FA PREMIER LEAGUE: Arsenal 3 Tottenham 0:ROBIN VAN Persie has ditched one reputation and is rapidly gaining another. Arsenal's latest league dismissal of bitter rivals Spurs had Arsene Wenger reflecting on the transformation of a player who had arrived in England saddled by a certain notoriety into a striker who has become "a mixture of Thierry Henry and Dennis Bergkamp".
“He had an ‘attitude’,” said the Arsenal manager, “but what saves people, always, is a love for football and an intelligence.”
Salvation could yet hoist Van Persie up among this club’s greats. The Dutchman is another of Wenger’s reinventions.
Henry arrived as a winger disenchanted by an unhappy spell at Juventus to be converted into Arsenal’s most prolific striker. Now Van Persie is prospering in his move from flank to forward. The temper that exploded too often at Feyenoord and dogged him still in his early days in England has cooled. Where once the ego prevailed, now talent has taken over.
Life as a central striker, with Emmanuel Adebayor sold and the atmosphere in the dressingroom cleansed, is coaxing new qualities from the Dutchman. His brace against Tottenham Hotspur swelled the forward’s goal tally to eight in nine games, with each reward plucked by an elusive poacher gliding unnoticed to the edge of the six-yard box.
Van Persie used to be this team’s pace and creation down the left. Now he has sharpened a predatory instinct.
He did not appear the most natural of target centre-forwards when the manager opted to pursue a split three-man front-line for this campaign. Logic suggested Nicklas Bendtner – whose groin injury will now keep him out for a month – with his greater physical presence would be the hub around which Andrey Arshavin and Van Persie would buzz. Wenger saw things differently.
“It was always clear to me Robin would be in the middle of the three,” he said. “He has a short back-lift, is an intelligent player and can turn very quickly. What he has around the box is very difficult to give to a striker. The timing of his runs are fantastic.”
Spurs were scarred by the manager’s foresight and the player’s vision. This game had stalled, stifled by the visitors’ massed midfield, when Benoit Assou-Ekotto and Robbie Keane dozed at a throw-in after 42 minutes.
Bacary Sagna found time and space to cross but it was Van Persie’s clever dart in front of Ledley King, caught flat-footed, that yielded the goal, prodded through a panicked Heurelho Gomes at the goalkeeper’s near post. Within 30 seconds Arsenal had doubled that lead and Spurs, shocked by the speed at which this derby had been transformed, were demoralised.
“Robin is at an age where a football player becomes really efficient, mature, and wants to win things,” said Wenger. “That is why I believe he can be the best passer in the league and he can be the best goalscorer in the league.
“He is a player you don’t consider at the beginning to be a ‘target man’ but, when you play him there, you realise he has everything a target man needs.
“There are things he must work on still: his heading, his use of his right foot. But he is much stronger than people expect. He uses his body very well and has learned to play football in the street. He has what you can only acquire at a very young age, that ability to push and turn quickly. And the responsibility is helping him. He is one of the leaders in the dressingroom.”
- Guardian Service
