This is what gives me some hope. He's having to learn a new position with a new team, while his confidence is clearly on the absolute floor. If the latter can pick up while he gets used to the role... that's the route to improvement. Though I still think it's unlikely that he works out.
Rice is the replacement for Partey. He's started every game in Partey's position from last season.
You should really leave your confirmation bubble for once if you think the level of criticism here is proportionate to his performance.I'll give it to you, you're relentless.
I guess the irony of the bolded eludes you.
No offense but that's exactly what I mean. People only look at highlights and/or big moments and then judge a player's performance on that basis. You can't judge a midfielder's performance based on goal scoring scenes when 99% of his job consists of doing the simple things right. He was good at retaining possession under pressure and pressuring the opponent himself. He lacked attacking impact and gifted United a counter opportunity. That's not particularly good but certainly not as bad as you'd think by only reading this thread.
Ödegaard 51 touches in 89 minutes (0.57 touches per minute), Havertz had 34 in 77 (0.44 per minute). I mean, I believe that he's not as involved as intended but don't you think "I can't remember the last time I saw a player hide from the ball more than Havertz" is a bit of a hypoerbole? Also, I don't think he packed when he got it but was generally quite composed that one turnover aside. He passed it on quickly but that is generally what I want to see from a midfielder. Maybe that's the difference, I like players who let the ball circulate instead of trying to force it impatiently.
The irony of your post is you were trying to convince the Caf last year that Sancho is quicker than Salah and Mane based on some “stats” you pulled up.I am but each weekend, there 39 games in the top 4 leagues so I think we'll agree it is hard to watch them allAnd as I said, my "judgment" is actually based on games I watched. I saw players have tremendous games (e. g. Thiago in the UCL final against Paris) and then read how people said he's only easy on the eye and has no end product. Most football fans simply have no idea what they're talking about and stats provide an incomplete but at least objective picture.
I watched your video of his touches to make sure. I don't understand your posts on it - that's clearly a very poor performance. An easy chance missed due to poor technique, a very lazy pass that loses the ball in a dangerous area, leading to a goal, a couple of clumsy fouls, and very little else. There's an ok pass to Martinelli at the start of the game, and good movement a couple of the times at the start of the second half, leading to the disallowed penalty and a Nketiah chance, but otherwise, he's making no impact. Through the game he almost never receives the ball in areas you want him to - in the box, in space, in-between the lines. That was a factor of him hiding from the ball, as I saw with my own eyes.
I played football myself for many years as a midfielder so I know that football is more than highlights. I just disagree that this was a 'solid' performance. It was not a car crash of a performance but it was like 3/10 maybe 4/10. I bet Havertz himself would agree with that assessment.
It's because he's decided this is a hill to die on, but what makes it most amusing is that it's a hill of his own creation.
I don't think you really dominated the game, though on the balance of things you slightly shaded it and probably narrowly deserved the win, but what you also have to take into consideration is that while you were playing with a passenger in the team, so were we with Martial. It was very much a 10v10 kind of effort (and you could notably tell how drastic the change was when both those players were replaced later in the game).
Slightly off topic but this must surely be the highest praise I've ever seen you give Arsenal
Yes, he seems to to be more at home there but Partey is still here and Xhaka is not. Now we are trying to fit Partey in at RB and shifting things around in a weird way. It is clear that Partey is still in Arteta's plans. The lineup vs Man Utd at least made more sense, but I think that happened because Partey was unavailable. I am curious how we would line up vs City...with Partey and Rice in as a double pivot? Is that the idea here?
I mean it's obviously not (and I actually said this straight after the game), but whatever makes you happy.Slightly off topic but this must surely be the highest praise I've ever seen you give Arsenal
How can you call a performance solid where a player missed a sitter and misplaced the pass that led to the goal? I'm genuinely confused.
Sancho did reach a higher top speed in that season's UCL than Salah and Mané. That's a fact unless you want to question the accuracy of their measuring technology. I know you have quite a special realtionship with facts but it is what it is. Maybe you should accept that the human eye can be tricked and some players may seem faster to you than others.
I think we weight the different types of plays differently. For me, doing the simple things right is what has the highest priority, at least as long as the team functions in general. Getting into goal scoring positions, chance creation, etc. comes on top of that. Better basics without that than the other way around. I know that many fans, especially in England as it seems to me, see that a bit differently.
I think we aren't that far off. On a scale from 1 to 10, I'd give him something between 4 and 6. But reading the reactions in this thread, you expect something between 1 and 3.
The chance had a goal probability of less than 35%. A misplaced pass in the opponent half happens even in the best teams. This is result oriented thinking. He had 34 touches plus the off the ball stuff, I think reducing that to two situations when he solved the rest of them solidly isn't a wholistic perspective.
I would say we dominated the game, but you were very threatening on the counter, and as a result, could have (and very nearly did!) win it.
Remember we have played City this season! In that game, Partey and Rice played together. I expect that will be the plan, while one of Partey or Zinchenko will also start each game as an inverted full-back to help win the midfield battle.
The basics are passing and moving into space to help his team-mates progress the ball and create dangerous attacks. He did next to none of that, which is my main criticism. I'm not really sure why I'm still arguing this, I'll leave it here.
I'm not saying judge him only by those situations. I just don't understand how given those situations his overall play can be deemed "solid".
You prove the point again. You are still convinced Sancho is quicker than Salah/Mane when anyone who watches football can see that’s absurd. Stop watching football by stats. You’ve picked stats from a competition with limited games and a small sample.
I think this is key - Hojlund, Mount, our first choice defence, maybe to an extent Amrabat, change the dynamic of the team drastically (especially Hojlund). I believe so far what we've seen is solid tactics, but poor technical execution in key moments, which will be reinforced, and therefore improve the overall performances, with the top available personnel.
He's now trying to build this as a sort of "we don't value the same things in a player" and weirdly trying to construct it as a UK vs others topic.
Yes, it definitely was a bad mistake. But those mistakes happen in almost every game. See, I'm by no means arguing he had a bad game. As said, solid to me is somewhere between a 4 and a 6. Average at best but not the trainwreck I expected when I read the first opinion pieces in here.
See, that's where we differ. I know that humans can't "see" how fast somebody is. We can roughly estimate but our perception is completely skewed. In this case, e. g. by running style and so forth. Which is why numbers have been invented: They enable us to compare certain things objectively. Football is often quite a subjective topic but when you find yourself arguing against the few objective facts which are there (and top speed that's been clocked through modern technology is almost as objective as it gets in this sport) then it is time to reconsider. You can argue that top speed isn't that important, you can argue that Sancho may be fast but uses it badly, you can argue he lacks match fitness so he can't maintain that pace but what you can't argue is that Sancho hasn't achieved a higher top speed in that respective UCL season than Salah and Mané.
If you actually read my post in the various topics in which we clashed, you'd actually realize that this is a constant. I do value other things in a player. But that would actually require that you try to understand what the other poster wants to say instead of taking everything personal like a butthurt primadonna.
This idea that Arsenal are undoing some crazy damage done to him by Chelsea is genuinely hilarious. It arrogantly positions Arteta as some kind of unrivalled talent guru saviour of lost souls.
It's true that Arteta isn't an unrivalled talent guru saviour of lost souls, but it's hard to deny that bar a good spell under Tuchel, the last few years Chelsea have helped create the lost souls in the first place?
He wanted to go, his wife wanted to go and 80% of his Arsenal career was spent getting shat on by fans of every club and the media. He wanted to leave on a good note and it was probably the perfect timing so we get something in return and thank him for turning it around.
Not necessarily. A few of them, sure. Most clubs have a couple of them. Havertz certainly wasn’t that.
He just needs time to adapt to his new teammates and new tactic. I remember it took Henry and Pires from 2 months to 6 months to adapt to new environment so 4 games is still a bit early to judge. So far sign is not very good.
I wouldn't quite put it that dramatically, but I think there is some damage from Chelsea, especially last season. It was a circus there and I'm not sure the club/managers had any clear game plan that the players understood. Completely logical considering they had 3 different managers last season. Think it's more damage regarding his confidence, which IMO is his biggest issue right now. He should have 2 goals for us by now and we'd be having a very different conversation about him. But he's bottled it. He is also playing in midfield again, which he hasn't done since he joined Chelsea, so he's relearning the role.
This matches my view.
He remember that he played the 9 very successfully in the last year at Leverkusen - and he was scoring more in that position than when he played in a deeper role.
Or it could be that a fan’s perspective on “the basics” is wildly different than how a manager views the game. You’re focusing on things that might occur once or twice a match. For a manager, the basics are more likely to involve what Havertz is doing without the ball at his feet, all throughout the match.
This. I was watching the game with my brother who is an Arsenal fan. We literally joke its a 10v10 game with Martial and Havertz acting as statues in the pitch. We barely even remembered both of them getting touches and doing something decent. Hojlund in his little cameo did more than Martial the whole game
In fairness, they've struggled in most games he started in too.
I'd say the Everton game was probably their worst performance of the season. It was worse than anything Chelsea have produced this season, and yesterday was the first time I felt another team played better than them. I doubt it's him that's the difference though, just an interesting observation.
What a ridiculous take.
Is it, though? Both Havertz and Mount are decent players but they are awkward tactical fits. Both obviously deserve the benefit of the doubt for now as the season has literally just started (and one hasn't even been given the chance to get going) but I would say both of them are far from ideal choices to adorn the strengths of their respective club midfields.
The 2 signings have nothing in common, apart from being former Chelsea players, so yes, it's a terrible take.
