Ambitious Van Persie Not Satisfied

Arsenal will face the League leaders Manchester City this week-end, having recently discovered that they will come up against Italian giants AC Milan in their Champions League knock-out round – a competition in which their week-end opponents are absent from. Both fixtures will certainly be tough fixtures for Arsenal to overcome, however, Wengers side go into the game against City with the joint best form guide from the past six games.

Indeed, Arsenal’s excellent recent form has been hugely influenced by their talismanic striker, Robin van Persie, who could soon be about to break Alan Shearer’s Premier League record by scoring over 36 goals in one year. The Dutchman currently has 33 goals to his name, so a hat-trick against City would not only do nicely for Arsenal, but his personal record too, not that the latter is important to the very focused striker who is fighting for success at a club which has been trophy-less for almost seven years.

The start of Arsenal’s season was so discouraging, it would have been hard to imagine the same side currently only one of two English sides in the Champions League and swiftly climbing up the League table, seemingly fully recovered from the 8 – 2 destruction at Old Trafford against Manchester United. Van Persie put this down to the unsettling summer with players such as Fabregas and Nasri leaving with a quick rush of players entering the club. He said:

“We had a tough start in the first couple of weeks, it wasn’t an easy summer with Cesc and Samir [leaving].”

“It was always hard because nobody really knew what the team would be for the season. We made a couple of late signings that we had to make, because we were losing a couple of world-class players.”

Despite the clubs recent improvement in form, the Arsenal captain is adamant that they can aim even higher; better than fourth, fifth or sixth place, and is positive that, having played only 15 games of the season, they will do better.

“We should have higher expectations every week, but for now because we have only played 15 games in the league we are not even halfway. I don’t think it’s clever to be excited by fourth, fifth, sixth or whatever. This is not now, we still have to play many games.”

City’s start to the season has been exceptional, and up until last week-end, they were undefeated. There had been talk of the Manchester club emulating Arsenal’s invincible side but thanks to Chelsea’s win which enabled the other title chasers to gain on the leaders, that possibility is now over. This week-end, Arsenal have the chance of drawing even closer to City once again as they seek to fulfill van Persie’s ambitions of the top three at least.

Thanks to DBS-football for submitting this quest post.