Obertan = Rag

He's far from perfect but I think people are jerking their knees a bit here.

I think Ober was unlucky today and the fact his team-mates didn't help him out as much as they usually do made it worse. You ask why he didn't use his pace, but every time he shot up the wing there was no one there to back him up. Remember when about 4 Chelsea players swarmed him on the sidelines and literally no one could be arsed to help him out? Ba was basically walking towards the goal when this was going on.

For all we know Pardew has told him not to nick off leaving Simmo to defend by himself, especially against the likes of Chelsea' wingers.

He's not amazing but he's not terrible either, who else could we have put on that wing like? Don't say Sammy.

 

IMO Obertan has plenty of ability but he needs to sort himself out inside that enormous head of his. All his problems are to do with his mentality. He has unbeleivable pace and plenty of skill, but seems extremely reluctant to run at anybody. Even when he got ahead of Cole - a player he is twice as fast as - he was cutting back on himself. Hell even people like Lovenkrands and Simpson were running at people on occassion and getting some joy and Obertan is far more capable in that department than those two. I also think he was hiding a bit today and didn't seem to want the ball.

Thankfully he's still young and things like this can be trained out of him. His performance against Stoke for example is a good indicator of what he CAN do.

 

Today every time Ober would make a run into opposition he'd recieve absolutely no support whatsoever. Midfielders weren't giving him option and so he was forced to try and skin world-class defenders one by one. He's got the talent and simply amazing technical ability - he's young and raw and will be good for us.

 

He's never had a bad game for us. If he wasn't fast then I doubt people would have such high expectations of him. Just because he has natural pace and great skill doesn't mean he has to neglect his duties as a right midfielder and try and go past left backs when ever he gets a chance... I'm sure you would see our poor full backs (in my opinion) even more exposed than they aren now.

 

Agree with this...Simpson doesn't attack with any speed , offer any great option for our RM or draw attention fro, opposition on the right flank. I we had a RB creating more space for orbetan

 

I don't want to piss in anyone's beer, but isn't that Griffiths person a smoggie?