Marouane Chamakh: Season Review

Marouane Chamakh is a football player. He once played football. He played in 19 games for Arsenal this year. He scored a goal. He assisted a goal. He moved around. The lack of embellishment or detail here is deliberate. Follow us after the jump for extended thoughts!

Paul: Tony Fernandez, Don Majkowski, Steve DeBerg, Marouane Chamakh. What do these names have in common? They were all replaced by better players who went on to have stellar careers. Jeter, Favre, and Elway all overshadowed their competition to the point where nobody remembers much about them, and Chamakh is the same. He’s a decent-but-not-great player who happens to play the same position at the same time as one Robin van Persie, and no matter how good Chamakh is, his ceiling is nowhere near RvP’s, so he isn’t about to get any significant minutes in a van Persie-driven Arsenal team. He did score a goal this year, which probably made his mom really super proud of him, but with only 19 appearances I have a feeling we’ve seen the last of Mr. Chamakh in Arsenal colors.

Grade: Is apathy a grade? If so I guess it’s a C.

Aidan: The biggest compliment I can pay to Marouane Chamakh is that I hardly remember him being bad this season. I also don't remember him being good. Hell, I remember like two of his appearances; he was kind of good against Norwich at the end of the season, and kind of good against Blackburn in the beginning of the season, where he scored his only goal. He was the only other player at Arsenal who could replicate van Persie's movement, but he couldn't replicate his scoring run. The 10 goals at the beginning of last season was probably an anomaly, as were the goals he didn't score this season. The problem is that because he didn't look like scoring when he did play, for whatever reasons, form, fitness and confidence chief among them, he never got an extended run in the team. If he'd been in better form, Arsene Wenger could've had more options, either playing 4-4-2 or rotating van Persie or playing van Persie behind Chamakh, and Arsenal could've been a better team. He wasn't, though, and after his shisha escapades, it's probably time for Chamakh to go.

Grade: F

Thomas: I guess I don't really get the point of Marouane Chamakh. He perpetually showed up on the bench for games, and when he actually played he contributed next to nothing. I don't think this was really his fault, he's just not that good. He's not good enough to overcome sparse playing time, and he's not good enough to earn more playing time, so he was really up against it and honestly, I would have liked to see Park Chu-Young get a chance instead every now and again. Assuming that he's real, of course. Anyway, Chamakh will likely not play here next year one way or the other; either he'll be sold to get him off our books, or he'll fester on the bench behind other, better strikers. He won't really be missed. I'm not mad at you, Marouane, just disappointed. I guess we'll always have the first half of last season, though.

Grade: lolololololol

Ted: There was a time last season when I thought that Chamakh's free transfer was a masterstroke. His movement was very good the role he was asked to play, and he was scoring some (admittedly gunky) goals. He offered something different in the middle for Arsenal, and he even could pass some. But then the wheels fell off the bus at some point, and basically since then he's made a number of ten-minute cameos with little to show. His movement is still good, and he seems like he's trying out there (as against Norwich near the season's end this year), but it just...it's just not working. Form and confidence are part of this, but there is very little chance that Chamakh has any kind of effect on next year for Arsenal, if he's around. He just didn't get it done this year, either way, and the fact that Wenger rode van Persie into the earth rather than give the Moroccan a start says a lot.

Grade: F

What do you all think of Chamakh?