Think everyone was amazed when Perez went for that, Rodgers definitely regrets it, he can't even get in the team. How many international caps does he have by the way?
Quality-wise then clearly Ben Arfa was the better player. I've said before that on his day he could have played for anyone but that does need to be tempered by the acceptance that the reason why he came to us was because most other teams wouldn't touch him with a barge pole and then after his time with us we were keen to get him out of the door and there didn't seem to be many takers. Pretty depressing to consider that one of our best players of the last decade we couldn't even give away, and he was in his prime.
Oh I forgot about Wijnaldum. Cabaye and Wij combined talent and work-rate; both made a nice profit for the club and went on to play at a higher level. Shame we didn't have Wij for longer really.
Define best would be the requirement. Most talented - HBA by a country mile Top performing - I'd probably go Demba Ba, he barely had any bad games. Even when we were **** he was good.
Jonas Guiterriez. Hard working, dedicated and stuck by us through all the **** that the club and he himself went through. Not just that, he was genuinely exciting to watch and always made things happen. Keiron Dyer was talented, but whenever he took players on he was always going to get injured, Guiterriez on the other hand plowed through opposition players like a bulldozer.
By far the best player... People could be excused for picking cabaye because he was more consistent, but the best footballer was Ben arfa by a country mile.. He was instrumental in the club finishing 5th under pardew and then everything went tits up because of our owner and pardew.
He wasn't really though, was he? His first game that season wasn't until December, and he didn't become a regular in the team until March. Cabaye, Ba and Cisse were the players who drove that 5th place (along with a much improved defence), HBA just added to the team once the season was well underway.
He was outstanding though and we really took off then. I don't feel there's an argument tbh he's the best footballer we've had at the club in that period. I the question was who served the club best I still wouldn't pick cabaye because he refused to play and forced a move, so I'd pick jonas.
We had that run of winning 6 out of 6 towards the end where he was key, but he also played in some games when we were poor just before then (ie the 5-2 loss at Fulham). What really got the 5th place was the run of no defeats in the first 11 league games when we were up to 3rd, and HBA wasn't in the team then. I thought he was better in the following season tbh, most of the team were total crap that season, but he was actually one of the players who had fight in him then and was probably one of the reasons we stayed up. I could never totally love HBA cos he was so unpredictable, sometimes he'd rip teams apart and be unplayable, other times he just seemed lazy and uninterested and it was like playing with 10 men. He was also completely ball greedy and had a massive ego - whenever he got the ball he wanted to take on the whole of the other team and turn everyone inside out, and most of the time this ended up with him losing the ball and causing us problems and costing us goals. That's why I went for Guiterriez, every time he played he looked like he gave everything, combined with his skill, strength and talent.
Same for most our players... 1 good game every 5 or 6 but with him the poles were so far apart it stood out more. We've had years of crap players
It's been years of nothing spectacular, but I'll never forget the first half season of Cisse. But talent wise the best was HBA, just a shame he couldn't be bothered most of the time.
