What sort of message does signing Odegaard send to Smith Rowe
Maybe that this is a club trying not to finish a lowly fucking 8th again.
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There is a chance that Ode play as CM along with Partey, and ESR play as a 10.
Don’t know yet.
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Merson is an Arsenal legend as a football player, but I am not going to take his fantasy manager opinions seriously, for obvious reasons.
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It’s that kind of rah rah English pundit intellectual dishonesty that drives me up the wall.
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Arteta tried it when chasing a goal last season. Reckon we see it again now with a full season ahead of us.
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Merson is a moron.
We’re not City but if you look at that team they had five guys who can be creators in attacking midfield and/or from wide positions the last few years - KDB, Gundogan, Bernardo, Mahrez, Foden. And now they’ve added Grealish on top of that.
We have three now with Odegaard, ESR, and Saka. If anything, we could use another one. We sure as fuck aren’t set with just two.
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One of my favourite memories of the Emirates era was Santi Cazorla bodying Yaya Toure, scooping the ball away and breaking free on the counter with his signature turn and pivot.
The idea that you need two bruiser CM’s as your pivot is nonsense, there’s absolutely a game or two for Odegaard to play as a literal 8.
I do agree with the sentiment that as it stands he’s our most creative facet so it does make sense to play him closer to goal with our personnel as it is. Some day though we might have a good enough squad to actually have options.
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It’s the same people who would take Wes Morgan or Johnny Evans over Maldini. There’s more than one way to play.
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Man you really just need to accept you were wrong about Evans and move on.
Wrong in the sense that I think Maldini is a better player?
I still don’t think he would have performed as well for Arsenal as he does for Leicester. He’s been a total steal for them and I definitely didn’t think he’d be a good pickup. Maybe it’s the coaching.
Yeh exactly, wrong like that.
No one thinks he’s Maldini, though he’s about as important to NI.
Of course nobody sane thinks he’s Maldini but my gripe was with Merson being gloomy about the Ødegaard signing. He falls into the category of old English pundits who can only see the game one way. Need a big guy in midfield to kick the shit out of people and defenders at the back to…also kick the shit out of people.
I was making the point that people like Merson probably think Evans, or pick some other English, Scottish, Welsh or NI defender, is a better defender than Maldini because guys like Evans or Cahill or Dunk are proper footballers.
I understand better where you are coming from now, but I do think the same can be said from people like yourself that only see certain players from these nations that way, as though they are limited and couldn’t possible possess the technical ability to play out from the back under pressure with composure and accuracy - one of Evan’s greatest traits. Cahill was no slouch on the ball either.
Actually I think one of the best football players right now at our club is Tierney because his grasp of the fundamentals is beyond exceptional combined with a real freakish athleticism, outside injuries of course. If Tierney was Brazilian or French instead of Scottish he’d be worth 80 million.
The truth lies somewhere in the middle, beyond English pashun and Twitter hipster bullshit a good player is simply a good player.
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Is it the way Southgate used 2 bums as CM and England had no creativity from those positions at all?
This is why Paul Merson is a totally shit pundit! The guy struggles to string a fucking sentence together and literally makes no sense with the BS he comes out with. TBH I think he just likes taking a big shit on Arsenal at any opportunity. One minute he savages the squad and the depth and quality of the squad and then the next minute he slates the club for signing another No.10! He can’t have it both ways! Yes they play in the same position, but as his loan spell proved, they can both play in the same starting 11. We need strength and depth and ESR could not carry us through the whole season alone. In many respects, Odegaard is much less of a threat to ESR, than Maddison would have been.
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Merson: Why have Arsenal bought another player to strengthen the squad, when they could have relied on the youngster for every game this season with no rest or dip in form. Stupid Arsenal.
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Merse is right. Odegaard had chances to make his mark last season and he flattered to deceive.
I don’t want to see ESR follow the same trajectory as Martinelli and Saka (excellent at first and not so excellent as time went on).
He’s not right at all. He’s just being his usual cunty self.
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We really can’t win.
We don’t sign players, they question our ambition.
We sign players, they question why we would sign this player and why that player would even think about signing for us.
We make ambitious signings/moves, they question whether we’ve done another Pepe or Aubameyang.
We make smart low risk moves, they again question our ambition.
Fucking decide will you? But I get it, Arsenal sells, a lot.
I think in this case it’s just the actual player we signed which has split the fanbase. Obviously always good to add players to the squad but they’ve got to be of proven quality.