Arsenal and Chelsea’s new-look midfields are in the throe of a debate which never should have been started.
Are we really doing this? Right, okay, come on then.
You might have seen, whilst perusing the truth bucket that is football Twitter (Sorry, football X as we must now call it) the attempts to compare Arsenal’s midfield to the new-look Chelsea middle third. The Blues are on the verge of yet another couple of signings as Romeo Lavia and Michael Olise close in on switches to West London.
Lavia completes a midfield three of fellow summer signing Moises Caicedo and the previous Premier League record holder for most inflated – correction – largest transfer fee, Enzo Fernandez.Meanwhile, Arsenal, who were forced to smash their own transfer record to sign their priority target Declan Rice thanks to the Blues’ transfer window antics have also added Kai Havertz to the fold as attacking reinforcement.
The comparisons that are being made include Havertz alongside Rice and Martin Odegaard. Now, it seems as though two important factors are being forgotten in the debates surrounding this selection battle.
Firstly, Thomas Partey is the starting defensive midfielder for Arsenal and did so when the Gunners beat Manchester City in the Community Shield.It was he that partnered Rice and Odegaard in what is on paper the best trio available to Mikel Arteta.
The second, has everyone suddenly forgotten quite how good Martin Odegaard is? The Norwegian єɴԀed last season with 15 goals and eight assists.
We’re talking about a world-class player in Odegaard, a world-class player in Partey and a world-class player in Rice. Period.
Enzo Fernandez is the only one of the three who has an argument for being included in the bracket of world-class players and frankly more justification, for me, is needed. Lavia is a player who at relegated Southampton showed great potential but gets utterly nowhere near Arsenal’s midfield.
Caicedo meanwhile is a great player.Not £115million’s worth of player mind, but he is very good and when Arsenal submitted a £70million bid in January I was hoping he’d arrive too.
But, more is needed from him still to be classed in the same bracket as Declan Rice. At Chelsea, all three players have the chance to showcase this and despite a lack of Champions League, or any European football for that matter, they can still do so on the Premier League stage.
138439845836
But please, can we not even raise this point… Which I do recognise I am doing this very moment by dedicating hundreds of words to the subject. But let this be the blowing out of the candle to this farce.
Arsenal’s midfield is a level above Chelsea and the only ɾєɑȿօɴ that it has even been bɾօυɢҺt up is a matter of forgetfulness and the association of money equalling quality which, based upon Chelsea’s recent spєɴԀing should be enough evidence to ensure these two factors are not one and the same. Are we in agreement?
