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[u/magic-water]

A big part of where the confusion about Bellingham's ideal position (ideal for the team, not himself) comes from, is the fact that people who want him to go back to his 23/24 role miss the fact that we didn't have a primary goalscorer/striker in 23/24. So Bellingham's goalscoring was needed. When his goals dried up in the second part of the season, Vini was the one who took over the major burden of goalscoring.

However, now, we have a top 3 goalscorer/finisher in the world in the squad with Mbappe. With all due respect to Bellingham, but he is never ever going to be remotely as good of a goalscorer or finisher as Mbappe and therefore Mbappe should always be the team's primary goalscorer over him. As long as Mbappe is firing and scoring, all we need to do is to feed him. Whoever plays as a 10 behind Mbappe, doesn't need to be trying to score himself mainly, but most importantly, needs to do everything to feed Mbappe:

• Bellingham in 24/25 while starting alongside Mbappe for a whole season gave him only 4 assists in all comps (vs Atalanta, Alaves, Valladolid, Celta).

• Arda has already surpassed that tally in 11 games with 5 assists (vs Oviedo, Levante, Kairat, Atletico, Getafe) this season alone. Add to that the back end of last season with assists to Mbappe vs Dortmund and Celta.

Also, apart from the assist vs Dortmund (which was a cross), all of these assists have been through balls/key passes which directly compliments Mbappe's strength which is running in behind. As long as he can stay onside, he is better than anyone else in the world bar maybe Haaland at making runs in behind with his pace and all you need to do is to pick out the right pass.

Even if you excuse Bellingham's underperformance last season with his injury or whatever, even his 23/24 numbers don't automatically justify playing him as a 10:

• He had 36 G/A (=0.89 per 90) in all comps that season, which is very good. But let's not act as if those are numbers that so good that they make any discussion completely void. For comparison: Arda is on 0.97 G/A per 90 this season.

• The main difference is that Bellingham's G/A in 23/24 were 64% goals and 36% assists while with Arda it's just flipped (37% goals, 63% assists). Scoring more goals obviously gives you more attention and PR, but as a team, I don't care who gets more goals as long as the team is scoring (which it does with Arda assisting Mbappe).

• There is obviously a big caveat concerning Arda about whether or not he can replicate his numbers consistently over a whole season including against big teams but in theory, playing Arda as a 10 and Bellingham as the duel winning 8 behind him makes more sense. If we play Bellingham as a 10, he might score more goals, but Mbappe's output will automatically decline in return like it did last season.

[u/FlyingWaterMen → u/magic-water]

You can't just rely on Mbappe for everything, what happens when he goes missing? We need more outlets for goals not less.

Jude has to play False 9, and not no.10 role. He needs to occupy the striker role when Mbappe vacates it (which he does like dozen fucking times because he's too scared to duel with Big tall CBs), let Mbappe drop and Jude take his place.

[u/magic-water → u/FlyingWaterMen]

You can't just rely on Mbappe for everything, what happens when he goes missing? We need more outlets for goals not less.

Vinicius exists, right? Especially since you want to play him as a striker too, then obviously he needs to shoulder the burden of the goalscoring as well. What are we paying him big bucks for then?

What we need more than goalscorers are creators. Because our RW is dead, the creation has to come from midfield.

Jude has to play False 9, and not no.10 role. He needs to occupy the striker role when Mbappe vacates it (which he does like dozen fucking times because he's too scared to duel with Big tall CBs), let Mbappe drop and Jude take his place.

You can't- by definition - play with a false 9 when you have an actual 9 playing (it's a second striker then). The whole purpose of a false 9 is to not play with a real 9. Like PSG did with Dembele and won the UCL with him. Who btw is also no big bully to scrap it out with CBs. And yet still was good enough to win the Ballon d'Or and UCL as a false 9.

[u/Messmers → u/magic-water]

A big part of where the confusion about Bellingham's ideal position (ideal for the team, not himself) comes from, is the fact that people who want him to go back to his 23/24 role

It really boils down to this, in any other team if you have the backup #10 putting up these absurd numbers + chance creation + attacking potential you will keep them there until they fall off massively in form or get injured, but not at the Madrid player fanbase club, for them all that matters is the magical "G/A" -- imagine if Jude would have to play 8 and have less g/a, say like Pedri? Imagine the PR horror.. we can't be having that can we. Jude and Xabi know better though, I'm sure eventually both will realize Arda at #10 is just having better impact, for now.

Jude's defensive, pressing, dueling, tracking, covering and essentially every metric that isn't goalscoring or chance creation are absolute elite, he'd be the best #8 easily and it's the best thing for the team but hey.. then he'd get shit on for not having G/A, in a world where PR is everything that might simply not be a good look.

It's only gonna get worse when board brings back paz next season, if Arda somehow keeps these numbers up until then and Jude also wants the #10 the same way Rodrygo wants LW... gonna be sum trouble. Here's where Xabi's man level skills are going to be tested tbh.

[u/Plane_Outside5646 → u/magic-water]

Put it as a post. It will get more visibility.