Bendtner: The killing of a flash boy

I don't want, particularly, to dwell on Monday night much longer. I'm not sure what purpose it would serve, I realise that I missed things that happened such as the repetition of the vile chants directed at Arsène, or Rio Ferdinand's unpunished attempt to cut Bac Sagna in half. But I also like to leave space for you to have your say. One thing that I would have liked to talk about came about as a result of a text exchange with Luke yesterday morning, but I didn't have time to mention it and I've talked about it before anyway.

However, today is a new day and aside from Samir Nasri's call for his team mates to forget the "flashy clothes", there isn't much to talk about and so I can return to one of the emerging themes of this season. Which is be the way Nicklas Bendtner appears to have been frozen out after his latest "I am wonderful! Play me! Outburst. Okay, so I'm paraphrasing slightly, but you get the drift. At least, I hope you do. I also know that Nicklas has a slightly higher opinion of himself than most Gooners and his manager seem to. However.

However, it can't be right that someone who returned to fitness a while ago, was said by Arsène Wenger in the best shape he'd ever seen him and has scored a couple of wonderful goals since that return is being overlooked. Don't get me wrong, despite Chamakh appearing to tail off slightly- is that a result of fatigue, or the return of van Persie I'm not advocating Chamakh be dropped for the big Dane. But it seems absolutely mental, not to mention counter productive to leave him on the bench when you need a goal at Old Trafford. Especially when you bring on instead a player that returned to Arsenal action on November 6th this year, looked rubbish then and has looked rubbish ever since. Or as Luke put it,

"van Persie nowhere near his best. Should've put Bendtner on. Rooney? What a t*****"

As I said, I know Nick doesn't particularly deserve to be starting games instead of Chamakh and has hardly covered himself in glory when making the rare starts he has of late. But how is it that van Persie is getting on ahead of him? Because he's better than Nick? Based on what, I ask. He may have greater technical ability than the Dane, but he's struggling to show it at present and that's because he's clearly not right. So why is he being used? Is it all because of Bendtner's mouth and a need to be taught a lesson in humility? I know that getting irate about a player who still has to convince many is perhaps a sad indication of where we are right now, but in Bendtner I see someone who has the potential to be great player. In van Persie, I see a player who might have been great. Had his body not betrayed him on so many occasions.

To add to this cocktail of intrigue, Bendtner's national team coach, Morten Olsen- not unreasonably- has spoken of the striker's need to play for his club side to facilitate national team involvement, conjuring up a beautiful image of a pair of eyes thinking in the process. He said,

"Thinking with the eyes of the Danish national team, you have to have minutes and you have to have enough games, and if he's not playing in Arsenal we cannot use him of course.

"So it's important not only for Nicklas Bendtner but for all the players that they are playing.
"And he has not played in the autumn, he has not played many minutes for Arsenal.
"We hope he will come back and show the talent he is."

With Bendtner already desperate for minutes, you can't help but think that this story can only end one way and I think the killing of our own flash boy would be a terrible shame for Arsenal Football Club.
Having devoted far more pargagraphs to Bendtner than I'm sure you think he's worth, we can now talk briefly about someone who is very definitely worth a few paragraphs- although I think I've given him enough recently- Samir Nasri. Or more precisely, his call to put away the flashy clothes. He said,

"Goals and flamboyant football don't pose a problem for me,"
"The essential thing, though, is my team wins and we're in it at the end.
"Sometimes you have to store away your flashy clothes in the cupboard and work for the team"

I don't think there's any argument from anyone that Samir is on the money here. We've seen that goals and flamboyant football are absolutely no problem for our French import, but the team have been letting him down somewhat on points 2 and 3. I'm not saying that Samir is the only one working for the team, because I don't think that's the case. What I would say though is that there have been games this season, West Brom at home to pick an obvious example, where it seems that Nasri is the only player who seems to realise the importance of giving 100%, 100% of the time. The fact that he scored two goals that day and the rest of the team did nothing was no accident.

Not to harp on about it too much, but I think his comments touch on something Lee Dixon was saying about the team not enjoying the process of winning the ball back. Lee, of course, knew a thing or two about that, it seems to me that are too many players out there who don't want to put the work in. I'm wondering if the solution lies in something @oke92 said to me on Twitter, you can lead the horses to water, but you can't make them drink. That's quite clearly true, but what you can do in that situation is pour the water over their heads, get new horses, or change the water if you have to.

I'm rambling a bit now, isn't it mental to think we could, again, be top of the league come Saturday night?

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