ROBIN VAN Persie believes that Arsène Wenger’s modern take on Dutch “total football” can yield the silverware that Arsenal crave.
The club have finished empty-handed for the sixth season in succession and the supporters are deeply frustrated. Some of them booed the players during the lap of appreciation that followed Sunday’s home defeat to Aston Villa, and Van Persie says he understands why.
The team has been heavily criticised, with one strand being Wenger’s use of Van Persie as the lone striker in his formation.Yet Van Persie has been in the form of his life – he has scored 21 goals in 25 starts in all competitions for the club, after missing two and a half months at the beginning of the season with an ankle injury – and he believes Wenger’s fluid style, in which players interchange positions and runners get forward from midfield and wide areas – will eventually be vindicated. Other European teams have shown the way; Arsenal simply need to add consistency.
“I don’t feel lonely up front,” Van Persie said, “because I have Cesc (Fabregas) around me, I have (Jack) Wilshere, I have Samir Nasri, (Andrey) Arshavin, (Theo) Walcott. It’s true that it’s a modern take on Total Football and if you look at teams around Europe . . . AS Roma have played similarly with (Francesco) Totti in that role; there is Barcelona, obviously, with (Lionel) Messi; ourselves, the Netherlands, during the World Cup, I was playing in a similar role and Ajax have made a change there, too. Siem de Jong is not a main striker, he is more of a midfielder but he played there and they became champions so you can’t really go against that.
“We came very, very close to being champions and if you look at our games against the big (top four) teams, we are first in that small league. We need to be more consistent because we have everything in our team. If you look at Barcelona, they are playing four or five top games after each other and that’s what our aim should be as well.”
Van Persie, who is under contract at the Emirates Stadium until 2013 and says he has no thoughts of leaving, also highlighted a peculiarly modern problem in the quest for the English title.
“Everybody knows everything about each other,” he said. “Opponents have a GPS system and they can track us, down to every small detail. They know absolutely everything.
“Everyone is training with the GPS thing around you as well. One of our players went home to get something and he still had the GPS around him and the guys tracked him on the computer and they could actually see that he went home. You don’t have a private life.”
Bacary Sagna, meanwhile, has insisted Arsenal’s players are “200 per cent” behind manager Arsène Wenger.
Sagna is also confident captain Cesc Fabregas will not quit this summer amid speculation the midfielder may have played his last game for the club.
Wenger, who has been in charge for almost 15 years, has been criticised for failing to spend big in recent times but right-back Sagna said: “Everyone is 200 per cent behind him. I think he is the right guy. He made a lot for the team, for the players and for the club as well. So we just want to keep working hard and give the maximum.”
Asked if he felt his team-mate would still be at Emirates Stadium next term, Sagna said: “Of course. He is under contract with the team. He is still our captain.”
Guardian Service
