Perfect, player plus cash for Maddison
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What do we reckon? Is he staying with us this season? Played CM/DM, LW during preseason and he finally made a rare cameo at RB in our last match.
Him and Arteta seem to be often discussing during goal celebrations and breaks so I think they might be back on good terms.
One to watch in the final weeks of the window.
Look very hard to know, if he does we need him to play RB, I still think out of all the RB options we have he’s the best.
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Out of all the positions he can play RB is the one that gets him the most minutes here too.
He can stay as a midfielder if he wants to but at best he’ll be backup like Lokonga and Elneny.
I think he eventually goes once he realizes game time will be limited and Arsenal may want to use the 15-20m we’ll get for him to fund a move for someone else.
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If we didn’t need him last season, what’s changed?
We have less games to play now so he might as well move on with his career.
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Players that used to be above him in the pecking order are/might be gone. Willock and Ceballos are gone. Guendouzi and Torreira still gone. Bellerin could be gone too. And this is my gut feeling but I think Elneny isn’t safe with a year left in his contract.
Still, there’s no guarantee he gets sufficient game time as we still have others at RB and Partey and Xhaka are the first names in that pivot.
Shouldn’t matter if Bellerin is gone or not if AMN is open to play RB, put simply he’s better than Hector.
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Not for Arteta. Or at least he hasn’t shown that he trusts Ainsley over Bellerin yet.
I actually think AMN would be a good RB option for the style Arteta seems to want to implement with more aggressive high pressing.
In a vacuum, if he is willing to play that position and you can give me two to keep then I want to keep Chambers and AMN. Play Chambers against the mid-to-low table teams that we expect to boss around and AMN against the much more dangerous teams where you need an elite athlete to run big distances and defend in space against the likes of Sterling, Rashford, Mane, Werner, Son etc.
But we might be able to sell AMN whereas Bellerin has no market with all Italian and Spanish clubs basically broke.
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I get your thinking but honestly AMN is nearly as bad of a defender as Bellerin. Chambers has way more defensive prowess but unfortunately not the athleticism.
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What’s our homegrown situation like though? Feel like we’re quite short in that area. Can we afford to let many more go?
Not true.
Source:
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I would keep him and other younger players like him.
They are on far lower wages, they have more potential and a better attitude.
Players like Bellerin, Xhaka, Kolisinac, Lacazette, Cedric, Willian, aren’t much better than a lot of our younger players.
It might be harder to shift such high earners but, even if we had to give them away, at least they would be off the wage bill and out of the first team.
We would then have space in the first team, as well money for wages, to get some genuine talent.
Yeah, Ainsley is probably our best fullback at defending. Arteta has used him plenty to defend on either side. Did it in the FA Cup and other matches.
I think that was the idea when he came on for Bellerin vs Spurs too. Bellerin was solid going forward but he was getting rinsed at the back. Spurs soon stopped attacking our right flank when AMN came on and they then focused on Tierney and then Tavares.
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I’ve seen that graph the first time it came around it’s still bullshit. It’s two small statistics that when you put them together barely begin to touch on what makes a great defensive full back. TAA is the perfect example as he’s far from one of the best defensive fullbacks in the league but that graph says he is. You literally spoke about the dangers of the manipulation and misinterpretation of data in the medical field then you go on to do that anyway to suit your point.
Also Arteta used him at either side out of desperation and had to have Tierney at LCB to baby sit because AMN is ridiculously easy to smoke and completely positional oblivious.
2021 and people still think AMN actually has talent, oh dear.
No he had Tierney LCB and Ainsley LWB/LM to stop any danger from that side, which they did.
Did you forget the game against Wolves where Traore was bullying Tierney on his side and he brought on AMN who completely shut Traore out?
I can get shitting on AMN for his nonchalant style at times or his delivery from the left but defending is one of his best attributes.
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AMN won us an FA cup.
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Still shows AMN is far better than Bellerin defensively.
Which we can all also see with our eyes.
I know you’re doing this to get a bit from me but still.
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Bellerin’s game was all around explosive speed which he has since lost, very vanilla footballer these days.
AMN is the only dood on planet earth that can make Xhaka look like a decent player because he does all the defensive and b2b work a normal midfielder should be doing 
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