Good morning, a very quick Saturday round-up for you.
Well, that’s it. Thanks as always.
Till tomorrow.
I’m not even joking. Despite the fact we have a game tomorrow, there is nothing happening. No news. No pre-Forest chatter yet. I could wait until something drops, I suppose, but then I’m not privy to when that might be, or if that’s even happening.
I can’t just sit here. Well, I suppose I could. I could repeatedly watch the TikTok of the dog coming out of a pond and swallowing/gargling a whole lot of water and the woman saying ‘Oh my goodness are you all right?’ and the dog makes a sound like Godzilla, but I have other things to do today.
I could talk a little about Albert Sambi Lokonga whose name I’ve seen mentioned in many discussions on the website that someone just spent $44bn on. That’s the kind of transfer fee that makes what Barcelona paid Liverpool for Philippe Coutinho look like great deal. Imagine you have that much money at your disposal and all you can think to do with it is buy fucking Twitter. Mad.
Anyway, Sambi. He wasn’t good against PSV, but then it’s fair to say that’s pretty much true of every player who started on Thursday night. The thing is though, most of them we know what they’re about and where they stand in our pecking order. Perhaps more than anyone, even Eddie Nketiah who still has plenty to prove after signing his new contract, games like this will go a long way to defining Sambi’s future at the club.
Before PSV scored their first goal, Mikel Arteta was already readying Thomas Partey to come on. I suspect if he hadn’t been, the way Veerman ran off Lokonga to score would have prompted that change immediately. I said this on the live blog, but at times Sambi reminded me of early Alex Song and to me, at least, that’s not a great comparison. I know he developed over time into a half-decent player, but when he started out he often took up positions which saw him stand too close to his teammates (often Cesc), basically looking to receive the ball in the same area of the pitch they were in, which is kind of useless.
Sambi is still pretty young, and he’s being asked to play the Partey role which took an experienced player like the Ghanaian some time to get to grips with after his arrival from Atletico. There’s talent there, he might just be finding this position tough to deal with. Even with that though, you get the sense that the manager is looking for more from him. When asked about his recent comments about not playing, Arteta said:
He has to prove that what he’s asking for he can produce on the pitch. We’re looking for every single player to raise their level and get the right competition in the team, and when you play and perform in a way that we win and play well enough to win games.
It would be unfair to expect him to be a one-man band, someone who can shine on a night when everyone else – including better, more experienced players – also failed to reach their level. Nevertheless, I think it was instructive that we tried to buy a midfielder at the end of the transfer window, and I fully expect that if we can find the right player in January, we’ll bring someone in. And where that leaves Sambi is a discussion in its own right.
When the Europa League games get bigger, more difficult and more important, he’s not going to play if everyone’s fit. Premier League cameos, some cup games perhaps, but beyond that it’s difficult to see any kind of regular football. And if he was considering his options at the end of his first season, when he actually played a reasonable amount, he’d surely do the same again.
Still, football can be weird and things you thought impossible come to pass with some frequency. Sometimes an opportunity comes along and player takes it. You never know. But it won’t happen without real focus from him, less talking, and more performing when he gets his chances, so let’s see.
Right, that’s definitely it. We’ll have a Forest preview podcast for you a bit later today over on Patreon, and should any news drop, we’ll cover it for you on Arseblog News.
