“Yao Gervinho on the ball” blared Martin Tyler somewhere inside my Xbox. The Brazilian sounding Ivorian joined Arsenal with a similar amount of hype to players such as Eduardo – it was not that no other clubs (Newcastle, Atletico) weren’t in for him, it was just a trademark Arsene Wenger signing, but was it to go the way of Laurent Koscielny or Sebastian Squillaci?
Bought for £10.8 million, Gervinho looked every bit the player as he netted a double on his pre-season debut against Cologne – a pacy, tricky and most importantly unpredictable winger not too dissimilar to Yannick Bolasie. However, his league career could not get off to a worse start, or best, having slapped Joey Barton and retrospectively being slapped back with a 3 game ban. The issue with tricky players is that they are often unprofilic, and this was the case in the 2011/12 season, with Yao only scoring 4 and assisting 6 in all competitions. Much like Squillaci and Mathieu Flamini, his debut season would be rendered below par, but not too disastrous and leeway should be given, having been imported from a foreign league.
2012/13 was a different story. 7 goals and 5 assists from a player positioned primarily as a forward is not near enough for a team of Arsenal’s stature, with the Ivorian becoming famous for the sheer number of chances missed, and rumours that he was failing to bed in and get on with a lot of the players (whether or not it was his fault) can not be too far from the truth. Overall the Ivorian trickster made 63 appearances and notched 11 goals with 12 assists – not a terrible statistic, but loking deeper, he failed to make an impact in any big games bar Chelsea in the 2012/13 season, his goals often coming as part of a larger win against the smaller sides in the league. He aptly left Arsenal in June 2013 with his head held at an appropriate height; simply a gamble that failed to grasp the rigours of the Premier League. Now playing for Roma, but likely to leave for Al-Jazira.
