Arnautovic's Fall From Grace
The Stoke CIty man has fallen onto hard times as of late after experiencing a brilliant spell of play.
One could argue that Marko Arnautovic hit the golden days of his career last spring. Nearly everything he probably could've imagined was going right for him. He ended up scoring 11 goals and also got 6 assists by the end of the season to help propel his club, Stoke City, to a somewhat surprising 9th place finish. To add on to that success Arnautovic also scored 3 goals and assisted 2 for his native Austria en route to their qualification for the EUROs. Arnautovic and his team weren't expected just to merely satisfy themselves with participating in the tournament, in fact, they were actually considered by numerous journalists as potential darkhorses to win it all. I remember reading a Bleacher Report article about his rocky past but how this was the turnaround in his career and how he would become a special player.
Alas, this was not to be the case because all of his success and reason for optimism was soon shattered and replaced with agony and shame. Arnautovic's Austria, once heralded as good enough to win it all, shockingly crashed out of the tournament without much of a fight in the group stages. They suffered horrid defeats at the hands of inferior, yet much more inspired opponents in Iceland and Hungary and managed only a draw against Portugal. Partially at fault for Austria's failure to capitalize on this weaker group was Arnautovic. He failed to score a single goal, but then again the entire Austrian team only mustered one that came against Iceland and so he is certainly not the only one at fault.
Unfortunately, the misery for Arnautovic is not over yet as things have looked quite bleak for him and Stoke City. Stoke currently are in 19th and in the relegation zone and have put in some pretty awful performances this season such as their 4-1 defeat to a decent but not spectacular Crystal Palace side. They've already conceded 4 goals on 3 different occasions and the attack hasn't been of much use either as they've only scored 5 goals. Just as with Austria, Arnautovic is not entirely at fault here because his teammates are most definitely underperforming as well, but he needs to try and revert to his fantastic form he had last season. If he fails to do so with some urgency, then his Stoke may suffer a similar fate as Austria and crash out of the Premier League when no one had expected it.
