So Close, But Yet So Far Away…

by MIKE HARVEY Let me start off by saying that I have always been a big fan of Robin van Persie, since he first entered the Arsenal scene in 2004. His passion for success, his determination to win and his naturally-born talents are absolutely superb. It’s obvious that these opinions are shared by Arsene Wenger, who has always been a big believer of Robin van Persie.

So why is a part of me doubting his position at the club?

I’ll get straight to the point. I don’t think he’s the right man to lead the line in a Championship winning side.

There’s no doubt that his ability is fantastic. He’s the stereotype of a typical Dutch footballer, who oozes world class skills at times and as we’ve seen over the years, he’s pulled off some unforgettable moments of brilliance. But he’s also shown, in my opinion, that he’s a very frustrating player to watch week in, week out – when he’s not injured of course!

Despite our injury problems at the back (which seem to be getting worse and worse every week!), I feel we should have bought another striker. And I’m not talking about another Nicklas Bendtner (obviously!) or Eduardo Da Silva, or anyone else as “back-up”. I’m talking about a big money offer for a world class striker. Not only someone who would score us 20+ goals a season, but also a player who possesses great speed and acceleration attributes, that could be used to ignite fear into the defence of any team.

Admittedly, I don’t keep in touch with any of the staff on the Arsenal scouting system, so suggesting an exact name would be unfair on myself. Nevertheless, someone like David Villa of Barcelona would be ideal – but realistically, someone for a little less money. Although the Catalan giants spent £34m to acquire his signature, which to be honest, is a bargain when you see Andy Carroll go for more. Whether we could invest a similar amount of cash, I don’t know. I’ll leave that one up to you…

But hypothetically, just imagine if we had David Villa in our side. He is fast. He can finish well. His movement off the ball is utterly brilliant. But most importantly, he has one of the best footballing brains in the modern game. It’s always easy to dream that we could have someone like him in our side and yes, it was never going to be easy, but we’ve never replaced Thierry Henry with a consistently-class striker. And I feel a player like Villa would solve our problems.

I’m not saying that we should give up on van Persie and get rid of him, as clearly, he’s a great asset to our team. Maybe we could try putting him on the wing in a 4-3-3 (or 4-5-1) formation and try Marouane Chamakh – or a new signing – in the centre-forward position. In my opinion, we need someone who can offer more in the centre-forward role, specifically. We could also try changing our formation to a 4-4-2 and start with two strikers, but I’ll do myself a favour and avoid that debate, because it will just get too complicated and I won’t get my point across…

Of course, times are hard at the moment and maybe that would explain why even I understand that I might be being a tad harsh here on our Dutch striker. Although I accept that what I’m feeling at the moment is just human instinct.

We are so close to winning the league. We are just 9 league games away from claiming our first title since 2004. But like we’ve seen pretty much every campaign since we were “invincible”, it appears that we are just about to fall at the last hurdle. Unfortunately, it’s too late to bring in anyone now. But I believe that if we were able to bring in someone a little more direct that could play up top in these remaining 9 games, we would win the league. It’s just frustrating that we’re just ONE player away from becoming Champions of England.

Despite our noble efforts to come back and leave with a point at The Hawthorns, we still can’t ignore the fact that we were 2-0 down to a, let’s be honest, rather average West Brom side. We allowed them to score two incredibly cheap goals, with poor decision making and defensive errors. It’s safe to say, that we should have never got ourselves into that position. If we had defended well, I doubt we would have conceded and we then could have gone on and played in a much more comfortable game.

We’re approaching April and we are still very much in the title race. But if we make more defensive mistakes like we saw on Saturday, we will have no chance of being crowned champions in May. With just the league to concentrate on now, I believe it’s perfectly acceptable to think that every player will have enough time to focus for every game, and give solid performances throughout, right up until the end of season showdown at Craven Cottage, on May 22nd.

I still believe we can do it, but we aren’t exactly doing ourselves any favours at the moment.

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Mike Harvey

I'm 20 and have been an Arsenal season ticket holder since 2006. My family has had Arsenal links since the 1920's, and the support is still going strong. I am at every home game, and also manage to get to multiple away games, when I can. I have been writing for various blogs and websites since I was 15, but have now settled down and have become a regular writer for Arsenalinsider. I also run my own Pro Evolution Soccer blog, Only Pro Evolutions. Arsenal is my passion. Writing is my passion. I was never good enough to play for The Arsenal, so I'll do the next best thing!

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