We should just go full Özil on Jesus and buy up his contract. Eat the loss and move on. He'll do more damage taking up a squad place and getting on the pitch.
Open play chances
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When two of the front three are shit (Martinelli and Havertz), you're going to struggle from open play. Zero guile.
You have to add Rice, Merino and (current) Odegaard to that as well.
Five midfield and forward players started today who offer no goal threat and don't assist either. We're entirely reliant on Saka and set pieces. It's a sorry state because glimpses of this were evident last season.
Odegaard's form is obviously a slump but even at his best he lacks composure in front of goal and fluffs a lot of chances. I wonder if it could be traced back to his horror miss at Villa Park two seasons ago? He used to have a good shot on him.
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Really don't like seeing Merino and Rice on the pitch at the same time.. they are to similar and level of quality on the ball in the centre becomes average, makes this too slow and predictable... Martenilli has stalled big time, was hoping it was a phase that he could push through and find his place but his general play has been ineffective, especially that he hasn't developed his dribbling so has been found out a bit, doesn't help that the left 8 is always a 'functional' player.. Would like to see what Nwaneri could do out there, has that unpredictability and don't see Arteta starting him and Martin together anytime soon.
it's my my concern with Arteta and the squad building process also, too much power and dominance and not enough focus of players with quality on the ball
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Dom odes finishing was sound last season. this reputation he's suddenly developed as an inefficient wastrel is misguided imo. he's going through a goalscoring slump, which is permissible in his position. it's only attracting the spotlight because we have such limited goal threat elsewhere.
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We have zero presence up front because we play without a centre forward. Has Havertz been on the pitch the last 2 league games? Apparently he started them according to the lineups.
Can't remember him playing CF. I do remember his pitiful run down the right
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invisibleman18 we are in the middle of December, he has yet to score away from home in the PL
Biggest mistake since Arteta took over has been buying Havertz, without any doubt. He is not good enough as a CM, nor as a striker, he is either the highest earner or the second highest in the squad, good luck moving him on. He blocked us from buying big and improving 2 main areas. Now it looks like we do not have the money to do it, and seeing as Arteta loves him, probably don't even want to...it's bad
HomeSteak Tbh in terms of strikers in the league, I would take Haaland, Jackson and Isak over Havertz. For some, arguably Cunha and Watkins are better strikers too. So he's probably around the 6th best option around.
Even people like Wissa, Duran and Delap has a better scoring ratio than him ffs. I think in an ideal world Havertz will be a very good rotational striker, but not when you have fucking Jesus to rotate with.
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Clrnc ok, rotation...but, we are going to sell our 50 mil striker Jesus(more like give away for free, he is on huge wages as well and finished with football), so we can go and get a 70 - 100 mil new striker(standard price for a decent striker) that will bench our 65 mil striker, on huge wages. Then fix the rest of the squad while not breaking FFP rules? No way, it's fucked bad.
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I thought the value proposition behind having a team of volume giants was so that we'd have a ridiculously high aggressive press that would generate chances for us. that's what worked so well last season. i remember even swamping and swarming liverpool at anfield for a whole half of football, and my pool supporting mate texting me about how spooked he was.
right now, I can't tell if some of our boys have physically dropped which is hurting this part of our game, or if teams have sussed it and are taking less chances to try building from the back against us. based on my cursory eye test, we're catching teams out with our press way less than last season, which is leaving us with the tessellating horseshoe as the only source of chance creation
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I think the press is fine for the most part. But the speed of attacks when we win it back is off. Feels like centre backs have 5-10 mins to take a breather between each attack while we pass it around, it needs to feel relentless.
With the amount of ball and territory domination we had we should have had 20-30 shots on goal, not 13.
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tetball at its heart has always lacked a real attacking ethos. it can offset its worst instincts of inherent structural conservatism by having as much individual quality in attack as possible, but we've remained short on that required quality every season. it's always been the major red flag at the heart of this rebuild project since its inception. we regress to stale moyesian archetypes too often. I don't how much mindshare or urgency arteta puts into resolving this obvious flaw in this system. as others have pointed out, there has been some appetite to bolster our attack, but the greater appetite has always seemed been for collecting defenders or costly impulse buys like havertz. we rarely miss out on burning budget on targets that should be ancillary, but the obsession is now costing us a generational opportunity for silverware. a day late and a buck short was on wengers inscribed on epitath, and we're somehow repeating those mistakes but this time with a far larger budget
On one hand, I agree we're allocating resources in a way that reduces our chance to win at times.
On the other, I disagree our recruiting emphasis on centre halves and fullbacks proves we're not interested in offence.
We spend big on ball-playing defenders because they let us play a front 5 or 6 with security, leading to the hallmarks of our game model: aggressive pressing and territorial domination.
Spending big on defenders does mean we're not shelling out that cash on ball striking unicorn wingers and strikers. It doesn't mean we're not interested in offence. As the story goes, we're scoring more goals than ever before, yada yada.
The weakness in our game isn't that we struggle to mount attacks in open play. The weakness is that we struggle for the highest peak of unstoppability against defences comparable to our own for talent and organisation.
With our recruitment we've sacrificed that sharpest possible cutting edge and invested in domination and control everywhere on the pitch. We destroy on stats-nerd artefacts like "field tilt" or "final third touches" without always getting three points to match.
If just one of Martinelli, Jesus, Trossard and Havertz was in any sort of scoring form we might not even be noticing the goal problem. Just one of the four. Unfortunately those four names are now respectively a developmental crisis, parasite, passenger and enigma that regularly go onto the team sheet.
We need a "Rice" up front or on the left, preferably both. I would put any of these four on the market to get in these signings if we have to, but I'd probably flog Jesus, Martinelli, Trossard then Havertz for priority.
Burnwinter The weakness is that we struggle for the highest peak of unstoppability against defences comparable to our own for talent and organisation.
I agree with much of your post, but not really this bit as our most recent EPL results show we are also struggling to score against teams with relatively poor defences. I don't think anyone could say that Everton or Fulham's defence are comparable to our own in terms of talent or organisation.
