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Gabriel Jesus: "Goals are not my strong point"

AbouCuéllar

Author of A-M essays 📚
We’ve sold some good players who didn’t work under him and they’ve shown that they’re actually nowhere near as bad as they looked here. Willian, Laca, Auba, Tavares and even Pepe have looked better since leaving. Willian is the most surprising because I was so convinced he was the most finished guy I’d ever seen. :lol:
Have they? Pepe has always done well in Ligue 1, it's no surprise, Tavares looks exactly the same player for Marseille, but again, Ligue 1, Laca same thing, Ligue 1, and Willian was never terrible or anything, he just wasn't the level required here...as I mentioned to you in the other debate he actually had more goal / assist contribution in that first 14 games of 2020-21 than Pepe, we were just a **** team then, honestly, with no creativity or ability to transition and construct, nor linking defence to midfield nor midfield to attack, no level whatsoever there. Auba he had a good little run in an easier league with some level of creative talent around him, when he was no doubt super motivated, and since then has returned to the exact same level we saw from him last season.

But Willian, yeah, he can't beat a man nor create interesting situations with his dribbling, nor does he have much physicality at all in pressing, but he's technically sound and makes good enough decisions in the final third and in association and passing, it's not surprising he's doing decent at a mid-low table premier league club.

Arteta’s system is very, very specific and requires unique (combinations of) attributes for certain players.
I think there's a bit of exaggeration here...I would re-state it more like: a juego de posición style played at the highest level (challenging for Premier League / best league in the world title, Champions league) requires unique combinations of attributes for all players. You just can't make this style work without top players in every position, it's why it makes more sense for teams at a talent / economic disadvantage like Atléti to play a different style, and it's why Arteta went for a different style while slowly implementing his concepts, because he knew we were at a major talent disadvantage and didn't have the quality in many positions necessary to play that style with real success.*

*factor underestimated by all during this process, including myself.
 

KrissKringle

Reinventing VAR 😡
No matter what player we bring in, one of the front 3 players will get replaced at a certain time during a game if we need goals.

I already said that I'd prefer a striker because we need someone who will put away those chances and a wide player isn't going to solve that aspect that's missing from our CFs lack of sharpness in front of goal.

In case one of Martinelli or Saka gets injured you have Vieira, Jesus and ESR (if he comes back soon) that can take their place, but if Jesus gets injured Eddie won't be able to do the same job and Martinelli would need some time to get the hang of the position after playing for so long on the wing.

Someone like Jonathan David would provide the same traits Jesus does for us because he's involved in the team play and can also be moved on the wing if need be. He's already a much better player than Eddie and he's a year younger.
 

AbouCuéllar

Author of A-M essays 📚
The Sp**s example from last season is not common. It's way over used. How often do January signings change a season? Not often.
Very fair point, definitely. As I say in the earlier post, it's really far, far trickier to find the right player in our situation than people realise. In Tottenham's case it really wasn't hard to upgrade their CM spot, and they could promise starter's minutes to any number of players, and Bentancur was one of many CMs in world football who would've massively improved them. Kulusevski was like Ødegaard for us in 2020-2021 one of those players you rarely find in the winter market, with that much quality. And in both those cases the teams again had a very low bar for what they were upgrading on and the above re: Bentancur applies.
City get injuries to Haaland and DeBryne and their title challenge is over. Should they go and splash on a DeBryne back up and a better player than Alvarez as a back up to Haaland, because they'll be heavily weakened if they are out
Yeah, very fair point. People overestimate how easy it is to strike the balance of getting a new recruit of the required level to really add something to the team while also not being able to promise him anything but back-up minutes. It's a tricky thing and really hard to find players on the market like that.
As for last year, it actually wasn't Sp**s signings that stopped us getting top 4 anyway. We just screwed up at the end - because our players were just too inexperienced.
Well, I think it was a bit of both, certainly without those signings they wouldn't have gotten to the 69 pts necessary to beat us, and also as you mention, a bit more depth to cover us for the injuries to White, Tomi, and Thomas that cost us and we would've got more pts. Striker we certainly made the right decision on, it wasn't worth it to commit our future of our 9 to say Isak instead of waiting for the superior top class player in GJ.

I do get the fear of injuries, of course, but I am not convinced that trying to mitigate all eventualities wrt to injuries is either possible or appropriate. I don't think squads are built that way - and I don't believe any club has a second team as good as the first, or has ever had.
Quite well said, yeah.

There are probably only 3 positions in the first team where a back up makes little difference.

Gabriel - White moves to CB, Tomi comes in at RB
White - Tomi comes in at RB
Zinchenko - Tierney comes in at LB
Definitely can't agree with Zin-Tierney. That's actually one of the biggest worries / drop-offs in the team, for me.

I'd also say that our back ups are fine - I know a lot disagree with that, but I am not keen on writing off back up players after 14 games and little game time.
Back-ups are fine at the two attacking centre midfield positions, but the wide attackers and 6 back-ups can be improved upon. Do agree with you that Vieira has been written off far too much off of a small sample of appearances, and a lot of reactions have been quite OTT.
Think I posted that somewhere earlier in the thread as to why it’s such a lazy comparison.

Last season City had KDB on 15 and about 5/6 players on around 8 goals and upwards. That’s like us expecting all of our attack + midfield to have a career high in goals in the same season. Possible of course but a fool’s gambit if the club actually do want the title.
Tbf, we don't have to score as many goals as City did last season to win the title. But it's a sound point aside from that.
It's not really a defence of Jesus, just an observation of what has happened.
Fair enough assuming Pep and Klopp know what they are doing - even if it's not working out yet. But then, let's also assume Arteta knows what he is doing. Nketiah has been given a new contract and is our back up striker. The club believe in him. I do too actually. We're too quick to write off players and look for the next player every time a transfer window comes round.
Agreed here for sure.
 

AbouCuéllar

Author of A-M essays 📚
Well, there are two claims to be made here
1) We are short in terms of attacking players and if there are injuries etc, we may not have adequate replacement within our squad and thus, we need reinforcements.
2) We are short of goals from the striker position and we need a striker to come in and provide another option up front.

I agree with claim 1 and I think we need reinforcements. The discussion here in Jesus thread with the context of Jesus`s lean spell is mostly claim 2 from what I can see though and that I am not sure I agree.
For me, Jesus is one of the best no9 in the world and with him in the team, we have been the second best attacking team in the league.
Just as an example, If we can get Felix or Toney, I would rather prefer Felix though Toney is more of a natural goal scorer(and a good player too). This is because in my view, he suits our system better. This is of course not considering other factors like league, physicality etc.

Yeah but then if it is a plan B striker we are looking for, then many of the other arguments being made in this thread are not really valid IMO. For example, there is an argument that in tough games, we might get only one chance and we need a clinical striker to put them away. Now this doesn`t really work with the "Plan B" argument because in this tough game, the plan B striker is unlikely to be playing in the first place (Because ideally we would want plan A to work).

I know that is not what you are saying, but this is why I feel the Jesus needs to score more argument strange. What we need is for Arsenal to score more. For Arsenal to score more, we need the system to work as well as possible and Jesus helps us there. The result maybe that the goals get distributed but that is a good thing and we should be happy with that.
I believe that if we had brought in the best striker we could get for less than 100m(Not considering likes of Lewa/Benzema/Kane/Haaland etc) instead of Jesus, we would not have necessarily scored more goals till now.

Top posting and 100% talking sense as usual.
This is maybe the 10th time I’ve seen this mentioned as a kind of roundabout defence of Jesus and explanation as to why we don’t need a striker.

First of all, it’s way too early in the season to judge. Secondly if Pep and Klopp both decide that their very successful teams still need a striker…I’m going to assume they know what they doing.
Definitely agree with this and the bolded especially. People forget we're only 14 games into the season. Too small a sample to make these kind of statements, and so many other variables involved that might be far more relevant (for me variables that would be more relevant for sure: small sample size variance effects, and complacency / lack of that extra mental edge and motivation typical in teams that win so many titles in so many years).
 

Trilly

Hates A-M, Saka, Arteta and You
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Country: England
Some of you see agendas everywhere, it gets so ****ing tiring. I just saw someone compare his numbers to two of the best players in the world and wanted to add context.
I mean if someone compares Lacazette to Neymar and Messi I don’t think there’s any need to add content to let us all know that Laca isn’t anywhere near as good as them two. :lol:

It just reads as you wanting to nip it in the bud before someone could even attempt to imply or joke that Arteta was shackling Laca.
 

Trilly

Hates A-M, Saka, Arteta and You
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Country: England
I think there's a bit of exaggeration here...I would re-state it more like: a juego de posición style played at the highest level (challenging for Premier League / best league in the world title, Champions league) requires unique combinations of attributes for all players.
How am I exaggerating when you’ve said the same thing? Is JDP not what Arteta is doing?

Disagree with all the rest, I’m not a big believer in league difficulty being the be all and end all when it comes to explaining performance differences from players at different clubs. Especially within the top5 leagues.
 

Dokaka

AM's resident Hammer
I mean if someone compares Lacazette to Neymar and Messi I don’t think there’s any need to add content to let us all know that Laca isn’t anywhere near as good as them two. :lol:

It just reads as you wanting to nip it in the bud before someone could even attempt to imply or joke that Arteta was shackling Laca.

Didn't think of Arteta at all when I made that post. I've always found Lacazette pretty mediocre, going all the way back to before you signed him. My posts back that up.

It was mostly to highlight how poor Ligue 1 is and to avoid anyone thinking "he could have done this for us" etc. I don't know if Arteta "shackled" him (going by Jesus' performances, I doubt it?) but he obviously had a terrible season last year.
 

AbouCuéllar

Author of A-M essays 📚
I guess this is somehow about Arteta? I don't even know anymore, some of you people can't write 5 words without seeing connections like ****ing conspiracy madmen.
Missed this beauty while combing over this thread!! 🤣

It's all a conspiracy bruh, Arteta only stayed so long in the job because he used his dark energy demon powers and his good looks (which his haters are, strangely, rather obsessed with) to get all the important Arsenal media actually capable of producing reasonable and coherent football thought to support him.
 

Trilly

Hates A-M, Saka, Arteta and You
Trusted ⭐

Country: England
Missed this beauty while combing over this thread!! 🤣

It's all a conspiracy bruh, Arteta only stayed so long in the job because he used his dark energy demon powers and his good looks (which his haters are, strangely, rather obsessed with) to get all the important Arsenal media actually capable of producing reasonable and coherent football thought to support him.
Was just an opinion, majority of Dok’s recent posts are in defence of Mikel. I’ve explained why I thought he felt the need to sh*t on Laca and made it clear I wasn’t 100% sure that was why.

What an annoying post.
 

AbouCuéllar

Author of A-M essays 📚
How am I exaggerating when you’ve said the same thing? Is JDP not what Arteta is doing?
Yes. Read the rest of the post though.
Disagree with all the rest, I’m not a big believer in league difficulty being the be all and end all when it comes to explaining performance differences from players at different clubs. Especially within the top5 leagues.
Well I think you are really underestimating the difference in level between Ligue 1 and the Premier League, then. Especially offensive players who can thrive, or have nice stats, in certain conditions in Ligue 1 but under more exigent circumstances in high level teams in the Premier League are not quite the level required.
 

2Smokeyy

5.0 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (49)
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Auba was a replacement - we lost Sanchez and we actually scored LESS goals with Auba and Laca than we did with Sanchez and Laca. We missed top 4.
Arshavin - quite a small impact - we finished 4th and won nothing after he came.
Fernandez did make a big difference
Countinho - do you mean Villa? He was hardly a massive influence on their outcome
Van Dijk - yeah
Saha and Sturridge you are going back a bit.

Firstly, why was there a need to add Laca in there? Have some chest and do Auba vs Sanchez 🤣 Sanchez scored 7 goals in 19 games in 17/18 and Aubameyang scored 10 goals in 14 games in 17/18.

Arshavin quite a small impact? 6 goals and 8 assists in 12 PL games between January and the end of the season.

hysterical-laughter.gif


I was on about Coutinho’s stint at Liverpool, he came in under the radar and did a good job by hitting the ground running.

Saha and Sturridge were included as you said Kulusevski and Bentancur shouldn’t be factored. You can’t have it both ways, so make your mind up because it’s a bit embarrassing now.

How many January signings have there been vs how many have actually made a tangible impact? It's rare. Even if we think we're getting a good player, it's a gamble. High fees at that point in the season and limited availability even before the uncertainty it will make any difference at all.

It’s not rare because I’ve just listed a bunch of players that have come to my head and I even forgot about Monreal, I’m sure there are many more but this narrative that you’re pushing is very weak and lacks any substance if we’re being honest.

It really sounds like the money being used for January acquisitions is coming out of your back account 🤦🏽‍♂️ don’t worry we won’t be betting all of our chips on red.
 
D

Deleted member 102404

Guest
Firstly, why was there a need to add Laca in there? Have some chest and do Auba vs Sanchez 🤣 Sanchez scored 7 goals in 19 games in 17/18 and Aubameyang scored 10 goals in 14 games in 17/18.

Arshavin quite a small impact? 6 goals and 8 assists in 12 PL games between January and the end of the season.

hysterical-laughter.gif


I was on about Coutinho’s stint at Liverpool, he came in under the radar and did a good job by hitting the ground running.

Saha and Sturridge were included as you said Kulusevski and Bentancur shouldn’t be factored. You can’t have it both ways, so make your mind up because it’s a bit embarrassing now.



It’s not rare because I’ve just listed a bunch of players that have come to my head and I even forgot about Monreal, I’m sure there are many more but this narrative that you’re pushing is very weak and lacks any substance if we’re being honest.

It really sounds like the money being used for January acquisitions is coming out of your back account 🤦🏽‍♂️ don’t worry we won’t be betting all of our chips on red.

I added Laca because football is a team sport. After signing Auba we actually lost 6 of the 13 PL games we played to end that season and ended up outside the top 4. Don't tell me he had any major impact on us after signing in January. We'd lost 7 in 25 before that. If we sign a striker and he scores 20 in 20, but we end up losing half our games and finishing 4th or 5th, would you tell me that player helped us win a title? No.

I did not say Bentancour and and Kulusevksi could not be factored in - I am saying that it is actually very rare for a player signed in January to have much of an impact on the team. Exceptions to the rule can always be listed.

Same answer with Arshavin. How did we progress as a team? We didn't win anything, nor did we do better than we had the season before when he came in. Didn't really change anything about us. In fact I don't think we won a single trophy with him? The signing of Arshavin was a 'meh' - big expectation , nothing delivered. Great player for sure, but certainly will not go down as any kind of catalyst for progress.
 
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blrgooner

Established Member
This is maybe the 10th time I’ve seen this mentioned as a kind of roundabout defence of Jesus and explanation as to why we don’t need a striker.

First of all, it’s way too early in the season to judge. Secondly if Pep and Klopp both decide that their very successful teams still need a striker…I’m going to assume they know what they doing.
Agree with the fact that it's too early to judge. I wouldn't say that Pep decided that successful teams still need a striker though. He could have brought in many 15-20 goal strikers in the past few years. He chose to go that route only when he was able to get an absolute freak of a goal scorer. If we could somehow get Mbappe tomorrow, we definitely should. The same argument doesn't necessarily work for strikers a couple of levels below though.
 

Batman

Head of the Wayne foundation for benching Nketiah

Country: USA

Player:Saliba
I seriously question whether the people moaning about him are watching the games. He impacts the game whether he's on the scoresheet or not because he's always contributing in the press, in the buildup and in our link up play. You dream of players like that who are always going to contribute even when their finishing is off. I could understand if it was like Lacafitness last year where he not only wasn't scoring but was also not pressing and not running and in fact was actively gimping our general play but Jesus is the engine that makes our attack go. He creates so much space and opportunity for others to score that you can live with these dips.
 

pigge

#Pigge #Equality

Player:Martinelli
I added Laca because football is a team sport. After signing Auba we actually lost 6 of the 13 PL games we played to end that season and ended up outside the top 4. Don't tell me he had any major impact on us after signing in January. We'd lost 7 in 25 before that. If we sign a striker and he scores 20 in 20, but we end up losing half our games and finishing 4th or 5th, would you tell me that player helped us win a title? No.
A collapse from the entire team would surely have been worse if we had a striker scoring 5 goals in 20. Hard to blame a elite scoring striker for the rest of the teams ability to score and let in goals.

Like arshavin scoring 4 vs liverpool and the entire team collapsing and letting in 4 is not his fault
 
D

Deleted member 102404

Guest
A collapse from the entire team would surely have been worse if we had a striker scoring 5 goals in 20. Hard to blame a elite scoring striker for the rest of the teams ability to score and let in goals.

Like arshavin scoring 4 vs liverpool and the entire team collapsing and letting in 4 is not his fault

The point is that you don't really blame anyone individually or give all the credit to someone individually.
It's a team game and if the team gets worse, the players you brought in didn't improve the team.
 

pigge

#Pigge #Equality

Player:Martinelli
The point is that you don't really blame anyone individually or give all the credit to someone individually.
It's a team game and if the team gets worse, the players you brought in didn't improve the team.
If you bring in a striker, that scores a lot. But a keeper loses his form and gives away a pen every game and makes a lot of mistakes it makes to let further goals in the striker a failure buy? I don't see the logic.

Obviously you you can't give all credit to one person. Or all blame to one. But you can give alot.
 
D

Deleted member 102404

Guest
If you bring in a striker, that scores a lot. But a keeper loses his form and gives away a pen every game and makes a lot of mistakes it makes to let further goals in the striker a failure buy? I don't see the logic.

Obviously you you can't give all credit to one person. Or all blame to one. But you can give alot.

Sure there might be extreme cases where a keeper throws the ball in the net multiple times to mess things up. It's unlikely though. Generally speaking you want a change to the team to yield more points and if it doesn't, it hasn't been very successful.
 

pigge

#Pigge #Equality

Player:Martinelli
Sure there might be extreme cases where a keeper throws the ball in the net multiple times to mess things yup. It's unlikely though. From a league perspective, you bring in new players to win you more points and finish further up the table. If we buy in Jan and we don't win the league, it would be a failure regardless of how many goals a new striker had scored.

In the case of Auba where this came from, I can't see how anyone could say we got better after we signed him in Jan - we got a lot worse.
True, but If we buy's someone and he plays very good, I think it's wrong to call the player a failure. It would suggest that the rest of the team are not putting in good performances.
 
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