Guest Post: The benefits of Fellaini

According to the news, Arsenal have launched a £22m bidand activated Marouane Fellani’s release clause.

This is great news if it is true because Fellani is exactly the type of player we’ve been screaming out for. He is a big, powerful midfielder with presence and can play as a DM, in the centre
or as an attacking midfielder.

He isn’t the most technically gifted, but a player with his power and physique would add some much needed steel to our midfield of technical midget wizards. He is great in the air too which would be a boost to Arsenal at set pieces, which is an area that we have really struggled to make the most of our opportunities so Fellaini could be the answer we are looking for.

Fellaini is thought to be one of Wenger’s favoured targets, with a perfect mix of technique and power believed to be the missing ingredient from Arsenal’s armory, a box to box player that can dominate a midfield from DM.

What I would like to see is Santi floating the ball into the near post for a Mertesacker flick on to Giroud or Fellaini and Mertesacker attacking the back post. We’d surely improve our set piece conversion.

With Diaby unfortunately crocked for some while, Arsene may want to add additional height and power to his midfield options. Fellaini is excellent at winning the ball back, not only great at attacking crosses but equally strong at defending them. Should Giroud find himself as a backup then his role will need to be picked up by the Belgian.

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What I like about him is that he is a fighter, a player that does not want to lose. I am sure many players don’t want to lose and I hate going all cliche on you but he looks like he doesn’t want to lose games similar to Wilshere. I love that in a player and have been hoping Arsene looks for players with that attitude this summer. He’s obviously really good in the air and has great strength but his touch and skill are very underrated. Look at his goal against us at Goodison this year.

Fellaini’s £22m-£24m buy out clause can be paid by many clubs, luckily we are now in that list so if we wanted to slap down that amount on Everton’s desk then there is no reason why we cannot should Arsene want the player. The issue then becomes who else manages to trigger the buy out clause because there are a number of clubs who can offer higher wages than we can. I don’t see Arsenal offering Fellaini £200k pw.

Now that we finally have enough financial muscle to compete in the
transfer market (according to Gazidis), hopefully this is the summer where it all changes for the Arsenal.