A Case for Nicklas Bendtner

It has been made no secret that Nicklas Bendtner is keen to secure a move from the Emirates and he seems close to doing just that. The Danish centre-forward has not travelled with the club or taken part in any pre-season friendly matches so far

Ask your average Arsenal fan and they will tell you that they’re very happy for Bendtner to be leaving. However the young Dane’s contributions to the Arsenal cause have been far less woeful than his reputation suggests. Often accused of arrogance or ‘over confidence’ by his own fans, Nicklas Bendtner was left in a no win situation at the club. The player said he wanted to play every game; he was criticised. He said he could score goals; he was criticised even more. Tell me, what more do you want a young forward to say?

The reason Bendtner struggled to score was because he was played out of position for the majority of his time at Arsenal. More often than not he was to be found out on the right hand side putting crosses into the box. Yes, the tallest Arsenal player on the pitch was putting the crosses in to the likes of Arshavin, it's laughable really. However, when he was played in a more central role, most notably in the 2009-2010 season, when Robin Van Persie was injured, he scored several important goals for the club; namely, a 94^th minute winner against Hull at the Emirates to keep The Gunner’s in the title race. A header from a cross, funnily enough.

Yet, it seemed that nothing could win him over with the fans. Constant criticism followed by several relatively fruitless efforts on the right wing eventually ground the player down and with the arrival of Marouane Chamakh he has probably felt forced to look elsewhere for the chance to play regularly.

Just to put things into perspective slightly, Bendtner has scored 45 goals from 156 appearances and Robin Van Persie has scored 97 from 230 appearances. That’s an average of 3.4 games per goal for Nick, compared to 2.3 for Robin. Now, just to clarify, I am not suggesting that Nicklas Bendtner is on the same level of Robin Van Persie the point of the stats are just an attempt to show that perhaps some of the ill-feeling directly towards Bendtner was a bit hasty. He also played a big part in securing Denmark a place in the 2010 World Cup; a massive achievement for a 20-year-old.

Before the signing of Chamakh, Bendtner was Arsenal's archetypal centre forward who could be deployed as a change of strategy when their patient passing football was falling short of the mark (See: Ibrahimovic's role for Barcelona). Yet, he was rarely used as an actual plan B, as in, Arsenal would never change their style to suit their target man and the whole thing was a bit limp. More of a bad fit than Bendtner being a bad player.

Talk of a potential buyer for Nick has been coming from Portugal and there has reportedly been several clubs in contact for him, it’s now down to the player and his agent which is his father to choose the most suitable club.