There’s an interesting piece about Phil ‘Big’ Senderos in this morning’s Standard, covering his meteoric rise in 2005. It has been pretty amazing, thinking about it. Following the win against Boro, French fop Bob Pires said, “He will be a giant, a great player for now and for the future.” Big words.
Of course, one of the benefits of his emergence is that we now, for the first time this season, have three genuinely good centre-halfs. Had his arrival on the scene come at the beginning of the season, things might have been different. We can only speculate how different our goals against could have been with him firing on all cylinders, but in the six league games he has started, we’ve let in three goals.
And don’t necessarily expect him or Toure to make way for Sol, is the message (psychologically astute on more than one level) from Wenger. “Senderos has emerged as a hard competitor for everyone”, he said. So Sol’s on his toes, Toure’s on his toes, and of course, Senderos is champing at the bit.
I’m not so sure – I think Sol, when fit, is a definite starter. It’s up to Phil to make sure he plays next to him. Maybe Saturday?
I think for the remainder of the season we should alternate Sol and Kolo and leave Senderos in the team to gain valuable expoerience before the start of next season. Some how I don’t see it happening though!
Much as I like Lauren (barring the odd two-footed challenge) I’d be very happy to see Toure pushed out to RB with Senderos and Campbell in the centre. Could work well?
I agree with Richard – as much as I like Lauren maybe Toure could move to RB to make way for Sol & Senderos in the middle. My only concern would be whether Toure could easily revert to the middle if needed. Maybe Wenger just needs to make a difficult decision; i.e choose 2 players from 3 for the centre of defense if all 3 are available (4 if you count Cygan of course, but not such a difficult decision?).
Senderos should be given as many starts as poss for the rest of the season, for the experience and to help M. Wenger decide just how much we can expect from him next year. Sol probably needs a few games to get match fit again. Sorry Kolo!
I think that’s part of the reason AW stalled over Lauren’s contract extension. I would expect Lauren to increasingly become a squad player providing support as a experienced midfield player rather than 1st choice RB, especially with the loss of Edu. We will have Hoyt, Eboue and Toure able to play RB.
With the return of Bentley, Van Persie and Alladaire we have a large number of young players AW is going to struggle to keep them happy, I suspect there will be limited new comers in the close season (a Goalkeeper, Striker ?)
Driving to Cardiff?
Watch out for the new traffic cameras (see below article).
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1565657,00.html
Fascists.
I’d like to see Phil Senderos get a prolonged run in the team, to give him the experience and to see what he is made of before the summer spend-up. Sol needs games to get back to full match fitness. Maybe move Kolo to right back, but it depends how easily he could revert to the centre when needed.
A lot has been made in various places about Sol & Phil prefering the same left of centre position, implying that they could not play together. I don’t see it as a big issue – surely a centre back could play in either centre back position? (Adams played left of centre before Sol arrived, but they managed to play together).
I’m hoping someone picks this up…
Every time I try to post to this blog I get a message saying that my posting has triggered anti-spam filters, and so will not be posted. This tells me to complete the form below or “use the email confirmation link at the bottom”. Neither the form or link appear.
Can this either be fixed, so I can get my postings through, or can someone tell me what I am doing to trigger this spam filter please.
I notice that numbers of postings are down of late, so I suspect I am not the only person hitting this problem.
Thanks!
I saw Phil and Cesc on Sunday at Oxford Circus and he is one big bloke. Master East Upper refused to say hello so it was left to me to speak to them making me look like some blushing teenager! Not sure anyone had ever spoken to them in the street before as they looked totally confused. Bless
Mix Cd for the silver battle bus has hit a snag as I can’t find my copy of ‘Shouting for the Gunners’ anywhere. Badly Drawn Dad’s ‘Hello Darlin’ mix of funky bits and bobs is ready to be dropped. (is that what the kids are saying now?)
Mr Farnborough – I have a spam filter on, and for some reason it’s taking offence to you. I assure you it’s not personal. I’ll look into it…