Wenger buys Xhaka and credits him for being a DLP and playing diagonal balls.
Wenger watches him play a few games, says he’s b2b, fans rustled.
Wenger observes Granit in training again and announces he really is a DLP.
He is a quality player indeed but so far in his Arsenal career, he has not shown anything to be considered our best option, especially considering the pace of PL is different to those competition and his lack of pace & athleticism has been found out and almost cost us a match.
He’s done enough in his career to be ahead of Elneny at least. And being the only midfielder capable of seeing and making a pass should have him starting every week in Cazorla’s absence. He has weaknesses but they all have weaknesses. No reason for him not to be playing right now.
IMO the plan against United was to play the most defensively solid team. Elneny covers more ground than Xhaka and is less likely to get a red so that’s why he started
So why did Wenger pay 30m for him.
Surely a manager who doesn’t like spending would have his stats and realised his lack of pace and the fact he wasn’t better than what we already had.
So he can adapt? and not get sent off in games versus United, Spurs and PSG.
[/quote]But surely it’s games like these where you need your best players.
You can’t spend 30m on a player if he is only going to play in matches we probably would have won anyway and not in the most important games.
Wenger signed a deep lying playmaker, said he thinks he might be a box to box then decides actually he’s a deep lying playmaker.
We lose our best passer of the midfield pairing and rather than put our next best passer of the ball in we instead opt for an ultra defensive and/or ultra ineffective midfield pairing which just so happens to coincide with our poorest run of performances this season.