Ray Parlour believes Alexis Sanchez is the only current Arsenal player who would have warranted a starting place in the club's famous Invincibles side
Theo Walcott recently claimed the Gunners "have been the best team in Europe" in 2015. However, Arsenal legend Parlour believes the current crop are still a long way short of the greatest side he played in.
Parlour played 26 games for the Invincibles of 2003/04, who famously went the whole Premier League season unbeaten.
And when asked which players in today's Arsenal squad could have made it into his former team, he could only come up with two names who would even be in contention.
"I don’t think the full-backs would be good enough. Lauren was a great underrated player, and Ashley Cole was fantastic," said Parlour, who was speaking at the Boot Camp stage of The People's Pundit, championed by Carlsberg.
"I really like Laurent Koscielny; he’s improved so much. I could maybe see him getting a game instead of Kolo Toure, alongside Sol Campbell. You could make an argument for that, anyway.
"In midfield, Vieira and Gilberto did a great job and Pires was a very good player. The only one I could really see getting in would be Sanchez, on the right side of midfield.
"As for up front, none of them would have any chance of replacing Bergkamp or Henry. Not a chance."
Despite Parlour's praise of his former attacking team mates, he doesn't believe either Thierry Henry or Dennis Bergkamp would solve the problems of the current Arsenal side.
He believes the only man who could do that single-handedly would be another former team mate - one who had already retired before The Invincibles wrote their names into history.
"If I could pick one Arsenal player I played with to put back into the side now, who would make the biggest difference to the current team, it wouldn’t be Henry, Bergkamp, Vieira or Pires. It would be Tony Adams.
"It’s not just that he was a great defender, he was a real leader too. Sometimes you need that on the pitch.
"When you weren’t doing your job and Tony Adams was behind you, you got absolutely hammered - and you would think, ‘Blimey, I'd better do that better next time.’ Arsenal haven’t got that at the moment.
"There are 10 minute periods in games where you have to sit in and weather the storm, and Tony would make sure the midfield did that. That’s what wins you games."
0 comments:
Post a Comment