Based on William Gallas’s latest intemperate, teammate-under-bus-throwing outburst in the press, I’d be inclined to guess that it’s William Gallas. But Gallas himself insists there’s someone else. He stoutly refuses to name names, but then, a touch less stoutly, agrees to name ages: “I’m 31, the player is six years younger than me.”
When, as captain, some players come up to you and talk to you about a player … complaining about him … and then during the match you speak to this player and the player in question insults us, there comes a time where we can no longer comprehend how this can happen. I am trying to defend myself a bit without giving names. Otherwise I’m taking it all [the blame]. It’s very frustrating. I’m 31, the player is six years younger than me.
So what does this give us? Arsenal currently have four 25-year-olds in their squad: Bacary Sagna, Eduardo da Silva, Robin van Persie, and Emmanuel Eboué. It can’t be Eduardo, since Gallas claims to have confronted this player “on the pitch.” And of Sagna, van Persie, and Eboué, only Sagna and van Persie have played recently because of Eboué’s knee injury.
So let’s narrow the list down to Sagna and van Persie. Is there anyone out there who doesn’t think it’s van Persie? On the one hand you have a hard-working right-back who’s enjoyed consistently good form for the club since he joined last season and who’s sounded a mature note in all his interviews; on the other you have a temperamental striker with a history of feuding with coaches, who was once describes as “21 going on nine,” who’s been continually frustrated by injury and had a hard time blending with the team, and who was recently sent off for shoulder-charging Thomas Sørensen to the ground in Arsenal’s match against Stoke City. I don’t know, who would you pick? Really the only piece of evidence you could muster against Sagna is his hair’s abiding fanciness.
Anyway, all the commentary about Gallas’s tantrum is going to be focused on criticizing Gallas, and not wrongly. But it also seems clear that he’s not simply making up the story about the problematic 25-year-old. And since “what’s been ailing Arsenal” is ultimately a more interesting question than “what are some ways we can disapprove of Gallas,” let’s not overlook what this incident tells us, albeit at second hand, about van Persie.
Read More: Arsenal, William Gallas
by Brian Phillips · November 20, 2008
I am a huge RVP fan and while I admit to not wanting to believe it’s him, I really think it’s Adebayor. He’s 24, not far from 25, so it’s an easy mistake to make calling him “six years younger”. Ade is the one who told everyone in the free world that he wanted out over the summer, and he’s not been scoring as he did last season. He’s also refused to play for his country if they don’t up his pay. While I don’t condone RVP’s petulace, I highly doubt he is cause of Arsenal’s unraveling.
I’d definitely have considered Adebayor as a possibility if Gallas hadn’t been so specific with his “six years younger” designation. It’s not that I place a lot of faith in the Gallas arithmetic, but you clearly don’t use a line like that unless you want people to guess who you’re talking about. So he presumably made sure he had it right.
Other than that…yeah, Adebayor’s a candidate to be holding the candlestick. My one hesitation is that I have a sense that he’s more invested in the club’s success than van Persie—that he sees the path to what he wants (even if that’s leaving the club) running through success on the pitch, whereas RVP might be more likely to see Arsenal as thwarting his God-given right to be a superstar and thus more willing to assert his superiority to his teammates.
But that’s just conjecture. The one thing we know from any of this is that Gallas is in the process of losing it. . .
Read between the lines, could it be the player who Zinedine Zidaned a goalkeeper with a new replacement of the headbut? He is one of the only two possibilities who have played recently, and the other is most unlikely. Anyway, who knows. Let the Gunners continue with the EPL battle, keep the candle burning, keep the faith, win the Champions League and never forget that the Carling Cup is yours for the taking…only do not be complacent that our two greatest competitors have fallen from it. God bless the GUNNERS.
its van persie. he told me so. he hates arsenal. everybody does, he says.
Hmmm. Would hardly be the worst crime RVP has committed, now would it?
Gallas is destroynig the team.
This keeps getting better.
If I could speak German I’d say that word.