Alex Iwobi

Well fortunately Arsene did make the right subs. He got Gibbs on to help and that seemed to squelch the danger from the left. Barrow going off helped too but I think once Gibbs entered we would have dealt with that Better. Coq was shading to that side as well once he entered.

He has to work on his defensive game a lot.

Moving Sanchez back to left & shunning a good talent is not the answer. He only needs to be more defensively aware.

https://cdn-e1.streamable.com/video/mp4-mobile/r1mq.mp4?token=1477759652_eef602607bbbc9a180e93c507837043c7912be31

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His Okocha side coming out there

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This dribble alone made watching that match for ninety minutes worthwhile.

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I like the kid but heā€™s lack of defensive effort will bite us in the arse too many times this season if he continues to start.

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It will, but by a much smaller margin than the lack of offensive capability of anyone else in the squad starting in his place.

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Yeah Im not going to disagree with that.

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Mad to think we have one of the best talents in football in our team

Even more mad is that you think heā€™s one of the best talents in football.

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I think she meant young talent tbh.

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Canā€™t see Iwobi ever being better than Walcott though.

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Iā€™m aware of that

You donā€™t think Iwobi is one of the best talents in football right now?

Hard to not find a 20 year old as one of best talents after they have performed for a Top club for almost 5-6months straight; especially when he has performed against the likes of Chelsea, Barcelona.
He is a undisputed starter(albeit down to lack of options) for Arsenal atm, allowing Sanchez to move up front.

How many other talents have had better impact in last year or so?

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The best thing about Iwobi is that he does the simple things really well. He links up well, he find the right pass, he has nice close ball control and is just a generally tidy player.

He is just a good football player but when you start saying heā€™s one of the best talents in football it starts to get a bit outrageous.

As per usual Arsenal fans are quick to galvanize his talents.

Iā€™d argue quite comfortably that he hasnā€™t even had a bigger impact than Rashford or his compatriot Iheanacho.

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I say the best thing about Iwobi is he makes difficult things look really simple.
Probably why he didnā€™t get noticed for so long until Wenger took a hard look at him.

You can find skillful individuals but hard to find a team player who makes everyone around him perform better.

Going back to impact, it remains that very few have had similar impacts.
Rashford, Iheanacho, Dahoud etc.
Even 60m Martial & 40m Sane have not shown the consistency shown by Iwobi. (not saying he is better than them),
When i said ā€˜how many otherā€™, I wanted to get a list out of you to show how few eligible entries there will be and the phrase ā€˜one of the bestā€™ would seem logical to apply to Iwobi.

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Most of the world who are clearly aware of Iwobi since he has played for a top club for a while tend to have the likes of Sanches, Coman, Samper, Alli, Donnarumma, Rabiot, Rajkovic, Coric, Martial, Romagnoli, Barbosa, Dembele, Neves, Dahoud, Tielemans, Jesus, Weigl, Iheanacho, Rashford, Sane etc. on their lists and you could probably add another 10-15 names, but I have never seen a single one that wasnā€™t Arsenal-centric that had Iwobi on it. And saying

Probably why he didnā€™t get noticed for so long until Wenger took a hard look at him.

Is complete guess work, first of all Jonker does most of the looking and what has actually been said about Iwobi IIRC is that he correctly wasnā€™t ā€˜noticedā€™ because he didnā€™t stand out for a long time and then suddenly got his shit together in a short time.

I mean I love the kid :smiley: but if youā€™re asking for a list, those names are the ones youā€™d get from everywhere outside of north london or PL centric journos. For me he has a bit to add, some concentration off the ball and some defensive work, maybe a few goals and heā€™s there, and things can change so fast at that age that those things could be a few games away if weā€™re lucky! I would love it all day long if we had a full feathered top of the line AM roll out of our academy :heart_eyes:

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I think I can make a good case of Iwobi having had better impact than quite a few in that list.
Samper, Coric, Martial, Neves, Tielemans particularly.
I donā€™t even know why Samper is even in that list, as he has played only once.
I can reduce your list by 10-15 easy i say.

As i said, We are not saying he is the best but ā€˜one of the bestā€™.

People who are not Arsenal centric always tend to underrate our players as well, see Koscielny.
Took them a while to acknowledge Bellerin, still donā€™t rate Coquelin. I wouldnā€™t put much weight on their thoughts.
Iwobi lacks hype to be in their list.

Tbf Iwobiā€™s sample size in terms of minutes played is still quite a bit short in comparison to a lot of these players. Heā€™s now played how much? 10 full games in the league and 2-3 in Europe? Thatā€™s hardly enough to really draw big comparisons when others are playing week in week out for their clubs while having their ups and downs. Consistency isnā€™t really something Iā€™d be looking in Iwobiā€™s game quite yet.

True, I guess we should wait a bit longer.

But so far, he has shown a lot for me to be optimistic.

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