The Worst Arsenal XI of the Premier League Era

Arsenal have won three Premier League titles, eight FA Cups since football started in 1992, and reached a Champions League final. That takes some really, seriously good footballers. 

Arsenal have also been one of the funniest clubs in English football for about a decade. That takes...something else. 

Here – with a vague minimum appearance quota of '20ish' in all competitions that somehow excludes almost all of the club's bad wingers – is Arsenal's worst XI of the Premier League era. It's in something resembling a 4-4-2, you can argue the specifics of positions among yourselves.

Goalkeeper and Defenders

David Ospina (GK): There's a case to be made that maybe Richard Wright deserves this spot, or perhaps Manuel Almunia. They would be good cases. But David Ospina is a tiny, legless, Quaver-wristed shambles who once collected a set piece behind his own goalline. 

Carl Jenkinson (RB): Was JENKO responsible for one of the all-time great footballer sightings? Yes he was. Was he lovably s***, and worth watching just to see what he'd do in a Premier League game? Absolutely. Is he Arsenal's worst Premier League right-back? Obviously. 

Igor Stepanovs (CB): Dishonourable mentions for Pascal Cygan, Philippe Senderos, Mikael Silvestre and – screw it – Johan Djourou too. 

Sébastien Squillaci (CB): Incredibly, delightfully satisfying name to get around your mouth-hole. An international for France and CORSICA. But he started playing for ​Arsenal at the age of 30 and – tellingly – stopped playing for France in the same year. Might've just on the downward slope. Might've just generally been crap. We may never know. 

Armand Traore (LB): A France Under-21 prospect plucked from Monaco's youth system by Wenger-era Arsenal (obviously), but the weirdest part of the five-cap Senegal international's career isn't him being really average at the Emirates or the time he ended up in police custody for 10 hours for bringing a knuckle-duster to a north London derby, but the fact that the only league football he's played outside England is...10 ​Serie A games for ​Juventus. On loan. What? 

Midfielders

Francis Coquelin (CM): Here follows a list of things I have called Francis Coquelin. 'The most aggressively pointless footballer to ever step on a pitch'. 'Not good at football'. 'Single-handedly responsible for the demise of Santi Cazorla'. 'The World's Most Frustrating Player©'. 'The Premier League's most inexplicable entity'.

Denilson (CM): Buying Denilson wasn't a bad idea, on the face of it. Brazil youth captain, not much club football under his belt but a clear underlying something. Played over 150 games for the Gunners and was actively good in about half a dozen of them. 

Joel Campbell (RW): Yeah, this feels mean. Joel Campbell was (is?) a perfectly acceptable football player, and the man's played international football nearly a hundred times. He's scored at a World Cup! But he played a total of 23 Premier League games despite spending longer contracted to Arsenal than Robert Pires...partly because he couldn't get a work permit for two years, and partly because Arsene Wenger hated the idea of playing him, ever. 

Gervinho (LW): You're telling me that I'm supposed to respect the football of a man with that hairline who won't just bald it off? Absolutely not. 

Strikers

Christopher Wreh (ST): Let's bring out the phrase 'plucked from Monaco's youth system' again for Wreh, who is probably the only player to have Persepolis and Bishops Stortford back to back on his Wikipedia page. Anyway, being a striker who scored five goals in 46 games is...not good. 

Lucas Perez (ST): Oh boy, speaking of strikers who didn't score enough. One in 11 in the league for Perez, who looked – speaking as someone who watched him up close and personal in one too many League Cup games – like a man who'd been told someone was going to strangle his dog if he took a shot. Also saw him score a Premier League brace for West Ham, when Neil Etheridge scooped one of his shots in before letting another go through his legs. Weird. 

For more from Chris Deeley, follow him on Twitter at @ThatChris1209!