Me too. The whole thing just looks very stale to be honest. It might just be a genuine slow start, but we’ve got a lot of players who have been with us quite a long time now. Continuity is a good thing, but you also have to refresh & evolve, and that includes players. PSR probably a big part of why
The biggest issue for me right now is the square pegs in the round holes scenario. SJM is wasted out wide like that and Pau might as well hop for the rest of his life he's that one footed!
That's my gripe Sue, we can't play Kamara, Youri, SJM and Onana in the same team. We have signed 2 flair attackers in Malen n Guessand who don't get a sniff.
Guessand still settling, I get that, but Malen had a strong pre season. I said earlier my understanding is he’s not trusted yet to do the off the ball work Emery demands from his wide players. If he can work a bit harder going backwards, he’ll be in
He needs to be given more than 10/15/20 mins a game to prove that he can do it though?
From what I can gather, he wasn’t doing it pre season when played wide, so he has had that chance. He’ll be expected to do very specific things for a manager like Emery, you have to be 💯 in on that
Fair enough. It does feel a little bit like cutting off our nose to spite our face right now but in Unai we trust
He won’t be the last player under Emery who takes a while to figure out what’s expected. I agree tho, I did think he’d be starting on the right
That's interesting. I did think people were focusing on the finishing but that his all round play was a bit scrappy. Mind you that applies to Rogers too
Not necessarily about being scrappy, altho that doesn’t help. It’s defensive positioning. Rogers does his role there pretty well
If he really won't start Malen there then I'd reluctantly put Rogers back there. And have Maatsen overlapping mcginn. Because cash and Mcginn is like having no threat at all on that side. But hopefully we might get a new signing....
If he isn’t going to play Malen, isn’t it best to sell?
I think it’s more not yet, than won’t. It’s not that black & white
The loss would be massive
The lack of urgency, and constantly letting the opposition set themselves up before we try to do anything seems very intentional. Arsenal, for example, put a foot on the ball when they need to, but the aim is always to get the ball forward quickly. We don’t seem concerned with getting it forward
Absolutely. You can see the players all moving themselves & each other around like chess pieces at times.