Le Coq

[IBK]

Careful, coming round here with your objectivity, balance and perspective.......

I've seen some try to totally absolve Wenger of any credit whatsoever for him which I always find strange....as if he just took the wrong turn walking home from school one day and ended up at Arsenal football club. The poor lamb/ He only came to the club in the first place because Wenger brought him here.

I remember the silly suggestion from a few last season that we should wait till well into the summer just gone to offer him a contract extension. Fortunately it was offered and signed ages ago and I think Syn alluded to it ages ago when he said that if he was 6'2 he'd get far much more praise. I concur.

I honestly, hardly noticed him till his yellow card against Manure but in the good kind of way!

I'm delighted with this internal solution!

If you want balance - don't then generalise by referring to people regarding Coq as a 'pure' accident. Saying that the manager saw something in him when he was signed is a statement of the bleeding obvious. Wenger himself has admitted that he was taken by surprise by the player's development. He was in fact recalled from Charlton (where he had not pulled up any trees) in desperation - following Arteta's injury. Had Arteta not been injured, Coq could easily have gone the way of so many of our young players in never coming into the first team, and then being sold on. I accept that Wenger is often proved right in the sense that few of our rejected loanees go on to become celebrated players. I accept that his challenge to the player once recalled has been taken up by Coquelin in spades. But the player could easily have slipped through the manager's fingers but for circumstances - and he cannot, prior to December 2014, be said to have been part of an great master plan.

That said, we are all thankful for the twist of fortune that saw Coq become established, and while some may have been sceptical initially - I don't think there is any Gooner that doubts his value to the team now.