Arsenal’s little Spanish maestro Santi Cazorla is extremely important to the Gunner’s midfield creativity, but age and injuries looks certain to be bringing his career at the Emirates to a close in the next 18 months, and it is not even certain that he will actually be able to play much in that time.
So it is certain that Arsene Wenger will be looking at finding a like-for-like replacement in the very near future. Some people think (or hope) that Jack Wilshere will stay fit and become the driving force of the midfield once again, but although he may have the drive and willpower I am not sure that he possesses the same level of skill as Santi. So there must be better players out there that can do the job….
The latest rumours are that Wenger has set his sights on the Bosnian playmaker Miralem Pjanic, who is now plying his trade at Juventus, and according to reports Wenger has supposed spoken to the 26 year old personally. There is no doubt that he is very talented and has been top of the assist charts in Serie A for the last two season’s, but those figures came while he was at Roma before he moved to Juve last summer, which is exactly why I doubt very much that Arsenal will be buying him any time soon.
The report says that Arsenal are preparing a £28m offer for Pjanic, which is just about exactly the same as Juventus paid for him just six months ago! The Bosnian has played regularly for the Italian giants since his arrival so there is no obvious reason why he should want to leave, and as he has scored six goals as well as his assists, there is no reason why Juve would want to let him go so soon after his arrival.
My verdict? Rubbish rumour!
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Pjanic is a class player no doubt but I don’t see Juve letting him go unless the player is unhappy and we pay a good price.
Does this mean that the Jack Wilshere and A. Ramsey experiment has failed and who’s moving on?
I believe that getting Payet would be easier and cheaper looking at his age. I have a feeling he would do well at Arsenal and can be turned into an effective deep lying playmaker like Carzola. One thing so sure is that it will be hard to replace a player of Carzola’s quality and we may need to go a little deeper to find quality close enough in this market.
Agree that Payet would be fantastic! But Pjanic is a very different kind of player. He’s very intelligent and incisive with the way he uses the ball.
The thing with Cazorla that people tend to gloss over when talking about a potential replacement is that he is actually very intelligent defensively. Positionally he is excellent and rarely gets caught out of position. We can’t just grab another #10 and hope he’ll do well there. Payet could not play in a two man midfield.
Cazorla is irreplaceable, he’s like our Paul Scholes ?
First people would talk about a Vieira replacement as though that was the only midfielder who would work… Now it’s Cazorla!
Before the season Santi shifted to midfield and we recalled Coquelin people would claim Wenger would be crazy for even trying them together!
The trick is to find balanced pairings, or even shift to a three. Just because one kind of midfielder worked for us does not mean that’s the only way!
I’m not for one minute suggesting I don’t rate or love Cazorla. Because i do both. But fans need to get over this obsession of like for like replacements.
This comes back to my proposal for getting Payet in the first comment josh37. Why get a like to like player when others can work too as long as the “team is balanced”.
My proposal for Payet is because he equally is an intelligent player and can cover for at least 3 other positions (at 10 and on both wings). He is a good long and short passer, decent pace, good on set piece delivery, long range shooter, very hard to displace on the ball with his lw centre of gravity, excellent ball control and killer first touch, composed in front of goal too. I know he is no Carzola but if Wenger can trust Ramsey, Jack or Elneny with all due respect there I believe Payet would be a good gamble. Getting Payet can also remind Ozil that he still needs to fight for his spot and Iwobi and the younger guns have another good technical player to learn from.
I totally agree with you, our midfield needs to be dynamic and selection depending on the opponent. Carzola is super, but not irreplaceable like any other player and manager for that matter (Wenger wink wink).