My pre-season player evaluation last year
Interested to find out who’s turd and who’s flame this year.
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I see people raving about the youth players on twitter and stuff, but this is fucking PRE-SEASON where youth players are always used against, often, players from the same age category. It means fuck all.
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Agreed I would happily lose every pre season game just for the first team TURN UP at every game in the prem.
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Yeah it’s strange to see them on the receiving end of so much praise when it’s the same story every summer anyway. They’re playing in games against other youth players or reserve talent so it’s hardly surprising to see them perform as they do.
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So youth players shouldn’t get praised unless playing against top flight established footballers?
In that case they should never be praised as they spend the majority of their season playing against players in their age group in reserve leagues.
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The notion that Arsenal have a great/special youth based on these pre-season games is rubbish imo.
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The notion should be based on years of scouting, training and promotion. Pre season doesn’t determine the value of the youth academy lol
And yet that doesn’t stop people.
Tbf the top flight games they play they usually impress as well.
Willock’s cameos last season, the United game the season before that, Nelson’s loan.
They may not be that special, but they have a claim in being better than the cunts in our first team, and that means they probably should start.
I just want my team of double-barrelled kings ffs :giroud3: 
:bellcry:
Praise the youth players as much as you can for doing well in pre-season games but if even one of them gets consistent minutes in the Prem that cohort has done absolutely amazingly well let alone all of them turning into starters that will win us the league and save our reputation.
I’ll be happy if one of Willock/Eddie/Nelson etc. get serious time on the pitch but time and experience has shown again and again that it’ll more like be a Sanogo scoring 4 against Benfica and then doing fuck all rather than the new Sterling or Sane breaking out.
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Willock did look good last night. It would be cool if he turns into a player. His dribbling and close control looked a lot better than I was used to from him. He looked a little uncoordinated for his body in recent years maybe he’s kinda grown into it now.
Where is Emile Smith Rowe? I guess he’s going out on loan, or recovering from some injury, but worrisome that he doesn’t feature.
John-Jules also looks good, faster and more agile than I thought. Would like to see him get some games in the Carling Cup and Europa League this season.
Really wish we could clear out Mkhitaryan to get more minutes for Nelson and find out what we have there. Ideally even for Smith-Rowe. This season should be about finding out what we have in those two, maybe Willock too, and about developing them, but we don’t have that kind of vision and coherent long-term approach so no doubt we’ll see loads of Mkhitaryan and Iwobi and we’ll end up seeing Nelson go out on loan after being disappointed at his lack of minutes in January while Emery brings in Yannick Ferreira Carrasco or Ivan Perisic to see if he can pinch 4th and save his USB drive loving ass.
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Exactly. Ozil looked MILES better playing in the hole and drifting in and out.
That backline concerns that hell out of me and AMN is being shoe horned into a position we seemingly don’t have anyone else for right now. Preseason and all that, but Arsenal looked the better side (even before mass substitutions from both clubs) for a big stretch of the game.
Eddie looked good after he came on. Hope that he sticks w/the team and gets a run out in cup/early Europa games.
@BigWeng_4LYFE did you go?
We are headed up to Charlotte Saturday. Been looking forward to it for a while.
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Would be nice if he could “force” his way into more minutes and eventually take over (sooner rather than later) there unless Arsenal sign a winger. Mkhi is too wildly inconsistent to count on. Those wages probably make it impossible to move him on.
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To be fair. Torreira, Guendouzi, (Martinelli), Tierney and Saliba are under 23 players. If Arsenal manages to buy Ceballos next summer you can’t really deny they are building something of a young core with long term perspective in mind.
For all the faults Iwobi has I don’t mind him as squad player. But next season we’re probably going to see too much of him still.
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Yeah I said that last year too - “season of sorting”.
With all our young guns, we have to figure out wtf we have. Is Chambers salvageable? Is Mavro Moose v.2.0? Are Nelson, Willock, ESR possible long-term starters? Is Nketiah an actual possible heir to no1 or no2 striker?
Big, big data needed this year.
Ozil with effort, keeps up with Aubameyang here but surprisingly shoots rather than cutting the ball back for Mkhi.
I read that is was apparant in last night’s game that he was also making a lot more of overlapping runs to get in scoring positions. I reckon him and Emery had a talk of what is expected of him, but it has to be seen how that’ll translate.
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Dunno why people were so worried about Auba slowing down, his athleticism will be top notch for another few years, when hes 33/34 I’d start to become concerned.
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Where was Aubameyang playing btw? Was it in a two with Lacazette or wide left or wide right?