Much has been written about the sudden meteoric rise of Francis Coquelin, from being on lone to Championship side Charlton Athletic to becoming one of the key members of Arsenal’s first team in a matter of months. Some have hailed him as the top class no-nonsense defensive midfielder Arsenal have needed for years, welcoming his addition to the side as the best ‘like-a-new-signing’ we’ve ever had (other than, perhaps, Robin van Persie when he finally managed to have an injury-free season).
What makes it all the more interesting is that Coquelin was recalled not for strategic reasons, as some miracle brain wave that randomly occurred to Arsene Wenger. Which is sad, for if it was, we could tell stories of how an angel visited him in the night to deliver the message that the solution to his team’s defensive woes was already contracted to the club. Of how the manager woke in a cold sweat, visions of flying Coquelin tackles flashing before his eyes, knowing instantly what he must do.
No, instead he was recalled as a necessity, a forced move as the result of yet another wave of injuries to the midfield. This fact has allowed for those who seek to criticise and diminish Arsene Wenger at any and every opportunity to refuse to hand any credit to the man for his decision to bring Coquelin back into the fold – indeed, many of them appear to have managed to twist the move as a way to bash the manager yet again.
Coquelin, therefore, has benefited from having both major sects of Arsenal fans singing his praises to suit an outside agenda – one group hands Wenger all the credit and uses the case as evidence that he will solve all our problems, and the other uses it as a way to criticise the manager for not seeing Coquelin’s usefulness earlier. The player, meanwhile, sits there enjoying the adulation.
And that adulation has been pretty non-stop, and only ever seems to be escalating. Even those fans who sit in the middle on most things – manager, title chances, need for signings etc. – are slowly accepting that Coquelin does actually appear to be quite a good player. Given his immediate impact on the Arsenal side and his incredibly impressive statistics – it is open to question why it has even taken this long for the acceptance of Coquelin’s worth to reach near universal levels.
It is, largely, for two reasons. The first is that we as Arsenal fans have grown so used to superb technical players that despite jealous glances across at other teams’ tough-tackling, rock hard defensive figures, when we actually get one ourselves we don’t quite feel comfortable in praising him as much as someone like Santi Cazorla. In the time BC (Before Coquelin), we cried out for someone who took delight in the game’s darker arts, rather than yet more tippy tappy technical masters. Now we have that, much of the criticism of him is that he’s not as good technically as his team-mates. We have been conditioned into the idea that Arsenal must play a certain way, that our players must be in a certain mould, and Coquelin doesn’t fit either – so naturally, we are hesitant to accept his qualities.
The second reason is that Francis Coquelin is another one of those footballers who really doesn’t look like he should be any good, but is. Even on the pitch – partly due to the reason above – he doesn’t really look very good a lot of the time. But despite the fact that he doesn’t look like a particularly good footballer, doesn’t play like a particularly good footballer, and even doesn’t have the name of a particularly good footballer, he’s incredibly effective. He does his job perfectly. He’s a key man for the team. Essentially, Coquelin is a bit like our version of Harry Kane. The main difference is that it’s much easier for defensive midfielders to get away with not actually being very good footballers – strikers tend to get found out.
Really, we are still yet to find out whether Coquelin is genuinely the long-term solution he does appear to have the potential to be. Arsene Wenger seems to have faith in him, and he has shown no signs of a drop in form – his performances have actually got better on an almost constant basis. Unlike his potential equivalent over at White Hart Lane, Coquelin has begun this season even better than he finished the last. Who cares that he can’t pass like Mesut Ozil or dribble like Alexis Sanchez? They can’t break up play like he can. He may prove to be one of Wenger’s best decisions, and it wasn’t even one he really chose to make.
