Let's talk about Mustafi

Didn't know much about him when he became NT player in early 2014. Heard he was doing great at Sampdoria or wherever he was.

Mixed bag at the World Cup. Looked terrible against Algeria as RB but then Löw was having a shocker up until this point and I wouldn't blame him for it.After that, he looked fine for the National team.

Moved to Valencia when they were still good. Seemed like a good move and he had a good first season, no?

Moved to Arsenal and I thought that was a great buy. He was expensive, but not excessively. Thought he fit in well from the start, Arsenal looked good and safe.
I considered him to be a very solid, potentially great defender.

Since a couple of months however, he has been absoutely diabolical. Arsenal fans must be clamoring for Mertesacker back. Who, btw, where is he?

Discuss.

He's been shite.

shit positioning, can't tackle, can't pass, no good in the air, looks completely lost every game

heard he was solid before they bought him, yet looks like one of the worst CB's in the league

I'm surprised that he's not 'good in the air', thats one of his standout traits

Firenze wrote:shit positioning, can't tackle, can't pass, no good in the air, looks completely lost every game

heard he was solid before they bought him, yet looks like one of the worst CB's in the league

That's the kind of deep analysis we can expect from people who have been schooled in the art of punditry by watching morons like Neville or Carragher.

If stuff goes wrong, always attack individual players and their supposed 'quality'. Always make it aobut individuals, because else thinking about a team sport is too complicated.
Because what are you to say to the camera except for "player x is just not good enough, Arsenal need to buy better players"?


Nope.

There's always more to it, and also in this case. Confidence. Team mechanisms. Tactical stuff. Bad form. New league. A team that running too little and not working well against the ball.

He's looking terrible, but I'll reserve definitive judgement until I see what Allegri will do with him.

ES wrote:I'm surprised that he's not 'good in the air', thats one of his standout traits

lmao he dominated in the air in a league where 5'3 players are considered the best. Says it all.

Football is a simple sport tbh.

Pace out wide, strength in the middle, height at the back and get balls in the box.

Only Europeans with fancy names try to make it complicated, taking about angles, tactics and 2341 systems.

442 will always reign supreme.

Hapless_Hans wrote:

Firenze wrote:shit positioning, can't tackle, can't pass, no good in the air, looks completely lost every game

heard he was solid before they bought him, yet looks like one of the worst CB's in the league

That's the kind of deep analysis we can expect from people who have been schooled in the art of punditry by watching morons like Neville or Carragher.

Wrong. I don't have Sky, I learn from the likes of Robbie Savage, Michael Owen and Owen Hagreaves nowadays lad so you know my analysis is on point.

Great Leader Sprucenuce wrote:Football is a simple sport tbh.

Pace out wide, strength in the middle, height at the back and get balls in the box.

Only Europeans with fancy names try to make it complicated, taking about angles, tactics and 2341 systems.

442 will always reign supreme.

We need to make this sticky somewhere. Or maybe as masthead?

Fair point though, I mean even top 5 CB in the world Koscielny has looked just as bad in the last few months. I will also reserve completely writing Mustafi off as a fraud until Eddie Howe takes over.

Koscielny is only top 5 in the world where Arsenal are the only club in the world tbh.

Wasn't it the "Europeans" who made the 4-4-2 a thing?

Also, not to absorb any blame from the players (a lot to passed around really) but watching Arsenal under Wenger is quite a pain and I feel a lot of instructions and tactics set by him is making players who are pretty decent look pretty shitty. Minus the one or two who really is not up to scratch.

Agree with Hans, would reserve legit judgement when a better manager comes aboard.

Doc wrote:Wasn't it the "Europeans" who made the 4-4-2 a thing?

Blasphemy.

442 was invented by King Henry VIII while beheading his 5th wife.

Great Leader Sprucenuce wrote:

Doc wrote:Wasn't it the "Europeans" who made the 4-4-2 a thing?

Blasphemy.

442 was invented by King Henry VIII while beheading his 5th wife.

Keep your Protestant nonsense to yourself Mole. The 4-4-2 is clearly a Catholic thing, probably invented by a Pope in Rome.

Pope is too conservative to think of such a thing.

If any Italian is capable of such a thing it's Leonard Di Vinci while trying to divert people from the Da Vinci code.

Spoiler:

Great Leader Sprucenuce wrote:Koscielny is only top 5 in the world where Arsenal are the only club in the world tbh.

Koscielny being a top 5 defender in the world, which frankly was known anyway by any football follower with an ounce of common sense, was proven beyond resonable doubt by the difference between Arsenal v Bayern with and without him.

The guy is keeping a whole team together all on his own, he's quite apparently delivered performances of Herculean, Atlas-like proportion week in and week out.

He has no outstanding physical qualities and doesn't seem to have the intelligence to compensate for it. Like Vermaelen, really.

So of course he's going to be exposed horribly with our "defending". Gets no protection in front of him (because that's usually Xhaka who's a lumbering moron when he's defending) or down the side (Bellerin's side, too busy having a bad hair day to defend). Koscielny can't bail him out because he's bailing out Monreal on the other side.

On who is the best CB in the PL:

Hapless_Hans wrote:So far it's Koscielny, with Mustafi second place.

Matip

I don't get how you can't realize that all this overhyping will end with your own feelings getting hurt, every time

This was Hopless in September

You owe me an apology.

He looked average when I saw him play for Germany. He did nothing special in Sampdoria either. Valencia is an unreal place for fraud CBs. Raul Albiol, Otamendi, Mustafi.

Don't call me James wrote:On who is the best CB in the PL:

Hapless_Hans wrote:So far it's Koscielny, with Mustafi second place.

Matip

I don't get how you can't realize that all this overhyping will end with your own feelings getting hurt, every time

This was Hopless in September

You owe me an apology.

They were the best in September. Nothing wrong there and I've already written along those lines in my first post in this thread.

Meanwhile, Matip is still meh.

Well if he isn't the most talented individual defender, he's going to look crap defending in whatever system Arsene has Arsenal playing.

There are brands of toilet paper tougher than Arsenal's midfield. When there is no cover from the middle of the park, of course the defense is going to look bad, especially when under constant pressure.

The best CB around (subjective so I will leave that open) would look like shit in this Arsenal defense given who is I front of them. That's why I can't completely lay the blame on Mustafi or any other CB back there for being so bad. Not the with a midfield that gets bodied by WBA ffs.

Wenger isn't known for arming defenses anyway. He's just like Pep except less possession obsessed. Doesn't matter who he has in the back if his best strategy is an attacking one.

Also it doesn't help that Mustafi isn't the quickest CB either. If Arsenal brought back Merte he'd just get murdered on the highline.

The following is my translation of a report from the mighty SportBild, German tabloid (I'm not going to make it more elegant in style)

SportBIld wrote:No future at Schalke - How Mustafi fell out of favour
by Maximilian Wessing

Schalke and Shkrodran Mustafi (21) - nothing but one big misunderstanding. Its climax in the game at Leverkusen, when manager Grammozis cut him from the squad. In the 1-0 against Augsburg, Mustafi came in only after 78 minutes.
That he's struggling, however, is not just due to his match performances. For example, ahead of the Leverkusen game he'd been delivering inacceptable training performances, not executing exercises according to Grammozi's instructions.

The coach called him in for a talk during the week and pointed this out. What did improve? Nothing.
Ahead of the Augsburg game, there wasa another talk, and Grammozis liked Mustafis reaction better then.

(bolded in original:)
Most of all, what is annoying his teammates: the defender produces many mistakes himself, yet most of the time proceeds to blame others for them, while acting a know-it-all.
Allegedly he proposed a change of tactics by himself - without consultation of the coach.
After the season, Mustafi and Schalke will go their separate ways.

https://sportbild.bild.de/bundesliga/vereine/bundesliga/schalke-04-deshalb-fiel-shkodran-mustafi-in-ungnade-76050638.sport.html