Arsenal fans are not used to seeing our players included on the shortlist for the Ballon D’Or award given each year to the player judged to have been the best over the course of a calendar year, so perhaps we should not really be too surprised that no Gunners are on the list again this year.
Having said that, I think that at least two of the current squad could argue a good case to be included, so do we think that Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez have been unfairly ignored?
I know that the Chilean did start last season slowly after coming back late from his Copa America heroics with Chile, but as I say this Ballon D’Or is supposed to be judged over a calendar year, so his form at the start of last season should not matter.
So including the start of this season, which has seen Alexis score six goals in 11 games, and his performances for Chile which helped them retain the Copa America, I think our striker can feel unlucky to have missed out. I would say that is even more true of our German playmaker, whose creative stats were second to none last year.
It looks even worse when you see that other attacking midfielders who made the list, such as Iniesta, De Bruyne, Koke and Payet were easily outscored by Ozil on the stats website Squawka.com, and that was before he started banging in the goals recently.
Is it just me or does the list of 30 players reported by the Daily Mail just seem to be the same old faces with a fair few of them not having done what the two Gunners have over the last year?
Bob.