On Monday, we covered the reports from the local media about the performance Nuno Tavares, on loan at Marseille from Arsenal, put in against Paris Saint-Germain.
It wasn’t great, to put it bluntly, and a lot of that had to do with the fact Igor Tudor decided to field him on the right-hand side of the defence.
He then put the Arsenal loanee back on the left for the second half, but that didn’t help much either, and it was an all-around terrible performance from the wing-back and Marseille as a whole.
L’Equipe have an article on the Portuguese this Tuesday, explaining what Gunners fans will already know, and that’s how inconsistent he is.
Tavares is clearly a capable player, as he has found the back of the net six times for Marseille this season, and what he lacks in defending, he can make up for when he goes forward.
Tudor did his best to tell him what to do from the touchline, and he has had to tell him off more often than not, first for a silly red card against Montpellier and then for a terrible first half against Toulouse.
He then scored in the latter, before losing his man later on in the game as Marseille conceded, which the newspaper say is a ‘perfect summary of the strengths and weaknesses of the player’, who has a ‘reputation of inconsistency and of being a youngster very (too?) sure of himself’.
Mikel Arteta and his staff were ‘often annoyed with his behaviour’, and that’s why they agreed to let him go on loan to Marseille.
However, Arsenal did so without an option to buy, as they didn’t want to include one, perhaps knowing a good season abroad could change him.
It has, and it hasn’t, really, and that’s something the Gunners will have to deal with in the summer.
