This week saw the Arsenal players Granit Xhaka and Takehiro Tomiyasu exit the World Cup and should now be immediately flying straight to Dubai to join up with their team-mates for the Dubai Super Cup and resume training ahead of the season restart in a few weeks time.
Maybe Tomiyasu was feeling a little tired and emotional after Japan lost on penalties to Croatia, as after the game he was asked if he would now fly to Dubai. He replied: ‘I don’t know.
‘Hopefully I can get a bit of rest. I need time to forget about football. I need a bit of time.’
Then the next day we saw Xhaka’s Switzerland get massacred by Portugal, but our tough midfielder showed the right attitude when asked the same question by the media. His reply was: ‘Of course, emotionally it is not easy. But this is part of our business, part of football.
‘You have to recover well. The Premier League is waiting and, of course, I wanted to be here longer than this. But we lost the game today and I am happy to go back now with the team.”
That’s the spirit we want to see! It’s hardly like Tomi has been overplayed. He only had about 190 minutes in Qatar and has been in and out of our EPL and Europa League teams, whereas Xhaka has started nearly every single game for Arsenal and Switzerland.
Well it is now being reported that Tomi has flown to Dubai after all, and I would have liked to hear what Arteta said to him. I imagine it was something like – “Man up son, we’ve got a title race to concentrate on!”
🔴| Tomiyasu has joined joined the #Arsenal squad in Dubai for the warm-weather training camp! #afc [@Sponichi_Editor] pic.twitter.com/g9PVHU6DrU
— Arsenal Buzz (@ArsenalBuzzCom) December 7, 2022
Let’s hope he now puts his head down and gets on with it, for his sake and ours…
Darren N
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Embarrassing- stop writing
@Simon
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He was talking after suffering a huge disappointment, but after joining his Arsenal teammates I’m sure he will soon regain his zest for the game.
Could it be Tomi is suffering lingering affects from his injury? I don’t know I am asking. Perhaps a personal matter that he chose not to inform the public? Again I don’t know.
Rather than assume weak mentality (which Tomi has never shown) perhaps wait and see when or if the reason is publicized.
I disagree with the opinion of the author, and think it a bit premature to leap to such as he concluded.
Fair enough it is his opinion, but think he may be a bit much with the criticism.
Terrible article, the writer obviously misses the point of what Tomiyasu meant or has an agenda!
I take a marginally different view in that Tomi whilst obviously disappointed by going out and from his performance, perhaps should have shown a little more resilience with the media. Players are under the spotlight constantly and do need to be thorough and thoughtful in replies to questions put to them. It has a habit of playing out badly if the tone is wrong. I thought in this day and age, clubs and country federations guided players in these situations.
That said, I would be surprised if Arteta asked him to man up or if in fact Tomi needs to man up.