30 Jul 2019 09:13:11
Just read this interesting line;
According to L'Equipe, Monaco have enquired about signing Arsenal defender Shkodran Mustafi

Please be true!

1.) 30 Jul 2019
30 Jul 2019 12:53:13
Fingers crossed! 🤞.

2.) 31 Jul 2019
30 Jul 2019 23:26:03
Got my fingers, toes, and bollocks crossed for good measure.

3.) 31 Jul 2019
31 Jul 2019 15:48:32
I have some sympathy for Mustafi. He clearly wasn't an atrocious player at Sampdoria and Valencia, otherwise we would never have forked out 35m for him. He became appalling at Arsenal, which suggests his performances have something at least, to do with the style of play and the way we organise ourselves at the back. It will be interesting to see if our defending improves with a change of personnel (Tierney and Rugani/ Umtiti/ or A N Other) , or familiar patterns persist despite the new faces.

4.) 31 Jul 2019
31 Jul 2019 20:17:37
The first thing I noticed about Mustafi when he arrived was how he stopped running and put his arm up hopping for a flag or whistle to save his legs (very similar to Mertesacker) then I started to notice how he never accepted responsibility for his mistakes but always seemed to blame a team mate even when it was clearly his error that cost a goal.
I'm sure this didn't start when he joined Arsenal and must have been part of his make up before he joined us and something that rang alarm bells that put us off signing him I the first place.
Same with Xhaka, could he tackle in Germany? Could he head the ball in Germany? Did he not give the ball away cheaply in Germany too!
It's every bit as much about spotting players weaknesses as ll as they're strengths when scouting them surely, I think this is an area we need to fix in future.

{Ed047's Note - Mustafi has been doing the very same thing in the last 2 pre season games I’ve watched.

It’s amazing that any decent scout would miss these glaring deficiencies.

5.) 31 Jul 2019
31 Jul 2019 20:32:49
It is Ed047 mate, it sounds like scouts and decision makers Arsene or whoever only saw what they wanted to see and totally ignored everything else.
A keeper might be a great shot stopper like Ospina was but good keeping is every bit as much if not more about positioning decision making and distribution, you've surely got to be open to seeing the bad as well as the good before signing a player, well if you want to be successful you have :-)

{Ed047's Note - if that wasn’t bad enough they keep getting game time, you have to ask what some of these managers see in these players.

6.) 31 Jul 2019
31 Jul 2019 22:11:03
I think Arsene was fixated by finding or conveying a player into the next Alonso, first in Artetta then Xhaka, he saw similarities but ignored the obvious differences and I think that's been the case with many other player too.
I will never understand why we do don't give Ox a run in CMF when we were obviously weak there and he'd done well there for England I know he's injury prone but for Liverpool under Klopp he looked excellent there.