Arsenal’s 19 year-old Alex Iwobi is looking certain to become a regular Arsenal first team player next season, as Arsene Wenger has been slowly integrating him into the squad. The nephew of Jay Jay Okocha has only made five subsitutes appearances in the League, but as Wenger thinks his best position is at Number 10 he has to push Mesut Ozil out of the way first!
But Wenger has started Iwobi in every round of the FA Cup to give Ozil a rest and today will be no different as Le Prof will save our German maestro’s energy for the trip to Barcelona in midweek. Wenger even named Iwobi as the Arsenal player to watch in the pre-game preview. “A modern, top, top player is a guy who has a good combination of humility and ambition – humility off the pitch and ambition on it,” Arsene said. “That makes real champions.
“Alex is a guy who provokes in his game and provokes mistakes from the opponents with the vertical way he plays.
“That can be expressed on the flanks or through the middle. In fact when he was a youth-team player, he only played on the flanks and I put him in the centre because I liked the way he read the game and the speed of his understanding of the game.
“That is why I would put him in the middle, but he can express his talent in every single offensive position.”
Wenger obviously has very high hopes for the Nigerian international, and his versatility will make him become invaluable to Arsenal in the future. If he carries on with his excellent performances in the FA Cup, I am certain that we will see Iwobi on a much more regular basis in the next campaign….