It’s seven years to the day that a pint-sized Russian called Andrei Arshavin scored four goals at Anfield.
With his cheeky smile, basic grasp of English (“I am Gooner now”), wacky personal website and outrageous unwillingness to track back, he briefly flirted with ‘terrace favourite’ status, especially after downing Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona with THAT goal.
Then he got a bit fat, had some off-field problems, stopped being able to run and/or pass, warmed up at Stamford Bridge in trainers and became another embarrassing notch on the bedpost of the so-called ‘banter era’.
After a brief loan deal at former club Zenit, he slinked back to St Petersburg on a permanent basis in 2013, spent last year at Kuban Krasnodar and now, at the age of 34, plays in Kazakhstan for Kairat.
Arseblog News hadn’t heard a peep out of him for quite some time…until now.
Contacted by Reuters, Arshavin has cast his eye over Arsenal’s faltering season and pinpointed the conservatism of Arsene Wenger as a possible reason for their failure to win the league this year.
“It’s a conservative club,” said the former captain of Russia.
“Over the last few years Arsenal have bought two world-class players in Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez, while the goalkeeper Petr Cech has also joined. Apart from that, there have not been any major changes.
“Arsenal have had the same head coach for a long time and he has his ideas,” he continued.
“The whole team depends on the viewpoint of Arsene Wenger and his views towards football. I don’t know if this conservatism is a hindrance.
“This season Arsenal had every chance to become champions given the squad they have. All their main rivals, Chelsea, Manchester United and even Manchester City have not been looking bright.
“Everyone was saying that the Gunners would be battling it out for the title, but as you can see there is no comparison to Leicester this season. It is very likely that they will be crowned champions.”
On his four years on the books at the Emirates, Arshavin concluded: “My time in London was an alright part of my career. There were some good moments and there were some not particularly nice ones. However, on the whole, I have good memories.”
Feel free to relive some of those below…
Also, where the hell did seven years go?
Never has a footballer made so much sense with words.
Yoi should have asked me: i would have said the same… No genius to say that.
He has read the papers and listened to the radio, (not as good as the four goal achievement) but well done? Meh
Lol..precisely. Where the hell did seven years go!!
Arsene’s a Conservative?!?
If everything wasn’t bad enough Arshavin shouldn’t have let that slip. Dodgy Dave (Aston Ham/West Villa supporter) or gooner Corbyn, surely there is only one choice?
Is the scruffy bloke a Gooner ?
F’kin ell!…:-(
Big one. And was claiming the Queen is too.
I mean. The common denominator is Arsenal Wenger, for all his problems he has had to contend with I can’t really blame him. But a fresh start and new era is needed. But who?
You forgot to mention his degree in fashion
Perhaps wasting money on (then) big signings like Arshavin put Arsene off splashing the cash in the future. Wasteful, fat little fucker.
Forget the rest, that is a really shitty website.
Oh, that website was performance art in its day.
I would love to hear from Park Chu Young.
Who?
I would rather hear from Park Chu Young.
He might not ove in his own little “nothing is my fault, everyone else is to blame, self indulgent, utterly without personal awareness” world.
Fat Russian fuck. Who cares what he thinks.
7 years and still no improvement
if only we’d sorted out the defense during the ‘banter’ era…
If only we could have other goalkeepers than Almunia/Fabianski in goal
I can just imagine our little Russian ‘meerkat’ friend is berating Arsene in the article’s photo shouting “compare the market ……. Mahrez, Vardy, Kante vs Giroud, Walcott, Flamini”
Shit, seven years!! Seriously?
He was and still will be one of my favourites. I know he declined, but once you pick one, they have to stay that way.
The 3 AA23 shirts i bought would be silly otherwise!
Presumably you bought 3 to mirror the number he would need to stitch together to get his gut inside….
I can think of no other reason.
….yet somehow we still (as always) managed to fuck up the game
What’s next? Denilson criticising Wenger for teaching him the art of the sideway pass or maybe Andre Santos complaining that he never gave him his shirt at half time…
I think you’ll find it will be Walcott criticising that the team ought to have played to his strengths.
Without stoping to inform us of what they might be.
I’m guessing that will be two: Running really fast. And spouting meaningless platitudinous PR bound waffle in post match interviews with .com.
I hope for his sake he doesn’t try to include “being offside despite said pace; hiding on the pitch in positions in which he knows he can’t be seen, much less passed to”; or “playing football”.
Although I wouldn’t put it past him.
No offence, but that video is terrible. Surely there’s better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5486aSujOI
Good video but whatever the creator was trying to do with the music did not work at all.
One of my favorites the past decade. How can you not love this dude?
He was a sublime player, the kind you can indulge. Wenger sometimes played him at center forward.
Blogs was eventually critical of him for not adjusting to defensive responsibilities. I can see the point. But he was an amazing no. 10
Behind the scenes, perhaps the fabled Russian inscrutability got to wenger.
I have to say, that little fucker sure had a helluva shot on him. I miss that on our team, the blasts from outside or edge of the box we used to get from Arshavin, Bergkamp, Vieira et al.
Would add Podolski to that list. Useless at times, but he wasn’t affraid to shoot & had a cracking power shot. The team really misses that dynamic. Can’t wait for Santi to return to the line up.
Guys surely we’re not putting Vieira on this list with Arshavin & Bergkamp? Tomas Rosicky would like a word
That seven years has gone quick- time flies when you’re in limbo!
I always thought we wasted his talent. He was a number 10 but was shoved out onto the wing. He then spent half a season playing as a lone striker when ours were all crocked.
Wenger should have played him in his best position, but as he did with Ozil, Cazorla and Rosicky when each first arrived, he refused.
Agreed.
He became a fat mess, but when on point, was he a glorious wonder. That first half-season was amazing.
But our Wenger loves a square peg in a round hole, and was utterly determined to first put a player that was well known to not be physically great, on the wings with a lot of defensive responsibility. Then there was that whole CF saga, whilst sometimes having Bentdner on the left. Glorious stuff. LVG-esque.
Arshavin wasted his potential, but we too also wasted the little time he had left at his peak.
He wasn’t being asked to thunder back into tackles, just help out his fullback. Parlour, Pires and Ljungberg weren’t natural wingers but did a great job for the team. Ultimately Arshavin was a forward being played in a forward position, i can criticise the boss for a lot but his management of arshavin wasn’t one of them, he gave him every chance to succeed. Bendtner on the left wing on the other hand is something I will never understand.
Exactly. One of his last contributions was that “from the ridiculous to the sublime” 7-5 against Reading. It will last long in the memory for the sheer madness of it, but Arshavin was man of the match in, guess what, the No 10 position.
Wasted away on the wing like quite a few others. Was Hleb ever really a winger? I don’t think so.
Speaking of players from the past, I wonder what everyone’s thoughts on RVP now?
We all hated him and ridiculed him for that statement he released, effectively saying he didn’t believe the squad was good enough and tried to strong arm Wenger into buying top players. But in the end, he proved to have been right all along.
Ofcourse going to United didn’t help matters. But if he left to Juve, would we still remember him fondly?
If we are being objective…he’s a cunt. If it’s truth we seek he was right. So was fabregas. Wenger was justified. I think it’s buys like Sylvester etc that was his downfall and his insistence on playing players out of position. The only role eboue didn’t play at arsenal was gk, cm and am. Denilson I think was damaged by lack of effort and partly being played all over the place. When he arrived he was such a talent. Fran merida Nicklas and his lack of class but I’ll remember his wonder goals against man city, pink boots at ucl.… Read more »
No.
Can I just say I absolutely love that picture. Reminds me of a time when I was still relishing the agony of supporting Arsenal (that 4-4 was so typically us in a way that has persisted till today!) :’)
Not that he’s bitter!
One of the most entertaining players in an Arsenal shirt in recent memory. All the fun has been sucked out of the club lately, at least Arshavin had that.
I think Arshavin was a great player that Wenger did not get the best out of. There is no one today scoring the goals he was for us now. He was a cunt in a good way, the kind of player just as happy to nail you with the 7th goal in a 7-0 drubbing as the first.
RVP was the same, until he became a cunt in a bad way.
I know I could express myself better but just think we miss a bit of “cunt factor” 🙂
Arshavin is by far not a legendary Gooner, but thoughts of him or seeing his name in the press always puts a little smile on my face. He had some absolutely brilliant moments for us, but he did go out with a whimper and not a bang.
Still, he was a great character as played brilliantly by Blogs in the pod cast. Maybe a cameo this week?
Winning goal vs Barca after being set up by Na$ri just still might be the best Emirates moment to date. Either that or Titi scoring on his return vs Leeds.
Arshavin always gave very good views, press conferences etc about our club he always made a lot of sense… Conservative is the best way to describe our club.. we lack ambition, vision we are willing to settle instead of pushing for more..
Yeah. Arshavin always wanted a “big” player bought. Wasn’t he the “big” player we bought? Turned out to be just rotund.
Diego Simeon should be the next manager as AW goes to the board