Claudius wrote:
Quincy Abeyie wrote:
That's assuming the best player always gets to start. If you think AMN is a worse fullback than Cedric I'd say that requires more of a Cedric cult membership than any equivalent AMN has on this forum.
Cedric is a lump of anthracite. That’s exactly why it is so damning of AMN that he hasn’t established himself ahead of him.
On Pépé. He’s a good player. He had a good game and was our most dangerous attacker before the subs. The problem is a fit one. Can he successfully learn to play the passing style and keep possession. Look at the long passing moves that Liverpool and City are sometimes able to do before scoring. Pépé won’t be able to offer us that.
If we saw Pépé playing on Spurs or even United, we might be excited by him. But those teams play differently to us. Fit is very important. We need to ensure all our purchases are consistent with our philosophy
Pépé is also really low on confidence - this is not the same player that did so well at Lille and that we saw here in patches in his first season. Just take a look at Xhaka to see what confidence can do to a player's performance - he couldn't play a forward pass 2 weeks ago, now he's pinging it every chance he gets again.
Although, like Xhaka, Pépé has problems in his game that are being exposed as he is asked to play this smarter, more technically demanding style of football. So I agree entirely that it's a fit problem and that it's not going to go away.
When Arteta was appointed, and given I expected a similarity to Guardiola's tight, positionally discplined and patient football, I figured it was going to be do or die for Pépé. And he's dying, in fact, he's dead already. We have seen enough, Arteta has no doubt seen enough. We have to sell quickly before his value is eroded further. Pépé is not going to suddenly get this.
