Centurion Van Persie leads by example

Arsenal 3 Bolton W 0:ROBIN VAN Persie's task is to become more talisman than totem. For all his skill and goals the Dutchman has tended to personify the haplessness – or, as harsher observers might put it, the brittleness – that has dogged Arsenal in recent seasons. He has been a symbol of their frustrated potential rather than a trigger for trophy-gathering. Arsene Wenger hopes that entrusting him with the captain's armband, following Cesc Fabregas's move to Barcelona, will galvanise player and club.

The fact that Van Persie accepted the armband was promising for Arsenal. Many at the Emirates Stadium feared that the sales of Fabregas and Samir Nasri would convince the only other world-class player on the club’s books to demand a transfer too.

Wenger had to reassure the Dutchman that his ambitions could still be fulfilled at Arsenal.

“It’s true that we had a meeting during the summer,” Wenger said. “It is understandable that he would want that when you lose players such as Fabregas and Nasri. I don’t think we will lose him.” There are suggestions that he may be lured away, however – Manchester City are said to be preparing an offer.

Critics argue that Van Persie is not a natural leader, that he is too quiet and individualistic to inspire those around him and, therefore, that awarding him the armband is merely a sop to his ego. Wenger suggests that this is bilge, and says the Dutchman is no longer the “emotionally impulsive” 21-year-old whom he signed from Feyenoord in 2004.

“He has leadership on the pitch,” Wenger said, “because technically he is super-talented so he gains the respect of the others for that, and then the second part that he has added is that he speaks his mind in the dressing room. And people listen to him.”

Van Persie may still not be the most vocal of captains on the pitch but there is no doubt he can express himself in goals. Last season he had the best goals-per-minute ratio of any player in the Premier League. If not for his fitness troubles he would surely have scored 100 goals for Arsenal long before Saturday.

The fact that Van Persie has struck a century of goals despite not playing as an orthodox centre-forward shows that he has the same intelligence as the last two players to reach that tally for Arsenal, Dennis Bergkamp and Thierry Henry. Wenger sees another comparison. “He is like Lionel Messi in the positional sense,” he said. “He doesn’t play like a real centre-forward but if you look at his movement he is very intelligent because of his diagonal runs. And his first touch is so good that in tight spaces he can make a difference.”

Theo Walcott also wants to play centre-forward and it is perhaps because he is not quite so flexible in tight spaces that he has yet to do so regularly. Moreover, his finishing skills are still not honed enough. Against Bolton, he and Gervinho squandered one-on-one chances but both were useful as suppliers, especially Walcott who created Van Persie’s second with a splendid run and cross from the right.

Walcott hobbled off late on, although Arsenal now say that his injury is only “minor”.

Bolton’s manager, Owen Coyle, would welcome similar glad tidings. Illness left him without two of his best players, Gary Cahill and Stuart Holden, and he then lost David Ngog to concussion early in the first half. Their chances of avoiding a fifth successive league defeat never looked good after that but Coyle said his side would soon clamber off the bottom,

“I’ll always accept being beaten by a better team but if you contribute to your own downfall, that’s a horrible feeling,” he said. “I’ve stressed that to the players and we accept that we’ve got to do better but we must balance that by saying that we’ve played four of the teams I expect to be in the top six and next week we’ve got Chelsea. But we’ll keep working hard and the wins are around the corner.”