Quote Originally Posted by She Wore A Yellow Ribbon View Post
van persie hardly had much service last season. everything went through him yes, but little went to him in the first place. hence why him bagging 30 was a remarkable achievement. he was very clinical and made the best of scraps he was fed. the amount of times i used to sit there in front of the tv and just get completely bored and dumbstruck at the continuous sideways passing and lack of creativity in our team last season. our creativity was poor and we often relied on our DM to bail us out with some incredible through balls. apart from that, we were shocking at opening up space. i remember liverpool away when we had that smash and grab. we had 2 decent passes up to van persie all game, the cross from sagna and the through ball by song. he ended up scoring both. apart from that nothing. hence the wild celebrations.

countless times we used to berate the lack of creativity in the final third and wonder why van persie was left so isolated up top, so i dont know why you're suggesting otherwise all of a sudden. in fact going into the summer most arsenal fans agreed that an attacking midfielder was a priority which highlights the problems we had.

and surely you're not denying van persie can create space out of nothing? when he was actually given the ball he was the only player in our team that could create something out of nothing. the amount of times i used to sit there and applaud him for scoring the most unthinkable of goals. volleys, headers, twists and turns, whatever, he scored them.

im not sure how messi and van persie would fit in a team because as you say there's a lot of politics involved. but my point was purely hypothetical; its not fantasy to suggest that van persie could score 50 goals in that barca team. he scored 30 in a crap arsenal team. one of the best finishers ive seen and im more than happy to admit it, regardless of my ill-feeling towards him.




http://www.eplindex.com/15004/robin-...pta-stats.html

I'm not saying things because there is no degree of truth to them. Sure we had poor games where we didn't create much and you're right to cite the Anfield game but that is no surprise, that's how it often is for us at Anfield, yet we don't lose anyway. There were wild celebrations because it was a last minute winner, surely?

The reason people wanted an attacking midfielder is to make our attacking play better but also in the hope it wouldn't mean we'd be needing to find RVP all the time and hope he can finish things.

I don't think you read what I said, I said that Messi can do it, with greater regularity than anyone (based on the attributes he has and uses more than anyone else). Watch a video compilation of all his goals, some are absolute tap-ins but a great deal are from picking up the ball and running, then chipping without breaking stride, multiple times.

You're making a 2+2=4 assumption in your hypothetical scenario and of course we're talking about a Barcelona team without Messi in it, therefore it's going to be a team that is a lot less great than it is in any other circumstance. Iniesta and Xavi do not lay chance-after-chance for him without needing to do anything, Xavi hasn't assisted him more than twice in about two years. I'm not going to doubt his finishing ability which is about clean striking, now with either foot but the likelihood of doing that 50 times in a season? I don't think it'll happen. I'm not sure he'll even beat his total from last season by much with Man Utd.

Also, with regards to Real Madrid against Barcelona in chance creation, in their most recent matches, the shots on target/off target stats are very even. Real Madrid just create theirs through going for the throat.