The good news for the Arsenal club captain Per Mertesacker is that the recovery from the knee injury that the World Cup winning centre back picked up in the pre-season game against Lens is still going well. But with the BFG still a couple of months away from a comeback, the good news for Arsene Wenger and the Arsenal fans is that his replacement Shkodran Mustafi is doing very well indeed alongside Laurent Koscielny.
Perhaps a little too well for Mertesacker’s liking, as Metro has reported the lanky defender talking about the possibility of moving on, with the January transfer window giving him the chance to talk to other clubs because his current contract is due to expire at the end of this season.
The injured Gunner said, ‘I know that I need to allow myself time. The more time I allow my knee, the longer I’ll be able to play football.
‘I can increase the workload already and I am no longer in pain.
‘I believe that I can reach a level again on which I am important for the team. I have the feeling that this is not the end.
‘I look at the perspectives for me and my family, and I think that I’ll intensify those thoughts from January on.
‘That’s also the time when you can listen to other things [offers] when your contract is expiring.’
I know that a lot of Arsenal fans think the 32-year old is too slow to do a good job for Arsenal but he is still a good player with bags of valuable experience. What I fail to understand is why Wenger made him captain when his contract was due to run out and knowing he would miss around half of the season.
Would it not have been better to extend his contract first? Or even to give the armband to someone like Koscielny who would definitely be on the pitch? I thought it was an odd move from the boss at the time but do these comments from Mertesacker prove that Wenger got this decision badly wrong?
Bob.
Hope Mert recovers fully asap
We need his experience as a CB
We are in 4 competitions so Mert is important
PEAR Mertsacker is good for backups to 1st team, he must stay!!!!
no im not surprised!wenger did the same with arteta during his last couple of years,even though he was regularly injured wenger still gave him the armband,i think it was to give him something to keep his mind busy not playing he had a lot of time to share his experience being around the team non stop you can,t really dismiss the importance of a captain off the pitch/behind the scene!!
i would even go so far as to say that a captain’s duty off the pitch/behind the scene is even bigger than on the pitch/in front of the fans
What a load of bull ? ???
A Captain’s influence is more important on the pitch than anywhere else, Its the results on the pitch that wins trophies! ?
lol again you show how small-minded you are, it’s a pretty stupid thing to equal the sentence “results on the pitch win trophies” that the off-field work wouldn’t matter, of course if the on-pitch results dont match your off-field works dont matter but everything related to the off-field work is the basement and the on-field work is the result you get from the basic you have done, the hardwork/dedication/fight/time one needs to win trophies is counted the work/part done off the field is significantly bigger than the on field part, but that neither is more important/less important they go hand in hand… the same as any project/scientific researches work.. almost everything in the world… to reduce the influence of one to just the on the pitch part is just.. too small-minded i dont even know where to start 😉
Hahaha ? If fish took the bate as often as you, there wouldn’t be any left in the ocean’s lol.?
And For someone that doesn’t know where to start you didn’t do a bad job blabbering on and on ??
I feel sorry for the people around you, I bet they suffer from ear and headaches? ?
Mate, This is Wenger’s Arsenal that we are talking about,
Player’s from the past and present have stated on many occasions that there isn’t much talking done in the changing rooms from Wenger and if thats how our manager sets his example then I doubt that our present club Captain does much either.
Tony Adams was our last ‘real’ Captain and then Patrick Vieira, though Adams was a real motivator on the pitch and lead by example on it, he was a drunken twat off of it and he even done 6 months for drinking and driving, wrapping his Car around a tree/lamppost/ or was it a wall in someones backyard? ? ? My point is that the Captains job is on the pitch and the off field side of things is down to the manager and in the past few season’s history has proven that Wenger just picks his lineup and tells them to go out and enjoy themselves.
A leader will lead regardless of wearing a armband doesn’t matter who has it imo I hate it when people think that this inspirational captain on the pitch shouts ‘come on boys’ or whatever they say is gonna motivate them anymore than they actually are on the pitch just because there wearing a stupid armband .off the field is far more important for me there’s days leading upto matches which a captain should be involved in certain things which I’m sure arteta was and mertesacker is there obviously well respected within the squad . Vieira wasn’t captain when Adams was there does this mean he wasn’t a leader !! It’s just a armband ?
Have to agree with Fatboy. How many times have Arsenal gone down a goal, and all the players just look around at each other with sadness. Team needs a leader that’ll get them back into the game and rally the boys. So many Arsenal teams have been called “soft” and “too nice”. That’s why Chelsea tormented us for years and years. They knew how to bully us. Wenger doesn’t know how to rally the players anymore, and there’s no player in the squad that’s willing to do it. We’re going to have bumps in the road during the season, and that’s when we’ll need leaders to step up. As much as I hate Terry, he’s always able to get the team to rally, and he puts in top class performances that lift the rest of the squad. That’s a leader.
cech should have been the captain
Freddie Ljungberg should have been made captain
It was an obvious mistake. Per’s time was coming either way, I don’t think AW really realized this. We wouldn’t have Mustafi if Gabriel and Per both didn’t get injured. Either way, hope he comes back soon and can still contribute to the season. Kos/Per partnership is still a very reliable one no doubt. Looking forward to seeing more of Holding down to road as well too. For the first time in a long, long, time, maybe since Invincibles, Arsenal have their defense sorted out.
Really not a defender I hold in the highest regard, because he has been one of the reason we can not play the high pressing game regularly last season.
However, he is one of the two most experience CB in our squad, which says a lot, Gab, Mus, Holding, Chambers and Bielik are quite young and sometimes erratic, without one out of our most experience pair of CBs being there.
Therefore Mert still has at least 2 – 3 more years of service to offer the arsenal and there will still be a lot of games to play, especially if we are still in the cup competitions after December.
It would therefore be ridiculous to part with the company of the Big German.
it is stupid to think there is no leader on the pitch apart from the captain,per might be injured but we have leaders on the pitch that don,t need the armband to show leadership,cech,mustafi,koss,le coq,xhaka,sanchez….