Friday, July 25, 2008

Clichy feels "old"

http://www.arsenalpies.tv/clichy.jpg

Gael Clichy feels that he's old, not literally but just an expression. With Arsenal's squad average age at a record low, Clichy feels "old" and a senior player the younger players looks up to. And FFS, he's only 22. Here's what he said on Arsenal.com:
"I don't really feel that old myself, but when you have players like Jack [Wilshere] at 16 and Henri [Lansbury] at 17 on the pitch with you then you have to say you are old. That's it.
"Even last season I felt a bit like this - now I feel it even more.
"I am 23 soon. That does not give me any pressure and if I can give advice to the younger players then that is a great pleasure for me.
"So maybe I don't feel old but I don't feel young anymore and I have to get used to it.
"At the same time, I know I still have time in my career and I hope to achieve great things."
http://pub.tv2.no/multimedia/TV2/archive/00316/Fabregas_316153c.jpg

This sort of brings up a much debated question, "Is Arsenal's squad too young?" Some say the younger the better, but the others say that we're inexperience; we lack the "old guns" to ensure we can last and maintain our form to the end of the season, and our inexperience often goes out of hand (eg. Bendtner and Adebayor's incident, when they had a squabble). To make things worse, we just sold Lehmann, Hleb and Gilberto. Hleb's okay, but he's considered a senior member of the squad. Gilberto, no doubt, is perhaps the driving force behind Arsenal at times. Jens Lehmann? He has played as much football as Fabregas has eaten food (little exaggerated). Him leaving would further add on to our inexperience and Arsene Wenger don't really seem to be doing anything about it. Aaron Ramsey, if he's considered experience then Toure would be legendary. Samir Nasri is still young and his attitude may get out of hand at times.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/tyne/content/images/2007/09/26/arsnufc6_470x331.jpg

Is a young or old squad better? Do you agree with Arsene Wenger sticking to his youth policy? And will our lack of experience affect our performance next season? Tell me in the comments section, cheers from Dariano.

3 comments:

Anindya Guha said...

Our squad IS too young. And it's NOT a good thing. We need good, solid players with lots of experience if we want to win something. The players don't need to be stars, but they do need composure and maturity, and the ability to give 100 percent EVERY game, which our super talented young squad couldn't do last season (they ran out of steam, remember?)
Another point's this: the young players are supposed to gain experience and become stars in the future, right? BUT WHAT IF THEY LEAVE AS SOON AS THEY BECOME ANY GOOD. Look at Flamini. Same thing could be with Cesc, RVP, Ade (HOPE NOT.)
Please Wenger, get Xabi Alonso, David Villa, Frings...

WEG said...

We keep losing thour core players. Which isn't good. Clichy is one of our senior players now, and that's not good. He's had 2 seasons as a first team regular. At any other top team, he'll still b econsidered a youngster. Here, he's expected to lead some of the youngsters as well as learn his own game. That's an imposition.

We don't necessarily need to buy every player we're linked with. But we do need someone to replace what we've lost in Hleb and Flamini, and we need an alternative CB to Toure and Gallas. What I'm seeing against WBA is hideous.

It's disturbing to see how thin our squad is at the moment. Eboue in midfield is strange.

Do you want to exchange links, Dariano?

transportation car said...

Nice review, thanks for dropping by!