It is true that Arsenal got extremely lucky when our injury problems last season forced Arsene Wenger to bring Francis Coquelin back to the squad last Christmas, and it is no coincidence that the Gunners improved drastically once he was introduced as our holding midfielder.
“He continues to improve defensively in his positional play and also offensively, you can see he has more confidence,” said the manager.
“His passing is quick and sharp, his decision-making is quick and he gets out of tight situations well. That is very important in the middle of the park. He’s also more available and [available] more quickly when our defenders have the ball. He blossoms well.
“When you’re a footballer you need to feel the confidence around you but after that I would say the main progress is decided by the player. Why? Because through his intelligence, he analyses what happened to him during the game and if he makes mistakes his intelligence helps him to analyse the situation and not repeat the same mistake in the next game by finding a solution.
“I would say to do that you need confidence, but the main progress is decided by the player.”
He has been brilliant in the holding position since he arrived, but as Wenger rightly pointed out, his distribution to the forwards has come on leaps an bounds. Can you imagine if he keeps on improving over the next few seasons. Le Coq has got the makings of an Arsenal legend!