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Hatem Ben Arfa (still a free agent)


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I'll judge HBA on his next move. To me he's had mitigation in the past for the shite, well not exactly mitigation but he was a bolshy young prick and fell out with some people. With us it appeared he'd honestly grown up but he came up against a truly wretched manager and human being up he's taken a temporary out and landed with another average manager putting him to blame for shit when in reality Bruce's own team has been garbage for months.

 

He'll be on a free and should be choosing the right club and manager for himself at this stage, if he chooses badly or chooses well and doesn't perform then that's that.

 

I think/hope he'll go to Roma and be class.

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I absolutely love HBA and would play him every week no matter what. But he needs to make his next move a success or his career will go down as a disappointment of epic proportions. Blaming managers has some truth in it but wears a bit thin after four or five goes.

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I absolutely love HBA and would play him every week no matter what. But he needs to make his next move a success or his career will go down as a disappointment of epic proportions. Blaming managers has some truth in it but wears a bit thin after four or five goes.

 

i'm sure he himself would (and perhaps actually already has) acknowledged he was a bit of a twat in his younger years but when he appeared to have matured personality-wise he's come up against pardew and now a steve bruce stuck in a performance rut of grim death :lol:

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I don't really get how the fact that HBA hasn't done that well at Hull is somehow relevant to his time here or whether it was the right decision to get rid of him.  We know how good he was and the direct effect he had in terms of goals and assists, how useful he would be to have in the squad now and how exaggerated his lack of work rate actually was.

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I don't really get how the fact that HBA hasn't done that well at Hull is somehow relevant to his time here or whether it was the right decision to get rid of him.  We know how good he was and the direct effect he had in terms of goals and assists, how useful he would be to have in the squad now and how exaggerated his lack of work rate actually was.

 

See also Robert, Laurent.

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Robert was 30 tbf and was naturally going to start declining whether he stayed he or not. Ben Arfa should be in his prime now. Needs a good move in the summer.

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Robert was 30 tbf and was naturally going to start declining whether he stayed he or not. Ben Arfa should be in his prime now. Needs a good move in the summer.

 

The main thing is he needs a manager who trusts him

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Sound familiar?....

 

Pretty ****e, he's pretty much solely been used in a 5-4-1 playing just in front of the midfield 3 with absolutely no support, no one to work with and left to do everything on his own. Showed brief glimpses of what he's capable of but as he's often the only player even halfway up the pitch, he's shut out by an entire defence before he gets very far.

 

Looked absolutely explosive, if extremely rusty, playing centrally in a 4-5-1 on his debut against WBA in the cup but ever since he's been a victim to an ultra defensive system which really just hasn't let him play at all.

 

You can see he has quality (at RARE times) it's just a shame our manager refuses to play too his strengths. He's being played in behind the main striker in a supporting role, with NO ONE else around him!! Our managers tactics are so negative its ridiculous.

 

Ben Arfa is a class player, but you need to set up your team around him.

 

It doesn't look like we are going to do that.

 

So if it's just an everyday attacking midfielder we want there are much better options.

 

he has had brief moments of quality - but being generous to him he has been playing with a team with their heads caught in the headlights . A type of football we wasnt playing when he was getting up to match sharpness :/

 

defo can't put all the blame on him

 

As the OP suggests, he's a lot better cutting in off the right and his best game was probably against Tottenham where he played on the right of a 4-2-3-1 and we attacked them for 45 minutes. He should have out us 2 up but missed a sitter mind.

 

However, Bruce does have a thing about playing wingers as strikers and that combined with our recent tactic of 'everyone back at all times' thwarts not just Ben Arfa but all of our attacking players.

 

 

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HBA loves being a big fish in a small pond. It's a contributing factor as to why he joined us. (And Hull.)

 

He doesn't care that much about his career, he nearly left it all behind to join some Muslim nutheads.

 

Fell out with ISIS as well, then? What a guy.

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