Was reading the Mail this morning and found Keown and Bergkamp's exchange (get a room, you 2) and what I found most interesting was Bergkamps mention of RVP being better in his (Bergkamp) former role. I was particularly struck by this because I'm a strong believer that despite Van Persie's impressive tally since his late December return, his best role isn't as a lone striker. He's so gifted that he'll always find a way to score or create but when starved of service in games where we aren't controlling midfield, I like my no 9's to work the channels and the opposition back line and keep them guessing but he lacks the pace and power to do this the way a Rooney, Drogba, Torres (at his peak), Adebayor etc do. I'd rather we got in a forward like Benzema, Higuain, Cavani or whoever Wenger's genius can unearth from obscurity like he did Henry than the creative midfielder we're clamouring for. I'd like to see RVP in a more withdrawn role and I'd like to see us get more bodies in the box. It's frustrating to see a cross delivered in the opposition box with no Arsenal player in sight to attack it.
At the moment RvP plays as a withdrawn forward, which means he drops back in to midfield a lot so the CB's don't know who to mark. I think this should be complemented with a goalscoring midfielder who runs in to the box unnoticed because the defenders are too busy wondering where RVP is. The other approach is that we ditch the 433 system and play RvP in the number 10 role with a mainly goalscoring striker in front of him, like what man u did last season with Rooney and Hernandez. Basically we should pick one of the two instead of relying on Rvp to score all our goals even though he plays as a midfielder half the time.
