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The Great Mass Debater

A marquee CM?

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So if we are all coming to the conclusion that the problem is in central midfield, what would peoples thoughts be on a marquee signing here. We have a great signing in Fer, but clearly require some creativity from his partner. Arsenal spent 40m on Ozil. How would people feel if we made a proportinally similar investment?

If we decided to splurge our entire budget on one player (including wages to entice him here), how would people feel. Im talking about smashing our record on someone truly special if wew could convince them here, but then not buy anybody else for any of the other positions. Provided noone leaves we have a balanced team in terms of all the positions, so would it be the worst thing in the world if we didnt add to the squad in other areas next season? A quality centre mid seems to be the gaping hole, whereas I feel we have enough quality everywhere else. If we could spend 15m for instance on a player like Cazorla for example (not him but someone similar we could perhaps entice) would people be happy with standing still in other areas for one season?

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Ozil is not playing CM.

He''s attacking mid and the likes of him and Cazorla do well, because a) they are exceptional talents and b) Arsenal are largely on the front foot in every game.

This is the same old number 10 debate. We have gone down the Elmander route this time round, not to say it won''t change if we can get our strikers and wingers confidently smashing goals in.

If there is any midfielder type from Arsenal we need, it''s Ramsey or Wilshire to partner Fer and add that buzz and class to the middle.

Out of Johnno, Howson and Tettey, i think Howson has the best potential to nail down this spot, but one of the other two is needed at the moment to win games ugly and let the more forward players and full backs do the pressing.

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"

So if we are all coming to the conclusion that the problem is in central midfield"

are we ?since when ?as to marquees perhaps we could pitch one up at the back of the south stand, though they normally are put up on grass .... I think

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[quote user="City1st"]"

So if we are all coming to the conclusion that the problem is in central midfield"

are we ?since when ?as to marquees perhaps we could pitch one up at the back of the south stand, though they normally are put up on grass .... I think

[/quote]

 

Seems to be the general conclusion on many threads, not least the Finidi George one

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I always find myself thinking about this predicament:

If we were to play with a creative midfield but were up against an opponent who was ''outcreating'' us, then how would we ever win the ball back? We would have no combative midfielders there to help out.

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[quote user="Nicko"]I always find myself thinking about this predicament:

If we were to play with a creative midfield but were up against an opponent who was ''outcreating'' us, then how would we ever win the ball back? We would have no combative midfielders there to help out.[/quote]

 

I think Fer would be enough here. I think we should see Fer as our upgrade on Johnson/Tettey. Can do everything they can do and more. Think Fer would offer more than enough steel. Im talking about a centre mid who would have some steel as well though, else Id say just play Hoolahan at CM

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The problem that we have isn''t that we lack midfielders with creativity, we have Fox, Surman and Hoolahan all who proved themselves competent at this level in our first season in the Prem. They weren''t frozen out/loaned/repeatedly dropped because they aren''t creative enough, but because they don''t offer enough defensively for how our coaching staff want us to play. They are all clearly more creative and better at passing that Johnson/Tettey/Howson.So the issue is that we would need a midfielder who is at least as good defensively as Johnson and Tettey while having creative abilities and sadly, those players are complete midfielders and out of our price range.

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I would actually like to see RvW play as a no10 inbetween Fer and Hooper as a 4,4,1,1 Stuck upfront as a lone striker he is not getting anywhere near the service he needs to score and unless this improves he is money down the drain. I think a role slightly further back will allow him to more opportunities to be creative where he can feed balls into Hooper or go for goal. He''s proven to score from range.

 

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I watched every Sporting game last season from the point where we signed RVW, at no point was he dropping deep like a number 10. He''s a marvellous finisher but we''ll be doing no-one any favours by playing him out of position.We should be getting our wingers to take more notice of the space he finds in the box to get the best out of him, numerous times you see him in the box dropping back a few yards to lose his marker only to find our wide players slam the ball aimlessly into the 6 yard box instead of pulling it back for him.

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We need a player who dictates tempo. 
Fox is the only player in this mould at the club. If Hughton and fans don''t rate Fox, then we need a player who can do what Fox does + whatever it is that people think Fox doesn''t do.
Unfortunately signing a player who can dictate tempo and spray passes about like Fox but who can also tackle, defend and score goals leaves us needing to sign Steven Gerrard or Andrea Pirlo.... and I don''t think we would be able to sign either of those. 

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[quote user="Dandy Mountfarto"]The problem that we have isn''t that we lack midfielders with creativity, we have Fox, Surman and Hoolahan all who proved themselves competent at this level in our first season in the Prem. They weren''t frozen out/loaned/repeatedly dropped because they aren''t creative enough, but because they don''t offer enough defensively for how our coaching staff want us to play. They are all clearly more creative and better at passing that Johnson/Tettey/Howson.So the issue is that we would need a midfielder who is at least as good defensively as Johnson and Tettey while having creative abilities and sadly, those players are complete midfielders and out of our price range.[/quote]

 

Even if we splurged an entire seasons trnasfer budget on one truly special player and stuck with what we have everywhere else? That was kind of what I was asking with the post

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[quote user="Dandy Mountfarto"]I watched every Sporting game last season from the point where we signed RVW, at no point was he dropping deep like a number 10. He''s a marvellous finisher but we''ll be doing no-one any favours by playing him out of position.We should be getting our wingers to take more notice of the space he finds in the box to get the best out of him, numerous times you see him in the box dropping back a few yards to lose his marker only to find our wide players slam the ball aimlessly into the 6 yard box instead of pulling it back for him.[/quote]

 

Would he do better with direct wingers do you think? (ie Redmond right, Pilks left) Or inverted wingers as we seem to want to play at present

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[quote user="The Great Mass Debater"]

[quote user="Dandy Mountfarto"]The problem that we have isn''t that we lack midfielders with creativity, we have Fox, Surman and Hoolahan all who proved themselves competent at this level in our first season in the Prem. They weren''t frozen out/loaned/repeatedly dropped because they aren''t creative enough, but because they don''t offer enough defensively for how our coaching staff want us to play. They are all clearly more creative and better at passing that Johnson/Tettey/Howson.So the issue is that we would need a midfielder who is at least as good defensively as Johnson and Tettey while having creative abilities and sadly, those players are complete midfielders and out of our price range.[/quote]

Even if we splurged an entire seasons trnasfer budget on one truly special player and stuck with what we have everywhere else? That was kind of what I was asking with the post

[/quote]
It''s high risk. That player could get injured and at the end of every season it always becomes clear that there are several positions which need strengthening. 
If we spent every penny of our budget on the transfer fee + wages of a world class centre midfielder (if we conveniently forget the fact that world class midfielders want to be playing in the Champions League) then we would have these issues:
1). Carlo Nash will be a skeleton by then.
2). Elmander would be going elsewhere as he is on loan.
3). We''d have to give Ayala a new deal because otherwise we''d be short at CB.
4). Becchio would have to stay despite not playing, even if he wanted to leave to get football
5). Hoolahan isn''t getting any younger and we need to think about replacing him, this is probably his last year as a regular, before he has to be managed carefully / used very selectively (I think he will be used a lot this year).
6). Michael Turner isn''t getting any younger and may not be the same player next year
7). Mark Bunn may decide he wants football (in which case we''d need to keep Nash).
8). Ruddy may want out.
Realistically we need to sign four or five players each year just to stand still as players age, or don''t get football, or get unhappy. Already just four games it is pretty inevitable that we will have changes in the goalkeeping department at the end of this season, that we will need a second striker or striker again, and that a centre back would be a good idea, that Fox, Ayala and Becchio haven''t got much of a future here, and that we really need to start thinking about Hoolahan having to drop a division. 
So no.... one huge signing wouldn''t be a great idea in my opinion. We will need four or five in the summer just to stand still. 

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[quote user="The Great Mass Debater"]

Even if we splurged an entire seasons trnasfer budget on one truly special player and stuck with what we have everywhere else? That was kind of what I was asking with the post

[/quote]I''m right with you there, quality rather than quantity is what we need now. My issue is that given we know our coaching staff value defensive ability and positional discipline over creativity and passing in our current midfielders, we would need to find a player who is both creative and able to do a job defensively, and those players are outside of our price range even if we have our entire budget to spend. We could easily afford to buy a very creative midfielder, but if he was a Brazilian midget, would Hughton ever use him?[quote user="The Great Mass Debater"]

Would

he do better with direct wingers do you think? (ie Redmond right, Pilks

left) Or inverted wingers as we seem to want to play at present

[/quote]Yeah I think more direct, pacey wingers would be better, we probably should have tried to sign Capel as he made a lot of chances for RVW in the games I watched. I was gutted that Bennett got injured as he and Redmond looked very lively against Everton.

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Ideally I believe we are looking for another midfield like Fer.

 

Strong in the tackle, good passing ability and vision, creative and a goal threat.

 

Yes these players are genrally expensive and not easy to come by, but we found Fer and so I believe there must be more out there and affordable too.

 

Snake

 

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