Sanogo was astonishingly bad. Genuinely took me aback.
I agree entirely with the the posts above about our bloated squad. For me, having players in the squad like Gabriel, Elneny and Lucas Perez (and others) that cost the club £30m+ in transfer fees and continue to cost the club 100k+ per week in wages, is just not efficient. Even more so when you have a very good youth system, with some very good players champing at the bit to get a chance.
Clrnc wrote:
Nice to see you back here Ricky. How do you think Nelson compares to City's best talent Jadon Sancho? By all accounts they were both impressive and are really similar players too.
How's Willock and Malen doing nowadays?
Kept an eye on Sancho since City signed him from Watford as a 14 year old for 500k. Was looking forward to seeing him live on Monday.
A little difficult to compare him and Nelson. They are different sorts of player. Sancho is a head down and beat his fullback with every single trick in the Fifa play book type of forward. His balance and close control is ridiculously good. He's quick, but not overly quick, and very much specialised in that left side, cutting in forward role.
Nelson is different. He doesn't have anything like the same number of skills in his locker - although he has a fair few - he beats people in a more old fashioned way. Sancho definitely the more dangerous one-v-one though. Nelson has played right wing, left wing, number 10 (where he was playing in the video above) and as a centre midfielder. He's explosively quick and a proper athlete. He can carry the ball, he has great feet in tight spaces, has an excellent passing range, sees runs and has the ability to play those perfectly weighted slide rule passes. He's not really shown himself to be a great goalscorer for Arsenal, but he can hit a ball and finish and has scored lots for goals for England youth sides.
Nelson has that Arsenal vibe to him where he always does the right thing, not greedy or arrogant at all. You almost want him to be more selfish because you can see the quality he has when he goes himself. And he did play more like that the other night actually. Sancho is the opposite. I am confident Nelson will look even better when he's playing with top level players whereas Sancho's success depends entirely on whether his skills and close control is good enough to bamboozle Premier League fullbacks the way it does the U18 ones.
Both big talents but I reckon Nelson is more of a sure thing right now.
Incidentally, Sancho is yet to turn 17 and there has been a lot of talk about us trying to lure him back down to London before he signs his first contract. City have reportedly offered him something like 30k a week to make sure that doesn't happen. I don't think there's much chance at all of him not singing for them but It'd be a great coup to get him.
Malen and Willock have done alright this season. The former has been playing for the U18s until recently and has looked too good for that level. Scored a fair few goals. Willock hasn't had quite the same level of influence this season, I think that's because Nelson has kind of taken over at that level. Willock has been linked with a summer move to Celtic recently. I think that'd be a good move for him and us. Put a favourably priced buy-back clause in his contract and we have it covered if he develops well up there.
Edit - same guy that made the Nelson video has made one for Sancho. So you can see what I'm talking about:
