Getting the team back together

So, Arsenal finally have their squad fully fit and ready to go, huh, I guess that’s a good thing?

Problem is, it’s week 35 of this Barclays’ Premier League season, and we have almost nothing left to play for. For once though, injuries cannot be blamed for our familiar inability to close out games and almost inexplicable tendency to do stupid things against Swansea City. Nonetheless, it is nice to finally have Santi Cazorla back in the team, and the (potential, but unlikely) return of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain could be a serious positive as well, especially when added to the fact that Jack Wilshere might be in line for his first start in 11 months after a cameo appearance last week.

I’ve written about Jack before though, and for the other two, they both return with very different points to prove. Santi has long been one of our best players, and his importance to the team cannot be overstated, especially since he has dropped further back into central midfield. However, at 31 he is going to start moving into the twilight of his career in the coming years, so this is a good chance to show Arsene (and Vicente del Bosque) that he is not to be overlooked despite his absence. In fact, with Mikel Arteta leaving the club, and Per Mertesacker no longer guaranteed a starting birth, with a few good performances alongside the younger and newer members of our squad, Santi could even stake a claim to be our next club captain.

We have missed him a lot this season, with perhaps one of our most persistent issues being the interchangeable nature of our central midfielders, as no combination has been a consistently winning formula for us. That seems almost unbelievable thinking back to the last few months of 2014/15, when the partnership of Cazorla and Francis Coquelin was arguably one of the best combos in the league.

Without Santi dragging us forward with every inch of his five foot six frame, we never would have made the top four in his debut season, 2012/13, and he may have scored the single most important goal of Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal tenure against Hull in the FA Cup two years ago. He’s had to reinvent himself so many times at the club, after being pushed out to the wing and then losing his reclaimed number 10 spot to Mesut Özil when he arrived, but wherever he is on the pitch, Santi is usually able to influence the play significantly.

In many ways, when you think about it, Santi is the prototypical Wenger player: small, incredibly technically gifted, and equally adept at dancing through challenges with ease and linking up play by getting the ball to others from preposterous situations. It’s impossible not to love the energy that he brings to proceedings also, always with a smile on his face and enjoying the successes of his teammates as much as his own. Though I’m pretty certain that Mohamed Elneny could look natural playing alongside anyone in the centre of midfield after his first few months, he won’t even have to try with Santi, and I’m interested to see the dynamic between the two if that is the starting pair this evening.

Coming from the entirely opposite perspective, the Ox has three games to potentially save his Arsenal career. After stalling for several seasons now in terms of his development, Chamberlain needs to make good on the promise of his early days at the club, which is going to be even harder for him next season given the upcoming logjam of midfield options open to Wenger. Though Arsene has long held the view that the Ox’s future lies in the centre where he performed so well at 18 against AC Milan, rumours of Granit Xhaka and others subsist, and currently Chamberlain is facing an uphill battle to play himself into contention for that position.

The problem with that situation of course being that the Ox hasn’t really shown over the past few seasons that he’s particularly suited to an assignment out on the wing for much longer either. Like Theo Walcott before him, what Alex possesses in terms of raw pace, he rather lacks in incisiveness in the final third. Time after time, the Ox can break or beat his man out wide, only for the intended cross to cannon back off the defender and out for a corner or throw in, or a wayward shot to bemuse fans behind the goal.

Now, I genuinely love Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, I think he’s an incredibly talented individual who once he breaks through the ceiling that has been stifling him for so long could be one of the brightest English talents in the league. He’s nowhere near that level at the moment however, and I currently would have him outside of my England team to take to Euro 2016, for whatever that’s worth. Clearly comfortable in front of a camera, and a natural with the media (which I actually think is a positive, rather than anything else) it might be time to see less of the Ox in his natural habitat, and for him to get his head down and really press on, which, to his credit, seems to be the case with his recent rehab from his injury.

I don’t know what this offseason holds for Oxlade-Chamberlain, but I hope that it’s an important one for him in terms of re-establishing himself at the club, rather than because he has moved on to pastures new. There are already rumours circulating that Pep Guardiola has the Ox in mind as part of his rebuilding project at Manchester City, and you just know that if we do let that transfer go ahead, Chamberlain will be a force next season, and have us all questioning what went wrong from our perspective to hold him back for so many years. At only 22, there are so many positives in the future for our winger, and I hope that he sticks around to see them happen with us.

Whether or not they both feature against Norwich this weekend, I’m looking forward to seeing both Santi and Alex back in the Arsenal shirt. For differing reasons, they should both want to hit the ground running from the get go.