re: Arsenal 2012/2013 Season Long Thread

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I don't think he'd be a perfect fit for our style (not the greatest passer or first touch) but I would not be opposed to the signing at all.

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No he wouldn't fit our style at all. He's not the passer that Arsene typically wants in midfield. We'd have to drop either Arteta or Ramsey. An Arteta/Felliani midfield combo would also be extremely slow, and it would be imperative to win the second ball. The Arteta-Ramsey axis worked well because of Ramsey's tireless running and pressing, as well as his new found ability to win the ball.

All in all, I'm rather confused by some of the links that are being made. For example, Higuain is a poacher who relies on superb service into the attack positions, but rarely creates himself. He doesn't hold the ball up, he's not known as a link player, but he scores a lot. Felliani is a powerful box to box player who can't really play the short passing game we want to play, but can impose himself physically on teams just by his sheer size. If we do buy them, I'll be interested in the formation we play, since we would be losing some creativity by dropping Ramsey for Felliani, and we'd be losing the ability to exploit space behind the CB's because we'd drop Giroud for Higuain. Thus we would probably rely on our full-backs to support and deliver more final balls, which might expose us defensively, unless Felliani plays as the deepest midfielder, who only breaks up attacks, and then looks for a B2B player who begins our attacks. I hope this is making sense.