He can stop and fine his opponents like a true police officer for years to come now
Anyone see Charlie Nicholasâs comments regarding Coquelin?
âSanti Cazorla is out for a long period, Mohamed Elneny is away and Jack Wilshere is on loan, so Arsene Wenger certainly canât afford to let him [Coquelin] go right now.â
âHowever, when everybodyâs fit and fresh Coquelin would be lucky to get in the 18. I would sell him in the summer when everybody is fit.â
I canât see us offering him a new deal only to throw him out the door a few months later. Nicholas is in dreamland anyway, âwhen everybody is fitâ, ha, good one!
Heâs an idiot - Coquelin is a key part of our squad. One of the weirder things this season have been fans attacking Coquelin. I think heâs been decent for the most part.
Might have been a bit harsh when I said in MDC Charlie Nicholas is a worse pundit than Merson
Coq is the best ball-winning midfielder we have at the club, and when playing a 2-man central midfield a ball-winning midfielder is absolutely crucial, so in a sense his role and position is absolutely cemented here atm.
The problem is that unless partnered by a skilled quick agile passing artisan a 2-man midfield just comes up short (not taking wide players into account), and only Santi is even close to filling that role here, so picking any two out of Coq, Ramsey, Elneny and Xhaka will fall short, Ox is well off, Jack is away and he isnât perfectly suited either.
It may look alright vs. teams that park bus and let us have 70% possession, then theyâre never pressured and you donât rely on a quick passing midfielder to play out of pressure. But look at the teams who didnât.
Everton who fought hard for midfield and more or less won it, we were way too slow to start attacks from central even though the channels and space was there, they offered it too us, we were just too poor centrally to profit from it.
City were slower than Everton and there was plenty of space but we couldnât pass around a stoic Yaya Toure and still failed.
At United Mou congested mid and forced us to solve the problem wide, a clever move since we played Ramsey and Theo wide along with two fullbacks with average technique and none of them got anything done for 90 minutes straight. But we didnât exactly have better options in the squad anyway (Perez?).
Some other teams can solve the problem i.e. relieve pressure by supplying wide full backs to stretch midfield and create space to then be able to play their way out of a press, or even have them take the ball all the way up to the final third (Marcelo for example is absolutely outstanding at both), but that requires full backs with great control, technique and passing and we have no such full backs, so we rely heavily on a Santi-like player to do the job.
And with Santi being 32yo and starting to have these longer injuries, us playing a midfield-centric football, with a manager who is addicted to midfielders and building around them, I wouldnât be surprised if we actually went and bought yet -another- midfielder like this unless Xhaka (or someone else) start progressing a lot faster soon.
Every squad needs a destroyer. Handy to have even if not used every week. There would literally be no good thing to come from losing a player like Coquelin, unless replaced with a Vidal type player which lets face it isnât gonna happen.
I tend to find its our continental friends that arent big on Coquelin, which you can attribute to different footballing cultures.
A more disciplined squad could survive without a Coquelin, however the current iteration of Arsenal cannot.
Furthermore, a âdestroyerâ, or rather someone who excels primarily on the defensive side of football, can be found in all the top teams in the league.
In Chelseaâs case, they have two in Matic and Kante. How anyone can watch Arsenal over the last 20 years and have the audacity to suggest we donât need a player like Coquelin is beyond me.
Mr Charlie Nicholas might just have bought himself a one way ticket to the cunt list with his dumbass remarks. Fully fit squad? Pah. I spit in the face of such a dream.
Maybe because our most successful midfields didnât have someone like Coquelin.
Guessing you didnât watch 03/04 then. The invisible wall ring any bells?
Gilberto Silva was a much better overall footballer than Coquelin. Better defender, smarter and better on the ball.
The entire squad was better. The fact is his key attribute was breaking up play.
Therefor you asserting our midfields didnât have a player âlikeâ Coquelin, is simply ignorant.
No youâre putting words in my mouth, when I said we didnât have a player like Coquelin I didnât mean that Arsenal didnât had a defensibly-minded midfielder, I meant that we didnât have a player that lacked the basic tools of a good midfielder.
I didnt put words in your mouth. You just didnât articulate your thoughts well. I do it all the time too its no big deal.
Coquelin in no way lacks anything, and for the record, Gilberto Silva receieved very similar criticism that Coquelin does now. Namely, poor passing and build up.
The two are highly comparable and thus, demonstrates that you were incorrect on this occaision
I donât agree that Gilberto was better on the ball at all. Both simple users of the ball surrounded by quality - our current team being worse probably exposes Coquelinâs deficiencies more. I would argue Gilberto was actually worse technically.
I think the difrence might be that Gilberto was better at defending that coq
Gilberto was nicknamed the invisible wall for a reason. The guy was tactically aware of everything.
There arenât many midfielders with Le Coqâs skills so we wouldnât find a good replacement for him.
Fine by me, certainly wouldnât want another midfielder like Coquelin anyways.
Tell me who we are gonna replace him with.
Iâm not a scout and follow a very limited amount of football these days, but I think it would be relatively easy to come up with a number of names.
Leandro Paredes is one that has been mentioned and comes to mind. Tolisso another. Even NâZonzi is a player that youâd have to say is a far better and more complete midfielder than Coquelin at this point.