My Arsenal Blog

Arsene Wenger saw his young prodigy Jack Wilshere take a lot of stick in Arsenal’s game against Sunderland this weekend (and Stoke the week before!), but he doesn’t think that the midfielder needs to get extra protection from referees, he simply needs to watch Lionel Messi to see the way that re rides his tackles, and then gets up and gets on with the game!

We could perhaps say that the physical defenders in the Premier League are more likely to give out more punishment than in La Liga, but Messi takes it all and you rarely even see him complain.

Wenger wants Wilshere to take a leaf out of his book. The Frenchman said: “I think he can handle that rough treatment,” .

“I don’t want to talk too much about being singled out as I don’t want to transform the player to a paranoia attitude.

“Just be natural and play your game and it is down to the referees to protect him when it is needed.

“The way he plays must take a toll, but it’s his game and he has to take that gamble. His game is to take the ball and go at people. Messi does that as well and he plays without being injured.

“You can only make a career with the string aspect of your game and that’s his strength.”

Jack not only needs to ride the tackles but he also needs to learn to control his temper. That’s another thing that Messi does so well. It would be great for Arsenal to have their very own Messi, but I think Jack needs to mature a bit more before he becomes the complete player…..

One day eh?

The Arsenal full-back Andre Santos declared that Manchester City’s aggressive Italian striker Mario Balotelli had to be put in his place in the match between the two sides because he was making all sorts of bad challenges and the ref was doing nothing about it!

Santos came off the bench and quickly picked up a yellow after a couple of tackles on Balotelli, but according to the Brazilian he had to do something about the way the striker was going about the game.

“In the first half Balotelli almost broke Song’s leg, then he harshly tackled Sagna. Someone had to be hard on him, put him in his place,” he told ESPN Brasil.

“Someone had to say something to him because he was doing what he wanted, and that’s not how things work.

“I was watching from the bench. When I was on the pitch I’d have the job to mark him, and that’s what I did. It’s part of the game.”

It’s a good thing that Santos managed to give Balotelli a piece of his own medicine, but that should have been done a lot earlier in the game and you would have expected someone like Vermaelen to be the player who would carry out the job before Santos even came on the pitch.

Get in there Andre!