Park Chu Young
Used sparingly, largely unimpressive. Park’s goal in theCarling Cup against Bolton gave Arsenal fans a glimpse of what could be, but he has failed to produce on his two other appearances. The Korean, like the rest of Arsenal’s new signings, needs time to adjust but he recently told Arsenal that physically he was ready to give his best.
Youngsters
Oxlade-Chamberlain has shown what he could be capable of with some brilliant performances in the Carling Cup and the England U21 team. However we all knew that he would perhaps be one considered more for the future. Joel Campbell too will perhaps be appreciated in a few years; he is doing well at Lorient and has earned himself a place in the team. Jenkinson was another for the future however even though their were many Arsenal fans complaining about his performances so far this year he was getting better with every game and many of those same fans will be disappointed to see him injured.
Obviously these players need time to settle in. All players do, or at least should. But if everyone knows that is the case then why were these signings made so late. If the inefficiency of the players cannot be blamed on the players themselves then it must be blamed on the people who didn’t sign them early enough to get a pre-season under their belt. There’s no point in Arsene saying that Mertesacker didn’t know he would be closed down as quickly as he was by Morrison on Saturday. The fact is that he should have been taught these things by now because soon mistakes like that will cost them points and the fans will not be as forgiving. Whether the delay in bringing in new players was the fault of the board or the manager is yet to be known, but both should have known better.
The quality of the player signed can be properly evaluated later in the season when they have had time to settle in. The success of Wenger’s ‘panic buying’ can be brought down to one main question: was he buying squad players or first team players? Obviously Gervinho and Mertesacker were bought for the first team but it seems that the others were bought to compensate for Arsenal’s repetitive injury problems. And therefore even though they haven’t lit the league alight with flair-filled performances players like Santos, Arteta and Jenkinson have done what they were meant to do. Benayoun too has provided ample cover and having an extra centre back in Mertesacker has definitely been beneficial to the club. The summer transfer window may not have gone exactly to plan for Arsene but it would be hard to imagine their recovery without their new players.
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