You really think Xhaka plays B2B? I don’t know if that’s what’s intended by the system but it’s certainly not the role he executes, doesn’t get about the pitch/into the box nearly enough for that.
I’d have said he was more advanced playmaker, but he does have a bit of a weird set of attributes so hard to say exactly
Isn’t this Ben White’s chick?
Partey cameo against Everton to exacerbate his injury, let’s go!
No I think White’s girlfriend is called Milly something, whereas this woman’s name is Sara (based on her @ handle in the video), but they both have black hair.
I don’t know how I’ve spent time finding these things when I’m not really bothered lol
Share their @s
For research purposes…
Between the filters, make up and Botox she barely looks human.
The fuck is wrong with you son
Seems to be a familiar story where a player gets a long term injury, posts great things about their recovery and expecting to come back sooner than expected, and it never ends up panning out that way. Human nature mostly. He’s not going to play for the rest of the season, but this is encouraging to see after some strange rumours about concerns over him not even being ready for the start of pre-season.
I’d hate for this to be taken the wrong way, but what exactly is the point of having a great player like him if we only get to actually use him sometimes?
It’s one thing to criticize the quality of our depth but I think we need to start looking at the question of what point we cut our losses and find something more reliable?
This is exactly the reason u can’t sit here hoping and praying Arteta comes good one day. Wasting the prime of a guy like Partey. Its a constant restructuring thing with squad building. Its why the whole “wait 3 or 4 years when Saka and ESR are in their prime then we will be great” thing was always a joke. Nope cant wait that long cuz in the mean time Auba is gone, Partey is broken down, now u have to rebuild ur striker core and ur 50m CM just wasted 3 seasons here cuz we had to wait for young players to develop. Your left back also became crocked in the process. You’ve got no CL football money and you gave away all ur serviceable players for peanuts.
No, I think it’s a reasonable thing to think about.
He signed a five year deal and we’re in year two?
He was unavailable for large portions of those two years. Next season he’ll be working to get back in shape for Qatar and I wouldn’t be shocked if he broke down in March again.
He is an excellent player when he’s fit but, you can’t build around him because he’s just not fit enough of the time.
It was the same with Diaby, although Partey is levels and levels above him in terms of talent. Wenger spent too much time building a team with the expectation Diaby would be involved and it just never happened. I think we need to really consider all our options.
And it’s not just with Partey. Tierney has been the same way since he signed. He broke down in every season he’s been at the club.
At some point you just can’t plan for these guys who are always hurt to be key players. It’s nobody’s fault that they’re getting injured but maybe a bigger dose of realism in the FO would have pushed Edu/Arteta to make a move in January.
Tierney’s an average to good LB, Partey is literally one of the best CM’s in the entire game. As fans we should want players like him at the club rather than not.
You said it yourself when the Partey - Odegaard connection collapsed as did our entire season. Fact of the matter is we’ll really struggle to get better midfielders into the club than Partey - how many out there actually are there? Not many in my opinion.
How many out there are better than Elneny, Sami, Xhaka, AMN, Guendouzi? A literal fuck ton, not even just in my opinion but as a fact.
It is as its always been, a depth option. We shouldn’t over think it in summer as fans, I spent all summer last year saying that Yves Bissouma would be perfect for us, but no one wanted him- people compared to him to Le Coq. Why not just lower the bar and expectations a little but keep it raises above fucking Xhaka and Elneny. My friend mentioned McGinn to me tonight, not a bad shout either, not glamorous but could be useful- might not shit his pants every tough away fixture
I think we all want him here, but he’s not doing us any good if he’s in the stands and not out there.
I’m not advocating for selling him this summer but I do think the club need to be realistic. Should they try to skate with one midfielder coming in because they think it’s fine to have Youri (for example), Partey and Xhaka/Elneny (one will surely go) as your three main options?
Or does the club look at the last two years where Partey has broken down, look forward to a very hectic 2022-23 schedule because of the WC and push a little harder to get two high quality midfielders in so we’re protected when Partey misses 15 games.
Teams get injuries man, i know you know how much I like Partey and you know I know you were a little iffy on him from the get go. But I will admit you do really seem to like the player now and respect his importance.
This isn’t a case of Pepe - who I also really like- where a player isn’t fitting into the style of the team.
Me and you both have talked about in the past about how Ode, Partey, Santi could be dreamland stuff. Santi was injury ridden but hell I actually wish we stood by him a little longer even after we nearly cost him his leg.
Look at Gundogan for City could barely string matches together then led the way to a title as one of their best players.
To me it’s really simple release Elneny and Xhaka and bring in two CM’S, if Partey isn’t looking that fit your bring in more.
Have you ever actually looked at how many fucking CM’s Liverpool have- just off the top of my head -Thiago, Keita, Fabinho, Milner, Oxlade, Curtis Jones, Henderson.
Now not all of those are perfect players but that’s what actual depth looks like at the highest level. Partey and Tielmanns or whoever should a couple of names on a list of 5 or 6
I think we actually agree.
I’m not saying sell (well, maybe if someone offers $200m) but like you said, clear midfield by any means necessary and bring in two guys who can actually play.
The problem is that now — because we cheaped out on the front end — we have a smaller budget.
I think people expecting a transformative summer are going to be disappointed. That was last summer.
I think we’ll sign Youri, keep Elneny, sell Xhaka and go into next season just a few players short like always.
Your point on Liverpool’s midfielders is a good one. Keita looked like he couldn’t fit in there/stay healthy but they kept him around and signed Thiago.
Yeh I’m with you on the entire post outside that small point, last summer felt foundational to me. If we don’t build on it this summer then I can’t stand by what Edu and Arteta are doing to move the club forward. Everything has to be perfect this summer window, which won’t be easy
We’ll see. I’d love to be proven wrong. If we sign Youri and Bissouma, Jesus and Toney and sign Eddie but loan him, stuff like that, well then I’ll hold my hand up.
But it feels like the club did all that work last summer because they thought it was a foundation and they could restructure their budget for summer 2022 to go big on one striker and one midfielder.
In reality, this season showed us that we’re shorthanded at striker (twice), both fullbacks, midfield (twice), the right wing and centerback.
We always joked that nobody can make that many signings in one window. We made close to that summer 2021 and did alright. I just can’t see it happening two summers in a row.
Well I don’t remember if you watched him in Spain but his career didn’t exactly start at Arsenal, he played 150+ games at Atlético and was excellent in terms of physical reliability, just look at this shit:
When we played him two seconds after he got off the flight from Ghana that should tell you something about how we do squad management here and why he isn’t playing towards the end of the season, we can’t control midfield and lose every other game.
We don’t even have 25 players in the squad, another self-imposed issue, we had access to more players, we just fucked them up, gave them away or loaned them out, and then we just played our best players every game like a child playing football manager except that we can’t load an old save file.
Squad depth and management starts showing in the last portion of the season.
The squad is full of young players who lack consistency and bottle it under pressure which is normal, and that’s again self-imposed, poor squad balancing and whilst next year they will likely all be better, so will probably all our competitors with more balanced squads so no trophy for that.
On top of that we will probably have lost some or most of our experienced players like Auba/Laca/Elneny/Leno. I mean look at our squad sorted by age:
We have 8 players older than 24yo, Pepe is bricked and should leave, Partey we ran into the ground, Xhaka, Cederic and Laca you all think are too poor and the latter should leave anyway, Leno isn’t playing and might leave, Holding and Elneny are backups and never will be good enough.
I know we salivate about the prospect of buying one or two top tier quality players to add to the squad- man we need quantity as well, this was one competition, players are leaving and next season we’re starting out in four competitions.
We would probably be better off just buying 5 Spanish 27yo Dani Parejo regens for £30m, one in each outfield position tbh. It’d probably be the best patching up we could do here, this squad building is an absolute rookie shit show and I do put it down to an exceptionally weak season by Chelsea, United and Spurs and lack of a traditional outside one-season-wonder rival as to why we’re even still within reach of top 4.
We have a lot of work to do here, and it will be tougher to fix in one window in the likely event that we miss out on CL.
Now im as pissed off with Arteta as anyone today but how have we run Partey into the ground. We had no europe and out of the FA cup in January.
by playing him too early when he’s back from injury and games with the NT. We keep rushing him back on the pitch because we’re desperate to get stability in mf and it keeps back-firing. Maybe running him into the ground is not the correct expression, but playing him too much under the circumstances is what I mean.
