Oleksandr Zinchenko (35)

Think only Gabriel, Saliba and Ramsdale come out of today with any form of credit.

2 Likes

What? Tried something different how? Falling for Maupay’s bullshit?

How exactly was that helping the team?

Gabriel and Saliba were also pretty awful. Got bullied by DCL and kept letting uncontested balls in our penalty box.

Talking about him pushing up and taking a couple pop shots. Idgaf about the bit with Maupay, Xhaka also fell for that earlier but you aren’t mentioning that.

Don’t think the two were that comparable. Different phase of the match. Maupay was standing above White like a twat in front of the ref. Xhaka told him to go away. Ended pretty quickly.

With Zinchenko we were attacking and he had to go onto Maupay off the ball to give him a receipt and then gave him words. It’s back-to-back games now, lost his head against City as well.

The fact he was still fuming after the match and Arteta had to tell him to head back to the locker room is not good either.

1 Like

Only shame is he didnt kick Maupay in the face tbh

2 Likes

Yeah agree there’s something needs addressing. Don’t need any stupid suspensions now.
Trust Arteta to deal with it hopefully.

My main worry with this really is the match with City at the Emirates. This keeps up I can see City focusing on Zinchenko doing something stupid. Mahrez will be on him that day, poking at every opportunity.

Might be unpopular, but I wouldn’t mind Arteta swerving them and using Tomiyasu instead like he did against Liverpool.

1 Like

Yeah he was definitely wound up for that. Point to prove stuff.
You have to channel that with composure.

He has a bit of that Joey Barton look except without the psychotic side… Maupay is just pure classic troll diver wind-up merchant who is a meh EPL striker.

Let’s be fair now, Maupay clothesline him, and then when Zinchenko tried to run past him he grabbed him around the neck and then dived on the floor.

Understandable why he shouted at the diving whiny bitch, but that’s all he did. What else did he do wrong re Maupay? (Genuinely, I might have missed something).

Re Maupay, if he was an arsenal player he could very well have either got a straight red for the initial smack, or 2 consecutive yellows for that and then the grab around the neck & dive, a la Martinelli.

That added to his other crap like going down holding his head when it was clear to everyone, (including the referee), that he was pushed in the back meant he should never have finished the game.

3 Likes

Wake the fuck up lad. City, Everton and now Brentford now that he’s been off.

Need a big performance from against City midweek.

Was shite today, if Tierney wasn’t such a clogger these days I’d start him on Wednesday.

Maybe time for super tom

Just got gain a bit more composure. Guilty of trying to hard at times.
Poor on the goal and not close enough to his man.
Still more good than bad and still key player.

He wasn’t even that bad at all.

What was wrong is that we were way to reliant on him to create something. Our midfield went missing. We had no true control in midfield…
The front three wasn’t able to create much either.

He had to act almost as our number 10 too much today… Guys like Odegaard, or even Xhaka, should’ve done more regarding the creating, leaving Zinchenko as their assistant - not the main guy.

1 Like

So is anyone else starting to feel like Zinchenko and Xhaka in the same team, in certain games, is looking a touch redundant?

Don’t get me wrong Martinelli has been complete and utter dog shit for a while now but this dynamic certainly doesn’t help him.

4 Likes

If you check their average position, sometimes it’s hard to tell them apart because they basically occupy the same space.

Correct me if I’m wrong but I think it was you who got mad at suggesting Zinchenko could play as a midfielder with us. We may have got into an argument about it as well. :sweat_smile:
I actually did agree with you he was coming in as a left-back but Xhaka’s lack of threat recently and Zinchenko being often a liability defensively is getting on my nerves lately so I’ve been genuinely considering it the past weeks.

Big call for Mikel but I honestly feel one of the two has to sit out going forward. For me, Xhaka takes the fall and Zinchenko takes his place. Tomi back at LB like it was before the WC. Time to adapt.

First off, don’t act like you don’t have photographic, obsessive memory of every God damn thing that goes down on this board, you’re like OA’s version of fucking Rain Man or even worse GFI.

And second I didn’t get mad at the fact people suggested he could play at CM. We all know he can, I got mad at the fact people weren’t willing to see that Mikel was always going to play him at LB. You can go back and check but it was clear as day even before he kicked a ball for us that Zinchenko was going to occupy the same space as Arteta had Xhaka playing in the early days, - the FA Cup run and such. That was to occupy the midfield and drop in to left back when needed. When people were creaming themselves over AMNs performances at LB a lot of that was to do with Tierney at LCB and Xhaka falling back into that role.

Zinchenko was always such an obvious Pep or Arteta player, it’s simply a zero sum game based around positions. Zinchenko offers two positions in game, Partey offers two, Jesus offers 3- if you offer only 1 you’re out. He did the same thing with White, no one saw that coming.

The other side to the coin and one which I can’t stand is that if you take Zinchenko out from left back and play him at CM you’re essentially disrupting one of the most important aspects of the system to play him in a space he can already occupy on the peripheral. Yeh people keep banging that drum about him White, and that Polish kid we just signed.

People need to look at Xhaka, the argument was that he offers us steel in that advanced 8 role. While I don’t disagree I feel like he’s utterly useless against the low block. These last two games haven’t been dropped points due to physicality but lack of invention.

3 Likes

I saw you writing and writing and kept thinking what the fuck you were writing for so long haha. :rofl:

Yeah, what you said rings a bell.

I want to look at Xhaka too and if we had ESR fit and available Xhaka wouldn’t be on the side for me. You actually do make a point about him against low blocks.
He was shite against West Ham and was rather underwhelming for most of the game against Newcastle. Clearly a pattern here.

I guess the issue is, if not Xhaka then who?
Vieira? He doesn’t seem ready unfortunately.
However, we had a small sample size of it against Wolves when Xhaka had to be taken off. We struggled in that match a lot and he did end up helping in breaking them down that day and assisted the first goal.

Tbh, I think Arteta will persist with the current team and hope we power through it until Jesus and ESR come back.

I’m not going to wish list because I’m looking at it through Arteta’s and his staff lens but we don’t have anyone right now who can offer that.

Viera today was meant to be that answer but honestly the young man isn’t ready. A bunch of nice Twitter stats in a dead man’s league equate to fuck all especially when you’re in a title race. Though I have no doubt Edu brought him here with eyes on the top 4 project not a title race.

For me Trossard is the wildcard. Of course we can assume he was a recommendation by Albert but he just suits the system much more than Edu’s picks who are entirely hit or miss. Edu needs to fuck up a little in regard to Portuguese/Brazilian typecasts.

Trossard in the hole and Jesus leading the line is my hope for these final few months.

I’ll be very disappointed in Mikel if Trossard doesn’t get the nod over Martinelli on Wed- although I would understand it. It would be nice to see Martinelli against a team that doesn’t put 10 men behind the ball