Captain Fantastic Leads Gunners To Victory

Arsenal (Gallas 83’, Rosicky 85’) 2 – 0 Wigan

What do you do when three of your most influential centre-midfielders are out either suspended or injured? Also with two reserves out too, one being the Brazil captain and World Cup winner? In Arsene Wenger’s case, you bring in the second volante a.k.a. Denilson and if we’re going down the comparison route, the new Makelele in Diarra.

Yet this was far from the polished performance from Arsenal’s youngsters, with neither youngster able to make the runs from deep to support Adebayor, the Togolese focal point in attack, in a way that only the mercurial Fabregas can.

After a week of criticism concerning the lack of Englishmen in this Arsenal team, young Theo Walcott had a promising performance, where rather than give the ball away as an Englishman tends to do (just ask Luka Modric), his performance was full of pace, control and excitement, with one turn, evading a trio of Wigan players, but the end product compromised of a lash that went into the upper tiers of the Emirates stadium.

Wigan came into the game with the simple idea of defending in numbers and counter-attacking sporadically (with some added luck), executed it with some success with Marcus Bent heading over the bar, when forcing Almunia (when does he naturalise to play for England?) into at least a save should have been on the cards.

Frustrated in their inability to break through the resilient Latics’ backline, led by Emerson Boyce, who made a number of blocks and interceptions to keep Arsenal out, as usual in their bid to replicate Cruyff’s ‘total football’ Messrs Gallas and Toure came forward in a bid to rescue their relatively blunt attack.

After all this is Arsenal we are talking about. An unfortunate injury to Theo Walcott was caused by a foul from the substitute Heskey, making his comeback from the dreaded metatarsal injury.

Enter Bendtner. The young Dane came to the fray, with Steve Bruce quaking in his corporate box seat, after managing the youngster on loan last season. And Bruce was right to be worried, with Bendtner laying off Sagna to provide the assist for a Gallas header, in a typical captain’s performance, naturally including a scuffle and stoutly accusing Bent.

Immediately after, he provided the assist to Rosicky, who finished with aplomb as the Gunners went three points clear, but with Walcott now out, Arsenal will be a marketing tool in the quota propaganda machine.