Players 'carrying' Arsenal

Discussion in 'Arsenal Talk' started by krackpot, Nov 11, 2019.

  1. Tir Na Nog

    Tir Na Nog In Big Trouble If He Speaks

    Yossi Rozza Walcott
    Arteta Song
    That worked wonders for us from NLD onward, with Ox also getting some appearances both on the wing and in midfield, after that the reliance on Van Persie eased a bit, Walcott came into a bit of scoring form.

    In general I'm reluctant to use to term carrying the team unless the performances are really poor and it's evident one player is bailing us out through individual brilliance. I never really got that during the Cesc era, most of the games we played pretty well, in an attacking sense anyways.
    Fewtch and Riou like this.
  2. Riou

    Riou Non-Stop Nostalgia

    Kos and Verm were decent that year together (though Per and Kos was better the following year) think this was the last season of peak Sagna before his leg too...it’s a very decent team tbf.

    That team would batter our current team worse than Gdeep does his wife, after losing ANOTHER six figure bet!
    Squillaci and Tir Na Nog like this.
  3. Tir Na Nog

    Tir Na Nog In Big Trouble If He Speaks

    Imagine if we kept that team together then adding Cazorla and Özil to it. :eek:
    Riou likes this.
  4. Riou

    Riou Non-Stop Nostalgia

    We came so close to getting Santi that season aswell, such a shame...pretty much all of our teams up to 2016 were good, just all had a thin squad compared to rival teams.
    krackpot and Tir Na Nog like this.
  5. Fewtch

    Fewtch Ozil at 10 And Emery Out

    Ofc it was built around Cesc, Wenger literally changed the way played and let Vieira go because of him.
    Not sure why you’re pretending that Adebayor, RVP, Sagna, Hleb, Nasri, Arshavin, Rosicky, Flamini etc didn’t exist.

    Cesc left and we didn’t even come close to becoming a midtable team despite our only attacking midfielders being Arteta and Rosicky at the time. In fact we won more points the season after he left. His departure didn’t move the needle at all.
    krackpot, Mark Tobias and Oh_Snap like this.
  6. Riou

    Riou Non-Stop Nostalgia

    I disagree that we ever played a true 4-4-2, in my head a 4-4-2 is having two strikers like Owen and Heskey playing right up top...there is little difference in playing Cesc and Özil at 10 or Bergkamp and Kanu behind the forward (the latter are better goalscorers though), all of them would drop deep...Arsène’s main formation was 4-2-3-1 imo, bar a few years where we played 3-4-3.

    Also Cesc’s best form for us came when he played in a midfield 2 rather than our number ten, 2006 Champions League run/2008 league challenge...we dropped of when we moved to the Emirates due to a drop in player quality compared to Wengers’s Highbury years, not anything to do with formation.
    Last edited: Nov 12, 2019
    Divided_Pie likes this.
  7. Fewtch

    Fewtch Ozil at 10 And Emery Out

    That was an Henry quote so you’ll have to argue with him about that I’m afraid ;). But yes, Bergkamp used to drop deep so you could argue that it was more of a 4231 but at the same time Henry used to float around the LW a lot, something you see more in a 442.

    It isn’t just about the formation though, Wenger abandoned the quick transition counter attack football with big physical players and replaced them with smaller technicians with a focus on possession style football around the time Cesc became the main guy in the team. There’s no question about if Wenger built the team around Cesc, that’s what you should do for your best player(s).
    Riou likes this.
  8. Riou

    Riou Non-Stop Nostalgia

    I have heard many of our ex players talk about the our successful years under Big Wengz from 1996-2006, and a lot of them go on and on about the 4-4-2, and it amazes me how many think the formation and not the quality of the players was the reason for our dip post 2006!

    I don’t know exactly what Arsène was going for, only he does...but what I can say is that whatever he was doing, it was always a flexible and attacking formation...he liked his strikers to drop deep and drift wide, he liked his wingers to go inside to leave space for attacking fullbacks etc...many players had free roles, Arsène was very trusting of his players...always saw it more as a 4-2-3-1 than a 4-4-2 though, but that’s just one fan’s unimportant opinion ;)

    I agree that post 2008 he started to become to obsessed with technical skills, and eventually began neglecting important physical traits you needed to have in England...which is a shame.
    Fewtch likes this.
  9. Rain Dance

    Rain Dance Well-Known Member Trusted

    Giroud coming from the bench and scoring a vital goal for a draw...
    Sanchez definitely in there with his 30 goals...
  10. Dokaka

    Dokaka AM's resident Hammer

    I think there's a case to be made that Arteta carried you defensively for a couple of years.

    **** all pace but when he was paired with Song and/or Ramsey, the team looked so much more defensively sound. He plugged the gaps like the best, to the point where there were several on here (including myself) arguing he'd been good enough to make the Spain NT at a time where they were at an all time peak in talent.
    Mark Tobias, GDeep™ and Riou like this.
  11. Riou

    Riou Non-Stop Nostalgia

    Think Sol deserves a mention in here...when you break it down we basically replaced our best ever defender (Tony Adams) for free with virtually no drop in quality, and while United had money to drop £30 million on Rio, we didn't, we had to be smart...think Sol can also make a good case to be considered Arsène's best signing, he isn't but can make a very srong arguement...if you look at the 5 years he was here: Double, Champions League final, Invincibles...would any of that happened without Sol being our rock, remember we needed someone to replace Mr Arsenal...great defender.
    YeahBee and Squillaci like this.
  12. GDeep™

    GDeep™ Bum Squad CEO

    We got lucky with Sol, he wanted to leave Sp**s for a better club but had to stay in London for his ill father.

    Wenger made so many great signings that it would be impossible to make a list ranking them, that we would all agree on, other than Vieira and Henry being 1 and 2 in that list.
    Riou likes this.
  13. UpTheGunnerz

    UpTheGunnerz No Longer Phallus Obsessed

    Bernd Leno.
  14. Rex Banter

    Rex Banter Got Swerved By Gallas Trusted

    Think one of the games in our run in against Norwich showed how reliant we were on him simply because we had banter defending.

    Remember he put us in winning positions while we kept giving away soft goals and ended up drawing 3-3.

    For us and Utd I’ve never seen two teams so reliant on one player. Song chipping through balls to him was a legitimate game plan because his volleying skill was absolute filth.
  15. Riou

    Riou Non-Stop Nostalgia

    Rosicky deserves credit for his role in us getting top four in 2012 and 2013...he wasn’t the best player in each of those seasons, first RVP then Santi...but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that our best run of form in those years cane when Tomas came into the team, and those weren’t even Rozza’s prime years of 2006-2008 with us...quality player, you can tell he loves and gets Arsenal too.
    DJ_Markstar likes this.
  16. Juan Matas Beard

    Juan Matas Beard Friendly Mancunian facial hair

    Just makes me think how scary he could have been if he joined Barca in 2011 instead.

    Amazes me how he did so well with such poor service. For us it was Rooney/Carrick chipping in the odd through lofted ball that Song was famous for and we relied on it as a game plan.
    GoonerJeeves and Rex Banter like this.
  17. DJ_Markstar

    DJ_Markstar Well-Known Member

    You seem to be missing the essence of the post - the team being "built around Cesc" in your conception appears to mean that he had all the right tools for the job ala Messi at Barca, which couldn't be further from the case.

    In reality Wenger knew that the only way to get through that barren patch is to play to clearly the best player in the squad's strengths. But this isn't "building a team around Cesc", this is simply mitigating a financial period sensibly.

    If he had a team built around him, he'd have had much better players to complement his play style.
    Riou likes this.
  18. DJ_Markstar

    DJ_Markstar Well-Known Member

    And he's a rocker as well, bonus points.

    Riou likes this.
  19. Riou

    Riou Non-Stop Nostalgia

    Remember when Arsenal had YouTube videos, showing players favourite songs...

    ...Tommy was the only one with good music taste!
  20. Divided_Pie

    Divided_Pie Well-Known Member

    All this talk about Cesc, Arteta, and Santi as our midfield orchestrators just highlights to me how everything went to **** when we signed Xhaka to take over that role.

    The players next to them (Flamini, Song, Coquelin, etc.) didn’t need to be top class, they just needed to do the dirty work and provide balance. We need to find the next orchestrator , and I don’t think Douzi is that guy.
    mpower2540 likes this.

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