Robin van Persie has qualities similar to Lionel Messi; claims Wenger

Not quite. Arsenal had endured a nerve-shredding first-half and, at times, the football was pedestrian. Arsenal are still struggling to find their fluency and, as Bolton manager Owen Coyle ruefully commented, they were “there for the taking”.

A team in better form than Bolton, now bottom having gone into free-fall at the end of last season and the beginning of this, would have exploited that but, eventually, Arsenal ran out easy winners with Van Persie collecting two goals to reach the century landmark.

Impressively, Van Persie has scored 26 goals in 31 games this year while not being a conventional centre-forward. “On that front, I see similarities positional-wise with Messi,” Wenger said. “He comes deep and likes to turn up in attack as well. Don’t make me make a comparison with Messi but just positional-wise he doesn’t play like a real centre-forward.”

Wenger praised Van Persie’s maturity, something he hopes to accelerate further having awarded him the captaincy, and hailed the Dutchman as a “super-talent technically”, and no one who witnessed this performance, and the technique shown in claiming those two goals, would argue with that.