Former Arsenal midfielder Gilberto Silva has claimed that the club should have utilised Mohamed Elneny better, claiming he is only the only player who could have played the role formerly occupied by Patrick Vieira and himself.
Our club has struggled to challenge for the Premier League title for a while now, and one possible issue is that they haven’t had a strong enough defensive midfielder employed to do the dirty work.
Our Invincibles of 2004-05 had the legendary Patrick Vieira and Gilberto Silva both adept at playing the role, but since then there has been far and few between who could live up to any such standard.
The aforementioned Brazilian claims that we have had a replacement in our squad however, but have failed to utilise him at all.
“In the last few years, the situation has been difficult at Arsenal. They have very similar players in midfield, with profiles that resemble each other and not really players of the profile of Patrick Vieira, or even my profile,” Silva claimed.
“The only individual who resembled [us], that could have been Mohamed Elneny, but he didn’t play. But they have not really had those types of players to cover the defensive midfield position.”
I for one have argued previously that Elneny has been given a rough ride in North London, and had regularly shown true ability in a midfield role, but for some reason, he has continually been overlooked.
He is once again impressing on loan with Besiktas this season, but it is believed that he has no future at Arsenal, although it is hard to tell considering we now have a new manager in Mikel Arteta in charge.
The Spaniard has his own ideas on what the club needs, and he may well take a look at Elneny and see what I have seen previously, and at 27 years-of-age he is hardly over the hill.
Could Arteta bring Elneny back to Arsenal? Has Elneny been overlooked unfairly?
Patrick
Two questions and two answers ,which are NO and NO!
Elneny ! Are you having a laugh 🤣
I never want to see him in an Arsenal shirt again!
True. Elneny is better than Xhaka and Torreira. I’ve been saying this for a long time. Many fans thinks I’m crazy. I even said, if Mkhitaryan and Ozil can compete in No.10 position, the former will come tops.
I am so happy someone can see a player from the technical point of view and not of sentiments and lack of vision by some Arsenal supporters, Elneny is a complete defensive midfielder, he was under utilised when he was at Arsenal, I wish Arteta can give him another chance, afterall, Mustafi was given another chance and he did not disappoint the manager, left for a typical Arsenal supporter, Mustafi will be gone by now.