Spoiler

Wenger uses Nicklas Bendtner as proof Arsenal are ‘on the way up’

Hotshot striker is developing at an awesome rate

After Arsenal’s limp-wristed attempt at putting up a title fight this season, Arsene Wenger has spent the last few weeks deflecting questions about his increasingly inadequate transfer policy of refusing to sign any player that isn’t fresh out of school uniform.

Speaking to Arsenal TV, Wenger has once again asked Gunners fans to give it time, as it’ll all come good next season, promise:

“We have one or two targets, we are analysing every position very well and the potential of the players we have, the improvement the players are capable of making for next season. We have a team that is on the way up, so we have to take that into account as well.”

Finishing one place and 10-odd points worse off than you did last season wouldn’t fit into most people’s definition of a team ‘on the way up’, but OK. More baffling is Le Prof’s choice of poster boy for the young Arsenal team’s rate of development:

“We talk about the numbers for Bendtner, but if we had taken them from between July and December they would not have been as good – that means the player has moved forward. He will move again, and you have to analyse that before you make decisions which could stop the player developing.”

Goals scored this season by Nicklas Bendtner before January ’09 – 5 in 22. Goals scored by Nicklas Bendtner after January ’09 – 9 in 27. Hardly indisputable proof of Wenger cultivating a team of world beaters. A closer look at the stats and we’ll see that, of those 9 goals since Xmas, young Nicklas has only scored 1 against a team in the top half of the table, and most of the rest have come against Newcastle, West Brom and Hull. Surely Arsenal fans should be hoping Bendtner’s next ‘move forward’ is out the Emirates’ front door?

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