i haven't seen this game but, for all his faults (and he has many), it feels like xhaka is currently the only central midfielder we have who can be a creator. others can have their moments of creative passes but, for just orchestrating, it does not feel like any other can. or am i missing someone? the one buy would certainly need to be someone to do that job. i mean, if torreira can ever get healthy and into the rotation, i think he and guendouzy can be the 2nd at the bottom of the triangle and we have other (young?) options who can (MAYBE?) play more forward.
He’s only missed two games against teams in the top 8, the loss to Liverpool and the draw with Tottenham.
One thing I'm not sure we've considered on this board--what if the club has ordered Arteta to not play Ozil to save on appearance fees? Or what if it's retaliation for not accepting the wage cut?What if Auba gets appearance bonuses but only if he plays as striker?
If we finish in EL places, we are going to continue the same stupid cycle. For the good of the club, we need to tank, which seems to be what we're doing
Unfortunately we don't get it in the states. Besides the fact that New Zealand got their cover-19 response right, this is another reason to be jealous of your situation.
They have been playing lots of old baseball and basketball games, so I hadn't really checked to see if they were playing anything live. You normally only find Rugby tournaments on ESPN and ESPN 2. World Cup, Six Nations, and Seven aside Rugby. But I guess without anything else live right now, they're looking for content. I will check it out.
The games have been very competitive so far The only issue is they have changed the breakdown rules which is leading to a lot of penalties
Just heard Guendouzie may receive a 3-match ban for violent conduct. As much as some people might like our guys sticking up for Leno, it's clearly a stupid move by Matteo so a ban would probably not be defensible. And it would be just the latest loss of player in the first 180 mins of football! Xhaka, Mari, Leno, Guen, and the most minor of all Luiz. Did I miss anybody???? [Edit: Since then I’ve heard that the FA is NOT going to punish Guen. No idea why, but he’s a lucky boy. And I guess in turn so is Mikel and the club.] The other thing I heard is that the PaddyPower is calling our next match against Soton even... identical odds. Oh how the mighty have fallen. Time for a new thread perhaps so all of this positive stuff can be mulled over?
He's done very well for age 21 But it would be good if Arteta can teach him how to play central midfield properly
Last season he had top ten numbers for ball progression, but this year he seems very uncertain. Definitely plateau'd hard
I think the worst thing for Guen was Arsenal not having anyone better. I think he has the potential to be a really great player, but becoming a first team regular has really stunted his development and let him get stuck in bad habits.
We have heard continually that his attitude/maturity is poor and that jibes well with pretty much all the body language we can read of him on the pitch.
Development between 19 and 23 is a total crapshoot. So many promising 19 year olds stop developing and lots of average 19 year olds make huge leaps. See - Kane, Harry
For sure. My supposition on this is that teams have gotten fairly good at developing players technically, physically, and tactically (to a lesser extent) but not as much mentally yet. That mental growth and development has to come later in the cycle
That's why Dortmund has such an impressive youth development program. They really try to train vision and anticipation into their players. They also seem to greatly benefit from everybody at the club being on the same page.