Bendtner's Back

Nicklas Bendtner was on target for Arsenal last weekend, scoring his first of the season, and aiming to back up his recent boasts of supreme fitness. Some reckon he's a bit of an arrogant so and so but this blogger thinks he might just be the real deal.

Arsene Wenger admitted that Bendtner's groin had been troubling him for some time and that we had not yet seen Nick at “full fitness”. Despite his somewhat constant injury setbacks and the fact that he has never been first choice striker (apart from the end of last season due to several injuries within the squad), Bendtner netted his 50^th Premier League goal against City after coming on as a sub at the Emirates.

Since his niggling injury, through which he played at the World Cup for Denmark when he probably shouldn't have, Bendtner has watched Marouane Chamakh relish in the role of Arsenal centre-forward in his three month spell on the sidelines.

Chamakh's adaptation to the Arsenal team and the Premier League has been seamless and he is looking like a fantastic all-round option for the Gunners. He adds the height that Van Persie does not and the speedy link-up play which Bendtner can, at times, lack.

Bendtner, however, has time on his side and still has a lot to learn. His feud with Adebayor was well documented and even boiled over onto the pitch at White Hart Lane during that infamous Carling Cup game.

Learning from Chamakh, rather than pitching himself against him, will do the young striker a lot of good. He has a similar physique but does not always use it to his full advantage, the Morrocan on the other hand holds the ball up well and usually turns the defender only for them to foul him.

Bendtner has been watching Chamakh and has commended him on his smart positional play, "As well as scoring goals he works hard when he doesn't have the ball which I like."

Positional play is something Bendtner is praise for by his manager. He is an intelligent player and he knows that he does not possess the gift of pace, as Walcott and Rosicky do, instead he has to make up for that by getting himself in good positions.

"I like Marouane. As a team-mate he's been really great. I hadn't trained with him until very recently but he seems like a good guy, a good football player and - on what I've seen so far I think he has done really well", Bendtner added.

It seems as if he has welcomed the competition that Chamakh brings and realises that no matter how good he believes himself to be that there is always room for improvement. The Dane also stated that he could play in any of the front 3 positions and would be happy to be deployed however Wenger sees fit.

Nicklas looks set to start the Carling Cup fixture against Newcastle at St. James' Park in his preferred central position and will be hoping to show Arsene Wenger and the Arsenal fans what they've been missing.