while staying true to the way we want to play. It can be done, but it will take hard work and determination from the entire team if we are to grow as a team.

Wenger also entertained questions today about potential transfers in and out of the club. He says he expects Arshavin to stay with Arsenal and that he will fight very hard to keep Fabregas.

“The biggest pride for a captain is to be committed to his club and deliver trophies with his team. A player who changes his club every time he is frustrated or when he doesn’t win a trophy, goes nowhere. I believe the quality of sports life is to be committed to your club and not just to move out when it does not go as well as you expected.

“Cesc Fabregas played 22 games this season out of 38 and we expect him to play between 30 and 38. That will make a huge difference to our efficiency [next season] as well.”

What I hope for during the summer transfer window is we see the club and the players make decisions quickly. If Cesc wants to leave he needs to make a decision already and not let this drag out for the whole summer like last time. Same with Nasri; he needs to sign a new contract sooner rather than later so that if he doesn’t, we can entertain the possibility of getting a good price for him while we still can. If players are coming in, I hope it will be towards the beginning of the summer rather than the end. I know I’m asking for a lot here, but it’s the best case scenario in my mind. I’m prepared for the worst though. I think.

Robin van Persie looks like he will be going nowhere anytime soon. The club is set to offer him a new contract with a nice pay raise following his excellent run of form this season. Honestly, he has been fantastic, and if he can continue to stay fit, I would be so happy to see him scoring goals for us again next season. He recently talked about how our season has gone and how he understands why the fans booed after the Villa game last week. You can read the whole thing here. BBC Sport has an interview with Alex Song, which you can find here.

Wenger was also asked about our Japanese wunderkind, Ryo Miyaichi. He hopes Ryo can spend some time with the squad in preseason. It doesn’t look like he will be eligible for a work permit to join the first team next season (I may be wrong about that), but he is still quite young anyway, and another loan spell would be the best thing for him. He has been doing very well at Feyenoord with his overall performances. He has started for them 12 times and has scored 3 goals. If he can get another season on loan there, it would be excellent for his progress and development.

The announcement as to who has made the England U21 squad, which will be cut from 40 players to 23, should be coming up shortly, but Wenger confirmed that Jack will be called up. Of course, he is less than thrilled about this, but there’s nothing anyone can do about it now. Wenger says he respects the decision and basically all we can do now is wish Jack a good tournament and hope he stays healthy. If you want to watch the entirety of Wenger’s presser, try these links for Part One and Part Two.

You can all chew on that for now. If there’s anything to talk about tomorrow, I’ll put something up. Martin will have a match preview up on Saturday.

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Category: Arsenal News, Arsene Wenger, Injury Report

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Chicago Gunner

Besides the 4-2-3-1, what formation has Wenger used most often?
guest

just off the top of my head a 4-3-3, but somewhere prolly for sure knows.
Shirish K.

4-3-3 DM was hard and fail roughly in the 09/10
Darren_V

The thing I hate about so much Arsenal coverage is that ALL of our prospects get so over-hyped. And then we are all disappointed when they don't make the grade and wonder what happened to them.
Ryo is a prospect and like all the rest, may never stay with Arsenal.
Gigi_man

I hope nobody fights for anything, as you say, I wish for a quick decision from those who want to leave.

I heard a comment on ESPN re our style and Barza's. Commentators said that Barza and ours was a similar style, with the difference that Barza tried to suffocate the other team when playing defence, while Arsenal was standing in line waiting for the moves.
Perry S.

Ha, my thoughts exactly.

"We just need to become more aggressive and ruthless when employing our style, if that makes sense"

Basically we just need to duplicate Barca's model with far less talent. Given the summer transfer window, hopefully I can change our status from "far less talent" to "completely capable" when it concludes.
GoonerBen

"Far less talent" isnt really fair. They are slightly superior in pretty much every single position but excluding messi, their players arent miles better than ours. They have xavi we have fabregas. Nasri/Wilshere, Iniesta. Van Persie, Villa. I definitely consider Vermaelen to be in the same bracket as Pique and Puyol and our full backs are of pretty similar ability. Then while they have Busquets we have Song who are definitely of comparable skill. I'll concede that while Szczesny is a great prospect he probably isn't on the same level as Valdes and the same goes for Kos/Djourou.
Our problem is our inefficiency. When barca attack there is constant movement of the ball and of players but when we attack we have the tendency to: 1) have a weak attempt at goal (rare) or, more commonly, 2) give the opposition too much time to get organised into their banks of 4 which makes them incredibly difficult to break through. The ball gets played to our wide men who don't really fancy the cross and if the ball hasnt already been lost it gets lost at this stage. At which point we find ourselves over committed, with both full backs pushed up, and liable to be broken against.
Over the 90 minute match that this attack occurs in we have the ball for 98% of the time (which always prompts the "woah great right? we deserved to win!!!") yet we have achieved precisely nothing and, without threatening their goal, put ourselves in vulnerable positions.
matt

completely deluded arsenal fan. xavi and iniesta are the best at what they do by far...on the entire planet. cesc and nasri are good but no one in their right mind would think they're anywhere near the same level. your other comparisons are equally ridiculous except for the song one.

here's the thing..if wenger wasn't so stubborn and changed shape...just slightly...your team would have way less problems when push comes to shove. ramsey next to song in a 4-2-3-1 w/ rvp or chamakh on top with the normal revolving door of attacking mids/2nd striker (rvp could sit there)/wingers. no one is going to try to push right up the gut of a midfield of ramsey and song when they can dispossess and turn it back the other way that quickly. but it's not happening...thankfully for the rest of us.
Zito_v2

Lol are you serious? Ramsey and Song, ane he's the deluded one? Cesc is faster, stronger and scores more goals than Xavi, Nasri the same with Iniesta, are you sure you have even watched football this year? There's a reason Messi has over 50 goals
Chicago Gunner

A little bit of Messi goes a long way, but I don't buy that Nasri/Wilshere are the equivalent of Iniesta. Iniesta is way better than both of those guys put together.
Orion_saidwiseguy

Fully agree with you except for one thing. You can't really consider Vermaelen in the Puyol/Pique bracket.. we still don't know if he will fully return from his injury, if you know what I mean. Let's hope we see the TV5 of '09/'10.