- Jan 17, 2008
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I particularly like this quote from the article:Big time stats guy and Arsenil fan is very unimpressed
If you're splashing the cash, you really want scouting and data to both be excited about a player. That's not output I want to spunk £50M and big wages on. Or big wages and a 5-year contract.
He was amazing against Barcelona! Great, then why wasn't he amazing against all the other teams in La Liga last season?
Atletico are weird tactically, and his stats are not reflective of how he will play elsewhere. Again, fine... but we can ONLY judge his output from Atletico because that's the only place he's played since 2015. This increases the risk that the transfer goes wrong.
He's an elite defensive midifelder! His output looks nothing like an elite defensive midfielder.
He's NOT a defensive midfielder, he's a box-to-box midfielder who is great on the ball. Okay, but he also doesn't score goals or create goals for his teammates, so what are you actually paying for?
Transfer shopping is all about correctly evaluating and mitigating risk. If you are going to spend big, there needs to be very little risk something doesn't work out, and hopefully some upside involved as well.
Season Preview 2020/21 Arsenal
Will Arsenal finish in the top 4, or scrape a position in the top 6?statsbomb.com
hopefully a flop on big wages they can't move on.
My perspective on Arsenal and transfers has been the same for years now. I think they should not be building to try and finish 4th and make the Champions League.
I think they should be building a squad to try and finish first, even if that's one or two years down the line. And the way you do that is not via signing 27 and 28yos... you do it via taking some risk on 21-24 year olds, hoping your analysis is good, and letting them mature into elite players while improving the style of play.
That last line sums up exactly what we've been doing over the past couple of seasons. While we hoped players like Lo Celso and Ndombele
would hit the ground running, ultimately we were buying them for the long term due to their huge potential. They are still only 24 and 23 and are on long contracts so if they develop into elite players (which I think they will) that's 2 incredibly important positions sorted for the next 5 years. Same goes for the likes of Hojbjerg and especially Reguilon, who looks a huge talent. If we get Rodon he would also fit into this type of signing.
You want to sprinkle your squad with older big name talents every now and then, as we're doing with Bale, but blowing a huge chunk of your wage budget for long deals on older players like Ozil, Aubameyang and, to a lesser extent, Partey, probably isn't the wisest move in the long term.