Arsenal: Is Robin Van Persie the Most Indispensible Gunner of the Last 20 Years?

If you caught Arsene Wenger's post-match press conference Saturday, following Arsenal's improbable 2-1 victory over Liverpool at Anfield, you noticed a couple of very interesting things from the Frenchman's quotes.

The first: When asked if he would have been happy to settle for a point, given the nature of the second half, Wenger responded thusly:

"Well, in the second half, I thought if we stayed 1-1 until the last 10 minutes where we have to come and, you never know, we have the quality to create a chance. In the second half, we had big chances. Our problem was the first half, where we were not in the game. What was fantastic was that we were 1-1 at halftime, because we could have been two or three down. Then the second half was much more level, I think. We did create clear-cut chances...we had two or three clear-cut chances. In the end, when you see the ball landing [at] the feet of Van Persie, you know that he can give a special goal. That's what he did again today. From not a lot, he did a lot."

The second: Asked "Is [Van Persie] quite simply invaluable; you simply cannot afford to lose him?", Wenger said:

"No. You can never afford to lose a player of that quality, but I believe that at the moment you have to give him big credit because in every game he turns up something special."

One imagines—in fact, one can run a quick Google search and verify—Wenger having said similar things about Cesc Fabregas and Samir Nasri last summer, ahead of the two star midfielders leaving the side for FC Barcelona and Manchester City, respectively.

Yet however instrumental either was to the Arsenal attack—and as any Arsenal fan knows, both had spells where they literally carried the side for games on end—neither ever impacted the outcome of games as consistently, as persistently, as Van Persie has done for going on 14 months now.