Hull City vs Arsenal (Premier League)

Let’s be fair to Coq, smart play by him helped start the moves leading to the first goal and the pen.

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Must say that I am impressed with Coq. He’s not flashy in any way and can’t pull of those long range passes every time. But he was everywhere today, and took good care of the space between defence and midfield. Deserves more credit and I’m sure it could work with both him and Xhaka on the pitch.

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If his name were Fernando Cuevas you’d be jizzing all over yourself right about now. Probably something along the lines of “es mejor mediocentro del mundo, hay dios mio!!”

lol, no. But I will say this is your first trolling attempt that has actually made me chuckle a bit. Maybe there’s hope for you yet. :wink:

btw, I’ve often been a defender and backer of Coquelin. But it’s clear he is what he is at this point, ie a Kante type, perhaps a little worse, and I’ve been guilty of getting a bit carried away with the hype on him (Coq, that is) too. Fact is he’s the classic player whose stats are used to make him seem like he is better than he is. Similar to what’s happened with Schneiderlin (BEST DM IN THE LEAGUE!) and Kante (BEST DM IN THE LEAGUE!) in the past. Xhaka is a better player than all of them (as was Arteta in his first couple seasons here), Wenger just needs to have the balls/conviction/clue to play him with Santi.

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The way Coquelin has handled the arrival of competition in the form of a 35m signing, has been nothing by exemplary IMO. It’s the exact way you want your current players to react in this situation. In fact it looks like it’s motivated him even more and he’s stepped up a gear. I haven’t seen him in training but he strikes me as a player who probably trains like a dog too. He’s clearly full of passion and you know even on a bad day youre still going to see a workhorse at minimum.

I hugely agree he needs more credit, because some of these attributes you just cannot train, its part of their personality. He’s massive for us right now.

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Coquelin’s been booked 3 times in 4 matches already this season, Cazorla will be heading towards a suspension soon with some of his Scholes-esque tackling.

We have 5 midfielders for 2 positions in my mind and will need all of them over the course of the season. We’re Arsenal: at least 1 will always be injured anyway.

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Hull are awful and I think they are going down this season, that was an easy game that we controlled I was amazed they somehow got it back to 2-1 with 10 or so minutes left.

Xhaka is a top player but Coq brings something defensively to this team that is sorely needed. I’m not delirious to think that Arsenal are some amazingly organized outfit and that we can stay tight and compact while grinding out results. Coq shields the back four better than anyone in our team and I think we can sacrifice a little creativity going forward in order to have that stability. Xhaka is reckless in the tackle and I don’t think he’s anywhere near coq defensively. We’ve got so many options for those two positions right now it’s unreal. I think Xhaka is probably looked at as a long term replacement for Cazorla tbh.

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We will need to defend better against Chelsea or they will beat us. We got opened up a few times but hull had no end product . Monreals positioning sense seems to have deserted him. Santi n Cech very lucky to stay on but an easy win with a great finish by the new boy. il take that. on to forest.

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Yeah I think people are forgetting how diabolically bad we have been at winning the ball back and dealing with counters. Le Coq has his flaws, but he has good timing in when to press and tackle and win the ball back and we haven’t had someone like that in a long, long time.

Xhaka has a lot more in his locker in other ways, but I haven’t seen that sort of thing from him at all - in fact, the sample of attempted tackles we’ve seen from him that were air-shots (granted VERY small sample size) lead me to believe he is much more the DLP type, and that is fine too… it is a strange collection of DLP/DM/BTB with Xhaka, Le Coq, and El Neny atm, but at least we have options.

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I don’t think Monreal’s positioning was bad. He had Iwobi playing ahead of him who fell asleep at the wheel more than once during the match.

It’s much harder to defend when you’re out on an island like that.

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fair point our attackers donr track back enough

Is the reserve league now called the Prem2?

Yes and it’s u23 now.

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