His start at Arsenal reminds me a lot of Giroud tbh. You can tell he feels the pressure of needing to perform immediately while knowing patience is limited, and he’s been solid from the beginning and improving every week, away at Newcastle he looked great imo, once he feels comfortable in the team and has gained the trust of fans I think he will fly.

gabi is one spinaroo away from doing his hamstring again

gabi is one spinaroo away from doing his hamstring again

I would hold it with the “we’re solid defensively”, still concede too many easy goals and give away the ball in our own half.

The truth is Arteta is in the process of figuring out how to best replace Xhaka, he gave us the perfect balance in midfield with his not only great passing and workrate, but his tactical intelligence which got the best out of everyone around him. We have no equivalent, and Rice is quite bad in that left CM role… so Arteta needs to find some alternative way to structure our midfield which will make us less vulnerable in transition but also still very good at progressing the ball forward and exposing open spaces. At the moment we haven’t got either, it’s not so much about our attacking players as a dysfunctional midfield at the moment which isn’t able to have good possession in the opponent’s half and our attacking players don’t receive the ball in good areas… we simply create few chances and not very good ones, we mostly rely on set-pieces and a bit of luck at the moment. Hopefully Arteta and co. find a way to maximize what we’ve got in midfield but it always looked awkward with Havertz or Rice replacing Xhaka, neither can fill the role he had, so we have to adapt more or less the whole team.

what the international break does to an mf

Eddie, a terribly ungracious player to watch. I still don’t know what Arteta sees there.