He dribbles in centrefield.
He’s a flair player who makes bad passes that can lose you a game.
He loves to shoot from 25 yards but plays for a team that wants to pass the ball into the net.
Arsenal have gone top of the table by winning five of their last six league games.
And they’ve done that by passing the ball into the box and from inside the box. And by not giving the ball away in centrefield.
But today I’m reading the Gary Jacob story in The Times that says that Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain might play in central midfield in future because Joel Campbell has started to show his classs on the right wing.
Gary notes that Oxlade has started just six of his 17 league appearances.
The lad has been telling Wenger for years that he wants to play in the middle. He’s two-footed and has great flair but he gives the ball away, so I never thought that would happen.
Oxlade is sloppy, a prolific ball-loser.
The Costa Rican has been preferred on the right wing. Campbell has really stepped up to the plate since Wenger told him it was “now or never”.
On Oxy, Wenger said, “He has the attributes to play in central midfield, he has that important quality — a little surge to get out of pressure. One of the things to get out of pressure is to have a little dribble to get away from the guy who closes you down and nobody more than Chamberlain has that. That is why he could be suited for the modern game to play in there because he has that capacity to get out of the pressure. He is really suited to be right-sided, box to box in a 4-3-3, he really fits in there.”
Later on today, about 4pm, I’ll post something about Anfield, about how tonight’s league game should go.