Golden Gunners: Tomas Rosicky - The Little Mozart

The second in our Golden Gunners series features a current player, our floppy-haired number 7, Tomas Rosicky.  My huge thanks go to Chris Light for his excellent guest contribution.  You can give him a follow here @Chrisml86.

Let me get one thing straight before we begin; Tomas Rosicky isn’t the best player Arsenal have ever had. He’s not the best midfielder we’ve ever had. To be honest, he’s probably not even in the top three Number 7’s to grace the club. It doesn’t matter though. He is by far and away my favourite player we’ve ever had. The only player that comes close is Edu. Mainly because I loved the way every single free kick he ever scored was via the back of an opponent’s head or Petit’s arse – honestly, check his stats, I’m not making this up (don’t bother - I made this up). Let’s address the obvious first; he’s made from Papier Mâché. This may have been OK if he had forged a career in Spain or Italy, but in Blighty it rains a lot. It rains kicks, tugs, hacks, late slide tackles, elbows to the abdomen and scissor tackles. He has spent a large majority of the last 2/3 seasons on the sidelines, but I don’t think many supporters could honestly tell you what injuries he’s suffered from. It’s been a series of never-ending niggles, bumps and strains. Some people use this against our moon faced hero, but they’re wrong. Tomas is just biding his time. He’s like that Nanny from that Nanny McPhee film. I forget what her name was. She was dog rough though, I remember that much. Anyway, my point was that he only appears when he is needed most. When the goin’ gets tough, Rozza gets goin’. Sagna got the plaudits for his game changing header against sp*rs, but it was Rosicky’s near post flick and open mouthed squatting celebration that really drove the team to victory. And even then, he didn’t want to score that goal. He’s better than a goal scorer, you see. He has put his name against one move and made it his own; the pre-assist. The man is king of the pre-assist. A term that didn’t really even exist 10 years ago, it’s crept into the vernacular of the average fan of the last few seasons as the need to analyse every facet of a player’s contribution to a performance has grown. His contribution to the run at the end of last season was huge. He injected drive and pace into the midfield. A rare player who chooses the pace others play at. If he wants a quick break, you best start running. The Little Mozart’s most important attribute to Arsenal is that he allows others to get into positions where they can genuinely affect the game. It’s not normally even an assist, it’s often receiving the ball just inside his own half, back to the opposition goal and then he spins. By God can he spin. The bloke has a short sprint acceleration that would embarrass players ten years younger than him. Once he’s skipped past the token Neanderthal hatchet man or the puffing utility player assigned to huff around the halfway line, he can then do what every greedy winger spends all their time screaming and gesticulating for; he releases them. A quick stab of the ball with the outside of the boot and the Czech Republic’s international captain has played them in. Cheers a lot, Rozza. The nature of his style of play is that it isn’t really backed up by bite size newspaper stats and lazy MOTD quips, put together by an underpaid and disinterested intern for a miserable and unimaginative Scotsman, pedalling the same half a dozen lines he has been for 20 odd years. Honestly, my Saturday evenings are have been like a fucking Groundhog day where all that’s changed has the kits have got tighter and I now sip a beer instead of an Ovaltine. Ovaltine’s amazing, by the way. I used to eat the powder instead of making a drink from it when I was kid, I recommend you try it. The other reason he deserves our love is the way he carries himself. He’s not overly comfortable with being in the limelight and despite the figurehead of the Czech international team for a number of years, he doesn’t pile out of clubs at 3am, run along the roof cars in Sunderland town Centre or get involved in too many spit roasts (haven’t seen one of them in the papers in a while, is that not fashionable anymore?). Super Tom’s quiet presence belies his luck with the ladies though. Unlike most Englishmen, he knows you can catch more flies with honey then vinegar (apologies for this crude analogy) and he uses his skills as a mind bending axeman to devastating effect. Check out what he did at the Czech player of the year awards. Can you imagine Steven Gerrard serenading Gareth Bale at the PFA awards? Although, given that he lamped a DJ on a night out for not playing his song, maybe he really is passionate about music? Revel in his understated talents. He may not be glamorous, he may not be cool, he won’t light up the red tops every week and Nike’ll never pick him as a front man. None of this matters though. He has amazing hair, uses the outside of his boot and listens to Metallica. It’s telling that he is so well liked by his teammates and colleagues. He’s clearly an influential role model at the club, with a lot of younger players openly stating their desire to emulate his style of playing the game. Swimming amongst a sea of money grabbing bottom feeders and parasitic fuckwits operating with little more thought going through their heads than to smash the ball in the net or nail the nearest tango’d hangaround slag, Tomas is a glorious salmon dancing his way upstream. He’s just a nice guy, yeah? And here is a sentence you should never have to read in an Arsenal blog post; I shall leave with the wise words of the sp*rs manager…