Pedro Obiang has staked a massive claim to become part of a regular midfield involving Mark Noble and Cheik Kouyate.
And that’s very bad news for contract-chasing Alex Song whose hopes of landing a permanent end of season deal are now rated at less than 50/50 by a number of Irons insiders.
The loanee returned to the team from injury in November and has since been involved in 12 games either as a starting player or sub.
He has failed to recapture the form seen when he first arrived at the club and key insiders now believe that a permanent deal is not a serious option.
One told ClaretandHugh: “It hasn’t happened for Alex whilst Pedro has impressed more and more over recent weeks, notably against Liverpool in the Cup replay when he was outstanding.
“There’s now a very strong feeling that he should get a real chance at an extended run and that of course is bad news for Alex. If we are brutally honest his chance may not be as good as even money.”
Should be first choice after Kouyate and when
Lanzini returns with Payet the midfield will be full,
Can’t wait for Sakho to return now as well to join Antonio and Valencia,
We need to start a good run again but another week and no defeat
40 points relegation done and dusted
If Alex can take a pay cut then we should sign him on a 2 year contract, we should have signed N’Golo Kante when we had the chance, we would probably be top of the league if we had because we wouldn’t have conceded many of the goals that were caused by poor defensive midfield play and he is always fit also like Payet he makes his teammates play better. As it is we don’t have anyone that plays like Song, although he has not been at his best he reads the game better than the other dm’s he is just prone to playing the occaisional poor pass and loss of posession at key times, much the same as Noble in that respect. I hope he gets himself fully fit because against the best teams when we are without the ball for longer periods he has been excellent.
This would be terrible for us.
One word – Tackles.
Song is our best and most effective tackler, in terms of work rate, second only to James Tomkins on percentage of tackles won. Every team needs these, and Alex is far superior to Pedro at this skill.
One of the reasons for our “slow starts”, is that without Alex, we tend not to get “in amongst” the opposition.
Why do followers of this club fall in love with old men that are finished and cost to much ?
We need young blood the have a reasonable wage demand don’t spend half the season injured,
Song,s day has been and gone,we have young lads coming through like Oxford who can tackle,
Stats don’t mean every thing as its probably some one like
Lawerson who has put them together
Nobody is falling in love with anyone, same as saying why do followers of our club not appreciate what Allardyce did, or what JOB does or Valencia etc, people have different opinions which there is nothing wrong with, its good that we have different opinions makes reading the posts more interesting, as I said and as backed up to some degree by the OPTA stats from MerryMichaelW Song reads the game well which means he can intercept, make tackles, hold onto the ball when it is required etc we don’t have any other players that are reading that trouble as well as Song, also Song plays more laterally sweeping in front of the back 4 which negates the work opposing flair players do, eg Silva, Coutinho, Oscar, Hazard etc this is why I think if he can regain his form and fitness he has a future for us under the right conditions.
Imho if we didn’t suffer so many injuries to the entire front line earlier in the season leading to all those draws, we would be top.
OPTA, Bubs. Actually.