Tonight Arsenal's Reserves take on West Brom, and Santos will feature. Nothing strange there, he's on his way back from injury. However, Djourou, Jenkinson, Park & Chamakh are also scheduled to take part. And that's the difference. It looks like Arsenal are starting to use the Reserve Games for more of their Squad players to get a run out. Last month saw Arshavin & Benayoun alongside Park & Chamakh playing. I've advocated this for a long time, I think minutes on the pitch are important, to build fitness, confidence & relationships between players, and if this is truely a shift in emphasis then I think it's fantastic!! Your thoughts folks? Do you think this is a positive change? It will increase the chances of injury, and restrict the opportunities available to some of the younger players. Personally I think more of them should be loaned out anyway - reducing the wage bill during the season and giving them more experience of game time.
And no Diaby. Why??? I do not think we should let more players go on loan. Our bench is too short. We let Arshavin go and all of a sudden against Milan there was no one on the bench who could make the difference. We ran out of steam and out of players.
Wenger has said Diaby could play against Newcastle. OK I ckecked, now he says Diaby has a "little chance" to play against Everton.
This is what I thought the ressies were for, playing players coming back from injury and first teamers not getting much game time.
Makes perfect sense to be frank. Also on the topic of loans, i think this is essential for youth development. We want our youth players to get as much experience, playing in different conditions as possible. Take Miyaichi for example, he was getting no games and no chance of adapting to these conditions. Now he is a first teamer for Bolton, playing under a quality manager Owen Coyle. This also gauges a players ability too as we are seeing that Miyaichi is the real deal and not hype....
Squad players not making the bench and players returning from injury have always played in the reserves. Once you get into the crammed schedule in the middle of the season, it can be difficult to give bench players a run out for the reserves, as the reserve games sometimes come too close to the first team games, where you want them fit to play. I think what you are seeing is a gap in our schedule, now we are out of the cups.
