What is with the TIME and ADJUSTING?
Maybe that’s why I am not a manager, but I just don’t understand Arteta’s approach to Thomas Partey.
If I was Arteta, and I had just sealed a deadline day signing for the most sought-after player we had been chasing for a few years, I would get him in the team from day dot! Especially if the player was fit and had previous game time just before he joined, why wouldn’t I play him straight away, and then pull him off if things were going wrong?
Look at other teams, Chelsea for instance, from day one they put in Timo Werner and Kai Havertz, granted they got a few pre-season games but isn’t this what the beautiful game is about? Buying players and giving them chances to prove why you signed them straight from the off?
If Partey had come to us injured then I would say fine, I understand why he wasn’t picked for the starting line-up. But he played only five days before we faced City, against Qatar, and bagged two assists in that 5-1 win for Ghana, he then was at the training ground on Tuesday and had a few days to settle into the training method, his surroundings and meeting his teammates.
With the way things went in training it seemed as the players gelled straight away given the reactions from Aubameyang and Lacazette when they finally came face to face with Thomas, it seemed as though he would have no issue settling in.
So why did we have to wait until around seven minutes before the end of the game against City to see our new player? Well that question was answered by Arteta:
“I think we have to respect that process and that timing for him because he only trained for a day really and there’s a lot of new information and different game models for him to understand, and we have to respect that.”
That may be the case but paying that much money for a player who is of that talent, surely it shouldn’t matter how much time he has trained or not. Let him play and then we can judge him after his performance and then decide whether he needs more “time to adjust” or not. Gooners?
Shenel Osman