Quote Originally Posted by Mac76 View Post
"ignored the bit which showed me to be wrong"

The fact is Saka is as always being overplayed by Arteta, after taking a bad knock in the last game he should have been on the bench today, we would have won the game in any case and he's clearly feeling the effects of being overplayed, going missing for portions of the game and I noticed particularly in the last 20 mins or so our players were avoiding passing out to him as i think they knew he was running on empty

Your stats (including the assists - for some reason Mandel athinks no goals are ever intentionally created by a player putting in a great ball to be scored from) do indeed show Saka is important and that's exactly why you don't start him in a home game against a bottom-of-the-leageue side, even when he is fully fit

It's also completely asinine as he'll now have to go away with Southgate's lot, whereas leaving him out of the squad altogether might have got him off England duty
Agreed on all points.
He's a hugely important player for us - I read a stat recently where it was said he'd been involved in half our goals this season, that was a few weeks ago so may no longer be the case. So mandela's trolling about him is tiresome. I get why he's one of the first names on the team sheet but agree Arteta is overplaying him, even when he's got a knock. Hopefully the international break will give him a rest.