Francis Coquelin

He’s awful.

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Of course it’s not his or any single individual’s fault when the team is at this tactical level. But how do you even expect to play your way out of pressure, when one of your deep midfielders, doesn’t want the ball in the first place?

Or well, to be completely fair, it’s not purely a case of him not wanting it ; More a case of Wenger recognizing that this supposedly underrated ball player, is actually crap and can’t make himself available like a good cm should, so he just makes sure he participates as little as possible in the build-up. But this causes huge problems against competent teams. If Özil drops and interchanges with Coq, then you’re pretty much expecting him to find space like Özil in the final third, receive it and do something with it. :facepalm: You’re a man down in possession when this guy starts.

You don’t see central midfielders at top clubs, even when they play against these opponents and with similar possession stats, with these types of passing stats.

Arteta didn’t do this shit either. The standards have dropped.

(Not happy with Xhaka either, btw.)

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Xhaka is like pirlo. But only in the fully attacking phase. He cannot control the tempo of a game like Andrea could, and this is what santi brought to the team, a level of calm and control. Xhaka just does not have this quality to his game and never truly will. Cazorla always seemed to be able to get the team out and move them forward, he’s good for counter attacking or dominating possession, these players are sadly rare but a better tactician would alter the system to accommodate the players available.

Coquelin is a shit gattuso. Xhaka is an even worse pirlo, in fact more like an ambrosini (whose forward passing was actually massively underrated) but yeah it’s 4am and I’m rambling and basically fuck wenger.

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Yep, i fear the pace of the Premier League is too much for him. That’s the reason why Wenger hasn’t played him many times so far.

His performance against City was a mixture of a handful of good progressive passes and combinations early on, along with a massive array of diabolical possession losses, shit touches, shit passes, useless runs forward and 9 times out of 10 completely unable to break up Man City’s possession game. He and Xhaka looked like an awful partnership both defensively and in possession. We need a Cazorla replacement as soon as possible.

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In a system that requires the players to be good passers, have some technical quality and good positional sense. Do you think Coq is the best we can do in that DM/CDM position?

Arguably you can improve upon every player on earth save for 11 (depending on your formation that will vary).

Coquelin is quality though imo. As @Aussiegooner identified elsewhere, what seems to really let us down right now are our wingers.

And… we should not look to improve upon Coquelin based on this astute observation why exactly?

and we need to convince Coquelin about his qualities. He is a ball recovery midfielder, a great BRM, but absolutely not good when he wants to emulate the Arsenal style. He should be limited to conquer the ball and pass to a team mate near him.

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If am open to improvong on every player tbh.

What i was getting at (and sorry if i wasnt clear) was that our priority should first and foremost be wingers, since the reality is (or, to me at least), thats where we can improve the most.

I really like Coquelin, i really like Alexis. Id still sell them both if a clear improvement was available.

I feel Coquelin is the scapegoat atm and his criticism is akin to Mertesackers. Very misplaced. But then again people like @AbouCuellar cant stand Coquelin, and obviously i am not seeing what others do.

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Surely you understand though that for the betterment of the club improving upon the likes of limited players like Theo/Ox/Coq should be a priority for the club in terms of progress?

Selling a sublime player like Alexis, even to bring in Messi would practically be a lateral move. There is only so much one man can do if those around him can barely string passes together at an intelligent level.

Also ignore AC he used to absolutely adore Coq now he pokes fun at people who rate him, he’s a contrarian first and foremost.

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No i fully agree i think you are right.

Coq’s alright, I agree he is clearly limited to some extent but he is pretty good at fighting people for the ball and giving it to someone else, which is pretty much what he is supposed to do imo. At least good enough to fall a bit down the pecking order of what we need to upgrade imo.

Your other suggestions (wingers/wide players) - definitely a spot to look to upgrade imo. Especially left wing. Maybe left back as well, Nacho/Gibbs are alright defensively but they’re not exactly Marcelo in attack, although it’s hard to tell how much of that ‘need’ is down to a lack of a quality on the left winger, maybe we’d look good on the left if we had say Hazard and Nacho behind.

Agreed on Le Coq - think he is underrated for his technical/offensive qualities and obviously offers a lot in ball-winning early in the transition (the most dangerous time to win the ball back)… I have no real issue with him as solid squad player and occasional starter - for me, he offers more than Xhaka atm.

Attacking wing is most pressing need - that and striker. I’d love another top left back, but they are super scarce atm - who is even in the equation that offers that perfect blend of attack and defense (or the promise of it for younger player)?

I think if we pluck a couple of top youngsters to go along with a WC wing attacker, we are a pretty damn complete team, even if still needing some quality depth… reality is that every team pretty much has weakness if you go too far down the depth chart.

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In fairness to him I think he does, more often than not, distribute the ball to better passers and distributors than him. However he doesn’t manage it with as much ease as Arteta and in tight midfield situations it’s important that both central midfielders can retain possession as well as find the number 10 in a pocket. His lack of ability here is an important weakness and can’t be ignored, as we saw against Everton and Manchester City. If he keeps on having to shirk opportunities to make progressive passes (through self-doubt or adapting to his limitations), not only does it slow the build up down but it’s also looking quite predictable for opposition midfielders when closing him and his options down.

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07/08 season was the season Arsenal, arguably, played the best football in the Emirates Era. Often with limited players like Flamini and Eboue (as a right midfielder ffs), but we always had at least three of Fabregas, Hleb, van Persie and Rosicky on the pitch. I don’t think Coquelin for that reason is as detrimental for our play. But if he has to play with a lot of other limited players like Walcott, Chamberlain, Giroud, it becomes of problem. Our lack of proper play lays more in us not having a high enough technical level in the whole squad rather than just Coquelin imo.

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Yeah Wenger really worked miracles with what he was given that year. Too bad his sub par players finally gave out there at the end. I remember Owen Hargreaves rising from the grave and putting the nail in our coffin.

Miracles? Are you saying that squad wasn’t that good :stuck_out_tongue:? Fabregas and van Persie developed into great players. Rosicky was really good, had his fair share of success with Dortmund (League title, UEFA Cup final). Arsenal still had Toure at the back and so on. Weakest players were probably Almunia and Adebayor. In my opinion that squad is probably the strongest squad of the Emirates Era at this point. Even though they were not rated at the beginning of the season (Henry leaving etc.).

I think it is fair to say that going into that season, expectations were lower than what we ended up producing… RVP only had 15 league appearances and 7 goals… it was really all about Adebayor, who hit lightning in a bottle that year. Of course Fabregas was evolving into WC talent as well… I think we should give AW some credit here, both for figuring out how to get what he did out of Adebayor and mainly getting 83 points, something unfortunately he really hasn’t come close to since except for once (2013 with 79 points).

Did he not score like 30+ goals that season? Hah probably the best season of his career.