Country: England
Player:Rice
Mate, I’m pretty sure if Lokonga would have been long gone by now, if he hides from the ball or was just not good enough as seen in the opinion here.
If you are calling his poor positioning and lack of awareness “hiding” then ok. What I’m saying is, he doesn’t have the awareness and other key requirements needed for a six. I don’t see that as protecting or standing up for the player, I see it as an assessment on where he is as a player.
What angers me is this writing off of the player completely. Sure, he isn’t good enough now, but where do we get all this confidence when claiming the player will never get it right? Did we not learn with Nketiah, Ødegaard, White and TP5 himself?
I think it's natural that people get frustrated.
We're in a title race. If Lokonga has to play a significant amount of minutes it's likely going to cost us points.
We're not in a position to give him the game time to let him grow and make mistakes at Arsenal, the stakes are too high.
Either sell him or get him a Tavares type loan in the summer.