The
team at the Republic Sport decided to celebrate the unsung heroes who do all
the hard yards but hardly ever get their names in the headlines. So here is the
first instalment of Underrated...
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| Song & Arteta: Arsenal's Unsung Heroes. |
All
the talk at the Gunners this season has been about Robin Van Persie and all the
goals he scored, but little is ever said about where the goals come from.
Monsieur Song and Senor Arteta are the 2 components that make the Arsenal
machine work. Song makes the hard tackles in the middle of the park and cleans
up in front of the back four, but he is not the ‘traditional’ defensive
midfielder in the sense that he does make forward runs and he has the ability
to pick the perfect pass. An apt description of Song came to me when I was
talking to a friend about the Cameroonian player. After trying at length to sum
up the player that Song is, my friend said “Well, I don’t know what he does
exactly, but nobody else in the league does it.” I would actually go as far as
to say that Alex Song is in the same league as Yaya Toure, the only player I
can compare him to. Arteta in the middle links up play. He has added some
fluidity to Arsenal’s play. The Gunners lost some of the slick football and
silky touches that were the norm when Cesc Fabregas and Samir Nasri wore the
red and white jersey but Arteta fitted in pretty seamlessly and become a player
that the Gunners rely heavily upon. To put it simply, he brings the team
together. This was demonstrated when Arsenal produced their worst performance
of the season when they played AC Milan in the Champions League at the San
Siro, without Arteta in the team.
Mawande
wrote this.
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