Ray Wilkins Not a Fan of Arsenal Youngsters

 

Ray Wilkins isn’t afraid to voice his opinion it seems. Last week he angered Blackburn manager Paul Ince by saying they would adopt aggressive tactics, now it is Arsenal’s Carling Cup policy on the Chelsea number two’s mind.

 

Arsene Wenger, as we all know, likes to field a team of youngsters for the competition, that is traditionally viewed as the least important for the big clubs of the Premier League. This has done him well so far this year with his young team defeating Wigan 3-0 last night to follow a 6-0 victory over Sheffield United in the previous round.

 

This isn’t enough to impress Wilkins though who believes Wenger undermines the value of the competition by using the Carling Cup to blood youngsters. He then went on to point out that Chelsea have won the competition twice in four years, while Arsenal haven’t won it once in this time and that justifies our policy.

 

Overall, this is a decent point from Scolari’s right hand man. As a big club, it is all about winning trophies and this is something Arsenal haven’t done since 2005. Surely they should see the Carling Cup as an excellent opportunity to end this rather barren run?

 

Yes, they may well get through the opening rounds with relative ease, but will they go on to win the competition with a team of 17-18-year-olds? The football odds probably wouldn’t favour it.

 

Wilkins wasn’t quite done with his views on this either. His final point was that you enter a competition to win the competition and that under no circumstances would Chelsea be fielding a weakened team in this year’s Carling Cup.

 

Emphasising this, Didier Drogba and Joe Cole are expected to return to the side to face Burnley tonight as the Blues look to progress to the next round.

 

In terms of my opinion on the whole "undermining the competition" theory, well I don’t quite buy into it. If you are still winning games, how can you be undermining it? If you put in a team of unorganised, unfit reserves—that would be a problem though.

 

I guess that’s why Chelsea are so keen to keep their strongest eleven on the pitch for this year’s Carling Cup. Field a weakened team and it could affect morale or confidence should they come unstuck. With an important run of games coming up, this is something Scolari, Wilkins, and co can barely afford.

 

As for why Wilkins has come out with these comments, well it is probably no coincidence that Chelsea host Arsenal in the Premier League in a couple of weeks time. Perhaps he wanted to add a bit of fuel to the fire ahead of this contest. This, admittedly, is normally something a manager would do. Alex Ferguson, Rafa Benitez and Wenger have all played their part in mind-games, after all.

 

So, what’s different at Chelsea? Well, it’s my opinion that Wilkins is being used by Scolari to throw things out there a bit. Scolari isn’t the type of character to criticise future opponents, so maybe he is happy with Wilkins doing his dirty work.

 

It’s just a theory though – thoughts?

Here’s to a comfortable victory tonight.

By Thomas Rooney – A sports writer who blogs about football betting