Gallas: Champ, or Chump?

By: Rob | November 13th, 2008

Gotta admire Arsene Wenger sometimes, the fella likes a risk. Whether its on some 17 year old you’ve never heard of, buying Kolo Toure (admit it, you doubted it for awhile Arsenal fans), or buying injury prone players (Oh how I miss actually seeing Tomas Rosicky). Perhaps his biggest gamble of recent times was, first getting William Gallas from Chelsea and having to part with Ashley Cole, and second making Gallas captain, which knocked Gilberto Silva’s confidence so much, he not only ended up out the club, but kick started Matthieu Flamini’s career.

He seemed to respond to the armband, the way anyone would. By making everyone in the world dislike him intensely. Whether it was having a go at his teamates beautiful football, having a crafty ciggy on a night out, or yelling at anyone, Gallas wasn’t winning friends.

The big point – and the arguably moment the wheels came off of Arsenal’s title challenge last year, was when he sat down sulking at Birmingham last season. Eduardo had gone off to a horrible challenge, and Arsenal were about to surrender two points to Birmingham because of a penalty. Gallas, instead of putting an arm round the youngsters or trying to stir him comrades, sat on his own at the other side of the pitch, refusing to take part in anything.

Now Gallas has come out and said that actually, yeah he is the best person to be captain of Arsenal. Afterall, they just beat Man United didn’t they? And after the Match of the Day team suggested he did the right thing – as captain – by shouting a bit at Theo Wallcott, the French defender laughed and said that he’d been doing that all along.

So has he turned the corner? Is he the right man to be captain of a very young Arsenal team? I think the jury is stil well out. If you look at the other title contenders this year, Chelsea and Liverpool have talismatic characters as Captain. Sure you might not actually like either of them – so that isn’t a problem for Gallas – but they seem to inspire the team. Gary Neville never seems to play at Man United, so the job seems to fall to Rio Ferdinand, who is in the form of his life, and a reformed character that Gallas could maybe aspire to, or Ryan Giggs who is a club legend.