Eddie the cat: Page 19 - The Arsenal discussion community: One More in the Tolly

Eddie the cat

Sicario

Big Willie wrote:
Quincy Abeyie wrote:
The entire squad went missing if that's how you want to see it.

Even Laca went missing for those two games. Two more appearances without a goal.

Laca was scoring goals in the CL when he was Eddies’s age. Let Eddie have half the career of Lacs and then we can reassess.

Clrnc

RocktheCasbah wrote:
Arguably, if Arteta had brought him in earlier, we might have made 4th.

It's always the case. Paying for the rookie mistakes unfortunately. Like someone else pointed out Arteta values experience far too much.

Don Pacifico

Didn't we have the youngest average age in the league this season?

Big Willie

Sicario wrote:
Big Willie wrote:
Even Laca went missing for those two games. Two more appearances without a goal.

Laca was scoring goals in the CL when he was Eddies’s age. Let Eddie have half the career of Lacs and then we can reassess.

Laca has 5 goals in his CL career over 18 games, so basically a goal every 3.6 games. Nothing to write home about mate. You are seriously over rating him.

RocktheCasbah

Clrnc wrote:
RocktheCasbah wrote:
Arguably, if Arteta had brought him in earlier, we might have made 4th.

It's always the case. Paying for the rookie mistakes unfortunately. Like someone else pointed out Arteta values experience far too much.

I would have said the same thing a year ago - but I'm not 100% convinced this is borne out by the evidence of this season. If you look across our starting XI now, the experience is provided by Tomiyasu, Xhaka, Partey, Gabriel & Odegaard (still only 23). I think it made sense to have an experienced team when he came in, because inexperienced manager + inexperienced team (probably) = complete disaster, but as he's got his legs he's been able to evolve the team to where we are now.

Klaus

Big Willie wrote:
Sicario wrote:
Laca was scoring goals in the CL when he was Eddies’s age. Let Eddie have half the career of Lacs and then we can reassess.

Laca has 5 goals in his CL career over 18 games, so basically a goal every 3.6 games. Nothing to write home about mate. You are seriously over rating him.

Maybe Eddie would have had a chance to score some CL goals too if we had a better manager 😆 Instead he was 16 the last time we played in the tournament. Bit much to expect him to chime in at that age.

Clrnc

RocktheCasbah wrote:
Clrnc wrote:
It's always the case. Paying for the rookie mistakes unfortunately. Like someone else pointed out Arteta values experience far too much.

I would have said the same thing a year ago - but I'm not 100% convinced this is borne out by the evidence of this season. If you look across our starting XI now, the experience is provided by Tomiyasu, Xhaka, Partey, Gabriel & Odegaard (still only 23). I think it made sense to have an experienced team when he came in, because inexperienced manager + inexperienced team (probably) = complete disaster, but as he's got his legs he's been able to evolve the team to where we are now.

All those are the players he brought in.

So far whenever there's a choice he has always gone for experience till his hands are forced.

RocktheCasbah

Our front line is literally the way it is right now because of decisions Arteta has made and the eldest in the front four is Odegaard at 23 - Arteta has stripped all of the experienced guys out. Yes, he brought Willian in two summers ago, he also binned him last summer, at the same time replacing Luiz with Ben White and then replacing Leno with a much younger Ramsdale, ...

USArsenal

RocktheCasbah wrote:
Our front line is literally the way it is right now because of decisions Arteta has made and the eldest in the front four is Odegaard at 23 - Arteta has stripped all of the experienced guys out. Yes, he brought Willian in two summers ago, he also binned him last summer, at the same time replacing Luiz with Ben White and then replacing Leno with a much younger Ramsdale, ...

OK, to be fair, ever single one of those replacements were upgrades on what we had. (White for Luiz and Ramsdale for Leno). The less we say about Willian, the better.

RocktheCasbah

Right, but my point is simply that I do believe Arteta has (in the last year) shifted emphasis away from experience and towards youth. More than that, actually, I don't see how anyone looking at this objectively could come to any other logical conclusion.

Ray

Depends what you mean by youth, guys like White, Gabriel, Ramsdale, Tierney are in their mid 20s, which for a footballer isn't really youth. And he actively bought White because Saliba was too young.

The only really young players in the team are ESR and Saka, and that's because they are extraordinary talents and our top scorers.

And now with Elneny getting a new contract and Xhaka staying that's another example of him preferring experience over a kid like Lokongo, who was a big investment.

I really don't see Arteta as someone who is going to give youth a chance, and by that I mean someone from the reserves / u21s

Qwiss

RocktheCasbah wrote:
Our front line is literally the way it is right now because of decisions Arteta has made and the eldest in the front four is Odegaard at 23 - Arteta has stripped all of the experienced guys out. Yes, he brought Willian in two summers ago, he also binned him last summer, at the same time replacing Luiz with Ben White and then replacing Leno with a much younger Ramsdale, ...

Edu admitted at the start of the season that they imposed the young signings on Arteta. Plus he brought in Odegaard to play number 10 ahead of the younger ESR. Brought in White because he didn't trust Saliba.

RocktheCasbah

Ben White was 23 when we signed him. We can sit here and get into semantics about the difference between "youth" and mid 20's, but given we have had centre backs at this club play well into their mid-late 30's, I think 23 is plenty young enough.

I don't think either that Elneny getting a new contract means Arteta prefers him to Lokonga either, having one doesn't preclude using the other - as we saw around November last year.

Martinelli has also been given plenty of chances as a 20 year old - chances that nobody thought he was getting at the start of the season. Arteta has actively chosen to replace Auba with him and Smith-Rowe.

RocktheCasbah

Qwiss! wrote:
RocktheCasbah wrote:
Our front line is literally the way it is right now because of decisions Arteta has made and the eldest in the front four is Odegaard at 23 - Arteta has stripped all of the experienced guys out. Yes, he brought Willian in two summers ago, he also binned him last summer, at the same time replacing Luiz with Ben White and then replacing Leno with a much younger Ramsdale, ...

Edu admitted at the start of the season that they imposed the young signings on Arteta. Plus he brought in Odegaard to play number 10 ahead of the younger ESR. Brought in White because he didn't trust Saliba.

So did Edu make Arteta get rid of Auba and replace him with Martinelli & Smith Rowe as well?

And, again, 23 is very young for a centre back, 20 even younger. I don't believe bringing Saliba back here as a 20 year old would have been right for his development last summer.

QuincyAbeyie

Replaced Auba with Martinelli and ESR..? Auba's place was taken by Lacazette, and if I remember correctly Laca got injured before the Chelsea match and Eddie started and scored two.

Qwiss

He actively chose to replace Auba with Laca, right up until Laca got sick no matter how terrible he was. Then he had no choice but to play Eddie, I don't give him credit for that.

I think its clear he trusts some young players (Saka, Ode, etc) but when push comes to shove and a back up is needed he prefers the older guy. Hence the new contract for Elneny and the fear of losing Xhaka. He's fundamentally a safety first sort of coach and that shows when decisions like that arise.

Clrnc

Qwiss! wrote:
He actively chose to replace Auba with Laca, right up until Laca got sick no matter how terrible he was. Then he had no choice but to play Eddie, I don't give him credit for that.

I think its clear he trusts some young players (Saka, Ode, etc) but when push comes to shove and a back up is needed he prefers the older guy. Hence the new contract for Elneny and the fear of losing Xhaka. He's fundamentally a safety first sort of coach and that shows when decisions like that arise.

We will not be talking about ESR so soon had Willlian not had covid too.

Ray

Arteta's been here 3 years but I can't think of any youth from the reserves who he has bought into the first team? Patino and Hutchinson maybe, but they've barely got into the PL benches, let alone being given a run.

Emery for example had introduced Saka into the team consistently and put his trust in him.

Klaus

I think it's obvious that Arteta's plan is to build a young squad; probably because he needs them to still be good in a few years when his team-building is supposed to come into fruition. It's been a rather insistent approach so far though. Instead of building a team in the here and now and taking a longterm approach with the youth we've done the opposite: we've assembled a bunch of young players and then we've usually added old twats like Willian and Luiz and Cedric in an attempt to provide the missing experience. In-house we've kept favouring past-it players like Lacazette and Xhaka to the point of foolishness.

Few of these decisions have worked in our favour, I think it's fair to say, because too many of the players are either too young or too old. The age profiles in the squad move between the extreme ends when we should have made more Partey signings: players who will peak right now, and hopefully sustain that peak for the next 4 years.

Hopefully we'll make more signings that can contribute in the present this summer. There's a danger in looking too far ahead. What good is squad-building and careful planning when you keep missing out on your targets, such as Champions League (or even Europa League last season), because of it?

Sicario

Big Willie wrote:
Sicario wrote:
Laca was scoring goals in the CL when he was Eddies’s age. Let Eddie have half the career of Lacs and then we can reassess.

Laca has 5 goals in his CL career over 18 games, so basically a goal every 3.6 games. Nothing to write home about mate. You are seriously over rating him.

When we signed laca in the summer of 2017 was it how ppl feel about this potential Jesus signing, underwhelming or were ppl genuinely excited about signing one of France’s hottest talents?

Overrated or underrated he still won our player of the year 3 years ago. He has been shit last few months but overall not as bad as ppl are making.

The amount of disrespect this guy gets is very strange. When other players who have done less (Pepe) get away with murder.

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