Santi Cazorla

Yup, season over.
Dire football to follow, unless Wenger finds the balance again.

Behave. Your posts make me want to slit my wrists. Stop catastrophising for 5 minutes because it’s genuinely not benefiting anyone.

Cazorla is a solid midfielder, but virtually everyone has some obsession at any random point in the year about players that are injured that if fit would magically make us title condenders.

I’m gonna make this abruptly clear for you, Cazorla is not a world class midfielder that dominates games and single handedly wins matches. He has had just as many poor games and mistakes as any other player in the midfield, and has been part of tons of lineups that have been utterly dominated.

If he was fit and Xhaka was injured, the you would be going on and on and on and fucking on about how the midfield sucks and how the season is over.

Christ almighty get over it and move on. The season isn’t over.

Lol pretty much sums up his posting style :smiley:

He’s like a broken record? You sure you don’t want to aim that at a few other posters?

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Sometimes the absence of a player who is maybe not a ‘world class midfielder’ can hurt as much when the player in question is unique in the squad and has no proper substitute. That is the case with Cazorla. Xhaka doesn’t provide what he does.

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Absolutely agree with this, we are a different and better side with Cazorla in the team. He’s absolutely intrinsic to our style, and that’s not to say he’s the best midfielder in the world or even at the club but without him we don’t play as well, and that’s been obvious in the last several weeks.

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My point is; with him we have games where we still lose. He alone isn’t the key to victory and there has been more than a few occasions where he has been on field and not performed.

Putting him on a pedastool and assuming he makes us some silky team that can go toe to toe with anyone is utter bollocks and needs to stop.

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Indeed. Santi would take less to recover than my father.

Was about to post it. You were right about his fitness in the summer.

Santi is world class for me as he transitioned from further up field to a deeper role and the fact that he became a key player for us and arguably a better player in the process.

Not playing much for Spain should not be held against him. How many superior DLP’s are there in the PL?

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this is not the type of record that is broken around here :laughing:

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We wouldn’t have won anything of note this season anyway but this is terrible news for a few reasons.

  1. Statistics show we win more with Cazorla in the side by a substantial margin.
  2. He’s a beautiful player to watch and makes watching us week in week out less painful.
  3. It could very well be his last game for AFC given he’s 32 and out of contract.
  4. the AKB will use it as the excuse as to why Wenger has failed in the league for a 13th consecutive campaign.
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Thats quite a fair post imo. He hasnt consistantly performed for about 3 years now.
The fact he was seen as the key play maker alone this season is the problem here.
His injury record alone and age should have made Wenger act more proactive in the market this season.

Obviously this team is lacking a lot more than just Cazorla. But I think, in that little good stretch we had earlier this season, that for our style of football to work optimally we need all the intelligence and creativity on the pitch that this squad possesses. That means Cazorla, Ozil, Sanchez and even Iwobi to a degree all need to play. If one or two of those guys are missing and we have to play three of more guys out of Ramsey, Elneny, Coquelin/Xhaka, Chamberlain at the same time we are missing those things to play well and there are serious limitations on our performances. That’s why, imo, we need to add a winger and a cm in the summer.

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You are right i think I am being a little aggressive atm.

I suppose we do need absolutely everyone playing to have any kind of consistency and reliability.

As for a CM, I genuinely think Wilshere returning would be unreal for the team and would more than plug the Cazorla gap. Furthermore, as you mentioned, an Alexis level winger would be astounding.

What kind of a point is this though? Of course we still lose games with him, we lose games with Sanchez and Ozil. We’d lose games with Messi too. I don’t think a single person thinks otherwise.

The point is that we generally get better results and play better football with him in the side. That’s not the same as saying we never lose or play badly when he plays.

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The point is people assume Cazorla fixes everything when he really, really doesn’t.

Edit: i feel what you highlighted alone distort my opinion a little. I think the second paragraph gives a little context and makes my view easier to understand.

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Cazorla is so versatile he breaks down the bus parkers and counters the all out attack teams just as well. Such a unique player for a long time in Arsenal. I don’t see much of la liga or bundesliga but are there (m)any players like him there? Marchisio a couple years back was kinda similar I guess. Or 2012 montolivo but a shit version of santi obviously.

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I don’t think Cazorla is the answer to a lot of our problems but he is a key player when we are playing well.
I think the problem is, that when he doesn’t play, we don’t have a suitable replacement.

I agree.
This would be the ideal scenario.
Sanchez upfront, with a proper world class winger and Ozil as our attacking line up.

But I’m still not convinced if Wenger sees Sanchez as our striker, so he might opt for a top quality striker and have Sanchez playing wide.

Either way, Cazorla probably needs replacing.

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Perhaps you are right but I just don’t see him moving Alexis. If he was in any rush to get Alexis on the wing he wouldn’t have benched Giroud imo.