Hello!! , How are you? I was wondering…. (Scratch that). I’m pretty certain I am not the only one in the world currently struggling with this “Hello” business. Heard the Adele song and all its numerous covers so much now I mentally start singing the words every time I tell or I’m being told “Hello”. Anyways, I hope you are well.
So it’s the second day of my attempt to blog daily for remainder of my vacation, pretty early to start appraising my consistency but let’s see how far we can take this. How about we make this a joint project, I try to blog every day and you try to read every day and you can tell me how awful or well I am doing? Yesterday seemed nice though, thank you to everyone who sent in kind words on Twitter.
So, I was on the “dot.com” today and Jack Wilshere was on it speaking on Arsenal Player about his injury and recovery process and like all graduates of the Arsenal finishing school, Jack spoke very well about his situation saying;
“Mentally this one has been the toughest to take because I had a big injury last year, came back, got myself fit, back in good form, played for England. Then I cut my holiday short for two weeks and came in to try to get myself right for this season.
This season I need to be fit for the whole season and go into the Euros with a whole season behind me. Unfortunately on the last day of pre-season I got injured so it was probably the toughest one for me to take. I want to be part of this team.”
I think for many fans, we have compartmentalized Jack Wilshere in the class of players that might forever be plagued by injuries and hence might not fulfill potential at Arsenal. In an era where football is heavily commercialized and players have no loyalties, as fans we tend to forget very easily that setbacks such as the ones suffered by players like Jack, Rosicky, Diaby, Oxlade, Walcott and Welbeck are really personal struggles for them as humans. Though they get paid during their time out, the real joy for them, I believe is being on the pitch representing the club, their country and for players like Jack, the fans.
Until our recent spate, I was and still am of the opinion that our injury situation has improved at the club. We all tend to have short-term memories now, but I dare say it was having loads of our players available at the second half of last season that helped us achieve the level of success that we did. Judging from the fact that we now have just 3 long-term injuries who are all due to return by January hopefully, I feel we are in a good place to challenge for domestic titles this year.
We are joint top of the league and going into a set of games that we really should win if we intend to challenge for title, having all our players back would be a real plus for our title chase. So, I decided to conduct a short survey to sample opinions of fans on our long-term absentees and the results were very interesting.
Aside from the result of the survey, what interested me the most was the average length of time it took respondents to answer. The average response time was 1.20 secs with the highest been 3.34 secs. At my day job, I design and analyze lots of survey results and as a rule I try to keep my survey questions short and clear. I tried to do that with this survey and I was surprised that it took that long to complete. Then again, it means respondents really took their time to decide which really is positive. Thank you to everyone who participated.
I seem to have issues with the image display on mobile, please click on the image if you have issues with clarity
To be honest, of the three players, my favourite is Jack Wilshere, however, I picked him for just one of the three questions. My pick for this question was Danny Welbeck.
Anyone who follows me on Twitter knows I am very passive about Danny Welbeck, I’m not a big fan of his largely due to his output in terms of goals. However, of the three players I feel he has the ability to contribute in more positions across the pitch. Left, center or right side of attack, Danny would be an ok cover for any of our starters.
I was very surprised by this result because over the last 3 seasons, Tomas Rosicky has always been a top performer during the second half of our campaign. Usually, it’s on the back of his amazing second half displays I believe the club always finds a reason to keep him. Ironically, it’s a case of contrasting fortunes for Danny Welbeck.
While he has a 12.33% lead over Jack Wilshere in who fans think the team miss the most, Jack Wilshere still tops him by 4.05% in effectiveness. This surely gives credence to the need for Danny Welbeck to work on his output. A good survey question I believe would be a comparison between Danny Welbeck and Oxlade Chamberlain in relation to output.
My pick was Jack Wilshere, and this was largely because I think he is our best replacement for Santi Cazorla should anything happen to him or if we intend to give him a rest. However, I can relate to most fans picking Welbeck especially with our current injury situation. Welbeck would be a certain starter on the right side of attack or Sánchez can be given a rest and Welbeck would fill that position.
Above all, what we can tell from the results is that Tomas Rosicky seems to have no future at the club. He made his début in 2006 and I wonder how much having his ten-year testimonial at Arsenal would have played on his mind when he renewed his contract last summer.
Out of curiosity, did anyone who partook in the survey select the same set of answers I did? If you did, please get in touch so we could interact. If you didn’t, and want to share your opinion, feel free to use the comments section or Twitter. I’m on vacation so lots of time to interact. 🙂
Thank you again to everyone who took the survey and I hope you visit tomorrow. Hopefully, I would find something to write about. Have a good night or day dependent on when you read this. Cheers.
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