Eboue – Hero, Villain, Clown

There are some players who are never destined to play well at a club no matter what they do or how hard they try.  Eboue is destined to be such a player at Arsenal.

When he arrived at the club he was a breath of fresh air; fast, energetic, willing to attack and linking up well with Hleb.  We no longer were missing Lauren, we had a new hero – Eboue.

Where did it go wrong?  It appears that once he had established himself the fame went to his head, he stopped doing the basics, tracking back, not giving the ball away.  But was not the villain yet, that was to come.

Eboue has become an irritation, a sore and everyone’s hate boy.  He has brought most of this upon himself and some of it is Wenger’s fault.  How many times have we seen him dive, how many misplaced passes, how many times has he failed to track back and help Bacary Sagna?

Every game he is given a clean slate by the Arsenal fans, every game he starts off with good intentions making the intelligent runs, but then the clown takes over.  The final ball is straight to the opposition, when the ball is in our area, Eboue is the last player to arrive to help out, he then stops running after balls and finally he starts to fall over or starts to kick the opposition players.

Part of his failings is that he was a right-back and is now surplus to requirements in that position.  He has not adapted to any other position he has been asked to play in, and looks incapable of doing so.

Yesterday’s game was a typical Eboue performance, he was our best player in the first fifteen minutes.  He created problems for Spurs, popping up everywhere and was unlucky to have his goal disallowed.  Then he argued needlessly with the referee and was booked.  On the half hour mark, the clown took over, he fouled Modric off the ball,  protested his innocence as only he can, walks over to Modric and commiserates with him on his booking only to turn around and find the referee brandishing a red card for him.  Again the astonished look of innocence, and horror appears across his face, but he let the team down with two pathetic yellow cards.

Eboue will never win over the Arsenal fans and the best thing for his career and Arsenal is that he leaves in the summer, besides with Rosicky, Arshavin, Nasri and Walcott, there can be no place in the squad for him.