By reena mmsport
Arsenal have won three Premier League titles, eight FA Cup since football started in 1992 and reached one Champions League final. We need really good players.
Arsenal were also one of the most entertaining clubs in English football for nearly a decade. It takes… something else.
Here – with a vague minimum attendance quota of ’20ish’ in all competitions which somehow rules out nearly all of the club’s bad wingers – is Arsenal’s worst XI of the Premier League era. It’s in something like a 4-4-2, you can discuss the details of the positions among yourselves.
Goalkeepers and Defenders
David Ospina (PO): There is a case to be made that perhaps Richard Wright deserves this post, or perhaps Manuel Almunia. They would be good cases. But David Ospina is a legless, wrist-shaking little mess who once collected a stationary piece behind their own goal line.
Carl Jenkinson (RB): Was JENKO responsible for one of the greatest footballer sightings of all time? Yes, he was. Was she lovingly shitty and was it worth watching just to see what she would do in a Premier League game? Absolutely. Is he Arsenal’s worst right-back in the Premier League? Obviously.
Igor Stepanov (CB): Disgraceful mentions for Pascal Cygan, Philippe Senderos, Michael Silvestre and – fuck you – even Johan Djourou.
Sebastien Squillaci (CB): Incredibly, delightfully satisfying name to get around the hole in your mouth. An international for France and CORSICA. But she started playing for Arsenal at the age of 30 and – significantly – stopped playing for France later that year. He might just be on the downslope. She may have been generally crap. We may never know.
Armand Traore (LB): A France Under-21 prospect snatched from Monaco’s youth academy by Wenger-era Arsenal (of course), but the strangest part of the five-capped Senegalese international’s career isn’t his average standing at the Emirates or how long he spent ended up in police custody for 10 hours for carrying a brass knuckles to a North London derbybut the fact that the only football league played outside England is…10 A league games for Juventus. Borrowed. What?
Midfielders
Francesco Coquelin (CM): Below is a list of things I have called Francis Coquelin. “The most aggressively useless footballer to ever set foot on a pitch.” ‘Not good at football’. “Solo responsible for the disappearance of Santi Cazorla”. “The World’s Most Frustrating Gamer©”. “The most inexplicable entity in the Premier League”.
Denilson (CM): Buying Denilson wasn’t a bad idea, at first glance. Captain of Brazil’s youth team, he doesn’t have much club football to his credit but a clear background something. He played over 150 games for the Gunners and was actively good in about half a dozen of them.
Joel Campbell (RW): Yes, this looks bad. Joel Campbell was (is?) a perfectly acceptable football player, and the man has played international football nearly a hundred times. He scored in a World Cup! But he has played a total of 23 Premier League games despite him spending more time under contract at Arsenal than Robert Pires … partly because he has been unable to get a work permit for two years, and partly why Arsene Wenger hated the idea of playing him, never.
Gervinho (SO): Are you telling me I should respect the butt of a man with that hairline who won’t just shave it off? Absolutely not.
Forwards
Christopher Wreh (ST): Let’s bring up the phrase ‘taken from Monaco’s youth system’ again for Wreh, who is probably the only player to have Persepolis and Bishops Stortford back-to-back on his Wikipedia page. Either way, being a striker who has scored five goals in 46 games is no good.
Lucas Perez (ST): Oh boy, talking about strikers who haven’t scored enough. One in 11 in the league for Perez, who looked – speaking as someone who has seen him up close and personal in one League Cup match too many – like a man who had been told someone would strangle his dog if he shot . He also saw him score a Premier League brace for West Ham, when Neil Etheridge collected one of his shots before running another through his legs. Strange.
Read more from Chris Deleyfollow him on Twitter at @ThatChris1209!
This article was originally posted on 90min.com as Worst Arsenal XI of the Premier League era.
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