Outspoken defender William Gallas still has a future at Arsenal, according to manager Arsene Wenger.
LONDON, England William Gallas' critical comments about his Arsenal team-mates might have cost him the captaincy, but they don't appear to have bought him a one-way ticket out of the Emirates Stadium.
Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has suggested he may recall the France defender, dropped from the squad at the weekend, for tomorrow's Champions League clash with Dynamo Kiev.
Gallas has always had a little bit of the maverick about him -- Chelsea claimed he had threatened to score an own goal in the first Premier League match of the season if he did not get to leave Stamford Bridge in the August transfer window of 2006.
Does Gallas have a point? Are Arsenal's players not up for the fight?
And when he got to Arsenal, assuming the captaincy following the sale of Thierry Henry in the summer of 2007, Gallas couldn't shake his destructive idiosyncrasies.
Exhibit B: the petulance he displayed when sat at the other end of the pitch as Birmingham took a late penalty to equalize at St Andrews last February really kick-started the Arsenal fans' desire to see the armband stripped from the 31-year-old.
Wenger, as is his way, stood firm and backed his man, perhaps all too aware he'd put himself in a position where he had to indulge the club's only top-drawer center-half.
But when Gallas, who earlier this season was photographed with a cigarette in his mouth in a nightclub, made his feelings about his team-mates clear, Wenger felt he had to act.
Gallas' defensive capabilities were missed in Saturday's 3-0 defeat to Manchester City. But his damage had been done as Arsenal turned in a dispirited display.
It was their fifth loss of a curate's egg of a season. Their Carling Cup kids have shone, brighter than even Wenger can have hoped, but in the Premier League the sparkle from the usual suspects has been missing too often.
Striker Emmanuel Adebayor spent most of the summer hankering after a move, while Cesc Fabregas has looked jaded and badly in need of an enforcer like Gilberto Silva or Mathieu Flamini alongside him. It is not the best interests of Fabregas or Arsenal to have the Spain midfielder babysit Denilson.
Perhaps it is the absence of a Gilberto or a Flamini, both of whom departed without replacement in the summer, that is particularly irking Gallas. They, after all, are the "soldiers" he believes the team are missing. And given Arsenal's increasingly soft center, it is difficult to argue with that.
So does Gallas have a point about Arsenal's lack of bravery? Does the truth hurt, Arsenal fans?
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