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Gabriel dos Santos Magalhães

Do you think Gabriel will end up signing for Arsenal?


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MikelHadADream

Established Member
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Unpopular opinion but I think Saliba-Mari could probably work quite decently, at least in theory. Both good in the air, Mari probably better with his feet. Saliba can do the running, Mari can do the whole Mertesacker organising the troops thing. If Mari is slow well you've got Tierney next to him who's quick and a good 1v1 defender. Bellerin next to Saliba so even if Bellerin cocks up Saliba could cover with his pace.

You've the whole dog/cat thing with CB partnerships, the dutiful dog and the prickly cat. Mari's the dog, Saliba's the cat, although I think he ends up the dog later in his career. Make sense?

I think it's a big risk going into a season with a guy that has barley kicked a ball in the PL and a 19 y/o kid. From what I've seen as well I'm not a fan of Mari, he is very slow and it doesn't look like he can defend 1v1. Making him permanent was the most baffling decision from the Luiz/Cedric/Mari news imo.

I think Saliba is better on the ball as well tbh.
 

KrissKringle

Reinventing VAR 😡
No more Lille players, please. Gervais was a bust and now his clone isn't exactly setting the PL on fire.
We don't have a good track record with players bought from this team.
 

GDeep™

League is very weak
Don’t know anything about this guy, but Napoli will have 80M to spend after they sell Koulibaly so the Napoli link makes sense.

I’m thinking we give Adams or Keown a call and ask them which two guys from the premier league they’ll advise us to sign. I’m abit tired having to spend money and then wait two years for these foreign boys to put a performance in.
 

dashsnow17

Doesn’t Rate Any Of Our Attackers
Trusted ⭐
Nah. One is a kid and the other has never played at this level before, both are new to the PL. Doesn’t make sense in theory and probably won’t in practise.

Maybe. I'm just saying Saliba has good reviews from pretty much everyone, they call him a Rolls Royce of a defender. And Mari was a hero at Flamengo, the fans loved him there. Flamengo isn't some Sunday league team ffs. And if the board signed Mari permanently i'll trust they watched him and know more about him than you or I do. They signed Cedric permanently, everyone lost their sh*t, then it turned out he's ok.
 

dashsnow17

Doesn’t Rate Any Of Our Attackers
Trusted ⭐
Don’t know anything about this guy, but Napoli will have 80M to spend after they sell Koulibaly so the Napoli link makes sense.

I’m thinking we give Adams or Keown a call and ask them which two guys from the premier league they’ll advise us to sign. I’m abit tired having to spend money and then wait two years for these foreign boys to put a performance in.

Keown wanted us to buy Maguire when he was at Hull, which would have been a decent move of course. But let's not pretend like Arsenal fans wouldn't be complaining about all Maguire's mistakes if he was playing for us now instead of Utd.
 

GDeep™

League is very weak
Maybe. I'm just saying Saliba has good reviews from pretty much everyone, they call him a Rolls Royce of a defender. And Mari was a hero at Flamengo, the fans loved him there. Flamengo isn't some Sunday league team ffs. And if the board signed Mari permanently i'll trust they watched him and know more about him than you or I do. They signed Cedric permanently, everyone lost their sh*t, then it turned out he's ok.
Joe Gomez was also a Rolls Royce defender in the championship, everybody wanted him, including us, joined Liverpool and took him 3/4 years to reach the level he is now. Mari is 27 and not done anything at the highest level. Jury is totally out. He’s worth the risk if you want, but that has to be backed up by us having 2/3 other guys who are solid - we don’t, we just have Mari and Saliba.
 

GDeep™

League is very weak
Keown wanted us to buy Maguire when he was at Hull, which would have been a decent move of course. But let's not pretend like Arsenal fans wouldn't be complaining about all Maguire's mistakes if he was playing for us now instead of Utd.
McGuire at Hull was 5M though. Not sure we would have much to complain about him at that price.
 

GDeep™

League is very weak
Keown begged us to sign Maguire btw, called him the best English CB when the media was busy hyping up John Stones etc.

Apparently we looked at him but our scouts felt he wasn’t mobile enough, which is bollocks now when you think about it.
 

dashsnow17

Doesn’t Rate Any Of Our Attackers
Trusted ⭐
I dunno, my opinion is that most defenders at the highest level these days aren't actually great defenders. There's only like a handful of good elite defenders in European football, VVD and Laporte are the only two in the PL. As long as you're an ok defender with good feet you're basically good enough for Champions League teams these days.

Two tall guys like Saliba and Mari with good feet and i'm not that bothered if they're not Maldini and Baresi tbh. I'm much more concerned by the midfield and attack.
 

Goonger

Well-Known Member
Unpopular opinion but I think Saliba-Mari could probably work quite decently, at least in theory. Both good in the air, Mari probably better with his feet. Saliba can do the running, Mari can do the whole Mertesacker organising the troops thing. If Mari is slow well you've got Tierney next to him who's quick and a good 1v1 defender. Bellerin next to Saliba so even if Bellerin cocks up Saliba could cover with his pace.

You've the whole dog/cat thing with CB partnerships, the dutiful dog and the prickly cat. Mari's the dog, Saliba's the cat, although I think he ends up the dog later in his career. Make sense?

It's a shame Mari got injured when he did, would allow us to properly assess him, or at least allow him a bedding in period. Now he's just a punt..... we are due some luck with 1 of these sometime surely.
 

GDeep™

League is very weak
He's better than what we have, but his weaknesses would have been worsened like 10 times over in our team...don't think he would make much difference, if we had him in the team now.
You can say that about everyone though, unless you’re signing Terry, Rio, Adams.
 

MutableEarth

Reiss' Dad
Trusted ⭐
This fixation with the next VVD baffles me. Just look at our clowns, any actually good defender brings us up a notch, Tierney has sort of proved that.
A lot of us want our ailments fixed as soon as possible - makes sense that slapping a big VVD shaped plaster over the defence would go a long way.

I don't think it's quite that dire, but we could do with players of a certain profile in our defence. We have too many players who are slow, lacking agility or not great in the air!
 

El Duderino

That's, like, your opinion, man.
Moderator
A lot of us want our ailments fixed as soon as possible - makes sense that slapping a big VVD shaped plaster over the defence would go a long way.

I don't think it's quite that dire, but we could do with players of a certain profile in our defence. We have too many players who are slow, lacking agility or not great in the air!

Just having someone with the right mentality would do us a world of good, here.

Luiz wasn't bothered and Mustafi and Kola shat the bed as soon as they got into trouble.

You'd think that someone like Luiz would just go up to their ears and snap them out of it, but again, couldn't be bothered.
 

SingmeasongSong

Right Sometimes
Just having someone with the right mentality would do us a world of good, here.

Luiz wasn't bothered and Mustafi and Kola shat the bed as soon as they got into trouble.

You'd think that someone like Luiz would just go up to their ears and snap them out of it, but again, couldn't be bothered.

Personally think Luiz has an okay attitude, but totally lacks the legs at this stage - for any pass that isn't accurate you'll find Luiz in a running duell with a striker he'll end up losing, exactly as has happened with Son.

Kola isn't a good defender in any regard, he's an okay offensive wb for a mid-table team.

Mustafi actually has all the tools Luiz hasn't, but he's not as clever as Luiz and just loses his head constantly.

Actually was happy with him under Arteta so far, as you cannot really complain about much he's done until that Sp**s game.
But the derby served as a reminder that he's always going to lose his head when the pressure gets too much.

Backup or bin for him.

We don't need VVD's now, what we need is FAST, strong, technical and relatively intelligent CBs that can ideally grow into a worldclass player later on in their careers.

Stop that narrative of experience - as long as they didn't solely play in the reserves or lower league matches, it's not like they are suddenly to play another game.

People are pretty ignorant when it comes to comparisons of leagues - the PL is without a doubt the strongest, but the differences are rather small. A big talent from Germany, France or Spain is very likely to continue what he's done here as well.
 

El Duderino

That's, like, your opinion, man.
Moderator
Personally think Luiz has an okay attitude, but totally lacks the legs at this stage - for any pass that isn't accurate you'll find Luiz in a running duell with a striker he'll end up losing, exactly as has happened with Son.

Kola isn't a good defender in any regard, he's an okay offensive wb for a mid-table team.

Mustafi actually has all the tools Luiz hasn't, but he's not as clever as Luiz and just loses his head constantly.

Actually was happy with him under Arteta so far, as you cannot really complain about much he's done until that Sp**s game.
But the derby served as a reminder that he's always going to lose his head when the pressure gets too much.

Backup or bin for him.

We don't need VVD's now, what we need is FAST, strong, technical and relatively intelligent CBs that can ideally grow into a worldclass player later on in their careers.

Stop that narrative of experience - as long as thes didn't solely play in the reserves or lower league matches, it's not like another game.

People are pretty ignorant when it comes to comparisons of leagues - the PL is without a doubt the strongest, but the differences are rather small. A big talent from Germany, France or Spain is very likely to continue what he's done here as well.

My point with Luis was more re: leadership. He should be in Mustafi's ear telling him to calm down or giving him a good hiding to calm him down.

Either way, I agree with you. VVD is a generational talent at CB and sure, it would be nice to land one, but getting a solid player with the attributes we need will take us a long way forward.
 

SingmeasongSong

Right Sometimes
On that note, I'd really like to highlight once more as to how much we can rate Arteta's achivements thus far.

We looked pretty good defensively with those wankers at the back and even though this will never be good enough, it allowed us to dominate a good set of games again, because of it.

If Arteta gets just remotely the players there that he'd wish for, we could see ourselves in big surprise as too how far we could come nex year.
 

SingmeasongSong

Right Sometimes
My point with Luis was more re: leadership. He should be in Mustafi's ear telling him to calm down or giving him a good hiding to calm him down.

Either way, I agree with you. VVD is a generational talent at CB and sure, it would be nice to land one, but getting a solid player with the attributes we need will take us a long way forward.

I actually noticed just after writing my post that it sounded way to critical of your post in reference - was more of a general opinion on my behalf and some disagreement with many voices on AM that make it sound like other leagues are like Englands sunday league - most likely those never watch anything outside England.
 
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