not dissimilar to how Barcelona suddenly went mad and bought such a wretched midfielder. one who plays quite often these days

I read your posts then made a few straightforward inferences about your opinion. Please don't sue.

Wenger said himself time and time again Song wasn't our holding midfielder. Anyone who watched us regularly would have realised Arteta was given the job to stay deeper. Blaming Song for playmaking and getting forward a bit is like complaining Ramsey turns up in the opposition box too often.

Something must've happened behind the scenes for Wenger to let Song go for £15m. He was at a good age, bags of experience, and even if you didn't like him (and I didn't tbh) you'd have to say he was a solid player. Wenger would never sell Gibbs, Szczesny, Walcott, Wilshere who are at a similar stage in their careers. Not looking to blame him (well, I guess I am) but he must've done something to piss people off. In hindsight you can say he would've been handy but I wouldn't say we've particular missed him. He was stronger than any of our CMs i give him that but we're looking for someone a bit quicker and snappier (if that's a word).

Song said in an interview that he told Wenger he wanted to leave badly and after must persuasion, Wenger relented. He say nobody can reject Barca.

The main thing Song seems to lack is leadership; he always seems very quiet on the pitch, when in fact he is better positioned than the players in the forward line from a defensive POV. Now that is a valid criticism, and one that should not be easily overlooked when we are looking at the full picture of what benefits the team. As a player though, I think he is quite a bit better than both Flamini and Arteta.

Song lacked a few more things than just leadership to become a really top holding midfielder.

I don't think Wenger wanted him to play like a dedicated holding midfielder. Whenever Song seemed to be focused on just defending, which happened from time to time, he generally did that very well. IMO I think there is a lot of confusion about what a lot of us WANTED him to play like, and what Wenger TOLD him to play like.

Ricky1985 wrote:

Song lacked a few more things than just leadership to become a really top holding midfielder.

Think we should probably look to get this thread back on topic fellas. We're all just re-hashing posts from 2012 here.

qs! wrote:

Wenger said himself time and time again Song wasn't our holding midfielder. Anyone who watched us regularly would have realised Arteta was given the job to stay deeper.

Yep. I never got this part of the criticism either. Song had faults, some of them very annoying, but this idea that he completely abandoned his defensive position to run forward is nonsense. He clearly played a box to box role from the minute Arteta made his debut in an Arsenal shirt, and we were better off for it.

Anyway, there's no need to spend the summer haggling with Leverkusen. There are plenty of players on Bender's level who will be available.

i dont care how wenger or song himself wanted to play. his best role was as a DM. outstanding tackler, great 1v1 defending, strong - the only thing he lacked was leadership/maturity/ability to organise the team.

he was a decent short passer but nowhere near good enough to merit playing further forward. like some people here, song was under the delusion that you pick a few good passes and that means you should be a playmaker.

Song was good at 1v1 defending? I used to feel like he almost always committed a foul and earned himself a booking in the process.

He did. For me that was more because he was an incredibly lazy tackler, couldn't be bothered to get the right side before sticking a lazy leg out. When he could be arsed to concentrate and focus he was a reasonably hard to pass.

Why is this thread about Alex Song?

Its baffling how many people confuse Songs's role. He was a 'shy' CM who played a B2B role as he grew in confidence and ability. His last season was a culmination of Wengers coaching and confidence in him when he successfully played as an all action CM/b2b contributing both in attack (majorly) and defense.

IMO some of Wilshere's best displays came alongside him

Selling him is an entirely different topic, though i think if we had him for one more season, we would have benefited tremendously