Mandzukic just did us a favour

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No thanks. Average striker. Belongs at Stoke City.

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Nah, I was just wumming, slow day on our board

comment by Viviano's Debut (U19138)
posted 1 hour, 7 minutes ago
comment by itsonlyagame - Jose are you watching, are you watching Jose? (U6426)

posted 1 hour ago

Viviano, how do you understand the term 'pivot'? This in relation to your statement that Mandzukic better as a pivot than Benzema.

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A lot of Giroud's best work was linking up runners through the middle (Ramsey mostly) and our fullbacks when we needed with. Considering just how much time we spend trying to break down buses every season, I'd go for a higher quality link up man than a pacy attacker. I'm assuming that's why wenger turned down the opportunity to sign Higuain, who isn't too different from Karim.
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That's what I thought, but in that case you're way off the mark with your assessment of Benzema. He's an extremely unconventional no.9, totally different to Higuaín. In fact, I don't think it would be too wrong to term him a 'no.9 playmaker', because even though he is fast and is a pretty decent finisher, his game has much less to do with pace and finishing than with involving those around him. He's got great technique and vision for picking out a pass among packed defences, and also for keeping the ball moving (as opposed to being the last man) in counter attacking situations. If you watch a lot of the goals Madrid score on the counter, you'll see that many of them are actually made possible thanks to how quickly Benzema shifts it out wide rather than hold up the play.

As a Madrid fan, that's what worries me about us selling him. Would be fantastic if we could find an upgrade on what he offers, but we're going to make life more difficult for ourselves if all we seek is a striker who can score a few goals more than he does. Goals are definitely not something we're in short supply of.

^^^
Yes, definitely a Benzema fanboy