Mik Merino: Page 14 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One More in the Tolly

Mik Merino

awooga83

It's looking like a total miss allocation of transfer funds for what the team needed we've been spending too much on reinforcing these areas we need to improve the attack.

Coombs

I want to be clear that I was absolutely fine with this transfer. I even think it was needed. It was the business we didn't do that is costing us, though, and I refuse to accept that signing this guy stopped us from getting a proper replacement for Partginho.

Selling ESR for this is just pathetic, though.

Qwiss

Coombs agree with this. As a back up for Rice I think Merino is a good option and something we needed. We needed another midfielder though on top of Merino. A real top quality mid that compliments Rice.

Coombs Selling ESR for this is just pathetic, though.

If it was based on a trust of Nwaneri then fine but it seems like Arteta is sticking rigidly to whatever his plan for Nwaneri is despite Odegaards injury meaning we need to use him more. This is how big players are formed, you suffer a crisis and they come in and show what they are about.

Dom

He'd be fine as a Rice back up but I hate that Arteta's using him as an 8 and having Rice sit deeper alongside Partey.

I know people have strong opinions on Rice's best position but Rice is too basic as a DM/6. I prefer him pressing up front alongside Odegaard than have him slow play down when he's receiving the ball from the defence.

JazzG

Dom He'd be fine as a Rice back up but I hate that Arteta's using him as an 8 and having Rice sit deeper alongside Partey.

I think some of it is just down to injuries. We needed to put Partey in at RB as we have White, Calafiori & Tomi out so Timber needs to go into LB. I think a lot of our good play comes from our full backs and not having White & Calafiori is another thing which is hurting how we play.

The main problem for me was Trossard, he needs to either play in the front three or come off the bench. He simply is not a No.10. He's at his best imo when he comes off the bench.

daredevil

He's stylistically the wrong type of midfielder to start with Rice. If you think of our midfield options as

Partey/Jorginho
Rice/Merino
Odegaard/Trossard/Nwaneri

Then he adds much needed depth, but configurations matter and we shouldn't be playing Merino and Rice together.

Qwiss

daredevil when you look at it like that its all so simple. I don't know why Arteta deviates from it so much.

Pepe LeFrits

I think he's been looking better and will turn out to be a good signing. We were desperately short of CMs; I'm pretty sure if you look back in the transfer threads you'll see this. I don't think he was a misallocation of funds at all, or at least signing a CM wasn't. Rice had no cover at all last season. We needed an 8, and he's an 8.

As regards the Rice 6/8 debate, well, I guess we haven't discussed it enough so I'll add my 2c: Rice clearly has limitations with regards to progressive passing for the role, but I don't think that necessarily means he can't be our 6. It may mean that he can't be our 6 in our tradition 3-2 shape with an inverted LB like Timber, though. Rice always tends to drop back to the CBs in build up so it may be that for him to give us the progression we need, we'll need to see both full-backs inverting and Rice playing more like a CB with Saliba and Gabriel in build-up.

Or maybe not. Anyway, regardless I think Odegaard being out and the shortcomings of our attacking quintet who aren't him (Saka excluded) is our main issue right now.

HomeSteak

So after all is said and done, he really is just a Havertz replacement in midfield.

Gurgen

I don't really get the recruitment. We had ESR, Vieira and Nelson to cover for the LW, RW and LCM positions. We got rid of them and replaced them with a ponderous DM, a has been who lost his motivation years ago and a 17-year old who is extremely talented but too raw and not trusted yet by the manager. What was the plan here?

lorddulaarsenal

Who lost their motivation years ago?

RocktheCasbah

lorddulaarsenal Sterling, I'm guessing.

I have to say, he is looking like a bust at the moment.

Claudius

RocktheCasbah the player who moved over the summer who could’ve had an impact given the Odegaard situation is Olise. I can definitely see that one being an option where maybe we should’ve been part of the discussion, even at £51m

invisibleman18

RocktheCasbah I have to say, he is looking like a bust at the moment.

If only there was some way that could have been foreseen... As Claudius said though, it's not fair to expect him to be fully fit yet apparently.

RocktheCasbah

Claudius yeah, perhaps.

You do have to wonder about our attention in forward areas I think. The defensive recruitment has been generally very good, but constantly evolving. Almost as if Arteta is so scarred by how the 22/23 challenge ended, defence has become all.

We have suffered loads of disruption, bad refereeing decisions, whatever but to see us so listless and clueless yesterday, when we had around 85 minutes to turn the game around, was really shocking. And we're all saying, get the 17 year old on.

I sat in the pub yesterday thinking, my Kingdom for a Smith Rowe, but even if he had stayed at Arsenal, I don't think he'd have got more than ten minutes.

My uncle went nuts about us after the Bournemouth game, to the point we haven't spoken since but I'd be lying if I didn't say alarm bells are starting to ring ever so faintly for me. Which sounds a bit mad a week after an excellent first half performance against Liverpool.

We just look a little Goldilocks, a little late 2020 to me.

SimplyThePest

RocktheCasbah what was/is your uncle’s take on things, out of curiosity?

Clrnc

Qwiss The way ESR is playing for Fulham is making it a mistake for us to sell him.

Unless even if he's here Arteta will still give him 0 minutes

Qwiss

Clrnc well thats exactly it. I was calling for more minutes for ESR for years but people kept saying he wasn't up to it, now he's showing what a run of games would have done for him. ESR wanted out though and rightly so because he was getting nowhere staying here and playing a couple of hundred minutes a season. He's already played more this season than he did in the last 2 for us. Some of that was injury but an awful lot of it wasn't.

Tam

Clrnc I don’t think so. It’s easy to look at Smith-Rowe this season, our current woes and consider it a mistake. But an outcome doesn’t drive whether a decision was sound or not. The thinking and process was right - removing emotion from the equation the problem is not the Smith-Rowe transfer, the problem is what we did after Smith-Rowe.

daredevil

Qwiss

It would be like starting Jorginho and Partey together. It wouldn't work for the same reasons.

My biggest concern with Merino when we signed him was that he was a low volume passer and I was hoping we went for Fabian Ruiz instead. Now that we have him, he's been as anonymous as the stats suggested which would be fine if he's playing next to Partey and Odegaard, as his box crashing qualities can be maximised without the team suffering for his anonymity in possession.

Jorginho saved our campaign last season and after all the FB injuries, I get that we had to move Partey to RB, but it should have been Jorginho who was brought in as his replacement and not Merino. Although, I can understand the difficulty in benching your new 40m CM.

goon

Qwiss

I think Kai and Merino as 8s is the bigger issue, you have two players who are seemingly not ball dominant. Neither are dropping deep or coming short to beg for the ball and dictate play, both instead look to drop into pockets.

Ethan was quiet when he came on but he was at least buzzing around trying to get involved up and down the pitch. It's definitely time for him to start. Ready or not, he's the only solution. Kai needs to go back up top.

For what it's worth, I like the look of Merino. I reckon he's someone who'll build some good relationships.

RocktheCasbah

SimplyThePest

This 👇 was after the Bournemouth game. There was a variation of this after the last game we lost before then, which was the Aston Villa game. I don't necessarily disagree with him, let's face it, it would be hard to say he's wrong at the moment.

"Arteta has got exactly what he deserves. His team selection was negative and over cautious taking into account the opposition and set the tone where in 80 minutes we haven’t created one decent chance. Totally unacceptable. This is likely to be costly come the end of the season.

It was fucking Bournemouth"

I just think the tone of the criticism whenever we lose, which till this last few weeks hasn't really been that often, isn't justified. And it almost always arrives on the final whistle, which makes you less receptive to it because you've had to suffer through the same shit he has.

This was on Odegaard on the last day of last season 👇

"Statistics probably suggest Odegaard is the best premiership midfielder this season but in my opinion he is not (but could be) as lacks the belief and arrogance required."

Who needs statistics when you have an opinion?

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