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MISPLACED TRANSFER RAGE AND THE ART OF FINDING VALUE

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Well GOOD morning to you all. January is always a fun month because we tend to forget the rules of the transfer window.

  • Most deals are done at the backend of January
  • Sometimes it’s better not to spend money
  • If a player is based in Italy and Juventus has cash, that’s where he’s going
  • The internet liking a player does not factor in scouting department decisions

Vlahovic is off to Juve. A club that lost $236m dollars last year, has $400m in debt, jumped in and took the striker off the market. Same deal as Locatelli. I’ve seen people digging out the club for a fail here and I don’t really get it. The player had dodgy agents and the club that broke them is the one being investigated for 42 suspicious deals. Hard to compete with that level of dirt.

Talking of dirt, did you see that Vitor Perriera, the manager Kia floated our way, was in the running at Everton until the fans protested? Honestly, it’s mad that Usmanov and Moshiri were so keen to own Arsenal but have zero clue on how to run a club. Why would you hand over to super agents? (because you’re not really interested)

Back to Vlahovic and fans criticizing Arsenal for having a go.

  1. Arsenal should always put their hat in the ring for elite players
  2. Elite players will always have options
  3. Sometimes they pick the alternate option

Something else people need to be aware of with transfer business. Only in the days of Wenger was there one target or bust. In real football, there will be multiple options for the same position. Clubs will often be talking to lots of agents and clubs at the same time because you NEVER know what is going to happen. Arsenal didn’t land all their primary targets in the summer, they wanted Tammy Abrahams, the player wanted Arsenal, but we couldn’t shift any of our forwards, Chelsea preferred to sell abroad, so he went to Roma. The nature of transfer business is unpredictable.

There’s also some embarrassing carry-on in the base with people losing their shit that we haven’t signed Youtube sensation Bruno Guimarães. The Lyon midfielder looks to have all the ingredients we need in a midfielder, he’s mobile, he progresses the ball like a demon, and he gets stuck in. Newcastle is the frontrunner right now, though Lyon are denying this as they try to create a market for the player. The price is £30m, the wages are £60k p/w… but it looks like we’re passing.

Why?

Well, not every player the internet likes is a target.

Arsenal are very lucky that our owners are taking big risks on transfer targets. We’ve overspent considering our situation. We borrowed last summer, if we sign a big name striker this January, that is coming out this summers pot. I don’t think we have the money to be dropping £100m in a January transfer window.

Outside that, take a look at what is going on at the Rams for clues as to how we’ll do our business. They are signing BIG names. But the way it works in NFL is if you take on a big name, you lose capital elsewhere. So what have they done? Got smart with data and scouting.

The base premise is they have been sharper than other clubs with lower draft picks.

“Our model is predicated on players who were drafted lower down in the draft being starters and contributors, probably at a higher level than other teams,” says Rams chief operating officer Kevin Demoff. “You need them to play—and you need them to be cheap for a few years.”

They found a guy called Cooper Kupp. Now the NFLs best receiver. Here’s what they did.

There were several things about Kupp that caught the Rams’ attention before they drafted him. Even though he played at a Football Championship Subdivision college, one level beneath the likes of Alabama and Georgia, he was spectacularly productive. He set records for career receiving yards, touchdowns and receptions.

He also didn’t slow down when Eastern Washington played up. He had 246 yards in a game against Oregon. He posted 145 yards and three touchdowns against Washington, when the Huskies featured future star cornerback Marcus Peters—whom the Rams would later trade for to become Kupp’s NFL teammate for two seasons.

The strangest thing they liked was that he looked slow. The Rams’ brass was thrilled when he ran his 40-yard dash in 4.62 seconds, a snail’s pace for a wide receiver. That’s because they didn’t care about how fast he ran one day in shorts. They knew he was actually fast. They saw it themselves when he constantly outran defenders.

They also had something better than their eyeballs: better data than a 40-yard dash time. The Rams had seen Kupp’s GPS-tracking data—which can produce numbers such as how fast someone runs on every play—from that year’s Senior Bowl. Those figures were proof he was faster than the most popular metric led everyone to believe.

Identifying talent where no one else is looking is where the value comes. KSE is the 2nd biggest sports franchise in the world, it seems like they might be implementing similar strategies. Josh K said this in the summer.

“We’ve only really owned the club since 2018. We have a young manager, we have a young squad and we’re charting our path to the future.

“In the United States we have a certain model [used at other organisations run by Kroenke Sports & Entertainment] and we’re implementing that here, and we have over the last three years, which is, young players, talented players with the right mentality, let them grow together while continuing to sprinkle in talent throughout the squad.”

We have resources and as long as we’re using those resources smart, appropriately and intelligently, one plus one eventually will add up to three.”

Arsenal doesn’t need the internet to tell it where to spend money, we have scouts that scour the world all day. We need them to find value. My guess is the club are looking for the same thing they were looking for in the summer. 21-24, 2-3 seasons of experience, hyper-specific profile, 18 months left on their deal, or a player that has fallen out of favour at a big club, but still has big talent to unlock.

Youtube favorites haven’t exactly been a huge success over the past couple of years. Remember everyone champing up Ndombele? Shit for Poch, shit for Mourinho, being pushed out by Conte. I remember people calling him a top 3 midfielder in world football. How about last summer when people were setting themselves on fire for Emerson Royal at £30m? What did Arsenal do? They found a right back that could play centre back, who was valued at £15m, came with immense character, who is now one of our most important players. Emerson Royal? Barca are leaking to the media that they couldn’t believe the bid and Conte is replacing him with Traore already.

Bruno might be the greatest midfielder of all time, but the only club that is close to dealing for him is Newcastle who are in a relegation battle. They aren’t even flexing their muscles to land him. Arsenal might want a midfielder that’s more robust and ready. We might fancy Tielemans (18months), Renato Sanches (18 months), or Douglas Luiz (18 months). Who knows. But at this point, I think I’d prefer to trust our analysts over a the internet that told us Odegaard was boring, Ramsdale an average keeper, and Tomiyasu a waste of money because someone from Sky said no one in the league wanted him.

Ok, that’s me done. See you in the comments. x

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