Arsenal: Laurent Koscielny Indicting His Own Captaincy

Arsenal’s fearless captain Laurent Koscielny has spoken up about the team’s failings, but doesn’t that fall on his shoulders as a captain?

Arsenal hasn’t had a real, true captain since Patrick Vieira left. Mikel Arteta and Per Mertesacker taking the armband was the epitome of bad ideas, as neither one had longevity or on-the-pitch relevance when the armband became theirs.

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Now that Laurent Koscielny has it, there’s a decent bit of optimism that we have a good captain. Still not the longevity captain that I think we really need, but definitely someone that is up to the task, loves the team and knows all about their inner workings.

Which is why I’m getting a less than fuzzy feeling about his recent comments.

“Because we scored first in both games [Everton and Man City matches] we stopped to play. We waited for our opponent to do something,” he said, via SkySports. He went on (there’s a lot):

“We were in too comfortable a position. We needed to push ourselves to score that second goal. That could make a real difference for us.

“When you have so many good results in a row after the Liverpool defeat, we were in too comfortable a position, and think we can win easily every time – it is not like this in football.

“You can have all the talent, but if you don’t put everything in, help your team-mates, you can have bad results. We lost this teamwork quality in the two games we lost.

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“We showed our character against West Brom, and it is important to keep this mentality for the rest of the season.”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but he is speaking like an observer who has no power over the situation. Koscielny, you’re the captain! If you see a bad mindset or something going wrong, it’s on you to sort it out on the pitch.

Wenger can scream and bellow all he wants from the sidelines but when you’re in the heat of the match, that’s what the captain is for. He is the extension of the manager on the pitch and it doesn’t sound like Koscielny is really taking a stand when needed.

We all saw what was happening against Everton and Manchester City. Koscielny saw it too. So why was nothing done? If everyone knew what was happening, then why was it allowed to keep happening?

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Perhaps Koscielny isn’t the captain we’ve dreamed of. Thankfully, both Granit Xhaka and Shkodran Mustafi are here now and both have captain written all over them. So at least we have that.