Nicklas Bendtner and Marouane Chamakh: two players that both look increasingly unlikely to be wearing the Arsenal shirt next season.
The big Dane spent the whole of last season out on loan in the North at Sunderland. The move came about on transfer deadline day after it appeared that none of Europe’s elite actually fancied taking Bendtner to their club.
Moroccan international Chamakh remained at Arsenal for the whole of the campaign, yet spent a good 90% glued to the Gunners substitute bench.
Both players will probably leave the Emirates this summer and there won’t be many Gooners who will be too gutted about their departure.
However, if it came down to you and one of them had to stay, who would you keep?
Bendtner broke into the side at a young age after donning the Championship during a loan spell at Birmingham City a number of years back but failed to live up to the hype when he arrived back in London.
Despite being the self-proclaimed “best striker in the world”, the Denmark international has rarely started a match for the Gunners, and has more often than not done his talking with off the field with his mouth rather than on the field with his feet.
One thing that he doesn’t lack though is confidence and, in my opinion, isn’t a terrible striker.
Get him on a rich run of form and Bendtner can prove quite a handful for many Premier League defences.
I’ll always remember the difference he made when he returned from injury in 2010 after the Gunners had been short on strikers with Andrey Arshavin (no pun intended by the way) leading the line in a period of mass injury.
Bendtner came back and offered us a new dimension, chipping in with a hatful of important goals and got the club back into the swing of things.
Yet for the money that he finds himself on, he should be doing a lot more than just that.
Chamakh arrived from Bordeaux with a lot of promise as well as Champions League experience and immediately burst onto the scene at the Emirates.
He was full of goals for the first half of the season and, like Bendtner, offered another style, a plan b almost, due to his impressive heading ability.
This lasted up until a certain Robin Van Persie came back from injury and had the calendar year of his life scoring seemingly, as the chant goes, when he wanted to.
From that point onwards the man from Morocco barely featured for Arsenal and when he did get a sniff of action proved rather disappointing time and time again.
The man seems to be ridiculously low on confidence and just seems like a liability when he is brought onto the field, one that you cannot afford at the top level and isn’t doing him or his side any favours.
He had been linked with a return to France but has denied rumours himself that he is looking to leave.
Many would like to see him leave though no matter how much Chamakh thinks that Arsene Wenger trusts him which, judging from the pending arrivals of Lukas Podolski and Olivier Giroud, isn’t much.
If I had to choose, I’d opt for Bendtner.
His arrogance is an issue but he has the confidence and can put in a good shift, which is more than you can say for Chamakh at the moment.
Bendtner scored twice as Denmark were knocked out of Euro 2012 but was crucial to the way they played their football, and put in some decent displays.
In an ideal world they will both be gone come the new season in August but, if push came to shove, I would be saying “bye bye” to Chamakh and give Bendtner one last chance.
Have your say in the poll below.
Matt Cotton
@FindingCotton
Purely from a player point of view it seems Bendy is better suited. From a pure team point of view, Chamakh doesn't disrupt nearly as much as Bendtner. Personally I'd keep chamakh simply to keep better harmony in the team because that's more important than any single player.