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Marouane Fellaini


Atholy
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@Sh0n3x, I don't deny the quality he has, he's very agile for his size. And you're spot on about his awareness to leave to others what he cannot do by himself

He would be a good squad player for Chelsea, a rotation player... for the amount of money we paid for Meireles. When I hear things such as 25m, 30m, my only words are bitch please...

Our beloved Villas Boas can deserve credit for one thing, during the interesting pre-season (from a tactical point of view), he asked Mikel to be available higher on the pitch. Against Kitchee he was a target on every set pieces.

I'm not doing any comparison with Fellaini there but the Mikel detractors should remind that Mikel as the anchor is one of the Mikels available in Mikel lol

Due to his formation as an attacking midfielder, that's clear that he could hold another roles. Being a target could be one, his ball retention is excellent and he wins aerial challenges as well. His use of the ball is always wise (crap, I though he only passed backwards) and I think it could be the same in the last tier of the pitch

You went in the Mikel comparison so I will respond

Yes, Mikel is a big lad and could be used as anchor man but when I watch him play he just doesn't impose himself physically like Fellaini, Tiote or Yaya Toure do for example. Instead, he looks to me like he is guarding some space around and waiting for someone else to go and do the dirty work. I don't rate his jumping that much also, with his strength and height I would expect more. It's not a big surprise that he still hasn't scored for us minus 2 goals in FA Cup quite some time ago. I am not impressed with his forward thinking and play also, while as you've seen Fellaini just tortured Manchester United playing basically as a striker :fainthv9:

Marouane is obviously not worth 25,30 mills and I never mentioned any massive money figures. In fact, here, a part of one of my posts here

If we do sign Fellaini for something reasonable - 12m max then it would be a good transfer in my eyes...

Besides, I'm pretty sure that if he came here, somebody would leave so we would get a part of the money back.

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We were sort of linked him in July, but the answer to your question would be the second one.

He is not better player than Mikel definitely, I'm not sure about Oriol and his condition at the moment but I think when he is at his best he is also better than Fellaini.

Yes, he is.

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We're OK :)

Mikel's defensive abilies are still underrated in my eyes. Fans love a player who'll make dirty tackles etc... but from a technical point of view, you don't rate a defending player by the amount of times he goes on ground for the simple reason that he becomes then a man down. A good defender (everywhere on the pitch) defends standing because the more he's intelligent, the more he reads the play. The less he is (footballistically), the more he waits for the player to challenge him body vs body

One of my griefs on Fellaini actually. If offensively he reads the trajectories to manage to be where the ball falls (like Drogba, Dempsey etc...) ; defensively he over relies on man on man challenges. He's not explosive, rather slow ; that explains it. He's a good defender on the man, not a good defender overally

36 tackles and 83% success. Yes that's just figures but it illustrates the "Mikel doesn' go on ground very often but when he does it's successful"

http://www.eplindex....-obi-mikel.html

I was reading a great ITW of Xabi Alonso the other day, he said he didn't consider tackling as an attribute but rather as the last opportunity when you cannot manage to regain the ball standing.

Well now, it's down to our personal taste on what kind of defensive midfielder we prefer, but if you want to put stats in, Fellaini won the most tackles after Cabaye in the previous season and had most successful passes in the Everton squad. He also consistently covers more ground then his teammates and he is just an ideal player to torture someone in the opposition team like Kagawa and Silva and like Yaya Toure did to Mata when we played City.

On the other hand, I've seen quite a bit of situations in the last couple of seasons where Mikel should have been running like crazy to tackle and stop a dangerous opposition attack but instead he chose to cover.

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We're OK :)

Mikel's defensive abilies are still underrated in my eyes. Fans love a player who'll make dirty tackles etc... but from a technical point of view, you don't rate a defending player by the amount of times he goes on ground for the simple reason that he becomes then a man down. A good defender (everywhere on the pitch) defends standing because the more he's intelligent, the more he reads the play. The less he is (footballistically), the more he waits for the player to challenge him body vs body

One of my griefs on Fellaini actually. If offensively he reads the trajectories to manage to be where the ball falls (like Drogba, Dempsey etc...) ; defensively he over relies on man on man challenges. He's not explosive, rather slow ; that explains it. He's a good defender on the man, not a good defender overally

36 tackles and 83% success. Yes that's just figures but it illustrates the "Mikel doesn' go on ground very often but when he does it's successful"

http://www.eplindex.com/16829/chelsea-forget-john-obi-mikel.html

I was reading a great ITW of Xabi Alonso the other day, he said he didn't consider tackling as an attribute but rather as the last opportunity when you cannot manage to regain the ball standing.

When you say goes to ground, you mean sliding tackles right? But tackle succes rates are about both standing tackles and sliding tackles. Mikel is a awful sliding tackler tbh. His timing is just all wrong. But he hardly does sliding tackles so his tackle succes rate almost solely include standing tackles.

Mikel does get too much stick most of time imo but he does need to improve his defensive play. When watching Carrick last season at Utd or Lucas at Liverpool in '10/11 for example, you can't help but wish you had a DM like that in your team.

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I think Mikel is decent defensively, of course his mobility and speed could be better, but he makes good interceptions and he shields the ball well. His problem is that Lampard bombs forward and leaves him isolated. We need our two midfielders to stay at the base and protect. Lampard doesn't seem to understand that and it WILL cost us against good teams.

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  • 3 weeks later...

He's a mediocre footballer, just a tough defender (not all round for all that) and mighty target man. He's often horrible with his feet, cannot make 15+ yards passes etc... For £25m it would be a complete madness.

We need a bully, a thug in midfield. So what if he has no technique? He has more positional discipline than Lampard or Ramires.

Everton bought him for 16m and they won't sell him below 25.

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