Football Special Report: Chances of Arsenal in the UEFA Champions League – Part 1
The English side Arsenal is one of those teams who are the least achievers in Europe. The English club has won three Premier League titles and has still never managed to win the UEFA Champions League. The Gunners have a lot of fans in England and all around the world but they are always criticized for being failures in Europe, where the real competition begins.
In 2004, Arsenal totally showed the English sides what they were made of. Under players like the French legends Patrick Viera and Thierry Henry along with players like Dennis Bergkamp, Ashley Cole and also David Seaman, the Gunners won an English Premier League season in which they were not defeated even once.
Throughout that year, the Arsenal side did not lose a single match and it is still considered to be a record as no other team has achieved this. There was only one team that came close to breaking their record and that was Liverpool in the year 2008. However, if Liverpool did not lose the only match that they lost, they would still have lost the Premier League from Manchester United who actually won the league with 4 points clear of the Merseyside.
Arsenal are respected throughout Europe for their style of play. The Gunners respect the beautiful game, that is football and beautifully pass the ball around in order to make a fast paced build up towards the oppositions’ goal. The players in the team barely dive and they barely get red cards because of their “fair play.”
Arsenal, almost every year, wins the award of “fair play” and this is the reason why a few rival clubs call them “sissies,” for not being “men enough” to tackle the players down. However, this is not the real reason for them being that way; the basic reason why the other clubs criticize them is because of their young players and them being fragile on the pitch.
Arsenal players always experience the worst injuries in English football. This is not only because of the fact that English football players are brutal tacklers, but basically because the Arsenal players are not well built enough to take their “stick-like” feet to English grounds. The former Arsenal player Eduardo is one of the few examples of Arsenal players suffering from an injury.
The Arsenal players were seen crying when Eduardo suffered that injury and to be fair, anyone would cry on such an injury. Eduardo took a foot on his ankle and literally broke it and went out of action for a whole year. Even though many said that Eduardo was going to be the “future star” for Arsenal, after his return he was simply not the same and Niklas Bendtner was the one who took his place.
Bendtner is a player who definitely looks to be solid but he suffered an injury while being on international duty and is still not back yet. The injury plagued Arsenal side lost another player from the first team as the Danish striker was sidelined for two months.
Later, it was the Dutch player and the Arsenal “sensation” who came under the injury “curse.” Robin Van Persie was sidelined for almost the whole season last year because of his ankle ligament and after performing “oh-so-perfectly” for the Dutch team, it was expected that the Dutch star was going to do wonders with Arsenal alongside the first team players. However, the old injury struck again and the whole world saw him walking towards the bench all over again.
With Robin Van Persie out, Arsenal played the newly signed striker Marouane Chamakh up front and the fans thought that he was to do wonders. Even though he is a great striker, he still lags that “pace” that Arsenal requires. However, it is Chamakh who managed to score in all the early games that Arsenal played. Chamakh is definitely a good replacement for the injured Dutch striker.
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