London – Robin van Persie saw Arsenal’s performance at Anfield two weeks ago and used it to motivate himself at Southampton.
Their display against Liverpool was probably the best I’ve seen from them in four or five years. Van Persie will have digested the result and considered for a moment if he had made the right choice in leaving.
He will have seen the service Lukas Podolski and Olivier Giroud are getting from Santiago Cazorla and wondered if he had left just as Arsenal were clicking. Winning so well at Anfield a week after the champions went there and struggled is impressive. It’s early days but it is possible that they could challenge for the title.
Van Persie knows he must not fail at Manchester United. He left Arsenal because he wanted to win trophies and it will be unthinkable for him if Arsenal win one this season and United don’t.
It must be a massive motivation for him and it showed against Southampton. Having missed a penalty, he could see the negative headlines. So he had to make amends. He’s taken responsibility for his team already because of his personal mission to win something. He has to make sure he’s scoring and that his team are winning and doing better than Arsenal.
Van Persie looks like an inspired signing for United, who have bought the finished article, the outstanding player in the Premier League last season. If he hadn’t been there in the last two games, they would have struggled.
People used to goad the Arsenal fans by saying they were a one-man team but Manchester United don’t look much different.
It’s unusual for a new signing to start so well – normally there is more of a bedding-in period. But he was in such a rich vein of form that the switch doesn’t matter.
He’s clearly enjoying playing with Paul Scholes. Wayne Rooney has been the United talisman since Cristiano Ronaldo left and you don’t ever want him out injured. But Van Persie’s presence means his absence is not a crisis.
Not many players who have left Arsenal in their prime have gone on to be hugely successful. Think of Marc Overmars, Emmanuel Petit, Alex Hleb. But Van Persie will want to emulate Patrick Vieira, who also left at 29 and won a host of trophies in Italy.
PRAYING FOR PEACE AT QPR
There is so much riding on the game at Loftus Road between QPR and Chelsea after what happened between John Terry and Anton Ferdinand last season.
Chelsea have started well but they did last season, too, and then unravelled after the defeat at QPR. They need to avoid a repeat. More importantly, it is vital that everyone involved — players, staff, fans — should treat each other with respect.
We should be talking about football after the game, not another unsavoury incident. The players must set the right tone, even though passions will, as ever, be running high for a local derby. – Daily Mail