Arsenal have made a pretty fine start to the 2019-20 season and 20-year-old Matteo Guendouzi has been one of the key players for Unai Emery so far in the campaign.
Before the start of the season, everyone expected Lucas Torreira to play in central midfield alongside Granit Xhaka but Emery has clearly shown faith on the young Frenchman who in turn has been rock solid in that area of the pitch.
Up until Friday, Matteo Guendouzi has featured in every Premier League game for the Gunners and the 20-year-old has also clocked up two assists.
But while most of the fans and pundits have been pretty content with the midfielder’s performances, pundits Stweart Robson and Paul Mariner have raised one major concern regarding the game of Matteo Guendouzi.
While talking to ESPN, Robson explained that the Frenchman’s indiscipline has been a bit of a concern for him and this could lead to a major quandary for Arsenal during the course of the season.
“[Arsenal’s discipline is] an issue,” Robson said on ESPN FC[as reported].
“If you’re aggressive and you tackle, I quite like players that want to get stuck in and fight for the cause, but what you can’t be is ill-disciplined, you can’t keep getting yellow cards.
“Guendouzi is probably the greatest player at Arsenal at the moment of being ill-disciplined.
“He wants to fight with the opposition, he wants to fight with the referee, he makes poor challenges.
“I think he’s going to be an outstanding player but he’s getting it wrong, he’s not being aggressive in the right manner, he’s actually giving away too many yellow cards, he’s going to get himself sent off more often than not and it tells everybody that’s watching that this club at the moment are ill-disciplined.”
And Paul Mariner also backed his fellow pundit’s statements.
“Let’s go back to what Robbo said there about Guendouzi getting yellow cards,” Mariner said.
“We’ve coached for a long, long time – we used to drum into our players ‘when you’re in the attack when you have possession of the ball, are you in a good position if it breaks down?’.
“Now, that’s coaching – there’s no coaching going on [at Arsenal] because if Guendouzi and Granit Xhaka are in such poor positions when they’re in possession for when that beak comes, we saw the position that Guendouzi had against Wilfried Zaha.
“I mean that was a red card, he’s horse-collared him because he’s in the wrong position.
“He’s not thinking ‘What if?’ and that’s all about coaching.”
