Wenger's treatment of Park

There's been a lot of debate recently as to why Park hasn't been playing much yet. And this has led to the unfortunate, but typical, knee-jerk reactions such as 'Wenger's lost it', 'Park's rubbish' etc. I thought I'd share my thoughts as to why, in my opinion, Wenger's treatment of Park has so far been spot on.

Cast your minds back to when Drogba first joined Chelsea. If you remember, his first season was a bit rubbish. As in, he was awful. But he stayed for another season and as the cliche goes, the rest is history.

The adaptation period for new signings has never been a couple of weeks. It takes more like a whole season for a player to fully settle in. It's really only been the last few seasons where here at Arsenal players have been bought and thrust straight into the first team with no time to adapt. Sink or swim if you like. Some players, such as Koscielny and Mertesacker, manage to swim - while some players, like Squillaci, flail their arms wildly and slowly sink.

Anyway, the point I'm making is that I'm rather pleased that for once Wenger's giving a player some time to adapt rather than putting him on the pitch and expecting goals from him every match.

Think about it. If Wenger had played Park from the start and he'd had a few fairly indifferent games, us fans from Knee-jerk City in the county of Completely-lost-touch-of-reality would be calling for Wenger's head, Park's head, and probably Denilson's head even though he's in Brazil this season.

I think it's been so good for Park to be able to adapt with no unrealistic pressure coming from the fans weighing down on his shoulders. And good for Chamakh too - whether he's beyond help is debatable, but had Wenger chosen to pick a newly signed striker ahead of Chamakh from day one, you imagine Chamakh's confidence would have gone from rock-bottom to whatever-comes-below-rock-bottom.

And hopefully now we'll see the benefits of giving Park time to adapt. I get the impression Wenger is planning to use him a bit more now - and given his performance yesterday, and his extremely well taken goal, this can only be good news.

Overall, I think in this situation Wenger's played his cards well.