The return of the Little Mozart, how we missed him.

When we allowed Super Bobby Pires to leave the club at the end of our last season at Highbury in May 2006 we signed a player by the name of Thomas Rosicky, a "classic playmaker" of superb technical quality born in Prague (Czech Republic) to be his replacement, for around 10 million pounds from Dortmund, a club at which he was adored and rated immensely. But despite this in our neck of the woods, he was still a relatively unknown quantity by most but he was a player that Arsene Wenger has said on many occasions that he loves and clearly rated him to the extent that he gave him the precious number 7 jersey, recently vacated by Mr Pires. He (Rosický) is a player "renowned for his penetrating runs, creativity and passing accuracy on the pitch which contributed a lot to the team's attacking play. Rosický specializes in using of the outside of his right foot to make quick and swerving passes".

During his first few seasons at the club we saw why Arsene rated him so, he brought superb technical ability and vision to the team, and showed that he was capable of really creating golden opportunities and openings for his fellow players to thrive upon. He had a great few seasons and was part of the reason why he had a very good beginning of the 2007 - 2008 season forming a great understanding with his midfield colleagues: Cesc Fabregas, Alexsander Hleb and Mathiu Flamini. However his Arsenal career hit a brick wall when he got what seemed like a rather straight forward hamstring injury, however this injury kept him out of the side for the whole of the 2008 - 2009 season and the beginning of the subsequent season (2009 - 2010). This is an injury to which he has only recently recovered from to show the touches, finesse and vision that he showed on his arrival at the club back in 2006. Aptly nicknamed the "Little Mozart" he is a player capable of composing great passages of play whilst bringing others in to the game with ease. But this talent and undoubted quality was in danger of being wasted by this hamstring injury that kept him out of the game for over a year.

When he finally did return from this injury to take his place back in the first team, many people were looking so much forward to his return to the field, and expected to see his creativity, vision and passing ability come to the fore once again, however this never really happened, and instead he seemed laboured, slow and just generally off the pace, following such a long layoff and absence from the game. He was in and out of the team on a regular basis, unable to get a consistent run in the first team starting 11 frame. The player that we always knew he was capable of being, seemed to have disappeared and many had began to question whether he should have been awarded with a new contract in 2010 and after that as well. Many felt that we would never see the best of him again, and that we (the club) should cut our losses and sell up. However the boss, never lost confidence in a player that as I said he loves, and believed in him that eventually he would get back to the performance level that he was capable of doing.

And eventually this came to fruition, and in recent months the "Little Mozart" has well and truly returned, and has began to hit and in some cases surpass the level of performance that we had seen in him in his early Arsenal days and the form that he had shown before joining Arsenal. In recent times he has been superb, and I believe that he has been a huge factor as to why we went on such a great run in the last few months, culminating in 7 wins on the bounce. I believe that he has been driving the team forward, quite literally. The way that he dribbles with the ball, charges towards the opposition before, releasing the ball to his team mates, has been superb and I feel that he has been key to this run we are on. I write this article on the day after a fantastic day out at The Emirates where we beat Manchester $ity very convincingly, and during this game at times I specifically just watched Rosicky rather the ball, just to see his work both on and off the ball. And I have to say he is such a hard working player, and I feel that this side of his game is undervalued and under praised. He tracks back quickly and effectively, he moves into space into the channels all the time and basically never stops moving. He makes a pass he moves he makes a tackle he gets back up and runs for the next one. This was really evident yesterday, and I think that his closing down ability is now a very big part of his game. Yesterday I thought we really saw the midfield trio of Rosicky, Arteta and Song put in a great shift and worked their socks, off and Rosicky really stood out for me. Arteta will get the headlines for his goal and rightly so because he has done a fantastic season in my opinion and he is also a very much underrated like Rosicky, but yesterday for me showed why Rosicky has been in such good form, because of his work rate and technique, I thought he was absolutely fantastic, and I hope it continues.

Therefore to conclude I feel that back in 06' we signed a player with immense quality and ability who shone through in his early days the club, but this was halted with a bit of a freak injury which no one had expected to last so long. On his return it seemed that we would never see the "Little Mozart" back to his best, but in recent months WE HAVE and boy can this boy play. In the last few months he has been superb and rightly so has kept the likes of Rambo and Gervinho out of the side due to his fantastic form which is largely down in my opinion to his exceptional work rate! I hope that we will be talking and raving about his form in Arsenal shirt for a long time to come. I love watching this player and hope that this continues to be the case. If we can add a few new faces to our squad to compliment the likes of Rosicky in attacking areas I feel we will have fantastic strength in depth because of the return to form of Rosicky and hopefully also the return to fitness and form of young Jack Wilshere! I for one could watch the "Little Mozart" all day! UP THE ARSENAL!!

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