A bad day for Nicklas Bendtner
Arsenal’s Nicklas Bendtner has been in good form recently, scoring in his previous two Arsenal games, at home to Sunderland and away at Burnley. He also netted in Denmark’s loss to Austria in midweek, taking him onto 11 international goals at the age of just 22.
Against Burnley, however, in stark contrast to his teammate Theo Walcott, he had a nightmare. He missed the target from five glorious goalscoring opportunities from less than eight yards out, all between the width of the posts. Three further shots were blocked or saved.
It is only the second time this season that any Premiership player has had eight or more shots from inside in the area within one game, and still failed to score, according to OPTA.
Bendtner should be praised for getting into the right positions (the other usual defence in this situation, that he “didn’t go hiding” is always a little overstated) but can Arsenal afford to have their centre-forward missing such easy chances before the game has been put to bed?
A bad day for Nicklas Bendtner
I can, in all honesty, say I’ve never seen a striker miss so many blatant and relatively easy sitters in one match. When he left the pitch and was laughing at his ineptitude I was first mad; then I realized that you really have no choice but to laugh at such a comical effort.
For all the talk about the Gunners trying to walk it into the goal; if it was Van Persie yesterday rather than Bendtner it would have been 6, 7 or 8 goals.
If the rumours of Chamakh coming are accurate I just can’t see Bendtner or Eduardo making it into many matches over the obvious duo of Chamakh/RVP. Wenger will likely find someone to overpay for him like he did with Adebayor.
whats your opinion on bacary sagna? has he not been producing form/not good enough or is eboue just playing extremely well?
Bah, a bit of both in my book. Sagna’s struggled to live up to his form in his first season form, whilst Eboue’s on a fine run of form. At home to weaker sides, Eboue’s driving runs are definitely the order of the day, but in tougher games I think Sagna’s better there.
what? Bendter is a striker? I thought he was a defender.