Granit Xhaka

Granit has ruined an excellent performance because of a shocking red card. Awful decision by him, totally nosense.

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Bunch of arrows on a picture doesn’t say anything to me and I don’t think his performance was good either. He had a couple of good forward passes and a bunch of pointless backwards passes but again we played opposition that didn’t pressure us much so it’d be an absolute farce if our midfielders didn’t do alright at least. we had silly possession (like 75%) up til the sending off.

He needs to add far more to his game than quitting the red card collection if he is to take over after Santi. Can he get there, absolutely. But he is far from there imo and I’m still worried about next time we play a team that attempt to fight us for midfield, hopefully he has stepped up his game til then.

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Quality performance.

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Why this talk of him taking over after Cazorla? They’re not the same type of players and they don’t even play the same position. He should either start ahead of Coquelin or not play at all.

The signing made little sense from the beginning, but if the idea really was to somehow turn this one footed player, with no real press resistance into “the new Santi”, so that he could be used together with Coquelin, then the signing was even more stupid than I thought.

A “new Santi” pretty much means a midfielder who can both somehow manage to be the deepest midfielder early in the build-up, only to then push on and play further forward again in the same move. Good luck finding that player on the market.

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Where has this idea that Cazorla is irreplaceable come from? I feel like plenty could offer what he does.

We can always take Kroos of Madrids hands the first year they don’t win the CL and sack their coach and sell all their players.

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Kroos really is the dream tbh.

Yeah too early to read much into it. Frankly, Xhaka still needs to just get his composure squared away. Forget the red, the pass leading to it was pathetic.

He has had a couple of goodish games to me in all that I have watched him with us so far and his passing is only appearing in flashes… Hope he comes good, but not really seeing much to get excited about so far other than 3-4 decent halves.

Maybe, but they aren’t really in our squad atm… closest player may be Wilshere, but he still has growing to do and was injured all the damn time anyway. Hopefully Xhaka or he evolve to that quality but even then Santi’s technique was on a different.

Yeah, but when you’re making as many passes as he is you’ll make a mistake or two. His passing on the day was really quite good.

I haven’t watched him as consistently as some of you have, but I find him to be pretty good most times I watch, including today and the Swansea game where he was good aside from the ‘accidents’ (in Spanish we say ‘errores puntuales’…I really want to say this phrase in English, but I’m not coming up with the word…‘random accidents’ is the best I can think of atm). I would agree that pressing resistance is the one thing I really don’t see in his game nor really see it coming…but I think his passing is good enough and his positioning can improve enough that he’ll be good enough for us as a 6. But he obviously needs to be paired with a very good player in the pivot with him, which really needs to be the priority for this club.

Have to say I didn’t mind Ramsey’s performance today, though.

Anyways, it only matters to a certain extent who’s playing, we’re not going to have a really, truly coherent midfield as long as Wenger is here, that’s pretty clear at this point.

Marek Hamsik and Luka Modric, are the only two I can think of.


inb4 someone replying with a picture of Dahoud -.-


edit:

Was tempted to mention him, too. :grin: But I’m not sure if he really can do the kind of passing in those deep areas, that those two can do.

If we’re just talking about a midfielder who is supposed to not also quite often be the deepest player in the build-up, but rather, focus purely on just advancing it further forward, then yeah, Kampl is still my first choice out there. :slight_smile:

Not Kampl?

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Haha beat me to it.

Well yes you will make misplaced passes, but that was one tragically bad - directly out of the Ramsey book. He clearly has some very excellent passing in his locker, especially the longer passes, he just hasn’t shown it consistently enough. And his major mistakes and “unforced errors” just need to come down.

I agree Ramsey wasn’t bad today. Overall, we need higher quality in that area of the pitch now - big time.

Don’t forget LB & probably a wide player too, which is why I don’t understand people still wanting to let a very useful player like Walcott leave, we have enough issues to solve already.

In my best singing voice: “don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” :smirk:

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He played well but he needs to fix the discipline side of his game.

Tend to agree - I’m not advocating his departure per se, but feel he IS one of the reasons we need better players out wide b/c he isn’t good enough. Having him as 3rd or 4th option for the 2 wide positions is fine though. If his departure helped fund (hahahaha I know, I know… we don’t need it) getting a top replacement, I would be all for it.

I can get on board with Granits tackle being a red but how is this not equally worthy of one?

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Because it’s not that dangerous of a tackle really. You’re not going straight into the player with two feet/or with studs up. That kind of tackle is not likely to end in much more than a knock that hurts a little for a few seconds and you walk off.

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