Arsenal Football Club: A Season Review

So here we are at the end of another long season,full of ups and downs,and more ups,and even more downs.

I can't remember a season in which we've been written off on numerous occasions, only to mount a miraculous comeback,then lose two games in a row and be written off again.

In order for easier viewing, I've going to go through the squad in groups instead of individually,and I'm going to give them marks out of 10 for their performances during the season. So we start with:

Goalkeepers

• Manuel Almunia                               3
• Lukasz Fabianski                             3
• Vito Mannone                                 6

I don't think I'm going to be the first person to say this when I say that our goalkeepers haven't been good enough this season.

Vito gets a half decent mark on the basis that he showed a lot of promise away to Fulham but showed his inexperience in the next game at West Ham.

So, I'm willing to wait until I see more of him in action before making up my mind completely on him.

However, as far as our No. One and Two keepers are concerned,this season has proved to be a disaster for both of them.

At no stage of the season did our defenders look comfortable with either of them behind them.

As out and out shot stoppers, both of them are very talented. I will concede that. But the name of the position isn't shot-stopper, it's GOALKEEPER, as in keeping goal.

If you're not comfortable with dealing with the high ball,then you won't be a top GK.

Both of them have struggled with that this season, whether it's been from corners or free kicks.

If you can't control your own penalty area, you won't be a top GK.

How many times have we seen both of them running 30 yards away from goal to clear a ball that was clearly out of reach for them? (Almunia against Barca,Fab yesterday against Fulham) It's as if they are uncapable of learning from errors made in the past.

You need outstanding levels of focus and concentration to be a top GK.

Time and again this season, both keepers have made some truly daft decisions, Fabianski at Porto being a particular example, Almunia continually kicking out long high balls to Arshavin up front being another.

It's clear, even to someone like myself,that neither of these are good enough to be a GK at a top club like Arsenal.

The only good thing that might come of this is that Arsene should now be thinking the same.

Defender

• Bacary Sagna                             7
• Gael Clichy                                 7
• Kieran Gibbs                               6
• Armand Traore                            4
• Thomas Vermaelen                       9
• William Gallas                              7
• Sol Campbell                               8
• Mikael Silvestre                           3
• Johan Djourou                             N/A
• Phillippe Senderos                        N/A

With Kolo being sold to Citeh and Djourou almost snapping his knee in half before the season started, there was plenty of pressure on our one major signing of the summer, Thomas Vermaelen.

As with most of Wenger's signings, very little was known about the Belgian at the time, and there were plenty of people doubting his ability to cope with the physical nature of the Premier League.

To his credit, however, he has proved to be possibly the signing of the season.

His willingness to put his head into any position where the ball may be has proved invaluable.

This also dovetailed nicely with Gallas' preference to wait for a ball to drop and try to start an attack from the back,as when Kolo was beside him, the pair regularly found themselves standing on each other toes,looking to do the same thing.

Unfortunately, injuries to both of them in the latter half of the season, meant Wenger had to bring in an emergency signing to cover for them. And boy did he throw a curveball at us when re-signing Sol Campbell, a man,who five months previous, had played at Morecombe for Sven's Notts County.

Nobody (including myself,) thought that he was a viable option. But it turned out to be a master-stroke in some ways, as watching him running around White Hart Lane like a mad-man, giving nothing but 100 percent in every tackle and absolutely determined not to lose at any cost, was a telling point in the season.

Not because of his performances but because of his refusal to give in at any time.

You could tell that winning mattered to him and you could also tell that losing didn't really matter to a few of his team-mates.

To see Sol charging around one minute and then watch Silvestre laughing his hole off after nearly scoring an own goal, was proof if it were needed that change was needed in the squad.

Clichy and Sagna both had their normal solid seasons, nothing spectacular but with the system we play and how are our full-backs are expected to be auxiliary wingers at times. They are two of the best at what they do and with Gibbs showing plenty of promise and Eboue doing a job back there at times.

I think we can be happy with what we've got there at the moment.

Traore looks like he wants to go to another club. When given a chance to play, he looked dis-interested and not willing to track back from attacks, so I'd be very surprised to see him still at the club by August.

The same can be said for Silvestre. If Sir Alex sent him down to sabotage us then he did his job to the best of his abilities in that respect.

I'd be surprised if Gallas stayed as well to be honest. He's had a good season but we all know Wenger's policy on contracts for older players. Unless there's some serious change in that then Gallas will go.

Who knows what the situation is with Senderos, palmed off to Everton where he never got a game, I can't see him returning either. So that leaves us with Verm, Sol and Djourou as our CB's.

We need another one.

Midfielders

• Abou Diaby                             6
• Cesc Fabregas                       10
• Tomas Rosicky                        6
• Samir Nasri                             7
• Denilson                                 5
• Aaron Ramsey                         7.5
• Alex Song                               9
• Emmanuel Eboue                      7
• Fran Merida                             5

Again, a veritable mixed bag of scores there.

I don't think anyone will disagree with me when I say that Cesc haas been our player of the year this season.

Our change in formation from a 4-4-2 to a 4-2-3-1 has definitely been influenced by a desire to get Cesc further up the field and more involved around the opposition area.

This meant there was more of an onus on him to score goals than ever before and he responded to that brilliantly. 19 goals in 36 games is a fantastic return for any player, let alone a midfielder.

Unfortunately, the key number in that stat is the number of games played; 36.

Injuries have ravaged us this season and Cesc wasn't immune from this.

Only an Arsenal player could break his leg scoring a penalty! Speaking of breaking a leg, poor Aaron Ramsey.

It's very difficult to play midfield when your team is playing three in the middle of the pitch and you're neither the holding player nor the creative player of the three.

Chelsea have played 4-3-3 for years now and still haven't found someone to do that job properly (see Michael Ballack.)

Diaby has looked like he could be a world-beater in that position in some games, only to look like a passenger in others.

Denilson never seems to know what to do when playing there, he passes when he should dribble, he makes a run when he should stay back and defend and he takes too long to make up his mind on what to do next.

Only Ramsey looked like he had the composure to pass the ball and the willingness to make a tackle that's needed in that position. So to see him in the predicament he finds himself in now is very disappointing indeed.

We can only hope that he recovers fully both physically and mentally from this.

If you had told me three years ago that Alex Song would be a certainty for the Arsenal first XI today, I would have cried.

He was that bad. Really. So to see him putting in the quality performances that he did all season long, is quite astounding.

He deserves a huge amount of credit for not letting all that criticism affect him and work incredibly hard, not only on his technique, but on his strength and fitness as well.

He knows his job is to hassle and disrupt the opposition as much as possible and he has done this to great effect this season.

It's been very rare that a team has out-muscled us this season (Chelsea and Blackburn away is all I think,) and his presence in the team has been a main cause of that.

He could do with a bit of help though sometimes, and as I've alluded to earlier, neither Denilson or Diaby look like they want to deal with the defensive side of the game like he does.

With Merida playing very little, except in the Carling Cup and is probably off to Atletico Madrid in the summer, another player coming in might be the only solution.

Our attacking midfielders have had their ups and downs as well this season.

Nasri doesn't look 100 percent comfortable in our new system as he always having to switch from one position to another during most games.

To me, his best position would be where Cesc plays but of course that's not possible.

It's the same situation that Rosicky finds himself in. Both of them are used to coming deep for the ball and try to get moves going, but now they find themselves being used almost as Plan B, to be used when Cesc can't thread balls through the middle of the pitch.

This is also a problem for a couple of our forwards, of whom I will get to later, but it will be interesting to see if they can adapt to playing almost like wingers at times, or will it remain a case of putting square pegs in round holes.

The same applies in a way to Eboue.

I don't think even Arsene knows where his best position is. He's at best an average right-back and an average right winger and he played in centre midfield's for the last couple of games of the season, where he was.....er.....average.

He's a good back-up to have but that's about it to be honest.

Forwards

• Eduardo                                      5
• Robin van Persie                           9
• Carlos Vela                                  4
• Theo Walcott                               6.5
• Andrei Arshavin                            6
• Nicklas Bendtner                           7

If there was one area where injuries hit us the hardest though,it was up front.

Losing RVP for most of the season was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back in my opinion. Especially when at the same time, Bentdner was out and Eddie was still suffering from the mental trauma of having his leg broke in half the year before.

It was remarkable that no-one said that selling Adebayor in the summer was a bad move though, even despite our lack of target-men at the time.

There were two reasons for that.

One was that £25 million for a player who had only performed at a top level for one season and had hawked himself to every top club in Europe,was good business.

And the second reason was that he was a cunt! I can't remember hearing one Arsenal fan say we shouldn't have sold him.

This though meant having to play Arshavin up front on his own.

Now Andrei is a great player but leading the front line on his own isn't exactly his strength.

For all his career he's been used to teams being built around his ability to create something from nothing. So with both injuries to himself and team-mates changing where he plays from game to game, it's been very hard for him to properly adapt to playing for a team that isn't giving him the ball at every opportunity.

Add to this the problems he's having with his agent/former agent and couple that with a typical Russian sense of being honest to the point of stubbornness, it's no surprise he's not at the top of his game at the moment.

Maybe a summer with nothing to do will clear his head and let him concentrate on his football.

That same sentiment applies to Theo.

The last thing that lad needs now is a World Cup to worry about.

Ever since that hat-trick against Croatia in 2008,he's had the world criticise him for every little mistake he's made.

He's also been very unlucky with injuries so far in his career and a summer off to build up some core fitness might be the best thing that ever happens to him.

Ironically, a player for whom the World Cup will be a good thing is Bentdner.

Now that Marouane Chamakh is on his way, what better way to show that you deserve a place in the team than to play well in the biggest tournament in the world?

When he came back from injury this season he showed that he has buckets of potential and that he can provide Arsenal with a different option up front if the situation arose.

I'd be surprised if he didn't see Chamakh's arrival as a challenge to him, to step up and prove that he can be a big player at our club.

Chamakh's arrival isn't good news for everyone though.

Together with him and Jack Wilshere coming back from learning how to kick people at Bolton (and learn that he did, if the standing ovation given to him from Bolton fans yesterday was anything to go by,) that means we have 10 players fighting for the three forward places in the side.

To me, that's about two too many.

So who do we get rid of? Well first out for me would be Vela, because for me, he hasn't kicked on and developed into a top class forward player.

Yes, he can finish brilliantly on occasions but its consistency of performance that's needed at this level and I personally, don't think he can be as good as he has threatened to be week in and week out.

The other player I'd sell would be Eduardo,and it's not because of his injury problems.

Yes,coming back from such a horrific leg break was bound to take time and I can understand when people say he'll never fully recover. But I would sell him purely based on my opinion that he doesn't fit into our new system of having one up front.

He is a wonderful finisher of chances but he needs someone to be playing off someone's flick-ons and hovering in the box for scraps to pounce on. But he can't do that at the moment, due to him being up front on his own for large periods of a game.

Even as I write this, I feel I'm being a touch harsh, but Wenger has never shyed away from selling someone when he thinks their performance levels have dropped.

It wouldn't surprise me to see Eddie go to another club and bang goals in left, right and centre, because he has that ability. I just can't see him doing it for us though.

And so concludes my Season Review.

If you disagree with any of my assessments of players,feel free to leave a comment below and I'll be more than happy to discuss with you about opinion.

Till tomorrow readers.