Throwback Thursday: 2009/10 - When Abou Diaby had the world at his feet
When Arsenal made the decision to allow Patrick Vieira to leave the club in 2005 - one Arsene Wenger claimed was taken to ensure Cesc Fabregas saw the game time required to keep him at the club - many felt that the Gunners would face an impossible task to replace their captain.
The club had missed out on the Premier League title to Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea having gone unbeaten in the 2003/04 campaign and began to fall well off the pace in the season’s that followed Vieira’s departure. Their midfield partnerships in 2005/06 and 2007/08 didn’t really click, with too much arguably required of Fabregas - a teenager at the time - alongside Gilberto Silva.
The Spaniard needed more freedom. A platform from which to express himself further upfield and it wasn’t until the 2009/10 season that he was really let off the leash so to speak.
Alexandre Song had become an important player for the side, but it was the energy of one Abou Diaby alongside the Cameroonian that ensured the Gunners’ midfield was a real area of strength once more.
The Frenchman had been signed in the January of 2006 as a 19-year old from Auxerre and immediately drew comparisons to compatriot Vieira in the way he got about the pitch. Both stand at 6’4” and loomed above the majority of their opponents in the middle ground, stretching out their seemingly telescopic limbs to pick pockets and set the side back on the front foot.
Diaby was still very raw at the time, however, and was never likely to start at such a young age with Fabregas already very much a first team regular. His prominence grew year-on-year, but niggling injuries restricted his impact and offered a sign of things to come until said 2009/10 campaign. It was the first time he had started a season fully fit in two years and he would go on to take the Premier League by storm and, in turn, allowed Fabregas to do the same.
He was the archetypal box-to-box midfielder, averaging three tackles, three interceptions and three successful dribbles per 90 minutes in the Premier League. Diaby started 26 times in England’s top-flight and a further seven on route to the Champions League quarter-finals and he became a fan favourite in no small part to a stunning record at the Emirates Stadium.
In said season Diaby scored six league goals and registered three assists, all of which came in 14 appearances at home. A sensational overall WhoScored.com rating of 7.76 - the fifth highest in the Premier League - rose to an astonishing 8.38 at home, which was a score only bettered by the division’s top scorer Didier Drogba.
With five games of the season remaining Arsenal were just three points off the top before a collapse saw them fall 11 points short, but there was a sense that their young and well-balanced midfield would ensure they didn’t fall further behind.
Disaster struck for the midfielder early into the following season, however, when suffering an ankle injury against Bolton. It initially kept him out for just one game, but upon his return, with Diaby clearly not at full fitness, Arsenal suffered back-to-back defeats before the Frenchman returned to the treatment room for the next two months.
He didn’t start a league game again until February, and it looked like being a dream comeback as Arsenal raced into a 4-0 lead at Newcastle. Diaby saw red shortly after half-time, however, and the Gunners went on to concede four goals and two points. Another injury followed the subsequent suspension and the rest, as they say, is history.
Despite a fleeting return from various ankle and muscular injuries in 2012/13 he suffered a cruciate ligament injury that would keep him out for the entirety of the following campaign and, in effect, end a career that, for one season at least, promised so much.
All in all, over the course of a 13-year senior career ravaged by injuries Diaby started just 102 league games, over a quarter of which came in 2009/10. The midfielder only retired from football last month at the age of 32 having been without a club for 18 months.
Diaby could have become a hero at Arsenal, but instead is often remembered for the injuries that followed a superb campaign more so than the campaign itself.
