Why has Andre Santos failed to deliver at Arsenal? When I heard Andre Santos was moving to Arsenal I was happy and thought the club had purchased a great player who would become a vital part of the team.

I saw him play at Fenerbache in Turkey and I was immediately impressed. He had a great ability to run back and forth from the left back position to the opposition box in very little time and retain his stamina, not only this but he caused the defenders for the other team as many problems as the strikers were causing.

He was able to get down the wing and take on defenders with his dribbling and pace and cause trouble by whipping in dangerous crosses and even shooting from crazy distances and scoring amazing goals. He seemed like a hidden gem of a player at the time and many clubs in Europe had their eye on him when he was at Fenerbache.

He may have displayed good attacking skill but Arsenal fans will know, he has never had any defensive skill at all. At Fenerbache he didn’t need to defend because the other players around him were good enough to cover for him and let him keep attacking down the wing.

He even broke into the Brazil team during his time in Turkey and became the first choice left back, keeping players like Marcelo out of the team. He has a total of 29 caps for Brazil which is more than a lot of good players have ever reached, if he has this many caps for Brazil he must have been half decent.

And so he arrived at Arsenal and I expected him to become Arsenal’s version of Roberto Carlos. We all know how his Arsenal career went, terrible performances because of terrible defending. Half the time he did get forward with the ball where he usually shines, he still couldn’t make an impact and eventually was muscled out of the team by Kieran Gibbs.

With the arrival of Monreal and the continuous growth of Gibbs it is certain that his time at the club is over and he will be sold to whoever will take him.

This may be a controversial opinion about why he didn’t work out at Arsenal but I think it’s because the rest of the defenders were not able to cover for him when he wanted to get forward. A left back should be able to defend but Santos is magic when attacking down the left wing, if the rest of the defence was stronger maybe we would have seen better things from Santos.

Things could have been so different for Santos and the club if he had performed well in his two years at the club, time to move on.

12 thoughts on “What went wrong with Andre Santos at Arsenal?

  1. Santos should play in the left midfield or left wing.if Wenger can convert him he would be a wonderful striker. I still remember that goal against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. It was a delight. He should be given a chance as a squad player but not in the defence.

  2. I actually don’t think its time over. I hope I’m wrong but I can see santos in the squad next season as a left wing alternative to podolski chamberlain gervinho ryo. He is certainly different in that he has slightly more defensive nous than all of them. He was also well liked around the club until that fateful afternoon when he made a bad error of judgement over the rvp shirt incident. I actually find it ironic that our fans ended with a non footballing reason to hate santos over when his poor defensive lapses were so easily forgiven.
    Have to say of the players currently left at the club he is in my top 5 for the chop coming in at 5 behind park chamakh bendtner denilson. My next 4 out would include fabianski mannone gervinho diaby.

  3. Please this guy is a joker…good for nothing except for his exceptional taste for jersey- always go for opponent top players for their jersey. I hope Wenger is mentality alright next season to quickly take notice of this joker and explore of ways to ship him as soon as he could..to me he is a liability to Arsenal and since we talked big about winning trophies next season, having him around is like putting a time bomb next to team…

  4. Santos allowed himself to get totally out of shape. Can he slim down and re-gain his focus? Last year, during preseason training, he was working out a lot on left wing. Right now, I can’t figure out where he might fit into the squad because we’ve got so many better alternatives in virtually every position. Maybe loan him out to another EPL side? Or La Liga– didn’t we sign a deal with some SPL side to shuffle off a couple of loanees every year? That, or bamboozle some Turkish team to buy him?

  5. I think that he also saw much better opposition right wingers in the Premier League than he came up against in Turkey. Much faster with much better skills.

    I think that he could have found a home as a left winger but even there now he would be behind Cazorla, Podolski and the Ox, basically no chance.

    1. Good point about the quality of opposition in the EPL. There are really only 3 or 4 decent teams in Turkey.

  6. bc says: “He was also well liked around the club until that fateful afternoon when he made a bad error of judgement over the rvp shirt incident. I actually find it ironic that our fans ended with a non footballing reason to hate santos over when his poor defensive lapses were so easily forgiven.”

    Are you serious, did you watch any of the games he played he was a liability and is simply not good enough for this level of football. He should never have been bought in the first place.

  7. What went wrong was he was always a beach football wing back and for some unknown reason Wenger paid good money for him. Once they worked out i] He has poor positional sense ii] he always goes forward into a one on one and iii] he saunters back when recovering …… that’s all the oppo. Coach / Manager needs to know.

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