Carragher and Rooney are wrong about Arsenal – they do have world-class quality
The Gunners are flawless in Europe and have a four-point lead in the Premier League but a lot of pundits are still reluctant to heap too much praise on Mikel Arteta’s team
Arsenal have played 41 games of football this season and have lost three of them, all three defeats by the way of the odd goal. There was a late winner from Dominik Szoboszlai at Anfield (83rd minute), a late winner from Emi Buendia at Villa Park (90th minute) and a late winner from Matheus Cunha at the Emirates (87th minute).
And that’s it. They won all eight of their Champions League games, have a place in the Carabao Cup final and in the fifth round of the FA Cup, and have won 17 Premier League games en route to a four-point lead at the top of the table. Yet fulsome praise is still difficult to come by.
On the face of it, Wayne Rooney and Jamie Carragher, in their latest podcast, are suitably complimentary, the former saying Mikel Arteta is handling matters “brilliantly” and the latter lauding the team’s “great mentality”.
But there always seems to be a caveat when it comes to Arsenal’s current pre-eminence.
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“What could stop them is actual quality,” says Carragher. Rooney believes Arsenal will win the Premier League but adds: “Have they got that superstar – that Ronaldo, Didier Drogba, Sergio Aguero type player that is going to make a difference? I don’t think they have.”
Rooney and Carragher are referring to talismanic attacking players, fair enough, and, specifically, to out-and-out attacking greats. Both are extremely effusive about Arsenal’s relentless winning drive and Carragher says he is referring to the “front four or five players” when stating that Arteta does not have “an absolute superstar” in his ranks.
Five of the top eight teams in the first phase of the Champions League were from the Premier League and you don’t lead a competition of that strength merely by efficiency alone. This reluctance to be overly generous in praise of Arsenal should be a motivational factor in the season’s run-in.
But, of course, there is another unavoidable caveat when assessing this table-topping Arsenal team that very rarely loses a football match. They have not won anything yet. And have not won a Premier League since the 2003-04 season.
On the inside at the Emirates, it must feel like the outside is just waiting for them to falter. But they will be too good for that – because this Arsenal team has more quality than it is given credit for.
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