His intelligence and speed at opting for passes is very good as opposed to Denilson, being more physical and using technique to retain possession under challenge and spreading out play etc. For me its a very tricky position that he plays in. Only Wilshere has played anywhere nearly as good in that position. He's been integral to possession play, defense and counter attacking.
Too slow, not mobile enough and too defensive.
If we keep playing him we'll have to play someone like Rosicky or Arshavin as an attacking midfielder. The balance of that midfield is off. The current combo is too slow and not mobile enough. We were playing at a snails pace against Fulham but they seemed happy to let us play at that pace. Against Dortmund, we saw how easy it was to pick us off and we struggled to get the ball out of our own half. The signs were there against Norwich as well.
RVP is the only player scoring. That's a worry.
We can come back to this topic later because as usual, people will only start looking at this sort of thing when results start going pear shaped. It's not moaning Ollie, it's an observation and such snipes are really annoying. Why not try to figure out why Fulham were able to stifle our play and why we struggled in the first half against Dortmund instead of moaning about other posters 'moaning'. We're looking more solid on defence but we will have a serious problem on our hands if RVP's goals start to dry up.
And be truthful, nobody thought we were signing a defensive midfielder when they heard we had signed Arteta.
rvp might be the one scoring goals, but the team is setting them up. how good is theos crossing recently, songs run against dortmund, his pass to rvp v norwich. he is the one finishing them. the team is just setting them up. not a worry atm for me.
when we signed arteta, i wasnt expecting a cesc replacement, i thought he was more creative then he has been but we have jack and ramsey for that. he is grafting away, being discplined and protecting the defence. we need a player like that, we have one. so far so good
Speaking of which, Song has more assists than Arteta. 5 assists for Song and 1 for Arteta. Good for Song, but we need more from Arteta. If Song can manage it, so should he. It doesn't have to be either or.
We're not passing the ball around as well as we usually do. That's a worry for me. Against better teams it could be a problem. A few pundits have said the same thing and I agree with them for once. We'll see how it pans out but it's an area we must improve on.
but you could argue the reason song has more assists is that he knows he can go forward and arteta will cover him and do a good job thus allowing him forward to create safe in the knowledge that arteta will be discplined and break up any counters.
quite glad we arent trying to play our tipp tappy beautiful passing game, last few years it hasnt worked, didnt work begining of season and we changed. we are now unbeaten in 7 games in a row, dropping just two points (if i am right, think its something like that) which shows its working. saturday didnt because palyers were rested and the team lost something. partly cos fat fuck does fuck all so we are down to ten men