CPM
Apparently ekitike was too expensive.
It was incredibly risky to sign a striker with a poor first touch to our team. (Haaland is a freak). And it's weird how bad he is on the air. Merino had to stand up there and take the responsibility off him against pool. It'd be tricky to have Nwaneri at 10 who's useless in the air beside him. Nobody is expecting you to win most of those but your job is to disrupt the CB when you can't win it. Just so the ball breaks loose in a dangerous area, that's it. He was misjudging the flight of the ball so badly he wasn't in position to put any pressure on CB glancing a head to a team mate. On the plus side he actually has a cool diving header like cazorla.
Overall it's a bit frustrating because it's like when ManU signs a slow defender we love it as we know it'll cause a cascade of problems. Even if his tackle percentages are good.
What made us arsenal for a long time was high level technical strikers Henry, DB10, Kanu and RVP and that's gone down and down.
When Liverpool and PSG look unplayable for periods of games is when the momentum shifts in their favour, they up the tempo and they can do that because they have high level technical players.
He's great at making runs and hyper aggressive in the contact when he's on the run. He's like a throw back to a different era. Even his finishing style is retro, a lot of the time he goes for blasting it rather than aiming for a corner definitely more Hasselbaink than Henry.
I think he'll get decent numbers like trossard does but like trossard he has a lot of limitations which you need to make compensations for. Which is why elite clubs didn't come in for Gyok or Trossard in the summer despite their goals and assists numbers and then both being available for a reasonable fee. And it's also why trossard generally doesn't start games despite his goal threat.
It's good to have Gyok as an option but I can see why arteta distanced himself from the signing through the media. It was continually leaked this was a berta signing.
He's very likable in a podolski way. But we need to shift him or havertz in the summer and try and find another striker.
