Written by Ben Harrington Wednesday, 16 November 2011 13:06

GunnerTalk Blog

By Ben Harrington

With our next game still 3 long days away, I was itching to get some thoughts out, well one in particular.

Mikel Arteta.

He has quickly taken on the role of my favourite player as I’ve been a long time admirer of his talents from when he first joined Everton, the delirium I had on deadline day was akin to The Arsenal winning a trophy.

But more importantly he had filled the void left by Le Bob and yes that void was the ‘swoon’ one…

The idea for this rant of sorts came from seeing these consistently crop up on my Twitter feed

“What use is Arteta?”

“What does Arteta do exactly?”

“Arteta isn’t in the same league as Cesc!”

(Of course these people are probably the ones who still think Koscielny is shit)

Let’s start with that last point, Mikel is in no way a Cesc replacement, he doesn’t do lung bursting forward runs, he doesn’t provide killer ball after killer ball. The ‘Cesc role’ (FYI I hate that terminology) has been taken on superbly by Aaron Ramsey.

Mikel does the things that seem to get unnoticed by the majority. He forever drops deep to take the ball off the defence and keeping moves going when they look to be slowing down, Mikel isn’t a flash player, he gladly lets Ramsey, Theo and Gervinho be the creative hubs of the side he just hands it over to RVP’s supply line quietly and efficiently.

Where I watch him very closely in every match I’ve noticed he also loves a tackle, he knows the correct time to push forward and also when he is needed to stay back.

Mikel is a very smart footballer and the experienced head we were crying out for at the tail-end of last season.

For me he has been the best of Wenger's deadline day signing-a-thon.

Until next time.

Follow me on Twitter @BenAFC