All this talk about Ramsey might be moot now, depending on his injury. Assuming it's serious enough to keep him out for weeks, I think it may induce Emery to entertain Ozil more, assuming that he can get himself back into our matchday squad. I also think that the injury to Holding will probably induce Emery to return to a back-4 out of necessity. Depending on when we see the full return of Kos, Monreal and Mavropanos.
Do you have stats showing that Torreira's completion rate for forward passes is poor or that he just doesn't try many? I mean, yeah, he's certainly no Fab or Cazorla, but I think his passing and overall forward progression is a lot better than Coquelin's.
It's more attempts than anything else: he plays a lot of safe passes. See this, and look at deep progressions (hard to compare with Coquelin because Statsbomb didn't track deep progressions back then): Lucas Torreira, Arsenal 18-19.Wuv. Twue Wuv... pic.twitter.com/cp24RYJRP0— StatsBomb (@StatsBomb) November 16, 2018 Then look at this article, with key quote (emphasis mine): "His most frequent passes [against Crystal Palace] were 11 to Shkodran Mustafi, 11 to Granit Xhaka (playing leftback, which admittedly makes everything weird) and 10 to Rob Holding. The week before against Leicester City, in a much better attacking performance, the pattern was the same with 15 to Mustafi, 12 to Xhaka and 11 to Bellerin. None of this is bad. There are lots of very successful defensive midfielders who profile this way. Win the ball back, settle possession with safe passes, be an option to rotate possession, and don’t make stupid mistakes. That’s the recipe for a very good player. It’s also somebody who needs to be surrounded with passing to succeed."
Well I think it is his ability to make the odd pass through or make a run that makes him special. As you said, I am happy to have him pick up and tackle and keep the ball moving but he can do a bit more, which world class DMs can do and right now, he is possibly the best DM after Kante.
Torreira is not Alonso but I’m happy with his distribution and odd pass forward This is why Xhaka works so well because he passes forward quickly from balls torreira plays to him
And just to clarify, I never said nor thought Torreira was the new Alonso, just that his passing is better (more progressive) than Coquelin's.
Torreira does what is asked of him, the humble soldier that he is. He's playing straight DM, not Hollywood-DM. We don't have another midfielder who can defend like him, so he has to be limited. We saw Duzy starting games at the beginning of the season, but as someone mentioned in another thread, he tends to drift across the pitch too much, which is probably why Emery dropped him for Torreira.