Yeah I agree he won't displace Salah at Liverpool and RB is the best for him.. but for England why not?
Trent Alexander Arnold
- Thread starter Red Indian Chief Torn Rubber
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Yeah I agree he won't displace Salah at Liverpool and RB is the best for him.. but for England why not?
Even just for England, what make you think he'd be good in CM given passing ability is just one fraction of what is required from a midfielder? And where would he actually play? Instead of Rice/Phillips, where his positional sense would be even more of a problem than it is at fullback? As an an AM ahead of actual AMs like Grealish and Mount? Or if not in central midfield, at RW of the likes of Sancho, Rashford, Sterling, Grealish, etc.?
It doesn't really make sense to me. He's an excellent fullback, albeit one whose skillset is skewed heavily towards what he does on the ball. You either play him in his natural position or (if that profile of fullback doesn't suit your team) play someone else.
He'll not play in CM that's for sure. You mention Sancho, Rashford, Sterling, Grealish as competitors but they play on the left, stick them on the right and they don't do as well. Are they really any better than Trent on the right?
He is an excellent fullback, for sure, but its clear Southgate rates defensive solidarity over attacking prowess at right back. I find it a shame that we can't use Trent's excellent forward abilities for England
Fergie would ditch AWB for TAA as quickly as he ditched Heinze for Evra
Fair enough. He's been our most creative player and the most creative in the league so far. Last season he was below par for large periods.
He was one of our best in the final third of the season.
This season he's only behind Salah for me.
Trent works for our system. Rather brilliantly.
What a lot of people don't see or consider is Hendo's role in his performance.
What a lot of people don't see or consider is Hendo's role in his performance.
Who wouldn’t?
Disagree with you there. I think most people totally see that it's the system that allows him to flourish so well (and probably a reason why he's a level below in the England set up), and that your midfield is more hard working than flamboyant which allows your FBs to be playmakers to a large extent.
Maybe. Though he did have a more history of a defensive sided RB that people seem to forget.
Neville. Wes Brown. Antonio Valencia. Arguably the most attacking was Rafael and he was hardly the best out of them.
insane player.
He's class and still only 23.
Even Fred would look insane against this lot.
Insanefully shit at defending. A liability when it matters.
I don't think he's a liability when it matters at all. He wasn't in our Champions League run in 2018/19. He wasn't during our title win (during which he made 38 appearances).
He has some issues with the defensive side of his game but people overstate how bad he is at defending.
my statement doesn't apply to this game only.
They also vastly overstate how important defending is for a modern fullback in a top team.
This game should be wiped off the records full stop!
No idea if he got an assist or anything today, but you can’t judge anyone off playing San Marino
I think it may have in part been overblown because of how highly he was rated, i.e. at times discussed as the best fullback in the league, and in contention for one of the best of the past years in the PL. It's a bit of a strange one with him, cos he's not a traditional FB, but a midfielder operating in that role, and it works super well at club level because of the set-up you have at Liverpool. I feel he looks more ordinary when playing with England, and I feel it would be the same in another team that wouldn't be built to maximise his strengths and hide his weaknesses. He's obviously a great player, but there is a big side to his game that isn't top notch, which isn't highlighted on a weekly basis, but he does get exposed at times and you can understand why people would highlight it. I also slightly disagree with @Skills that defending is overrated for modern day fullbacks, it's a bit of a blanket statement that doesn't take into consideration various teams' playing styles, their set-up, etc.
he really needs to become a better defender
Such a mediocre defender.
He will be like Glen Hoddle, great for his club, but England won’t be able to utilise his talent.
That could be said about many English players. Scholes, Lampard, Gerrard, Rooney etc all struggled there.
This time, it's a young team, and all of them can improve significantly. The onus in modern fotoball now is attack , and that wins you the games.
Obviously, but it's much easier to do at club level, where you can buy the players you need to maximise his skillset
People need to get over discussing his perceived defensive weaknesses though. Reminds me of Pirlo - people see FB and think defender. Too bad players aren't positions...
Reckon a couple years more until everyone accepts he's not a defender, his job is not defending, and he should not be judged on how he defends...
I dunno, SAF loved his RB to be defensively sound. He had Wes Brown behind Ronaldo and alternated Smalling and Jones there later on.
He might not have wanted AWB but I don’t think he goes near Trent
He contributes so much to that Liverpool team that you can overlook the defensive frailties. I agree that in the long run he’ll be more important to club than country.
No, not really. You're mixing up correlation with causation.
SAF might not have gone for TAA because he had Scholes, Giggs, Rooney and Cristiano. Not much need for another world class playmaker there
Pretty much everyone who is a good football player. But then again, it's not like bad players massively overperform for England. Can we just say, English players under perform for England in general? Okay one could make a point that Maguire looks like half the player for us as he does for England, but so does Pogba if you compare him to the players he is for France, where he for some reason can play a role he can't play for us.
SAF played Smalling and Jones there when he had Valencia, Nani, Hernandez and old man Rooney up top. He never sacrificed defensive solidity for attacking output.
edit he even selected the lesser attacking Silva twin when given a choice!
Beckham reincarnated at fullback? Fergie would've been all over him imo. He'd have had no time for a player like AWB, even Oshea and Brown were braver on the ball
That was because he had Evra on the other side, he liked attacking full backs but didn’t want two of them because leaving two at the back is suicide and we never played with a DM to drop into the back three, he didn’t have some weird thing about right backs.
To be fair this sounds like our tactics now.
One attacking full back. One defensive one.
No CDM, the only one that is is an exceptionally old player and needs to be replaced.
Yeah, it's a pretty normal thing. If we just cherry pick a handful of great teams: Abidal and Alves at Barcelona in their (1st) treble-winning team, Chivu and Maicon at Inter in their treble-winning team, Vogts and Breitner in Germany's '74 WC winning team, Howedes and Lahm in their WC winning team 30 years later...all of these players were primarily fullbacks, but the former group also played at centre back quite often, and the latter also played in midfield quite often. That's pretty much how they played at full back, one was additional centre back and one was an additional midfielder, because fullbacks are pretty much the only position on the pitch that need to occupy multiple roles in every game just by nature of covering the length of the pitch.
At the end of the day tactics in football is mostly just about outnumbering your opponents in the right places at the right times, so the general idea that you never want to leave your centre backs 2v2, and definitely not 3v2, is why you'll pretty much always have that third man. That's why back three's became so popular once attacking fullbacks came onto the scene: if you wanted both, you made them wing backs. That third man will either be in front of the centre backs or alongside them. Generally Sir Alex preferred having the centre mids playing with less restraint, so he was happy enough to have that 3rd centre back there as a covering fullback. He got lucky in a sense that Neville started as a centre back but as he got to his late 20s, he became pretty decent in the attacking phase too, so he was defence-first with a bit of quality. But when Neville retired and Evra showed he could carry the attacking threat single-handedly, he mostly preferred the likes of O'Shea, Brown, even Smelling and Jones to counter-balance him.
he was obviously more conservative at RB compared to LB? Maybe it was just a kink of his but RB was always the more defensively solid of the two. It’s not a coincidence if it spans almost 30 years!
I dont think he touches any expensive fullback anyway since that wasn’t how he operated. He would probably sign Matt Doherty or someone ridiculous over the two of them and turn him into a monster
We play Liverpool on Sat evening, I watched the goals from last seasons games (3-1 Anfield, 3-0 at Emirates) to remind myself where we fecked up.
The 6 goals Liverpool scored across both games all originated down their right side, I think Trent was involved in 4 of them, either providing crosses or just interceptions to start the attack.
I know both full backs are good, but I think a big part of hoping to stop Liverpool is stopping that right side with Trent & Salah.
The 6 goals Liverpool scored across both games all originated down their right side, I think Trent was involved in 4 of them, either providing crosses or just interceptions to start the attack.
I know both full backs are good, but I think a big part of hoping to stop Liverpool is stopping that right side with Trent & Salah.
It's a good comparison but Heinze was openly talking about wanting a move to Liverpool.
TAA gets away with defensive lapses because he is good going forward. AWB has the odd bad game but is usually sound. If we had a better setup he'd feature more in build up play.
Thats more because of Reece because he's a more complete full back.
SAF also barely ever (never?) played 3 workhorses in midfield.
Wasn’t far off near the end of his reign. Our midfield was atrocious for a long time and little came from it in an offensive sense. Even if you look at the stats in the Carrick / Fletcher / Scholes midfield they weren’t very creative. Controlling but not creative