Caporegime
- Joined
- 18 Oct 2002
- Posts
- 33,188
Do you apply the same thinking to Vidal? In fact, wasn't Khedira ready before the World Cup (he played in the Champions League final, iirc), whilst Vidal missed the end of the season and was only back for the World Cup where he was building up fitness/having injections in his knee. If Khedira is as bad a risk as you make out/can't necessary be relied upon, isn't Vidal similar?
A meniscus tear which has a recovery time with surgery of a couple of weeks, and a ligament tear with a recovery time of 4-6 months if lucky aren't particularly comparable. Guys who have 6 month style ligament injuries often redo them, sometimes over and over again, more so at 27 than 22.
A meniscus tear isn't hugely likely to lead to further problems. Type of injury and chance of re-injury or related injury makes a huge difference. Either way, Khedira looked okay but banking on his fitness is a tad worrying, particularly with Arsenal's seeming inability to treat injury.
In terms of Arsenal/Chelsea getting him, either team would/should get rid of other players if they bought him. Khedira is less defensive than people think and more offensive. he likes to get in the box and rush forward, and isn't particularly great defensively. He'd be a big upgrade on the likes of Ramires who Chelsea should try to cash in on before everyone realises he's ****, like Luiz.
I think like Kroos he's being over rated somewhat, he's good but over his time at Real he wasn't particularly key to many games. He doesn't often dominate defensively and while he has the odd really good game offensively it's rare.
I think considering how much attacking talent we have, a much more serious defensive player would do us a lot more good.
WE see this pretty often, a team like Real does well, people think the entire squad is great. Real/Bayern don't, they don't think Kroos/Khedira are worth top wages because they know they aren't that good. Other people, pundits, media think they must be crucial to the team. Other teams pick up these players, offer the "star player" wage and much much more often than not find out the player was correctly regarded as not worth that money by the previous team.
I wouldn't want to be giving Khedira remotely close to 200k a week. He's decent but not special. More importantly really is, Khedira has never started more than 24 league games before(well going back to 2006/07 when I guess he started playing first team). He has never started more than 20 league games for Real. He's had long seasons, 54 starts in a season before but that includes world club cup, euro's, multiple other games. Other players in similar years, your Xavi's/Lampards, would start in 65-70 games in similarly long seasons. Khedira hasn't ever shown the ability to play in 35+ league games and 6+ UCL games and various other cups. Arsenal need a 35+ league game defensively strong midfielder. Not a half season playing box to box type.
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