Zatara
Player Valuation: £90m
I was reading this article from the usually excellent Barney Roney of the Guardian. It illustrates his views on Wengers choice of central midfielders for the United game.
https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...er-united-arsenal-arsene-wenger-jose-mourinho
I found this extract particularly interesting:
'By the end here Wenger had dismantled the oddly flat, samey Mohamed Elneny-Francis Coquelin central fulcrum, and replaced it with Aaron Ramsey and Granit Xhaka, a midfield that does at least look like it genuinely wants to go out and win a football match at Old Trafford. To select one workaday, lateral, do-a-job central midfielder seems sensible enough. To pick two looks like self‑defeating caution.
In Wenger’s defence, a lack of muscle in the middle has been exposed by Mourinho teams before, most glaringly in the 6-0 defeat by Chelsea at Stamford Bridge in 2014, which quietly euthanased Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain’s central midfield career. But at some point, not least when this is your team’s strength, you do have to play a little, too. Elneny is a good, neat player, but he is essentially a VW Polo of a footballer, matched here against Pogba’s high spec, quiveringly cantilevered four wheel-drive-mobile. At one stage late in the first half Elneny and Coquelin tried to oversee a rapier counter-attack, an odd spectacle as the ball pinged back and forth between them, like watching a particularly stodgy rugby line trying to lumber forwards, only backwards passes allowed.'
For me, this is a similar case of us playing Gana/Barry or Gana/McCarthy...I see no logic in playing 2 defensive minded players in midfield especially when Gana is essentially our Kante/Makalele in waiting, he's that good.
Surely when opposition managers know that we will have 2 defensive midfielders playing they can throw off the shackles a bit and play attack minded centre mids knowing that there wont be any penetration from us and we will need to resort to long balls. We can see the huge gaps from defensive midfield to Barkley all day long...
Personally, I'm a bit sick of reading that the players are to blame for every negative result when we setup in such a negative fashion. We have other players who can play further forward (Lennon/Bolasie/Deulofeu/Mirallas) so why not get Barkley alongside Gana and give the opposition something to think about?
Yes, it may not work and perhaps we need to sign someone in Jan/Summer but surely now is the time to move Barkley back...
https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...er-united-arsenal-arsene-wenger-jose-mourinho
I found this extract particularly interesting:
'By the end here Wenger had dismantled the oddly flat, samey Mohamed Elneny-Francis Coquelin central fulcrum, and replaced it with Aaron Ramsey and Granit Xhaka, a midfield that does at least look like it genuinely wants to go out and win a football match at Old Trafford. To select one workaday, lateral, do-a-job central midfielder seems sensible enough. To pick two looks like self‑defeating caution.
In Wenger’s defence, a lack of muscle in the middle has been exposed by Mourinho teams before, most glaringly in the 6-0 defeat by Chelsea at Stamford Bridge in 2014, which quietly euthanased Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain’s central midfield career. But at some point, not least when this is your team’s strength, you do have to play a little, too. Elneny is a good, neat player, but he is essentially a VW Polo of a footballer, matched here against Pogba’s high spec, quiveringly cantilevered four wheel-drive-mobile. At one stage late in the first half Elneny and Coquelin tried to oversee a rapier counter-attack, an odd spectacle as the ball pinged back and forth between them, like watching a particularly stodgy rugby line trying to lumber forwards, only backwards passes allowed.'
For me, this is a similar case of us playing Gana/Barry or Gana/McCarthy...I see no logic in playing 2 defensive minded players in midfield especially when Gana is essentially our Kante/Makalele in waiting, he's that good.
Surely when opposition managers know that we will have 2 defensive midfielders playing they can throw off the shackles a bit and play attack minded centre mids knowing that there wont be any penetration from us and we will need to resort to long balls. We can see the huge gaps from defensive midfield to Barkley all day long...
Personally, I'm a bit sick of reading that the players are to blame for every negative result when we setup in such a negative fashion. We have other players who can play further forward (Lennon/Bolasie/Deulofeu/Mirallas) so why not get Barkley alongside Gana and give the opposition something to think about?
Yes, it may not work and perhaps we need to sign someone in Jan/Summer but surely now is the time to move Barkley back...
