Ramsey, Gonalons, and the undervalued Gonzalo Higuaín
|The triangles, flicks and six-yard passing look faster and more fluent at Arsenal. Aaron Ramsey is forcing his way into the team because, despite the fact he may infuriate occasionally, the Gunners play better when he is in the team. Alongside the usually nerveless Wilshere and Gibbs, the team looks robust and unintimidated. Ramsey has learned to play at a higher tempo, rushing and smothering in the style of Pedro – maybe the best at pressing in the world – who does it so well at Barcelona.
Mikel Arteta generally takes the deeper role, where Wenger likes him to receive the ball and dictate the tempo. Room will be found for Wilshere next season, but Coquelin will go. Frimpong appears not to have a future – lacking technically, a less capable version of Wanyama. Diaby has a contract until June 2014 and unless there is a sea-change in his fortunes, Wenger will release him at the end of it. The smart money is on a bid for Lyon’s Maxime Gonalons. He is a tall, dynamic defensive midfielder with a superb passing range.
I am a Podolski fan and a Giroud sceptic – something tells me the German won’t be around long. The vain Frenchman has touch, strength, knows the role of a target man, and has a decent left foot. I accept those qualities but see weaknesses that time won’t change.
The exciting story doing the rounds in Spain is that Arsenal have a ‘preliminary agreement’ in place for the under-appreciated Gonzalo Higuaín. Higuaín is leaving Real Madrid this summer and escaping the goldfish bowl of playing for the most glamorous club in the world. In his words: “every little thing you do gets analysed; everything has twice the impact it would somewhere else.” Could Wenger sign the star striker and in doing thus instantly give the team the sharpest of sharp edges? You can’t mention his name in Madrid without hearing Benzema being compared, so perhaps he’ll thrive as the main forward at another big club.
Benzema is a technical forward who lights up quick combinations, whilst Higuaín is the poacher, the more athletic, counter attacker. Mourinho tried to distance himself from the debate – he just wants to win, but others consider Benzema the more artistic, romantic player.
Higuaín’s critics think he is greedy and question his attitude. However, I’ve often felt those Madridistas wanted reasons to not like him – rather than actually having reasons to not like him.
We hear Higuaín could be sold for £22m, Arsenal want him for £18m. If Wenger sanctions the signing of an established world class forward of Higuaín’s finishing calibre, I predict the combination of Arsenal’s slick build-ups and rapid counter-attacks – combined with his fast game – will mean he would become an unprecedented success.
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Agree with you for all of the article… except one point. I think Wilshere has been the best player on the pitch when he was playing but when he wasn’t playing we are a much better team. He needs to be fitted in to the team better to make use of his strengths. Ramsey is perfect for the role he’s currently been given but don’t think Jack can play that role. Jack is decent as AM but Cazorla is better there and as the dictator Jack would probably be better than Arteta but Jack has a tendency to lose the ball in dangerous area’s (when the 93rd cruyff turn of the match goes wrong).
As for the strikers… Podolski’s finishing is about 8 times better than Giroud’s. Giroud reminds me a bit of Adebayor with his finishing; you never have confidence in him scoring as he requires 8-9 chances before putting one away. In games where he only gets one chance (Sunderland at the beginning of the season and recently Everton as examples); then he usually screws it and costs us vital points. His hold up play is decent but his passing stats show that there’s no point in being able to hold the ball up if you can’t pass it. As you can see; I’m not a Giroud fan. Podolski is not suited to play lone striker so not sure where his future lies and is he even fully fit? Higuain for me would be a perfect replacement for Giroud. His conversion rate is much much better and he has scored in plenty of big games before.
Lastly; whoever decided to extend Diaby’s contract to 2014 a few years back deserves to be sacked.
very attracive combination and i hope arsenal will an other class one striker to out shine other big competitors, please invest on big players to proceed to get throphy next season.
I believe Podolski will be here next season and Wenger see’s him playing through the middle up front possibly after his recent performances. Ramsey has turned it around for him self and his finish not looking and in the roof of the net was world class, had Messi, Ronaldo, Falcao scored that people would be ranting ans raving about it for years to come. Higuain will bring the class and experience to our squad, he has won LaLiga and is a gifted footballer, natural finisher.
Olli G has had a pretty good first season. Strikers need to understand their team mates on an instictive level and that usually comes innthe seacond season. Only then will we be able to really judge whether he was a poor/good/great buy.
As for Diaby, he has been man of the match on many occassions but his injury record is worse than the duch traitor. I have a nasty feeling that we’ll let him go and he’ll find a team that refs like to protect (unlike us) so he’ll be injury free and we’ll have the loudmouths shouting that we should never have let such a great player go… But can we take the risk of keeping him…. probably not.
Personally I think Giroud has had a great first season considering he came from the French league, also considering he’s scored 17 goals and layed on some quite brilliant assists (gibbs and podolski volleys against swansea and montpollier respectively, not to mention for wilshere against swansea). To say that he cant pass is near on rediculous, however I would like to see another striker come in, perhaps Higuain or Jovetic. Higuain would add that cutting edge in the centre forward position but in my opinion Jovetic would add more of a creative influence up top, whilst also chipping in with his fair share of goals. this could work wonderfully with Walcott adding more goals and playing in a stiker/winger hybrid role (podolski playing in a pretty similar way). My realistic 2013/14 XI would be this:
Szcz
Sagna(if he stays) Mert Koscielny Gibbs
Ramsey Arteta
Walcott/Ox Wilshere Cazorla
Jovetic
Ramsay passing is shit. But he hustle and close down opponents quickly. His vision and decision making is poor and his combination play is subpar. But really, his passing is not good enough to be starting midfield for arsenal.
sorry jase but ur chattin absolute BS! about our friend giroud. ur more than entitled to ur opinion but like Truz very well remembered and truthfully said giroud, although i agree he has fluffed sum crucial match winning opportunities, giroud has adapted to our(arsenal) and the english game very well, im pretty sure along with his 17 gls in all comps he has a very good 14 assists to go with that – meaning for a 1st season in wot evrybody agrees 2 be the toughest and most demanding league in the world hes created an been responsible for a great 31 goals so cut him sum slak. if he was injured in the crucial games that he scored an got assists in we wouldnt be excited about the idea of higuain and jovetic bcos champs lge football would be non-existent. but with that said i cnt lie giroud as well as hes dun, as a true gunners fan he isnt 1st 11 quality for us he shud b a squad player. wenger has always had a world class finisher at his disposal, bergkamp, henry, v.persie and now.. giroud….simply not good enough..
Not bad article. But to say we need Higuain or were even interested is completly wrong. We are monitoring Higuain because we want Jovetic, Juventus want Higuain OR JOVETIC. Let me explain why and how the transfer market works it’s a bit like Gareth Barry and Xabi Alonso. When Arsenal wants a player there is always a drama with another player. I.E. Liverpool wanted Gareth Barry to replace xabi alonso (for some weird reason) we have always admired xabi alonso so Wenger quickly geared up to buy Xabi Alonso. We registered interest in Gareth Barry via Aston Villa (so they will tell Arsenal if a bid had been made for Gareth Barry by Liverpool). If Liverpool had got the agreement to buy Barry then we would have hd a call by Aston Villa that Liverpool has bid this much for barry WE NEVER interested in Barry would go ok let us think if we can match the offer, Wenger put the phone down would quickly ring Liverpool to orgainse Xabi Alonso’s bid IF YOU GET WHAT I MEAN. Juventus want Jovetic so do we, Fiorentina do not want to sell to Juventus so Juventus next option is to buy Higuain hence we are monitoring Higuain’s movements, we might have enquired to madrid acting we want him but trust me we don’t.