Arsenal: Good luck not rooting for Mohamed Elneny

Arsenal have plenty of players that fans just don’t like for one reason or another, but chances are, no matter what, that will never be Mohamed Elneny.

I would like to believe it isn’t true, but I do believe that there are some players out there that certain Arsenal fans will root against, solely because they want more fuel for their argument. Granit Xhaka comes to mind, as does Shkodran Mustafi. Maybe I’m crazy for thinking that, but it sure does seem that way sometimes.

Mohamed Elneny is never going to find himself in that situation, or at least he shouldn’t. There is a certain brilliance in Elneny that is a coalescence of who he is on the pitch, as well as off of it.

For instance, I find it incredibly hard to criticize a player that never stops working. You could be the most uncoordinated player in the world (Danny Welbeck) but if you run your arse off and fight for every inch of pitch, you come out, at the bare minimum, as “alright” in my book.

Mohamed Elneny, however, has graduated from being “alright.” And for awhile there, that’s all he was. There wasn’t much upside with him, but expectations were set so low by his modest price tag, that it wasn’t a big concern. Plus, when Xhaka came in and stole all the expectations away, Elneny essentially had a free pass to do whatever the hell he wanted.

Because no matter what, he would never be criticized nearly as much as Xhaka.

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But my appreciate for Elneny has only been multiplied by his recent statements with Arsenal Player. There are so many players out there that, when asked about their future, sit on the fence. They talk about how anything can happen in football, and about how they would love to play at such-and-such team at some point in the future, and in the end your left wondering where their loyalties actually lie.

Elneny isn’t like that.

"I trust myself, I have a dream to pursue and I am not going to give up on it. I dream big and this is one of the biggest clubs in the world and I want to stay. The club welcomed my decision to stay and that was the end of it. People were saying, ‘You aren’t playing enough games, maybe you should leave or go on loan somewhere’ but I wanted to prove myself."

That’s pretty simple and straightforward. There was no “but I could see myself somewhere else in a year,” or anything like that. Elneny knows what he wants, he has a conviction that you don’t feel a lot from other Gunners.

Next: 5 Things Learned Against Newcastle

And that is someone you really want to have on your team, especially when that team is struggling to get back to the heights they are capable of.

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