Quincy Abeyie wrote:
I still disagree that you need to be a complete player to be a good one. Having strengths and weaknesses is fine. Özil on form was a fantastic CAM even when his shooting was awful, and Sagna was our best fullback since I started watching regularly even though he was nothing to write home about offensively. If you can play a four man defense with only one (?) defensively great player and still let in the least goals in the league, then why not.
I agree Sagna was an excellent right back, and Wan-Bissaka does remind me a little of him (although he'll do well to be half as good). Sagna improved his crossing with hard work to a decent standard but his touch, dribbling, passing and combination play was still poor to average, and it was 12 years ago when he arrived at Arsenal; the game was different, fullbacks at top clubs in England were asked, by and large, to get up and down and provide width and even then the holes in his game made him a frustrating player when we had the ball, and as time went on he struggled more with what was asked of him.
Now it's moved on even further: Fullbacks have to be able to pick the ball up from the keeper or centrebacks, play in tight areas, and progress play. They have become much more than players that just stretch the pitch with dummy runs and occasional crosses. With the tactical shift towards greater compactness, fullbacks at the top teams have to be able to deliver crosses and final balls with good efficiency and take advantage of the space created for them.
It's why we see so many wingers and centre midfielders being converted into fullbacks.
I'm not saying a player has to be a complete player (it'd be nice if they were), but I disagree with your use of Mesut Özil as an example: Positions on a football pitch aren't equal to one another and especially not in different tactical environments. A striker in a 2-man strikeforce doesn't have to be complete, a centreback in a team that exclusively sits deep or the third man in a back 3 where he's tasked with advancing the ball, doesn't have to be complete, Mesut Özil when he gets 20+ assists in a team that scores 2+ goals/game doesn't have to be able to score that often. Indeed a fullback in a team that plays deep and defensively pretty much exclusively, doesn't have to be complete; although I'd argue it's much more important for a fullback to be well rounded than in most other positions.
Wan-Bissaka is going to a team that are better than 75% of the Premier League and expect to be better than 95% ordinarily. He will face a different challenge to that which he faced at Palace: Who are worse than 75% of the League and set themselves up accordingly. The emphasis will be on his ability to play in tight areas, progress the ball, get on the outside and then produce efficiency when he delivers into the box or plays a final ball. I'm not convinced by that half of his game at all. And defending transitions, as defenders at top clubs have to do with much greater regularity, is a whole different ball game to defending deep in a block.
So let's see how he gets on. He could prove to be great for them but I foresee shortcomings in his game that make it far from a sure thing.
