It has been a somewhat tumultuous season thus far for Arsenal’s back-up striker, Nicklas Bendtner. His shenanigans in the past put him on the bad books of Arsenal fans but his loan spells to Sunderland and Juventus proved unsuccessful as both sides failed to retain his services.
At the Stadium of Light under the tutelage of Martin O’Neill, Bendtner was given a lot of game time and managed to score eight goals in 30 appearances for the Black Cats but his spell at Juventus was marred by his drunk-driving incident, complaints of how he had gained some weight and some niggling injury problems.
With Arsenal clearing out its deadwood in grand style this summer, many had tipped Bendtner to join the exodus as it’s was glaring from the fans that they would be glad to see the back of him but a protracted move to Eintratcht Frankfurt proved fruitless as the German outfit couldn’t match or better his current 52,000 pounds per week contract so they pulled the plug.
Hull City also declared their interest but nothing concrete sufficed. On Transfer Deadline Day, Bendtner was subject to a potential move to newbies, Crystal Palace, with Ian Holloway declaring his interest for the Dame and with Arsenal keen on securing the services of Demba Ba, albeit temporarily, Wenger had given his blessing for the move. However, Jose Mourinho’s reluctance to “strengthen a rival” ensured that the move for Ba fell through so Arsenal was forced to withdraw Crystal Palace’s offer for Bendtner.
When it was widely publicized that Bendtner was going to make his first Arsenal start in two years against West Brom in the Capital One Cup, he spoke about his “new challenge” and how he was going to give his all to the fans. An assist to Thomas Eisfeld as well as converting Arsenal’s first spot kick was a decent return and the fans had to make do with the Dane, till January at least.
More substitute appearances in the Premier League was followed with another start against Chelsea in the Capital One Cup but in all honesty, Bendtner’s contributions have been infinitesimal. The Dane was brought on for an ineffectual Santi Cazorla in Old Trafford and he didn’t do half bad and he would have achieved a hero status if he managed to latch unto Sagna’s peach of a cross to salvage a draw but that didn’t happen.
Following some more vitriol and abuse from fans on Twitter, Bendtner recently stated that he’s extremely disappointed that his move to Crystal Palace was blocked by Arsene Wenger. Bendtner stated that he’s preyed by the fans and he also spoke about his dissatisfaction of being demoted to the Reserves by the manager, before things changed for the better when the Ba move couldn’t come to fruition.
In my honest opinion, Bendtner must be out of his mind for these recent quotes and I hope he’s shown the exit door this January for peanuts with a world class striker purchased in his stead.
In a time when the team is gelling on and off the pitch showing signs of togetherness, Bendtner pops up and decides to open up healed wounds of the summer, like his quotes were going to change anything at the moment.
He speaks so arrogantly about top clubs coming for him this summer and all his “class” could muster were potential moves to Frankfurt, Hull and Crystal Palace. Marouane Chamakh, Andre Santos and Denilson all agreed for their contracts to be mutually terminated in their bids to save what was left of their dwindling footballing careers but Bendtner chose to sit on his fat salary rather than securing a move to Frankfurt.
His ego and over-confidence has always been an issue for the Dane and it’s really pathetic to see that he can’t even back it up on the pitch. Bendtner is not as bad as the fans think he is but he’s not also as good as he think he is.
With the winter transfer window just a month away, I really hope that Arsenal would delve into the market to sign a quality striker to support Olivier Giroud, because Nicklas Bendtner isn’t the man for the job.
Sayonara.
But I need to keep me strong, I begin to listen or even believe in them, I can quickly force myself into a black hole. “Right now I’m the easy prey to them because I want to get away from the club, and Arsenal do not want to keep me. And these haters – they always choose the easy option. Basically, it is unfair to pig me when I had my club transfer in place in the summer and Wenger told me to be.” “When I had been at the club since I was 16, I found it totally ridiculous that they had placed me in the reserves and let me train by myself,”. “Suddenly everything was back to normal: I trained with the first team, I hung out with the first team, I had a dietician again. From being completely out to be completely with it again. “I had it all in place, there were three clubs who were just waiting for me to say yes to one of them. “It was not the mindset I had [to stay at Arsenal]. I was incredibly disappointed when he [Wenger] called because I was ready to move on. And I actually did not think that they wanted to keep me.”