#Reine-Adelaide

26th August 2015: Draws galore

Posted on by TremendArse

Welcome back. The draw for the third round of the League Cup was made last night and we got Tottenham away. Nothing much to add really, other than Sky Sports will be showing it live and I’m looking forward to Jeff Reine-Adelaide taking the tournament by storm.

Incidentally, the draw for the group stages of the Champions League is made tomorrow afternoon and looking at this piece on the official site, I’ll take PSV Eindhoven, Olympique Lyonnais and Malmo please. More likely though, is that we’ll get PSG, Sevilla and Wolfsburg, giving our new signings Edinson Cavani, Grzegorz Krychowiak and Kevin de Bruyne the opportunity to return to their former stomping grounds.

In seriousness though, it feels a bit odd seeing the likes of Real Madrid, winners of the competition as recently as 2014, in Pot 2, whilst Pot 1 is populated by teams such as Benfica, Zenit and PSV, but then I guess it is called the Champions League for a reason, so having domestic title winners in the top pot makes sense.

The changes in regulation for how seeds are selected also provides potential for some really big games in the group stages, which perhaps the competition as a whole could do with given the mundane manner of many group stage fixtures in previous years.

And speaking of draws, following ours with Liverpool on Monday night, Mesut Ozil has been speaking to Arsenal Player about his desire to add more goals to his game. Yet the German also pointed out that his signature skillset remains picking out a pass and ensuring he does the right thing for the team is paramount. He said:

I want to score more goals than in the last two seasons and that’s my aim for this season. What’s important firstly is that we are successful as a team. That’s most crucial for us and as I said, for me it’s not just goals and assists that mean everything, what’s more important is that we’re successful as a team. My aim is to help the team and I’ll do all I can to achieve that. In truth I’m more the sort of player who doesn’t really go for goal, I tend to look for my team-mates and think, ‘Can I play this pass?’. I think now and then I need to become a bit more selfish – then I’d definitely score more goals. But I’m a player who thinks for the team first and not for my own needs and that’s why I will carry on to play the way I always do. I think that’s one of my distinguishing characteristics.

Whilst it’s great to hear Mesut making noises about upping his goals output, I hope more of his colleagues are doing the same because Francis Coquelin aside, the other five members of any front six we choose should be regularly contributing to our tally. Particularly while our 70 goal-a-season, universe-class striker remains elusive in the transfer market.

One such player is Santi Cazorla and the perma-grinning, string-puller has also been talking to Arsenal Player about how he loves his role in the middle of the park as he gets lots of touches of the ball and that makes him as happy as Wayne Rooney at Wimpy. The Spaniard said:

I’m always ready to play in any position on the field. Luckily I’ve played in many different places, such as both wings, behind the striker or as a midfielder. Therefore, I am no stranger to this new position. As soon as the manager informed me about my role change, I told him I was ready for it. To be honest I’ve found myself very comfortable in this new position since the very first day. I’m a player who needs to touch the ball as much as possible and for any possible purpose on the pitch, from giving an assist to a short pass. The more I touch the ball, the more confident I get and that’s why I need to have contact with the ball. If I don’t touch it for a period of time I feel uneasy. Thanks to playing in this new position, I’m touching the ball a lot and that makes me happy. I’m loving my new position on the pitch.

And I’m loving you in your new position too Santi, most of the time anyway. I mean, I understand there are certain games where, as Arsene Wenger himself said recently, he prefers the more athletic, physical qualities of Aaron Ramsey alongside Coquelin, but for me, those games are the bigger ones where we may not dominate the ball as much and instead adopt a more counter-attacking style.

For the rest, and certainly at home, I much prefer the ball re-cycling and game-controlling qualities Cazorla offers from the middle. But I’ve said that before. More than once. So I’ll stop now.

See you on Thursday.

26th July 2015: Unbelievable Jeff lays on Walcott winner

Posted on by TremendArse

Evening all. You know, sometimes, football really can be a funny old game for a fan to follow.

With Petr Cech so far being our only major signing of this summer’s transfer window, the Emirates Cup was no doubt marked in the diary by many, as the weekend we’d catch a first glimpse of our brand new world class ‘keeper in action on home soil, with the Czech cast as the main attraction for the tournament.

Yet following today’s 1-0 win over Wolfsburg which secured us our first Emirates Cup since 2010, and yesterday’s destruction of Lyon, the name on everyone’s lips isn’t Cech, but another of this summer’s arrivals at Arsenal – 17 year old Frenchman Jeff Reine-Adelaide.

When plucked from the Lens academy and announced with zero fanfare as one of three new ‘young professionals’ by the official site in early July, few had heard the name Reine-Adelaide let alone seen him play. But boy has that changed over the course of the last two days. Following yesterday’s highly impressive cameo, the youngster made his first start for the club this afternoon and capped off another silky smooth showing with a fine assist for the only goal of the game.

Receiving a pass from Mikel Arteta midway inside the visitors’ half, Reine-Adelaide skipped past a challenge, strode forward and bided his time before passing perfectly into Theo Walcott’s path, who had peeled away to the left. The England man promptly applied a poked finish past the on-rushing goalkeeper to settle the match. Exquisite stuff.

It has been quite an introduction into the Arsenal fans’ conscience for Reine-Adelaide and afterwards Arsene Wenger revealed the midfielder would not be loaned out as he continues his development.

Speaking at his post-match press conference, he said:

He is 17 years old and he looks very promising but he needs to work with us for a year in the first team. To be an adult, to play for the under-21s and to develop. There is fantastic potential there but he will stay with us. I don’t know (how much he will play). I honestly don’t know. But today was a good opportunity to see him. In some situations of course, he has the game of a 17-year-old player but on the other hand he has shown great potential as well and looks very advanced physically for his age, and I’m sure he has learned a lot these last two days.

Arsene also had some warm words for the goalscorer Walcott, who had started the game as our central striker, but grabbed his goal having wandered infield from wide following Chuba Akpom’s introduction at half-time.

He said:

Another goal for Theo and I’m not surprised by that because I played him through the middle. I’ve always said that he’s a goalscorer because he has the movement, he has the timing of the run, the speed for the finishing, and he has an eye for taking his chances at the right moments. When he gets into these positions he finishes well. Yesterday he nearly scored when he came on as a substitute, today he scored. I believe that Theo will score goals. He has his own way as well. He’s not an aggressive striker, he’s a mobile striker. He’s the striker who lives from the quality of his movement and the speed of his movement. He turns up in the right spaces in the box and you cannot give that to a player. He anticipates well, he understands quickly and when that is linked with his speed and execution it always makes him very dangerous.

And when asked what he felt was Walcott’s best position, the boss said:

It’s a good question because it’s a complicated answer. I think in all the three positions. If you ask him where he loves to play, I believe that even he will say that it depends a little bit on the period. Sometimes he prefers left. When I’ve played him on the left he likes it as well because if he makes a good run he can score goals as well. In his ideal world he would like to play with a strong guy next to him, a player who is very strong physically, and he play off him. We have so many offensive players which makes that very difficult to combine all of them together.

Which tallies with how I’ve thought we could get the best out of Walcott all along – playing him next to a more physical forward in a two man attack (think Kevin Phillips and Niall Quinn), or from the left (as I mentioned in a recent post) allowing him to cut in onto his favoured right foot.

Wenger says Walcott likes the left-flank

I just feel he looks far more comfortable on the opposite flank to which he’s most often been deployed in his Arsenal career so far. And I think it was an away Champions League qualifier against Udinese (I may be wrong) a few years back where he raced away from their defence from the halfway line to slot home at the near post, having started his run on the left.

There are a few other examples including a great effort for the England Under 21s, his goal in the League Cup Final in 2007, a finish on the end of a brilliant team move heavily involving Alexander Hleb – the list goes on. The only surprise for me is he hasn’t played from that side more often.

And with that bit of positional opinion, I’ll call it a day.

Back tomorrow.