Its that time of the year folks..Yes,usually around this time of every year, we see the Captain of Arsenal being linked with a move away from the club. And this time around, it’s none other than Thomas Vermaelen. Thomas Vermaelen took over the captaincy from Robin Van Persie during the start of the season, and since then, he has failed to cope with the weight, expectation and pressure of being the captain of Arsenal. His form has slumped terribly and he has failed to deliver in the big games. His mistake cost us the game against Manchester United and another terrible mistake from the Belgian cost us the 3 points against Liverpool in the game at the Emirates. Vermaelen has looked a completely different player this season – a player who is short of self belief and confidence. It looks like he has succumbed to the pressure of being the captain of the Arsenal Football Club.
But, at the same time, let us not forget the quality he possesses.Yes, he is short of confidence and terribly out of form right now, but we all know how good he can be. He has been excellent in some games and he has shown his brilliance in patches in a few others. Notably, he was truly outstanding against Liverpool at Anfield at the beginning of the season and led Arsenal to victory in that game. He started to find some of his old form during the start of this year, but then lost it again at the end of January. Since then, his performances, unfortunately, have not lived up to the expectations and he has been disappointing. But all I want to say is, let’s just give the man a break.
There were times during the last 2 seasons where our defense was a complete mess without him. He was so much important to our defense in the last two seasons. And add to that,remember his goals against Newcastle and Everton last year ? That 2 goals probably are the reason why we qualified for the Champions League this year. Although his responsibility is to maintain stability in defense,he is also a useful goal-scorer.. Since taking over captaincy,he has completely lost his goal scoring/creating touch. Maybe the pressure has gotten to him. There were times last season when you felt that Vermaelen led the team more than RVP. You knew this guy loved the club so much. Ever since Vermaelen came to Arsenal,he has had to deal with constant injuries. This probably is his first injury prone season. So Vermaelen might have not been used to playing so much games at a stretch in the past 2 years. Plus,Koscielny and Mertesacker have been playing really well and we can say in a sense that the rotation policy followed by Arsene between the Centre Backs seemed to have affected Vermaelen’s form.. Although we can clearly see that Kos and Per are our two best centre-backs right now.
All i want to say is that.. He IS the Captain of Arsenal football club right now.. We the fans,should back him,instead of criticizing him too much and hoping for him to leave the club..We must respect the fact that he is the captain of our club right now and we must support him. Selling him to Barcelona or some other club might not be the right way to go. Thomas will always be the Verminator,he just needs to think about his game,concentrate more and restore the faith among the fans. As they say,we’ll only know the value of a certain thing when we let go of it,and i hope that wouldn’t be the thing in the case of Vermaelen.
