People on here have been saying he should be playing for us & constantly slagging the manager for not doing so. Its the same with Azeez. Forum is full of absolute jokers who just wanna send Lambs to the slaughter.
He did ok tbf all things considered.
Tonight showed though that only ESR & SAka are 100% at the level needed.
Hopefully Balo gets hatrick now against Chelsea
Saka showed nothing tonight. In fact Martinelli was good if anything, but we can't see that because of unbalanced XI. ESR did well too but he needs help.
The problem was Arteta mostly, you can't just lineup three forwards and just one midfield-forward mix in ESR. You need to have more ball-dominant players to balance it out.
Listen, Pepe is a forward, but despite his excellent finishing, he isn't good on the ball and specially off-the-ball, in fact he provides negative value in these aspects, gives the ball away too much and is bad defensively, just can make his work off-the-ball. He is good only when he is shooting.
Martinelli worked very hard without the ball with his runs attacking the space and also made a lot of recoveries and sucessful pressures (in fact Arsenal was winning the "expected goal match" until he goes out), but he was denied by Arteta's XI, Martinelli isn't a ball-dominant player and at least he isn't used as such. I see him more of ceiling player rather than floor raiser player.
Balogun bad game was not only poor service from the team, but his receptions, first touches, and he also looked overpowered in most of the duels, wasn't good defensively and wasn't OK with playing with the back to the goal, that was the impression. Nketiah's average match is usually better.
It only took one match. Fickle.
