Why Mertesacker will start for Arsenal against Leicester

Many Arsenal fans have constantly complained that Arsene Wenger always chooses Per Mertesacker to partner Koscielny in defence, while our new beast Gabriel is usually left on the bench. Wenger started with the Brazilian against Bournemouth last week, but with the massive game against Leicester coming up tomorrow it is nearly certain that Wenger will revert to the Koss/BFG partnership again.

Why? It is simply that the 25 year-old has not yet mastered English enough to communicate fully with his team-mates. The Spaniard Nacho Monreal explains that he still talks to him in Spanish during the games. “It’s good that I can speak Spanish with him on the pitch, but Gabby knows he needs to improve his English because that will make the football easier,” Nacho said. “Myself, Hector, everyone is helping him every day with it because it’s much better for the team.”

“I know exactly how he feels, because it was the same for me when I first arrived,” he continued. “When my English got better, I got better on the pitch too, because when you are playing one of the most important things is confidence.

“If you are confident in yourself, you feel better because you are more relaxed and you feel the authority to correct things you see. You feel more involved in the group.”

We may feel that Mertesacker is slower than Gabriel, but his excellent reading of the game makes for a great partnership with Koscielny and they have served us wonferfully for the last few years. But the Big German is now getting on a bit and I am sure that by next season Gabriel will be the automatic choice with Mertesacker as backup. But tomorrow it will definitely be the German starting the game….

Tags Gabriel Leicester Mertesacker

14 Comments

  1. starting BFG will make Koss work as twice as hard, he always do more to cover for the slow lame partner in every match. we need speed that can recover immediately in the hands of the speedy and accurate Vardy, and the tricky Mahrez

  2. How can you actually believe that Mertesacker reads the game. Is it because he is so slow that he must be workig hard in his mind. John Terry reads the game,anticipates what is going to happen and makes sure he can snuff out any danger before it happens. I for one feel much happier now that we have another quick defender alongside Kos, and also one who can read the game. If he has a problem it is that has not had enough game time. Dropping him now would be a disaster.

    1. Its not really speed central defenders need, its pace and strength and I don’t see those in Gabriel.
      And yes Gabs reads geame well…
      haha bulls

  3. Just when we thought we mustn’t see per in our starting Line-up

    Admin dropped the bombshell “why mertesacker will start for arsenal against Leicester”

    great!…..just great… Pff

    1. It’s not a bombshell because they don’t have a clue. They’ve seen an interview where Monreal speaks about communication in the defence, extrapolated all the stuff about Mertesacker and then used it as their headline. Most of the comments on here recently have been saying that Mertesacker shouldn’t start, so the headline has said he will (without any suggestion it’s true, let alone verification) to make the readers riled up and post more comments.

  4. And it will be 2nd worst decision just behind starting FLAmini ahead of Le coq. And anything go wrong we forgive him (wenger).

        1. They will blame Wenger, as usual. Arsenal lose = Wenger’s fault, Arsenal win = nothing to do with Wenger. So it goes, for the standard wobbly WOB.

        2. Its not about favouritism of any player, its about putting the better players and everybody knows who is better between Le coq & flamini or Per v Gabreal.

  5. Why would AW pick BFG ? Bum chums I guess. He is to slow he don’t read the game fast enough and I think he is nothing more then a bench player.

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