ThlRama
Active Member
Country: Greece
Player:Saka
Seen him play well but also at times gives you a CB in midfield vibe.
True, on the other hand IIRC it was reported that Emery wanted "a tall DM." Well, this guy isn't tremendous physically and we don't sorely lack physicality in midfield anymore anyway (good luck bullying our current set of midfielders off the ball,) but on the other hand he is still a taller and more "safe" midfielder than anyone we currently have. He offers basic passing and defending, probably inferior to the underrated Elneny in this respect, but his ability to dribble forward with the ball and his extra athleticism and physicality mean that he might be more suited to a second-string two-man midfield that Emery seems to aim for in this team.
Also he is homegrown, young with room for improvement, and apparently on 65k p/w which isn't terribly much, not sure he'd ask for much more here at this point. So I would definitely take a straight swap between him and Ramsey in January with no extra money involved, question is whether we'll be able to sell Elneny for a decent fee after that because he would certainly be redundant. As @Mark Tobias wrote, even without Ramsey we have enough midfielders as is.