Country: England
Player:Rice
Nail on the head.
Gabriel has his phisical presence going for him. Good recovery, great phisicality and not bad at passing.
If Martinez is here and copes with that aspect of the PL well enough, I think he gets ahead of Magalhães.
There's some weird mentality when it comes to CB's. If you're comfortable on the ball and have decent distribution, it's almost as if you're too good to be a CB and should be made to play elsewhere.
It's pretty obvious that Arteta rates ability to play out from the back in his CB's. Gabriel, Saliba and White can all do it. This Martinez looks like he can too so it's no surprise to me that we're after him.
I trust Ajax in their judgement of developing players. If he was best as a LB they'd have him playing there.
I agree with you, Gabriel is a player I rate but he's still a bit rough around the edges. I think Martinez would be stiff competition for him.