Hazardous times ahead for Rosicky

In our eternal attempt to read between the lines and decode what goes on inside the cavernous brain cells of Mr Wenger, its guessing time again.

Moments after we were held to a frustrating draw by Roberto Mancini’s Manchester City last week, Wenger came out to uncharacteristically announce that the club was keen on making a move for Lille’s midfield starlet, Eden Hazard. He used words very similar to the ones paraphrased below:

“"Let us try to make his dream come true". We are following him. Personally I think he has real talent and the level needed to play at Arsenal. But in the offensive department we have many players. At the end of the season we'll have a look at the situation."

Interestingly, Wenger was speaking just 24 hours after the Belgian player turned 20. As strange as such an admission is, especially coming from Wenger who never speaks about potential transfer targets and is more secretive than Swiss banks when it comes to the movement of players in and out of the club, it was a major concession. The man described as an “old fox” by Barcelona’s president, Sandro Rosell during the peak of the CescFabregas will-he-go-or-will-he-stay saga over the summer, must surely know a lot that we bemused fans don’t know. Or something seismic is about to happen within the playing ranks come the next summer.

The boy who will be king.....Eden Hazard leaves Liverpool players in his wake

So as we all await the arrival of the much-hyped Hazard in the summer, methinks it is safe to conclude that his coming must signal the end of someone else at the club. A player or two will head for the exit door because as Wenger himself admitted, the offensive department is one area where the club is overloaded. In that department, we have El Capitan Fabregas leading the pack. He is then supported by the cast of Samir Nasri, Jack Wilshire, Abou Diaby, Tomas Rosicky, the returning Aaron Ramsey and sometimes if need be, Denilson. That’s a total of seven players vying for a maximum of two spots in a game.

This season so far, we have seen Fabregas and Jack Wilshire enjoy the lion share of playing over and above the rest of the offensive players. The rest have had to settle for cameo roles as they have drifted in and out of the team for varying reasons and at different stages.

What this means therefore, as mentioned earlier is that the coming of Hazard can only further increase the population of attacking midfielders in an already-overpopulated part of the team. So, who would have to make way for the little Belgian?

My pick of the bunch for the exit door will have to be Tomas Rosicky. At 30, he is at the sunset of his career and this is no Indian summer kind of sunset. Since missing almost the whole of season 2008-2009 to ligament injuries, he hasn’t found his rhythm. He still possesses a keen eye for the pass and can still pick out teammates from a distance but those instances are very far in between and increasingly infrequent. Talk of Golden Oldies but sadly, Tomas doesn’t belong in that category.

His long and persistent battles with injuries have taken something away from his game and he avoids contact as much as a bag of sand avoids contact with water. He has lost the stomach for an old-fashioned scrap and as far as I am concerned, I count us one player short anytime he starts.

For an offensive player however, it is going forward that Wenger really rates them. The wily coach that he is, he has always, always loved to used attacking midfielders as some sort of surrogate striker. His spell at Arsenal is littered with attacking midfielders whom he has adapted to the role of strikers, thus making them difficult to pigeon-hole. Since the dawn of time (literally that is), Wenger has loved to unleash midfielders who pop up allover the pitch and ghost their way into the opponents’18 yard box to score and yet they are not strikers. Mention the likes of Ray Parlour, Emmanuel Petit, Fredrik Ljunjberg, Robert Pires, Fabregas and even the unfortunate Ramsey. They all drifted behind strikers but apart from the pass, they are onto the ball in a flash with the sole intention of hitting the net. Ljunjberg in particular was a master of such tactic.

When Rosicky,otherwise known as ‘Little Mozart’ after his musical maestro countryman was bought from Borussia Dortmund in 2006, that must have been the role he was acquired to play. Injuries however have seen to all that. His extended spells on the doctor’s table led to the eventual acquisition of Alexander Hleb to play that role, while Fabregas was being given time to mature. Hleb’s ill-advised defection to Barcelona in 2008 finally pushed Fabregas to the fore while Rosicky continued his endless battles with injuries.

Wenger humours him these days by giving him the captain’s armband anytime he starts and Fabregas is not in the side, but the truth remains that Rosicky’s days are numbered. He’s got no legs anymore and gives up the ball at the least pressure. Looking at his stats since coming back from injury at the start of 2009 season, he has played a total of 57games both as a starter and sub. In all those games, he has managed just three goals! For an attacking midfielder, whom Wenger relies on for goals to backup the strikers, those are damning figures. Considering also that this period under review coincided with the times when a key striker, Robin Van Persie was out for a total of nine months with extended injury spells, the role of an attacking midfielder like Rosicky would have been crucial. But sadly, he never took his chances, thus leaving the likes of Fabregas to carry the can and shoulder the burden of supplying goals from the midfield. No wonder Arsenal have remained trophyless till date.

This season so far, Rosicky has made a total of 24 appearances both as a starter and substitute and scored exactly zero goals. Of the 14 starts he made this season, he has been substituted in ten of them. The emergence of Wilshire and the return of Ramsey have made his absences less and less impactful.

So, with the coming of Eden in the summer, it must herald an hazard of sorts for Rosicky. He may not necessarily be judged on the altar of his goalscoring inabilities, but there can be no room anymore for someone with his handicap who due to no fault of his, has inadvertently found himself bringing little or nothing to the table.

Always willing to err on the side of youth, Wenger is one manager who would rather give a young player a chance over and above a fading star. It was why he chose Wilshire above the better-known England international Joe Cole, despite the latter being available on a free from Chelsea. Both players’ season so far has vindicated him100%.

Hazard’s coach at Lille, Rudi Garcia was quoted last year as saying about Hazard that though young at 19, he can still “make progress in all areas”. For the world’s most famous developmental coach, it must be music to Wenger’s ears if he didn’t already know that about Hazard. The ten year age difference between Hazard and Rosicky further makes the case for the Belgian water-tight.

Until the summer transfer window opens in June then, let’s keep our fingers crossed for the fate that lies in wait at Arsenal for the blossoming Belgian and the fading Czech.