I wrote an article about Francis Coquelin after Arsenal had come back from an away game at Man City with all three points, rave reviews and a new style of playing in those big games. And although I did not go as far as Jamie Carragher who said that it was too soon to judge him after one game, I did suggest that Coquelin still had a lot to do.
The young Frenchman was quite rightly praised to the hilt for his performance in that game and we Arsenal fans had seen it coming in the previous games that he played for the Gunners since Arsene Wenger recalled him from the loan deal at Charlton.
But we also know that our manager is not the biggest fan of what you might call a midfield spoiler, as proved by him using the pass master that is Mikel Arteta in the centre of the pitch. So I felt that Coquelin needed to improve this area of his game, because the stats comparison on Squawka.com between him, Arteta, Flamini and Schneiderlin clearly shows that this is where Coquelin lags behind the others.
However, the young midfielder seems to be taking that on board, because if you look at his stats on Arsenal.com from the game against Aston Villa, it shows that as well as his usual defensive work, Coquelin got on the ball more and used it better.
Cazorla was the only Arsenal player to have more touches and the youngster’s passing accuracy of 91 percent was the best of all of our starting outfield players. Surprised? I was and it is just the latest surprise that the Frenchman has pulled in the last couple of months. If he carries on like this, could Arsenal have finally found our perfect all-round central midfielder?