It’s fair to say that this time last year Arsenal fans had scratched their heads so much at the signing of Carl Jenkinson that bloody scalps littered the Emirates.
Signed from Charlton with only a handful of League One games to his name, the teenager was, somewhat unfairly, thrust into action as back-up to Bacary Sagna and stood around helplessly as Liverpool and Manchester United plundered 10 goals in two Premier League games.
While it was great to see a dyed-in-the-wool Arsenal fan selected in the starting line-up, it was a bit worrying that he was as useful as the chubby granddad in Row K. He was out of his depth and drowning.
While the Corporal (as Alan Davies loves to call him) showed signs of improvement during last term, a serious back injury curtailed any serious progression.
It is therefore with a cartoon-like eye-rub of disbelief that Gunners supporters now watch Jenkinson strutting his stuff. Indeed so impressive was his performance against Manchester City yesterday that even Gary Neville, a notable (albeit cuntish) right-back himself, lavished the 20-year-old with praise in his post-match Sky Sports analysis.
Speaking about his advancement over the last 12 months, Jenkinson told Arsenal.com:
“The more I play [means that] I feel more than comfortable at this level now. I feel very comfortable here.
“I just want to push on from here, keep building every game and get better and better. That’s my aim and I just take it game by game.”
Blessed with an engine that sees him pounding up and down the right touchline all game, Jenkinson set-up Gervinho in midweek before causing former Gunner Gael Clichy all manner of problems during the first half at the Etihad.
“The way we play as a club, you’ve got to get forward as a full back,” he continued.
“I think in the modern game, it’s a big part of a full back’s job.
“I think you can find plenty of full backs that can just defend, but the good ones are the ones that get forward as well.
“I try to do that as much as I can, and Gibbo’s [Kieran Gibbs] been doing it really well so we’ve got to keep that as a big part of our game.”
You’ve got to pat Jenkinson on the back for his development, it’s rare for a player to improve his game on so many levels so quickly. While there’s no doubt that Bacary Sagna is still the number one in his position, the fact that the club can call upon a player who is now delivering at the highest level both domestically and in Europe is a real fillip.
There’s still lots more for him to learn, but hopefully being part of a solid defensive unit and having the notable influence of Steve Bould and Neil Banfield behind him will ensure he does that just. You never know, one day he may just stand up straight too…
This guy is practical living my teenage dream. Oh god where am I going with my life…
Oh right about Jenko. He’s still got miles to go before he can challenge Sagna for a first team spot, and that’s a compliment to Bac. But I think we can say with some confidence that he’s one of the best 2nd choice RBs in the league.
i think we can say that we have the best second choice defence in the league! carl, kosc, djourou, santos!
Honestly feel so wrong about listing Kos as our 2nd choice defender. Like the world has turned has been turned upside down and Spurs have become a title challenging team
Koscielny second choice ? BLASPHEMY!!
Don’t forget the midfield.
Yep quite like our 2nd choice midfield
coquelin diaby rosicky
and the third aint too bad either
frimpong ramsey arshavin/chamberlain
diaby would have something to say about being 2nd choice. remember it is now wilshere who is going to have to prove himself
Just gotta say this guy is mad underated on the new FIFA!!
I think Jenks certainly showed signs of potential last season, but as the article rightly points out he was in too deep against Liverpool and Man.Utd.
But fair play to the lad, also it is quite encouraging to see someone in the squad can actually put in good cross every time he gets up. Long time since Arsenal have had someone who had can cross the ball like he does.
The fight between Finland and England must surely be on the horizon.
I don’t think there’s going to be a fight. If Jenkinson thinks he can get a call up from England I’m pretty sure he’ll choose England over Finland. I’d love to have him in the Finnish nt though.
I agree with you, surely he must have had a phone call from the Finnish manager. He’s probably waiting to see if he has a chance with England, by his current form he should definitely be under consideration.
He’s already better than Glen Johnson, who can’t defend for toffee.
Mixu Paatelainen (the Finnish head coach) told some time ago that he had chatted with Carl, and according to Mixu, Jenkinson will make his decision “before Christmas”.
I while ago I was pretty confident that Jenks would choose Finland (I´m Finnish), but now I´m not so sure anymore, since his form this season might earn him a call up from Roy Hodgson. If that´s the case, he´ll not going to choose Finland.
Now that the T-cunt has retierd from International Cuntery, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Corporal Jenks choose the English team
80%+ Number of Arsenal connected players in the England team in Brazil 2014 (makes sad face for 2014-2015 season).
Oops! that belongs on “By the Numbers” page.
Not to worry. They’ll only have 3 games, assuming they qualify 😉
At least Conor Henderson will be fully fit 🙂
I know this may sound premature, but I’d take Jenks over Johnson as my right back any day… He certainly has a chance at England in the next year or so.
So good to have a proper Gooner playing for the club. Now we have Wilshere, Ramsey, Gibbs and Jenkinson as a British (not that I am bothered about nationailty of players but just to shut up the xenophobic press) core of real potential!
The Ox?… not to mention the soon-to-be departed Theodore
How could I forget the Ox…? Deliberately left out Theo on the grounds that he will soon be leaving and that reasonable judgement leaves me with the opinion that he does not have ‘real potential’.
another example of the genius of wenger!
Slightly off-topic I know, but Neville as a pundit is very insightful, Who would’ve thought considering how much of a douchebag he was when he used to play.
Definitely rather listen to him than the likes of Hansen, Shearer and Lawro on MOTD.
or Ian Wright .
Buy jermaine Defoe was comically bad
I still love Wrighty but he’s spent too much time with that ginger airwave troll on talkshite
Oh shearer oh shearer. Good on the field, whack of a pundit.
WHACK!
You guys think you have it bad? We have Warren Barton here in the states who keeps calling Mertesacker “Bambi on ice skates”
You mean The Warren Barton? The defender famous for his skills? Car-thieving skills? What a guy, I was convinced he’s fallen into oblivion…
Bambi on skates was my MOTM yesterday.
Wow, that’s a blast from the past! Warren fucking Barton. His eyebrows used to scare me. Orange faces don’t work with blonde hair. He kind of looked like an albino oompa loompa.
Yup. THAT Warren Barton. And then you guys wonder why the colonies rebelled!
Baha I can’t believe you guys are complaining. We’ve got Mark Bosnich here in Oz. Absolute fuck wit! In other news Corporal Jenks rise to stardom makes me a whole lot less nervous about Sagna’s rant in the French media.
Fuck Warren Barton..
He’s by far the best tv pundit. Jamie thin tie redknapps days are numbered. Neville tells it like it is even if that means criticising a team he clearly loves in manure. When you compare to absolute shite spouting scarecrows like savage on espn they are worlds apart
Seriously, what is the point of Robbie Savage? He was a shit player and is an even worse pundit. Don’t get me started on Alan Shearer. Oh, too late. He has the charisma of a cats arsehole and only ever states the obvious. Hansen needs to take his craggy old face elsewhere, and Lawrenson is just a bell end. He’s like your dad’s mate that you hate because every time you see him he just takes the piss out of you because he, and only he, thinks it’s funny, so you spike his drinks with laxatives and… oh… er… yeh.… Read more »
Credit where it’s due. Monday night football is now my favourite football programme for analysis. Apart from the minority report desk display pc unit table thing, Neville breaks it down – while his co-host nods.
PS Feeling sorry for the full back i’ll be playing against on Sunday.
It’s weird how quickly I’ve forgotten how much I hated Neville as a United player. But he’s the best commentator / pundit out there by a long shot.
I’ll never forget how enthusiastically (and unashamedly) Neville cheered us on when we played Milan last season. I thought, “who’s this Arsenal fan embracing his bias on national television?”…and it was Neville!
Everybody loves The Arsenal!
This boy (boy? I’m the same age as him) is absolute class. He has come a long long way from last season and one can only imagine how good he’ll become down the road when he’s the finished product. Hopefully people will learn not to question wenger’s younger signings: arsene knows.
This boy’s got Arsenal legend written all over him.
We’ve got the two best right-backs in the league.
This guy will put that Belgian in his back pocket, people will have to call him a BioHazard. Comedy isn’t forte but at least I tried with the puns.
I laughed, well played pal.
This improvement has all got to do with this guy’s drive and determination to succeed. Within 2 years from barely starting at RB for Charlton to challenging Bac at Arsenal. Once again though, this proves Wenger’s vision to see potential in players(most notably FBs).
Future Arsenal legend. I’m so impressed with his play this season and I am ecstatic that Bould came in when he did so Jenkinson & other young defenders can have such a positive role model for them. Yes, the modern game you need fullbacks who can get forward but they also need to understand when it’s acceptable and when not. Also love his crossing. Theo… take notes!
can’t wait for him to get the #2 shirt and gibbs to get the #3.
not that I want the current incumbents of those shirts to leave, but it will be really satisfying to have two gooners playing at full back
Whoever said gibbs is a gooner? im certain i read he was a chelsea fan as kid
If you want that you should force Arsenal FC to extend contracts with those two guys… sooner the better.
p.s. Diaby wont leave any time soon!
Who taught sagna will get a tough time ro get in the first team once he is back and who taught one day we would be chosing gary neville as commentator for our matches if we had a poll.
The kid always had the talent and stamina i guess its more to do with his love for Arsenal and cement that place in the squad.
“It’s fair to say that this time last year Arsenal fans had scratched their heads so much at the signing of Carl Jenkinson…”
I scratch my head all the time ,like why buy a 17 year old from league 2 or why buy an unknown defender from Lorient ,ooh Wenger
I stopped questioning his choices of signings at Eduardo. My initial reaction was “Really… this guy is supposed to be a quality signing?” 3 months later, I was sold on any random signings we make.
I love when they come through too, but Park is the biggest head scratcher yet.
Although he did score the winner for Celta Saturday so who knows.
But then he rejected Modric from the same club saying that he’s too weak for the league. Then Modric had to go to 5pur2… so nobody’s perfect but I don’t know anybody better. 🙂
And he has a ridiculous pace, the way he outran Lescott (if i remember correctly) for the loose ball before creating that chance for Poldi was breath-taking.
Garcia was completely outrun by jenks,
On the wing there. Too bad that javi-xavi prick hacked him down.
That wasn’t a hack, that was prison rape
Not just the pace, but that strength to wrestle him off the ball, too! The boy’s a beast, I tells ya!
Top lad jenkinson… Not as defensively solid as the bac, but his crossing is better I feel. So early in his career as well I think he will become a real star! The way he out-muscled/outpaced lescott was amazing, his workrate phenomenal, and he isnthe definition of a gooner! Also I don’t know what is is about Gary Neville… I just can’t seem to hate him anymore. He’s the best pundit around, and even with his scummy roots he is by far the least biased of them all. Enough respect for him now! The rest are all a bunch of… Read more »
Looking at the bench yesterday, I’m encouraged about the possible line-up for Wednesday night Vs Coventry,
Perhaps we could try and hammer them in build up to hammering that team captained by the racially prejudiced, mate’s ex shagging ex england captain.
Martinez
Yennaris Djourou Koscielny A.Santos
Coquelin
Ramsey Ox-Cham
Walcott Arshavin
Giroud
Subs: Shea, Miquel, Jenks, Eisfeld, Podolski, Gervinho, Gnabry.
You forgot Chamakh man… 🙂
he can be gunnersaurus substitute
*woman
I love how everyone is calling jenkinson a future arsenal legend! He has been playing classy buy let’s relaxe on that until we win the league or bac bitches out on us and jenkinson has the right back spit unchallenged and is putting perfeomances like that in consistently. I do
Love the guy don’t get me wrong…. Just saying.
Jenks is gunner be great for us. I really i’m encouraged to see a youngster say he’l never be satisfied untill he lands a permanent place in this arsenal side. Competition as has been said can only be great for the team and right now jenks is staking up a good case for RB.
Sagna didn’t like the sale of song and but he better get used to a psyched up jenks breathing down his neck.
Quite surprised by the corporal increase in force and quality guess he has wenger illustrious mental strength but I don’t think it’s time yet to promote him to sergent
“Gibbo”. Love that name.
Fab, nico, santos, djou, kos, le coq, frimmy, mozart(c), arsh, theo, chiamaka. Hmmm would be a nice capital one cup squad bar injuries
Jenkinson showed phenomenal pace yesterday both in getting back against Sinclair and forward. He seemed to be a constant outlet on the right flank even when we broke from defense. In one-on-ones he seemed very stable and calm, which is a definite improvement from last season. His defensive decision making of when to go in for the challenge, and when to just guard seems still a bit off, but that’ll definitely iron out with experience. I’m thinking particularly of that one moment of misunderstanding with Mert leading to aguero with loads of time for picking his shooting spot. He was… Read more »
“I think Arsenal is coming again. I like this
Arsenal team” he said “I know they’ve lost
some players but I like the way Arsene is
building this team and I think they can be a
positive surprise (in the title race)”
Wordz by Jose twat mourinho……
And some wordz here by my guy Eboue to van per$ie on twitter.
@TheRealEboue: “The bloody Traitor was trying to hug me . I couldn’t look at his face.
Here’s the pic.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uRRKRor4TIs/UGCBMXah6oI/AAAAAAAAwa0/3mcPB3Ug0F4/s320/eboueabdrvp.jpg-large.jpg
I’m no Twitter expert (Twixpert?) but this account sounds fake.
Twitter……more like Twatter
yup it’s definitely not real:
http://pappzd.com/2012/06/eboue-slams-england-manager-roy-hodgson/
The kid, whoever he is, seems to have gotten a lot of publicity out of pretending to be Eboue though. I know Eboue’s a bit of a card but he’s not so stupid he would write some of the shit on there, as much as I agree with the sentiment re: the tweets about RVP.
Yeah right – Eboue wouldn’t refuse a hug from Hitler.
My only question is how was the play shown in the picture above not a red card?
Seriously, I didn’t realize that “tackling” meant NFL style in the EPL.
I’m glad everyone’s finally waking up to how good he is. I thought he looked excellent at times last season and just needed a really good run of games. Now he’s had a platform to build on he can only get better. I like that he’s quite an imposing guy as well, it would scare the shit out of most wingers and fullbacks to come up against him.
Theo wants to play as a striker according to the beeb.You’ve still got some learning to do out wide theo,Jenko can teach you how to cross properly.Just ask nicely and sign the contract Arsenal offer you.Think of it as a reality check.
That was so obvious. This is why he stayed. And I think he would be better then Gervinho on that spot. But Wenger is always following some strange ways… so patient we must be. 🙂
One thing that annoys me above anything is this media myth that Arsene has never replaced the legendary back four, and that he can’t buy defenders. Neil Warnock once said how he loved Arsenes teams but he wishes he’d let him buy him a defender.
Arsene identified Toure and Lauren as defenders when they were midfielders, he’s bought Kos, TV, Jenks, Sagna, Mertersacker relatively cheaply, when the ‘experts’ were calling for Samba, Cahill etc. This season seems to show he can identify good defenders, maybe he just isn’t that good at drilling them.
Its no surprise to see how quickly Jenkinson has improved…I’ll go back to the 2 games against the spuds last season…the away fixture, where we lost 2-1; Jenkinson came on for Sagna who had his leg broken and looked so off the pace, especially when Bale was running past him with ease. But the fixture where we thumped them 5-2…he came on to shore up the defence maybe while it was 4-2 or 5-2, but each time the spuds looked like creating a chance, he stopped them in their tracks and they couldnt find a way past us. So keep… Read more »
One decent game against a poor sinclair and you think he roberto carlos. He comes under the best improved category which means he was crap and now hes getting better – not difficult when your training with the 1st daily. Needs to improve his defensive positioning and passing with both left and right feet and his 1st touch under pressure. Forget about playing for england for now, when sagna return he returns to the bench.
Carl Jenkinson my new hero !
Speaking as a chubby Grandpa, I resemble that remark !
He really can deliver one hell of a cross too!
I know Bac is pretty damn good at whipping them in too but it’s exciting to know that when Jenks is in the team, we don’t suffer in that department. All we need now is the dreamy Giroud to get his quaffed hair/head on the end of one.
guess that’s the reason why Vertongen decided he won’t get much first team chances and chose a lesser club instead. For the first time in years we can say Arsenal is well stocked in the defence department. Arsene knows
If he improves this much again in the next 12 months, he could be looking like one of Wenger’s best signings. Did you know that Charlton’s acquisition of him raised eyebrows when they signed him from non-league football?
Look, it’s a big “if” and right now I’m just happy that Jenks is a decent, PL quality backup, but if he comes properly good then you’ve got to hand it to Wenger for seeing something in him well ahead of time.
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MC. yes there is no doubt of his (in hindsight) defensive vision of players. he did lack a drillsman. then bouldy came in. the rest is history 🙂
Somewhere around his 300th appearance for The Arsenal, he’s going to be General Jenks with all the medals on his chest, taking up the armband when called upon, cheering from the substitutes bench when necessary, and driving his insanely hot WAG around in a fly but sensible supercar.
And it all started with a brick at Ashburton Grove he dedicated to his Grandpa.
Somewhere around his 300th appearance for The Arsenal, he’s going to be General Jenks with all the medals on his chest, taking up the armband when called upon, cheering from the substitutes bench when necessary, and driving his insanely hot WAG around in a fly but sensible supercar.
And it will have all started with a brick at Ashburton Grove he dedicated to his Grandpa.
Don’t forget that Carl Jenkinson can play centre back, too, at a pinch. We’ve got great backup there at the moment, but if he had to, I’m sure he’d fill in very adequately. Class.