Mohamed Elneny (25)

Sanchez has 2 copa America under his belt… Nor smart to tease him

Bet your fun at parties ronnie :wink:

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Bet Sanchez won’t enjoy this kind of teasing at this moment :slight_smile:

He played well being the midfielder the furthest at the back

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So much better than Xhaka should play more

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One thing I like about Elneny is he plays with drive and purpose. Like he actually wants to be here. Never a passenger.

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Elneny deserves credit and is actually useful to the squad. Stays back and retains possession. There’s a false perception that a £5m squad player has to be completely useless.

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Been calling for Elneny to replace Xhaka in the starting xi for some time now. You can see the difference. When palace started pressing Elneny was aware of where is teammates were, and made some smart passes to alleviate the pressure. Elneny is also underrated when it comes to movement off the ball as well, he’s always moving into space making himself available. Sure he’s not gonna break the lines with his passing but i’d rather have someone doing the basics at this point.

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I like that he’s willing. He’s always moving trying to give his mate an option if they want to take it which tbh for a team like Arsenal is half of that role anyway.

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I am just disappointed at his afro game. Expected better when we signed him.

He doesn’t have an Afro.

People calling for Elneny to start a lot more shows how deplorable the situation has become, that’s a sign we are spiralling into a mid table club, this guy wouldn’t have made much day squads in our glory years.

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No worse a player than Denilson, Flamini, Coquelin, who all played when we weren’t that shit. The “don’t do anything stupid” midfield position has never really required a genius.

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I think he would have been a very good squad option in those days.

He’s not bad, somebody that has a good attitude and is minimally competent.

That is something Arsenal football club is in short supply of at the moment so I’ll take it.

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If we defended properly he would be a lot more valuable than he is now. He gets a lot of negativity because he doesnt really fit in to our system a lot of the time.

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Still would like to see Maitland-Niles in his position, but yeah, he’s fine, and better than Xhaka, probably. Xhaka though, he’s basically useless now, isn’t he? I mean, playing him like he was yesterday, as a b2b, makes him even worse than he already was.

Trying not to go OTT on Xhaka, talked with a friend yesterday who is a steadier head than anyone I know (though chronically over-optimistic) telling him “Xhaka really is shit isn’t he?” and he responded saying nah, he’s still got good qualities. Anyone else willing to offer an opinion like his?

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First one is Elneny, second is Fabinho.

Fabinho is the guy we should have playing there next season but, Elneny is doing a good job for now.

@Burgundy what do you think of this? I’m not 100% sure on how to read these but Elneny’s looks similar to Fabinho’s does it not?

We had Parlour and Edu as squad options in those days, both superior players.

No reason why he wouldn’t still be there, I mean Pennant was.

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It’s odd. I think he has the ‘qualities’ of a great midfielder but his (cliché) football brain can’t quite compute everything into one. Form, confidence, stagnation in regards to improving as a player, playing in a weird Wenger team are all things that go against him right now, but that’s not to say he is completely written off. It’s a stretch, but wasn’t Pep interested in him before we acquired Granit? I think everyone goes with the benchmark of this proving that he is, somewhat, a reasonably good player.

He’s just a really shit one right now and I really did think he’d be able to pull himself together faster than this.