Samir Nasri-injured, Denilson injured, Tomas Rosicky rehabilitating, the time has come for Abou Diaby to stand up and emerge as an Arsenal player. If there ever was a do or die moment for an Arsenal player, this is it. In a 3 man midfield, Fabregas and Song-Billong have laid their claims, and unless Diaby does something special, he will relinquish the last posting to Samir Nasri at the end of October when he returns.
As pointed out in my early season preview, Abou Diaby has the tools to cement a place in the Arsenal team, what he hasn't done yet is apply himself mentally to becoming an elite champion. He cannot become a holding player for Arsenal, but he has the abilities to act as buffer to teams passing and breaking at Arsenal through his technique. As for his assertiveness, he showed it against Portsmouth by scoring two powerful goals to compliment his good performance.
Also, in the French set up, he is a certainty to be called up on Saturday in the France matches against the Faroe Islands and Austria, and is a dark horse to start as Raymond Domenech looks to add more attacking ability in midfield and the word is that Toulalan will be 'rested' as he hasn't been on form for Lyon, partly because he has had to play in defence, but also to find a new solution to having two pure holding players.
The time for Diaby is now, I personally feel he can rise up and declare himself to the Arsenal fans. He has the ability, few players get called up for France just after playing two matches, Diaby has done that in one of the most fiercely competitive positions in the French team that has a long queue in midfield. If Abou realises that he must apply himself mentally to using his abilities, and to produce performances over 90mins and not just 5-15mins a game, then he will have solved a few of the problems that Arsenal face.
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2 comments:
Although your analysis about Diaby makes sense, it's not clear to me why against Olympiakos all of a sudden Diaby will shine. Denilson has already been out for 2 weeks. In that time Diaby has put up inconsistent performances imo against Wigan and Fulham. Sadly, I'm not convinced that he will be able to buck his trend of inconsistency.
I wrote this 24 hours before tonight's match. Again, he never put his all into the game, still makes the same errors such as dribbles that are not complete, not focussing on his key strengths. This is 1 game down, he needs to step up more.
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