caughtoffside
·25 November 2024
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·25 November 2024
It’s great to see Nuno Tavares doing well at Lazio and hopefully the injury he picked up during international duty doesn’t keep him out for too long.
But there’s no way you can look at how he’s performing in Italy and the question whether things could have gone differently for him at Arsenal.
It’s not like he didn’t get opportunities. He got plenty. He was just very raw and didn’t really make the most of those opportunities.
You could see he had talent and that he had the attributes to be a decent player, but he was – and still is to be honest – a bit too chaotic a player for a Mikel Arteta team.
He does always tend to start brightly at new clubs as well and then tail off a bit. He did it at Arsenal and at Marseille, so it will be interesting to see whether he can maintain this form with Lazio.
Nuno Tavares in a press conference (Photo by Marco Rosi – SS Lazio/Getty Images)
Providing a few clauses are met, his loan will be made permanent in the summer and he will stay in Italy. Arsenal will get their money back on him and have a very big sell-on clause included in the deal with Lazio.
I think that is pretty good business to be fair. I certainly don’t look at what he’s doing and regret that he was allowed to leave and I can’t imagine there will be many people at Arsenal who feel any different.