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Most underrated Arsenal players

roz

Fake News Merchant
Wiltord was a very good player, but was (understandably) overshadowed by playing with peak Henry.

Kolo Toure was as important as Sol Campbell to our Invincible season, great defender at his peak.

Edu (longer haired version) was such a player, briefly displaced Gilberto in the team in 2004, shame injuries ruined him...


...love this, probably our most underrated goal!

Szczesny is our best keeper of The Emirates Era, we should have done more to keep him and given him better goalkeeper coaches to work with.
Have to agree with Wiltord. Have been rewatching a lot of our old games during lockdown and he stands out everytime he’s on the ball. I remember him fondly obviously (Old Trafford :drool:) but I never held him in the same regard as the rest of the more obvious players. Fantastic player.
 

Tir Na Nog

Changes Opinion Every 5 Minutes

Country: Ireland
Is Hleb underrated? I get the feeling he is a bit. I thought he was unbelievable. Vs Madrid in 06 and then for the entirety of the 07/08 season he was brilliant. He was just incredible to watch. He was direct, quick footed, great ball retention and close control, could carry the ball great distances, drag defenders out of position and could open defences all on his own. Him, Fabregas and Adebayor were such an attacking threat that season.

The thing I loved about Hleb the most tho is that he played with absolutely no fear, even in big games he'd still play his game. It's a shame it ended how it did, not just for us but for him too. As much as it annoyed me him leaving I kinda feel sad how his career just declined rapidly after he left.
 

Riou

In The Winchester, Waiting For This To Blow Over

Country: Northern Ireland

Player:Gabriel
Is Hleb underrated? I get the feeling he is a bit. I thought he was unbelievable. Vs Madrid in 06 and then for the entirety of the 07/08 season he was brilliant. He was just incredible to watch. He was direct, quick footed, great ball retention and close control, could carry the ball great distances, drag defenders out of position and could open defences all on his own. Him, Fabregas and Adebayor were such an attacking threat that season.

The thing I loved about Hleb the most tho is that he played with absolutely no fear, even in big games he'd still play his game. It's a shame it ended how it did, not just for us but for him too. As much as it annoyed me him leaving I kinda feel sad how his career just declined rapidly after he left.

Feel he is a little underrated, but that's really on him and the career choices to made, at least he won a lot at Barca during his short stint there.

Obviously 07/08 was his peak, but I always felt he was very good throughout his whole time with us...you mention the Madrid 2006 game, him and Reyes were quality during that run to the Champions League final...such a nice mixture of pace and skill on the wing for us back then.
 

Corbulo

Active Member
I will have to go with Aliaksandr Paulavich Hleb as well. He was a creative Latino, not a metal-cutting truck driver from Belarus.

It's sad that he will probably be rated lower than our current Ottman attacking midfielder.

Hleb’s dribbling was simply outrageous, it was like seeing someone’s labia for the first time. Hamas would be proud of the way he was torturing defences.
He would drive us forward and then play a perfect pass to a teammate. In a sense, this blondie was the sort of player who could truly express the philosophy of Wenger's equivalent of football kamasutra.

Tight interchanges, amazing first touch and incisive movement, all traits which were a requirement if you wanted an invitation to Wenger's wild, all-night parties. It's true that Hleb was shooting blanks but his impact on matches was picked up by those who appreciate the boring game of football. Unfortunately he couldn't resist the symmetrical face with the most perfect features of Barcelona.
 

Rex Stone

Long live the fighters
Trusted ⭐

Country: Wales
Feel he is a little underrated, but that's really on him and the career choices to made, at least he won a lot at Barca during his short stint there.

Obviously 07/08 was his peak, but I always felt he was very good throughout his whole time with us...you mention the Madrid 2006 game, him and Reyes were quality during that run to the Champions League final...such a nice mixture of pace and skill on the wing for us back then.

He fell off so hard when he left us it makes me wonder was he just benefitting from playing with the best attacking midfielder in the world after Kaka at that time? Remember watching him struggle to get on the field for Birmingham ffs.

I think a lot of the guys in those years had inflated stats and looked better because of playing with prime Fabregas.

Adebayor definitely did and arguably Nasri as he never hit those 2010/11 heights with Man City.

Possibly controversial but I’d go as far to say that Hleb might actually be overrated.
 

TromsoGooner

Obsessed With Looking for Eric
I find Hleb a very difficult player to judge, he was certainly a very unusual type of player. He wasn`t very quick, didn`t score much( didn`t et too much assists either I think) and was physically weak. When it came to keeping the ball in tight spaces he was world class and the best I`ve seen in an Arsenal-shirt, only Nasri comes close in my opinion. Very clever player too, usually made the right choice.
 

Notorious Big

Drunka In Friend Zone
He fell off so hard when he left us it makes me wonder was he just benefitting from playing with the best attacking midfielder in the world after Kaka at that time? Remember watching him struggle to get on the field for Birmingham ffs.

I think a lot of the guys in those years had inflated stats and looked better because of playing with prime Fabregas.

Adebayor definitely did and arguably Nasri as he never hit those 2010/11 heights with Man City.

Possibly controversial but I’d go as far to say that Hleb might actually be overrated.

Hleb was probably underrated at Arsenal as some fans want to say,but as a player for other club he didn't show show a lot and he changed a lot of clubs during his career.Think that he done very well at us for 3 years and made good partnership with Fabregas.

Just like Özil who is probably overrated in Arsenal,but was proper player in other teams.
 

Notorious Big

Drunka In Friend Zone
Think he mentally gave up shortly after joining Barca, he knew he wouldn't play and probably immediately wished he stayed with us...still think he was a very good player, just made the wrong move really and kinda downed tools after.

He was quality at Stuttgart before joining us...I am assuming this, based on his Championship Manager attributes/stats back in the day!

Ade was similar, had everything to be a top striker, but seemed to struggle to motivate himself regularly...thought Nasri in 13/14 for City, was as good as his 10/11 with us, but again he seemed to suffer from motivational issues too.

Think no one can be wrong here really, Hleb, Nasri and Ade are a collection of players that can equally be called both underrated and overrated...as they all had very up and down careers.

Think that a lot of players that left Arsenal,kinda looked worse than they were at us.Fabregas never played so good for Barcelona,RVP had one good season at Utd,Hleb and Adebayor were in decline for most of the part.

Of course,they got what they wanted for most of the time,titles or money,but as a players they went backwards.
 

Rex Stone

Long live the fighters
Trusted ⭐

Country: Wales
Random flashback to when Cesc and Nasri left one of the only Arsenal supporting friends I have was spamming the Gervinho at Lille highlights on Facebook.

He looked so dangerous I was sure he’d bang 20 in a season for us.

Like Hleb think he’s another one who built a career out of playing with an all time teammate. Hazard was in that Cesc bracket even as a teenager.
 

musoke

Active Member
Rosicky, Koscielny, Torreira, Arteta and Sagna have never been underrated though.

Chambers is a good shout though, I feel like he was getting better the more play time he got. He could have become a first team starter, much better than the likes of Sokratis or Mustafi.
I remember from about 2011 or 12 people were going for Rosicky’s throat. Most pundits on TalkSport would say things like “Arsenal expect to challenge when they have average players like Rosicky blah blah”.
I used to spend a lot of time on The Sun and Daily Mail online sports sections back then and most Arsenal fans would be putting Rosicky in the “Most Overrated player” category.
It used to pss me off. Every time I would try to defend him i would be labelled as part of the reason we were struggling to maintain our Top 4 status. People like me were part of the problem because we rated weak and poor players.
Lol
 

Tir Na Nog

Changes Opinion Every 5 Minutes

Country: Ireland
He fell off so hard when he left us it makes me wonder was he just benefitting from playing with the best attacking midfielder in the world after Kaka at that time? Remember watching him struggle to get on the field for Birmingham ffs.

I think a lot of the guys in those years had inflated stats and looked better because of playing with prime Fabregas.

Adebayor definitely did and arguably Nasri as he never hit those 2010/11 heights with Man City.

Possibly controversial but I’d go as far to say that Hleb might actually be overrated.

No no no no. I'm not having this at all, in the past few weeks I've watched loads of footage of the 07/08 season and I'm telling you Hleb was a demon. There was so many big game performances where he was just gliding past players.

I just think that whole year at Barcelona might have just destroyed his confidence and for whatever reason just couldn't get up to those same levels. Also physically I think he had a massive decline. I actually think that not playing a lot can have just as negative effects as being overplayed. He never really had the same burst he had at Arsenal when going past players which was a huge part of his game.

I also think it's a bit simplistic to say Fabregas made everyone look better. Adebayor's talent and ability was undeniable, he had a lot of issues in terms of motivation and mentality tho. Like at Sp**s he looked unplayable at times too. Nasri had some good times at City but he was in a similar boat to Adebayor. I think maybe perhaps we just had the right circumstances for a lot of players to thrive because Wenger was never restrictive in the way he wanted his players to play too. All of a sudden Pep, Mancini and whoever else start giving you strict instructions and you're kinda hampered a bit in terms of showcasing your talent. At Arsenal a player like Hleb has the freedom to float around, which he did, which is why he was so hard to mark at times and which made him so effective. In general the attack consisting of Adebayor, Cesc, Hleb, Rosicky was so effective because opposition players found it hard to mark them without being dragged out of position thus leaving spaces to exploit.

I've gone off on a tangent but I'm not accepting Hleb being overrated, certainly not for his time at Arsenal which is all I'm really interested in. Like I've watched loads of highlights of games, highlights of Hleb and they've all confirmed what I thought of in my memory, he was literally unplayable at times. Hence why he earned himself the move to Barcelona.
 

Tir Na Nog

Changes Opinion Every 5 Minutes

Country: Ireland
If we're talking about players who weren't as good as when they were at Arsenal then Fabregas is literally another. Like he had a few decent moments at Barcelona but largely either wasn't first choice or was shoe-horned into the team. At Chelsea he had half a good season his first year and then was a decent impact sub under Conte. He reached absolutely nowhere near the heights at Arsenal either.
 

Rex Stone

Long live the fighters
Trusted ⭐

Country: Wales
No no no no. I'm not having this at all, in the past few weeks I've watched loads of footage of the 07/08 season and I'm telling you Hleb was a demon. There was so many big game performances where he was just gliding past players.

I just think that whole year at Barcelona might have just destroyed his confidence and for whatever reason just couldn't get up to those same levels. Also physically I think he had a massive decline. I actually think that not playing a lot can have just as negative effects as being overplayed. He never really had the same burst he had at Arsenal when going past players which was a huge part of his game.

I also think it's a bit simplistic to say Fabregas made everyone look better. Adebayor's talent and ability was undeniable, he had a lot of issues in terms of motivation and mentality tho. Like at Sp**s he looked unplayable at times too. Nasri had some good times at City but he was in a similar boat to Adebayor. I think maybe perhaps we just had the right circumstances for a lot of players to thrive because Wenger was never restrictive in the way he wanted his players to play too. All of a sudden Pep, Mancini and whoever else start giving you strict instructions and you're kinda hampered a bit in terms of showcasing your talent. At Arsenal a player like Hleb has the freedom to float around, which he did, which is why he was so hard to mark at times and which made him so effective. In general the attack consisting of Adebayor, Cesc, Hleb, Rosicky was so effective because opposition players found it hard to mark them without being dragged out of position thus leaving spaces to exploit.

I've gone off on a tangent but I'm not accepting Hleb being overrated, certainly not for his time at Arsenal which is all I'm really interested in. Like I've watched loads of highlights of games, highlights of Hleb and they've all confirmed what I thought of in my memory, he was literally unplayable at times. Hence why he earned himself the move to Barcelona.

It’s just bizarre though, his career basically ended as soon as he left us. It’s like he forgot to be a footballer overnight.

Could barely get off the bench for teams in Russia within a couple of years. Genuinely never seen a fall off so quickly.

As for Adebayor, think he was a decent striker who really had a great supporting cast with us, outside of one semi-decent year at Sp**s he was pretty average the rest of his career.
 

Oxeki

Match Day Thread Merchant
Trusted ⭐

Country: Nigeria

Player:Saliba
I remember facemask-Coquelin. What a monster he was for a period.
It definitely didn't do him any favors when he started to play a bit more advanced. Not sure though if that was Wenger's tactical suggestions or more Coquelin feeling more confident and as such overestimating his technical skills and wanting to make a bigger impact offensively.

I could be completely off on this, but I recall him scoring a goal or two in a short span and then he started to develop more attacking tendencies - perhaps to chase some more thrills of scoring, couldn't blame him tbh. And Wenger was never much for limiting player's creative urges - great showcase of this was our fluid football which was scintillating at it's best, and defensively horribly unstructured at it's worst.
He was better or almost at par with matic in 2014/2015 IMO.

He was a beast. He looked like Prime Gatusso at times.

I remember the 0-2 win at the etihad :drool:
 

Oxeki

Match Day Thread Merchant
Trusted ⭐

Country: Nigeria

Player:Saliba
We paid £10.5M for him.

75c773d1c9e78a1689e89c220bfef85a.png


How anyone can say he was overrated is beyond me.

Had we had a mental coach who could've helped him with his composure he'd been world class is my gut feel. He got to the right positions, and lacked that last bit of cold-bloodedness.
Giroud won't have been World class even if you'd bring in all the Havard-trained therapist to work with him.

Maybe Francis Jeffers would have been world class too if we'd brought an army of of mental coach to work with him.

The reason he wasn't world class was because of lack of consistency. You could say that for pretty much every other average player. Apart from the occasional worldie he scored, he was average at best and Sunday League at worst
 

L3T5 PL4Y

Flair Accuser
I will have to go with Aliaksandr Paulavich Hleb as well. He was a creative Latino, not a metal-cutting truck driver from Belarus.

It's sad that he will probably be rated lower than our current Ottman attacking midfielder.

Hleb’s dribbling was simply outrageous, it was like seeing someone’s labia for the first time. Hamas would be proud of the way he was torturing defences.
He would drive us forward and then play a perfect pass to a teammate. In a sense, this blondie was the sort of player who could truly express the philosophy of Wenger's equivalent of football kamasutra.

Tight interchanges, amazing first touch and incisive movement, all traits which were a requirement if you wanted an invitation to Wenger's wild, all-night parties. It's true that Hleb was shooting blanks but his impact on matches was picked up by those who appreciate the boring game of football. Unfortunately he couldn't resist the symmetrical face with the most perfect features of Barcelona.
Reads like a pornstar's bio on pornhub.
 

L3T5 PL4Y

Flair Accuser
I wouldn't say Rosicky was underrated because we never got to see his best apart from glimpses here and there but if he weren't injured so frequently I think we would have had a world class player.
 

Notorious Big

Drunka In Friend Zone
If we're talking about players who weren't as good as when they were at Arsenal then Fabregas is literally another. Like he had a few decent moments at Barcelona but largely either wasn't first choice or was shoe-horned into the team. At Chelsea he had half a good season his first year and then was a decent impact sub under Conte. He reached absolutely nowhere near the heights at Arsenal either.

Part of the problem was because Pep wanted him and Fabregas did well in his first season at Barcelona.He was probably seen as successor of Xavi,while he was younger than him.

Than when Pep left in 2012,whole Barcelona was kinda in downfall with next 2 managers and Cesc fell of the clip.It was a mixture where Cesc never really adapted to their style of play and Barca's struggles to find right tactics.
 

Notorious Big

Drunka In Friend Zone
I wouldn't say Rosicky was underrated because we never got to see his best apart from glimpses here and there but if he weren't injured so frequently I think we would have had a world class player.

Yeah,we really can't judge him a lot.Like some people say that Eduardo or Diaby were overrated.They just didn't play a lot games that we can see their real quality.
 

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