Why do our players need the team built around them?

[Monstar-Gunn4r]

So yeah why do our players need the team built around them? I see this pop up again and again about several players over the years, that {insert player x} is not doing well because {our setup is wrong/the player around them are wrong/the team is not playing well. its unfair to expect anything of them}. I would immediately class this as a limited player, ie. needs several conditions to produce to the level we should expect at Arsenal in any consistent or meaningful way. I'm not saying that these players cant be used but how the fk do we end up with so many? Xhaka, Özil, Pepe, Willock, Lacazette, Luiz, Mustafi... the list just goes on and on. It seems like we'd need 3-4 teams each worth 900 million so these players can produce. How do we get so many of them?

Maybe I just expect too much that an Arsenal player should be able to perform to a high level consistently even if the team is playing poorly.

 

[OnlyOne]

@OnlyOne

 

[OnlyOne]

@OnlyOne

F*cking hell, again?!

 

[Monstar-Gunn4r]

F*cking hell, again?!

OnlyTwo? I'll show myself the door

 

[MutableEarth]

It's a relatively amorphous turn of phrase to be honest, it depends on the context in which it's used. For some, it can indicate what Tim Stillman would call a "goldilocks" player who needs conditions to be just right in order to flourish. The team needs to be built according to their weaknesses - but that would mostly depend on how prominent their strengths are and whether it's worth the compromise.

The other way I see it used is to describe a player who's considered to be a significant part of the future of the club i.e. "Saka is an amazing talent, we need to build the team around him", which roughly translates to "he needs to be a starter and we need to put other quality players around him".

 

[squallman]

The real question is, why are there any suggestions whatsoever around building our team around someone like Xhaka to get the best out of him?

Every great team is or was built to get the best out of the star player. Its just hard to notice because great teams are filled with great players.

How do you think Benzema has survived at Madrid all of these years? He helped to get the best out of Ronaldo.

 

[Jury]

"he needs to be a starter and we need to put other quality players around him".

This was the original meaning and definition as far as I’m concerned, but it was twisted by Football Manager and FIFA geeks over the years (Nothing wrong with being either type of geek btw). It’s always meant decorating the side with good players to keep your special player. Obviously the biproduct of that is he should do even better with good players around him. Whenever I hear people say that you should structure a team around any one player... well it just makes my ****ing piss boil. It’s pink fluffy clouds and chocolate tree fairy stories.

 

[Moleque]

perhaps it's more a reflection on those doing the transfers than it is on the players

 

[Oxeki]

@Monstar-Gunn4r the players you listed are not good enough to have the team structured around them. That's moot point anyway because no player is good enough to have the team built to their strength except he's Ronaldo or Messi

Klopp's Dortmund or Liverpool wasn't built around any player.

Even when KDB got injured last season city kept on winning.

Even Madrid is now trying to reverse years of dependence on Ronaldo.

 

[Fallout]

i agree with the OP that having a lot of "limited" players is the root cause of the issue. i think this is magnified at arsenal for two reasons.

1) our key players limited in extreme ways. in other words, we have too many specialist players. for example, Özil can only deliver a final ball, xhaka can only play long passes, mustafi can only be effective playing ultra aggressively. the rest of our players, some of whom are more well-rounded, are either too young or aren't good enough to compensate for this.

2) our specialist players don't fit together, reflecting a haphazard transfer strategy that has resulted in magnifying everyone's weaknesses. for example, we have several players who are relatively unathletic in our midfield, but we haven't bought or developed an athletic midfielder to balance things out tactically.

 

[Tir Na Nog]

Yeah i think it's a lack of planning in terms of recruitment. We should be signing players for specific roles to fit into our team.

 

[Oxeki]

Once you buy the right players you don't need to structure the team around one particular player. It kind of make the team more balanced

 

[Elwood]

Because they're ****? I mean limited. Can do a couple of things right, but suck at other tasks needed.

Can you even have a good team of limited players where you need one or two more to cover for each other, and it doesn't create a huge problem for your team, regardless of tactics evolved? I don't think so.

Omg this thread almost showed me the light regarding Özil, then I remembered he's just so good at what he does.

Tl;dt
Yeah, our players don't really have elite traits that warrant the team to be built around them, bar Özil and Saka imo. Xhaka is close, but not really there unfortunately.

 

[Mrs Bergkamp]

It's a relatively amorphous turn of phrase to be honest, it depends on the context in which it's used. For some, it can indicate what Tim Stillman would call a "goldilocks" player who needs conditions to be just right in order to flourish. The team needs to be built according to their weaknesses - but that would mostly depend on how prominent their strengths are and whether it's worth the compromise.

The other way I see it used is to describe a player who's considered to be a significant part of the future of the club i.e. "Saka is an amazing talent, we need to build the team around him", which roughly translates to "he needs to be a starter and we need to put other quality players around him".

This is a really good distinction that isn't often made. Sadly, I believe @Monstar-Gunn4r is talking about a squad with too many goldilocks figures which is generous as our players never find a run of three consecutive games where things are just right for even just one of them.

 

[Football Manager]

Talking about players limitation, City is doing the right thing.

Fitness, physical strength and tactical knowledge can be trained through hard work. Anyone can go to the gym, work extremely hard and drastically improve their strength.

Skills and football intelligence are talents that could not be trained. Walcott would never ever become Ronaldinho, even if you give him 100 more years to practice his football skills.

So for the qualities that could be trained, City don’t have to look for them when recruiting players. They just have to buy the most talented players and train up their fitness. Then they become players who are less limited.

 

[Ash10]

The term itself is not the problem. You have a star player & you build a squad to get the very best out of him.
But It's comical in case of our squad. You hear this term used for so many of our players when not a single player is good enough for such treatment.
We used to have guys like Cesc, Van persie to build around. Recently Özil & Sanchez.
Now people want to build a team around Granit fvcking Xhaka to hide his weaknesses rather than because he is a star or around Pepe because he hasn’t done much this season. Imagine building a team just to make a player seem decent rather than to maximize the potential of a legit WC player to help the team to become a true force.

That's how far our expectations have fallen.

 

[GeorgiaGunner]

We can no longer attract / afford truly world class players who'd flourish in any system, and haven't developed one since RVP and maybe Fab.

 

[Riou]

Think the first time I really heard this saying used in a negative sense, was with Arsène when he "built the team around" Cesc...when Big Wengz gave up all he knew after 2006 on how to compete, in order to make Fab his new top guy.

Always thought it was unfair to Fabregas, as people seemed to use that phrase to prove he wasn't good enough to win things with at this club...when it wasn't anything to do with him that we dropped off post stadium move, but just a lack of funds meant we couldn't really compete with Yanited and Chelski back then.

The phrase itself is kind of redundant to me...every manger builds the team around the best players he has, surely?

 

[Geofranco]

Think the first time I really heard this saying used in a negative sense, was with Arsène when he "built the team around" Cesc...when Big Wengz gave up all he knew after 2006 on how to compete, in order to make Fab his new top guy.

Always thought it was unfair to Fabregas, as people seemed to use that phrase to prove he wasn't good enough to win things with at this club...when it wasn't anything to do with him that we dropped off post stadium move, but just a lack of funds meant we couldn't really compete with Yanited and Chelski back then.

The phrase itself is kind of redundant to me...every manger builds the team around the best players he has, surely?

And even with all the financial limitations, we still had a chance to win the league.

The biggest thing that ****ed us over in that era was a good GK, consistent CBs and almost all our technically gifted midfielders and attacking players being injury prone.

Imagine how devastating we would have been if Wilshere, Ramsey, Fabregas, RVP, Rosicky and Diaby weren't injury prone players.

All these players suffered injuries that made them miss months and even years (Rosicky's 1 week injury according to Wenger that ended up being an 18 month injury).

And then to come back and adjust, physically and mentally to the highest level on the get injured a couple of months later must be devastating. Took away a lot of athleticism from most of them.

Don't know if the players were just too fragile or it is the training regiment, maybe medical staff, but it just seemed like the team was so consistently unlucky when it came to injuries.

If those guys stayed healthy with Fabregas as the main man, we'd have def won the league and even the champions league within 5 years.

 

[Sanchez11]

Look at utd with Pogba it still hasn't worked. Building a team around one player is abit old school imo. One could argue we tried to build a team around Özil, has it worked? No!!