Arsenal

Arsenal: Charles Watts on Mikel Arteta’s use of Willian at City

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Image for Arsenal: Charles Watts on Mikel Arteta’s use of Willian at City

Charles Watts, the Arsenal correspondent for Goal, has been discussing the club’s narrow defeat at Manchester City and in particular, the role and performance of Willian during a recent video on his YouTube channel.

Raheem Sterling scored the only goal of the game and as such, Pep Guardiola’s side won the game, condemning Arsenal and Mikel Arteta to their second Premier League defeat of the season.

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In what month did Mikel Arteta take over as the Arsenal boss?

Arsenal signed Willian during the summer on a free transfer from their London rivals Chelsea and since his arrival at the Emirates Stadium, he has started in all of the club’s league fixtures (as per Transfermarkt).

He was once again given the nod at the Etihad Stadium on Saturday evening but the 32-year-old was deployed in a somewhat unfamiliar centre-forward role.

The journalist doesn’t feel it worked out quite as Arteta had planned and here is what he had to say on the subject:

“It just didn’t really work. Willian hasn’t played well since the first game of the season, I don’t think – since that game at Fulham when he was very, very good.

“The game just passed him by a little bit, [it] just wasn’t really the game to experiment.

“I’d much rather have seen [Alexandre] Lacazette there or even [Pierre-Emerick] Aubameyang as the central striker.”

Would you like to see Willian given another opportunity as a centre-forward?

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TIF Thoughts on Charles Watts’ Willian comments…

It’s clear from the Arsenal correspondent’s comments that he hasn’t been impressed with the Brazilian since the opening weekend of the season and the fact that, in terms of his performance ratings, he hasn’t got anywhere close to the 8.35/10 (as per WhoScored) he scored at Fulham, backs that up.

Post-match, Arteta suggested he could use Willian in that role again in the future, so, that is one to keep an eye on. However, if he is to do so, we can assume the Arsenal faithful will want to see a more positive result from that particular tactical decision.

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