What on earth is wrong with Marouane Chamakh?
I just finished watching the replay of the Udinese game and am starting to get fed up. What in the blazes is going on with Chamakh?
When Wenger signed him last year I was thinking, "incredible steal!" He was winning aerial balls up high, he was pressuring the opponents' backline with energetic pressing, and his flank-to-flank drifting was doing wonders for ball retention and offensive flow. He even contributed on defense.
So who is this guy and what happened to the real Chamakh? All of the above skills of his seemed to have disappeared into thin air. At the end of last season we all attributed it to fatigue in his first EPL season. But he's had a full summer to rest. Even in the preseason friendlies against the likes of east asian slapped-together teams he looked invisible. There's no fire, no energy, no sense of competitiveness from him anymore.
I've vaguely heard whispers of personal problems, and I hope that's all it is....otherwise losing Bendtner is going to start looking like a disaster.
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I think holding on to Bendtner, at least for now, would be the smart thing to do. Perhaps his presence in the CL squad was an indication he will be around. Assuming the right deal isn’t in place now, why not hang on to him until January — and play him as a striker now & then — and then re-evaluate. There is often a sense of desperation in the January market due to injuries or unexpected circumstances, so it might work out better for all parties.
He's a strange player
Very big and strong, but he doesn’t seem to like playing in the box or in front of goal. He like to drop deep, but he lacks the technique and vision to play effectively there. We needed a goalscorer when we signed him and he’s definitely not suited for that role.
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by LouisMurphy'sLaw on Aug 19, 2011 4:59 PM EDT reply actions
He must've caught whatever Arshavin had (or still has)
Just looks slow, lost, and un-confident. The thing I’ll never understand about professional athletes is when they get into a funk and then they just show no energy. If I was struggling, I run around, chasing the ball like a rabid dog chasing a rabbit.
same here, BUT that isn't necessarily a smart thing to do in pro ball.
On top of that, I have NO experience with playing in a huge stadium with 60,000 people staring down at you, so it’s not like I can pretend to underestand.
I just PRAY that he gets out of this funk or he’ll be worse than useless. As it stands now, our only usable dedicated forward is RVP, a dangerously low amount of depth. Even if Walcott and Gervinho can play striker, they don’t have the size to play a holding roll like Chamakh can, so we lose versatility.
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That's not how human nature works
Confidence is a very fragile thing, and there are very few people on the planet that can will their way to being more confident when they’re in a slump – in sports or in any other walk of life.
I have NO experience with playing in a huge stadium with 60,000 people staring down at you
This is what people forget – athletes are human beings. Pressure gets to them. It’s easy to say “they’re paid enough, they’re athletes, they should be able to deal with it”, but at the end of the day, being an athlete is their job. Think of it in terms of your job – when you’re under ridiculous amounts of pressure, do you always rise to the occasion, or work so hard that you end up rising to the occasion, or do you sometimes struggle a bit before you find your groove? Athletes are no different.
I don’t know what Chamakh’s problem is, but as silverace99 does, I hope he sorts it out soon enough.
Realistically, Chamakh, like Bendtner, will never fit in well at Arsenal
And that’s because they are all tall, slower moving forwards like van Persie. Basically we have three of the same player, RVP’s skill set puts him a level up on the others. In our formation and strategy, where if RVP is doing badly in a game and we need a boost, we need somebody smaller and faster, not the same build of person like Chamakh and Bendtner. Walcott is more than willing to fit into that role, Gervinho can also play there, but he’s probably better suited out on the wing. We’re also linked to Lazio’s Zarate, who appears to be pretty close to coming here because he’s not featuring for Lazio anymore (thank you Miroslav Klose), his profiles states him at 5’7" and 165 lbs, he scored 9 goals and 7 assists on 114 shots, so he’s pretty decent.
are you all insane??
what are you talking about?chamak being inneffective didnt have any fire…itd..well dont you think you need to give him a game to play maybehe didnt get a start all season logn..i mean comonfirst part of sesaon best scorer in team every game and then when selfish van persie comes back he is kicked out of team..what the fuck?after that half season for a player not to get any more chance at all is more then frustrating..tal about personal problems,no this is the problem.give him a chance now and you will see..
Take a deep breath. Count to five. Try again.
by pdb on Aug 20, 2011 12:18 PM EDT up reply actions 2 recs
what, are you a fanboy or something?
And by the way Chamakh had a couple of easy preseason games to get warmed up and he flubbed them. This isn’t a “one game” thing. He’s been doing this for half a year now. Except now he doesn’t have the excuse of being tired after a summer of rest.
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#selfishvanpersie
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by Thomas Wachtel on Aug 25, 2011 9:28 PM EDT up reply actions
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't he fasting for ramadan?
I believe that lasts until the end of the month, so I’d be surprised if he’s capable of going a full 90 until then.
by Stephen Schmidt on Aug 20, 2011 6:44 PM EDT reply actions
Rumours that Chamakh has been fasting since December, however, are off the mark
Squeezed to Song and Bendtner and Song and Nasri oh lovely lovely lovely!
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by Aidan Gibson on Aug 21, 2011 8:30 AM EDT up reply actions
He's goal fasting, giving it up for
Christmas, New Years, Lent and Ramadan.
That said, Chamakh has never been a goal machine, so I don’t think it’s so surprising.
This.
I'm not asking Chamakh to be a goal scoring machine (and by the way, he scored quite a few goals in the first half of the season actually)
He just needs to get back the energetic style of play he had and he’ll already be an excellent contributor.
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by silverace99 on Aug 25, 2011 11:38 AM EDT up reply actions
I think a few may dislike the comparison, but...
Chamakh in good form could contribute in much the same way as Dirk Kuyt does to Liverpool. Not a poacher by any means, but a hard worker who does a bit of everything up front.
chamakh
he is just not good anoth send him out on loan to bolton they will ake a player of him

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