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Per Mertesacker One Of Four Gunners Who Need To Improve
If you have been reading any of my pieces you will notice that I have held particular scorn for Arsenal defender Per Mertesacker, for his lacklustre performances in matches over the past month or so. However for Arsenal to succeed he is not the only Arsenal player that needs to improve, especially to improve on what is usually a Nightmare November. Who are the guilty gunners?
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Per Mertesacker
Quite simply he has been exposed too often in the past month for my liking, including the last match against Anderlecht. Whilst he is brilliant on his day and he can be extremely solid at the back he can often be found ball-watching or slightly slow off the mark which means his defensive physical strengths are nothing. So for Per Mertesacker to be at his BFG best he needs to be mentally switched on, which I don’t think he is right now. It almost seems as though winning the world cup this year with Germany has caused him to realise it’s never going to get better than that, and he’s come back to Arsenal almost in a daze. I will be disappointed if I don’t see him improve in the game against Anderlecht tonight because he is better than he has shown, and if we don’t see any improvement we could possibly find ourselves in another tough scenario.
Santi Cazorla
A bit of an enigma in terms of trying to work out why he is playing poorly at the moment, but he just seems completely out of sorts; as though he hasn’t played football in ages or ever with the team-mates he sees around him. In this regard he reminds me of how Ozil looked earlier this season, showing flashes of what he can do but really not looking overly comfortable on a football pitch. I’m not sure he’ll play tonight in the Champions League clash with Anderlecht but he needs to step up if he does. Like Mertesacker he has looked a yard off of the pace for most of the season.
Mikel Arteta
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For me I’m not too sure what he offers Arsenal’s midfield at the moment. He’s not as good defensively as Flamini and he’s not bringing enough to the team in terms of attacking influence or even controlling the game. When the team has no injuries I don’t think he makes the first team on what he brings to the line-up, but whilst he’s still getting picked he has to improve he general play. Even if that just means making sure everyone is organised and keeping hold of possession, because I don’t even think he’s doing that at the moment.
Welbeck
Since scoring his hat-trick against Galatasaray Welbeck has not really looked too confident in front of goal. Playing against Burnley should be a dream for a decent striker at the moment because they are conceding goals all over the place, but despite getting himself into the right positions he looked slow and out of sorts when taking the opportunities. A couple of goals and we’ll see the talent that we paid for but at the moment he’s just not looking on top form. With Alexis banging in the goals we haven’t missed Welbeck in that regard but he can’t be expected to score in every match so I think Welbeck needs to improve if we want to keep the momentum over November.