Arsenal’s Matteo Guendouzi has been in the news for the wrong reasons recently.
The Frenchman appeared to have overstretched Mikel Arteta’s patience recently, and the Spaniard is looking to offload him in the summer, according to reports (The Metro).
He was axed from the Arsenal team to face Southampton after appearing to mock Brighton’s players for their earnings compared to his.
However, that isn’t the first time that he is getting into Arteta’s bad books and he has been defended by an unlikely individual.
Arsenal legend, Lee Dixon has claimed that the young Frenchman is not entirely to blame for his petulance and he insists that Guendouzi is simply not being guided by anyone at the club.
He claimed that the current team lacks leader and if it was in his playing days, the Frenchman would have been put in his place by now.
“I completely agree with leaving him out,” Dixon told the PA news agency as quoted by Four Four Two. “It wouldn’t have happened in my day – well, it might have happened once but it wouldn’t have happened again.
“Somebody needs to have a word with him and I’m sure Arteta has done – he wouldn’t have just left him out at Southampton and not said anything.
“There will have been a conversation and then it is about the ability of that player to take that message on board and see what he does with them.
“You don’t just do what the coach says, you listen and use your football intelligence to work out the good bits, the bad bits and what will get you to the next level.
“The next level for him is not being sat at home and watching the game on TV, it is about being in the team every week.”
“It is not the first time we have seen a bit of petulance from him,” added the four-time league winner, speaking in his role as a pundit for Amazon Prime Video.
“He is a talented boy but, unfortunately for him, he has got his chance in a team that has not really got a lot of leaders on the pitch.
“If you picked Guendouzi out of the team now and stuck him next to Patrick Vieira, he would be a totally different player because he would be led around the pitch and told where to go.”
Arteta has urged the Arsenal players to get on board with what he is doing as he looks to return the club to the top of English and European football.
