Three reasons why Nicklas Bendtner is Nicklas Bendtner

Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, Nicklas Bendtner was touted to be a star for the Gunners, when he signed from F.C Copenhangen’s feeder club, Kjobenhavns Boldkulb. At 6ft 4in, he was likened to former Arsenal striker Niall Quinn, who went on to have a successful career with Manchester City and Sunderland after leaving Arsenal.

The tall Dane made his debut for Arsenal in a League Cup match against Sunderland, coming on as a substitute in the dying minutes of the match at the Stadium Of Light. Clearly, Arsene Wenger saw something special and he decided to loan him out to Championship side Birmingham, where he went onto score 11 goals in 42 appearances. On returning from his loan spell at Birmingham, Arsene Wenger decided to keep him at Arsenal as opposed to sending him out on loan again. After making a good impression on his debut he was sent off for two bookable offences against Everton.

But there is no better way to redeem yourself than to score against your rivals. After coming on for Emmanue Eboue, he scored with his first touch barely 2 seconds in a 2-1 win to versus Tottenham; an unstoppable header off a Fabregas corner. Bendtner, then only 20, was destined for greatness. At least that’s what we all thought. Since then, he really has not done anything special. Yes, he did score a hat-trick against FC Porto in the knockout stages, which helped Arsenal go through to the next round over-turning their 1^st leg 2-1 loss. But such performances were very few, if any.

Since then, he has gone on loan to Sunderland and is currently on loan at Juventus, only succeeding at the former, scoring 8 league goals. He was praised for his performances against Manchester City, where he scored the second goal in 3-3 draw and in a win against Liverpool, which saw him score the game’s only goal.

His career so far, hasn’t turned out to be a big success as everyone had foreseen when he was a 19-year-old playing in the Champions League for one of Europe’s best clubs (at the time).

There are many reasons for his below-par performances:

1) Due to the presence of top- class strikers like Emmanuel Adebayor , Robin Van Persie and Thierry Henry, he was never going to make it as a first team player at the London club. Yet, Wenger gave him chances to prove his worth to the Gunners folklore.

2) But he was played on the wing. A target man on he wing? This poor decision by Wenger, clearly hampered his development as a center forward. Of course, Arsene Wenger has been successful in converting wingers into center forwards before. van Persie, Henry and Theo Walcott are all great examples, but the Bendtner experiment didn’t pay off.

3) His over confidence. After missing quite a few guilt-edged chances in a match, Bendtner would come up with statements like “I can take on the world” and to add to this, Bendtner scored 10 out of a maximum of 9 in a self-confidence test conducted by Jaques Crevoisier, a psychiatrist at Arsenal and this is what he had to say about it, “On a scale up to 9, Bendtner got 10! We have never seen that before. Pat Rice was sitting next to me and couldn’t stop laughing. When Bendtner misses a chance, he is always genuinely convinced that it wasn’t his fault. You might say that’s a problem, and to a certain degree it can be. But you can also view it as this guy has a remarkable ability to come back after set-backs”

All this said and done, Bendter is still 25 and has plenty of time to re(juve)nate his career at Juventus once he comes back from injury in about a month’s time. They also have an option to make his loan move permanent from Arsenal at the end of the season. Whether they will take that risk or not, only time will tell. As an Arsenal fan, I can only hope that he turns out to be an excellent player in the near future.