Vermaelen: Arsenal’s new captain, or not?

Moving away from the man who was our captain last year to the man who was our vice captain last year – and the man who could be our captain next season: Thomas Vermaelen.

Let us start right away with the remarks he got when we bought him – the same remarks that were directed at Koscielny, and not many of those were good. But like with Koscielny he managed to overturn the sceptics’ thoughts about him.

Vermaelen has been at Arsenal for three seasons now but he has featured in only two of them. He missed out on one season after getting injured while playing for Belgium. Being put on the field while playing for Belgium despite the injury and then finding himself out for the whole season after suffering a world record of setbacks before they finally discovered what was wrong was one of the most depressing aspects of that year. I do feel that a lot of doctors didn’t cover themselves with glory in those days.

In the two seasons he has played so far for Arsenal, he has managed to start in 33 and 28 of those games. He suffered a minor injury during the last season but this time the doctors knew what was wrong and he was back in the team very quickly.

His end of season form wasn’t the best however. But just as with Szczesny, later it was made public that they both played with an injury, could hardly train and were made fit to play each game.

In fact, the story of Vermaelen being injured was only discovered in Belgium when he came to Brussels for a few friendly internationals and he was unable to play in the first because of his injury.

He was brave enough to play even with an injury for Arsenal. It shows that he is willing to give it all for our club. And I know I am not from the gutter press, but his dip in form at the end of the season might have something to do with some personal problems, as we all know such things can have a negative influence on a player’s performances.

Leaving the defensive side for later I must start with his offensive power. In the two seasons where he featured prominently for Arsenal, he scored 14 goals in total . And we are talking about a central defender. I think most midfielders would be happy with such a return.

So it is obvious Vermaelen is a defender that can score vital goals as well. He has scored with headers from corners and quite a few great goals from distance. Probably, his best goal was the ugliest one: the ‘bundle it over the line goal’ against Newcastle. After running the whole length of the pitch in the 94^th minute starting from his own penalty area, Vermaelen eventually pushed the ball over the line from six yards out.

So most people don’t mind his forward runs too much and hope that he can score while doing so. However, the rest of the team have to keep their eyes open and one player has to sacrifice himself and drop back a bit. In previous instances, on quite a few occasions while there were some important players missing in midfield, we got caught.

Yes, we could blame Vermaelen for this and when we are 1-0 in the 90^th minute I would urge him to stay back. I’m sure these are things that have already been addressed by now. I hope that he will time his runs better and hopefully the rest of the team will know when to drop back when he tries to support our attack.

Some have said that Vermaelen could be a great defensive midfielder because he has good technical skills and can pass the ball around and has the ability to deliver good long balls. I don’t know if he has the necessary tactical skill to play that role to be honest. Because if he runs forward, we won’t have anybody to cover the back line. I think this is the reason why Wenger doesn’t go for the suggestion that most of us have made when in the pub or in the train or in the car on our way to the game, or back home.

Not being the tallest can sometimes be a problem when playing against a huge centre forward, but with good timing and technique Vermaelen is able to work away the handicap of not being the biggest person on the field. Besides, many great centre backs are just as big as Vermaelen. Being clever in defence can help a lot.

What about the next season? Well with obviously a new captain to be chosen for next season (I really cannot imagine RVP being captain even if Arsenal would hold him for the final year of his contract) the chance of Vermaelen becoming captain will increase.

He was captain of Ajax at a very young age. He was captain of the Belgium national team at a very young age and only lost the captaincy because he was out of the team for a year due to injury. In an interview this summer, he said that he was still very unhappy about losing the captaincy after playing for Belgium with an injury and then on his return to find out that Kompany had been given the armband and was going to keep it. So he enjoys and wants the responsibility of being a captain.

Will he be promoted to being captain? Will he be asked to be the captain? And will he accept it? I think this depends how Wenger is seeing the central defence for next season. Does Wenger want to use his central defenders as much as possible and rotate them as much it is rather unlikely that one of them (Vermaelen in this case) will play all the games. Usually a captain is certain of his starting place and well with the rotation it could mean that we would have different captains. So maybe Wenger will go for another player. One that he expects to play almost every game.

But if Wenger asks Vermaelen to be the next captain I think he would be very honoured to take on that task. The only hope is that, well, we know what happened with our last captain.

But I really do think that Vermaelen is still a very down to earth young man. He’s from a little town near Antwerp, a home where boys grow up dreaming of becoming a professional football player.

I don’t know in what way his little town will honour him if he becomes captain of Arsenal. They gave him the “Gulden Garve” last year. They might have to invent a new special prize and ceremony I think. And I, well I could then say that I have met the captain of Arsenal in person and I have his signed shirt lying in my bedroom.

Blimey, I’m a blessed person!