Category Archives: Arsenal

Villa man to be “next Trossard” for The Arsenal

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When we signed Leandro Trossard I was very underwhelmed.

To go from chasing one of the most exciting raw talents in Europe to ending up with a journeyman at one third of the cost was a bit deflating. And that is why I am a blogger (that makes no money from his blogs), rather than work for Arsenal.

Anyone that says that they were excited by the arrival of Trossard last January would be a liar. I think almost everyone shared my view on the transfer.

One goal in 20 league games in the 2nd half of last season might indicate that he was a poor signing to those with such linear thinking when it comes to statistics. To present that as a representation of what he contributed would ignore his 10 assists.

Only 4 players assisted more during the entire of last season than Trossard did in an Arsenal shirt (Kevin de Bruyne, Mo Salah, Bukayo Saka and Michael Olise).

This season he has 6 goals in 14 games across all competitions, as well as a further 2 assists. The Belgium and Gabriel Martinelli are providing a perfect axis for us that allows the left hand side to maintain 100% intensity for 90 minutes.

Trossard has been a terrific signing.

In the same way I was underwhelmed by Trossard’s signing, there is a similar feeling amongst Arsenal fans about our links to Douglas Luiz – I have learned my lesson and think he is a ideal for Arsenal.

With Thomas Partey’s Arsenal journey coming to an end, Arsenal probably need to go into the market in January to recruit someone who can provide cover and competition to Declan Rice.

You would also hope that the replacement can also become an option further forward, giving us an alternative to the more attacking Kai Havertz / Trossard option. Someone a bit more defensive minded who can replicate the solidity that Granit Xhaka gave us.

I recently blogged how Olexsandr Zinchenko could be this player once Jurrien Timber returns from injury – having the options of Timber, Tomiyasu and White at full back would allow Zinchenko to be an option in the midfield. But with Jorginho and Mohamed Elneny also heading for the exit door in the next 6-months, and Timber still 2 or 3 months away from returning, signing someone in January could be key to our title hopes.

Everytime I look into who can do this role, I keep coming to one man – Aston Villa’s Douglas Luiz.

Like Trossard, Luiz is certainly not a big name and would be joining from a mid-table Premier League team.

The Arteta / Edu era has seen us look to players with Premier League experience more often than not when it comes to new signings – Ben White, Martin Odegaard, Aaron Ramsdale, Gabriel Jesus, Zinchenko, Trossard, Jorginho, Declan Rice and Kai Havertz.

Nearly 75% of what we have spent since 2021 has gone on players with Premier League experience.

Going for Premier League players means they are less risk. They do not need to adapt to a new club, in a new league, in a new country. They are more likely to hit the ground running. Declan Rice as exhibit A.

Luiz has been in the Premier League since 2019. In that time he has clocked up over 170 games for Villa in England.

Many of those appearances have come as Villa’s deepest midfielder. A single pivot whilst the likes of John McGinn, Emi Buendía, Philippe Coutinho or Youri Tielemans played further ahead.

This season, with the recruitment of Boubacar Kamara and departure of Coutinho, Luiz has played further advanced.

Luiz has the right mix of defensive awareness and tenacity, combined with wonderful technique. He is Aston Villa’s best passer and anything positive they do tends to come through him.

You could certainly see Luiz in an Arsenal shirt, as cover for Rice defensively and as an option to compete with Kai Havertz further forward.

He has a contract expiring in 18-months, so Villa only really have this window and the next to make any sort of money for him. The fee being floated about right now is £60m.

£60m might seem expensive for someone who would become a squad player, but it is a figure that we could work with.

Partey is costing us £9m a year in amortised transfer fees and a further £10m a year in wages. A total of £19m a year.

£60m for Luiz would see his amortised cost be £12m. An increase on his £4m Villa wages to £6m (£115k a week) would cost Arsenal a total of £18m a year. So despite the big transfer fee, Luiz would actually cost us less a year than Partey.

You would also hope that we can flog Partey to the Middle East, get a fee of around £30m+. That fee would offset some of what we play for Luiz.

I learned with Trossard to trust in Edu and Arteta’s judgement. They have come on a long way from Willian / Cedric / Mari.

Douglas Luiz might now be the global superstar some will demand, but I think he would make the perfect midfield recruit.

Anyone that watched the Manchester City game will know that today will not be easy.

Aston Villa have won 14 home games in a row, a wrong that goes back to last February when The Arsenal won 4-2.

In that time, Villa have beaten Newcastle, Tottenham and now Manchester City.

It is probably too early to call them title contenders, but if they win today they will be just 1 point off top spot (2 if Liverpool beat Palace in the early kick off).

Unai Emery has got his team purring – not a surprise as he is a top manager who thrives at mid teams, getting them to play levels ahead of where they are.

Against City, they played a 4132 system, with a very narrow, compact midfield.

Boubacar Kamara sat behind a narrow trio of John McGinn, Douglas Luiz and Douglas Luiz and Youri Tielemans. They overwhelmed Manchester City’s midfield.

City played into their hans by playing John Stones and Manuel Akanji in midfield, with Julian Alvarez and Rico Lewis ahead of them. Stones or Akanji might be able to do the job when alongside Rodri, but together they were hopeless.

Lewis is a bright young talent, but often it feels like Pep Guardiola plays him so that it can appear he is developing young talent. I do not think he starts for anyone else in the top 6. And Alvarez is a striker.

Today we need to ensure that we do not become over run in midfield, and match Villa’s work rate. For that reason I expect Jorginho to come in for Kai Havertz.

That then makes is a 3v2 match up in the middle (McGinn, Tielemans, Luiz v Rice and Jorginho). Considering Rice is a two-man midfield, we should be able to match them.

Due to them setting up so narrow, we could exploit the spaces they leave out wide. They will not have the resources to double up on Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli, whilst also keeping the middle compact. This will leave our wingers one-on-one with the Villa full-backs. Odegaard should have more space to roam as well if he can shake off Kamara.

It is going to be an interesting tactical game! UTA.

Keenos

Arteta right to strick with Raya as number one

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Against Luton, David Raya made a couple of errors that led to their goals. This reopened the debate on the goal keepers again and, despite being top of the league, Sky Sports predictable jumped all over it.

Firstly, Sky Sports show week after week that they are unable to Arsenal being back, and will take any opportunity to paint us in a bad light, try and spread negativity and derail us. And that is what they do in this piece.

The morning after we go top of the league, they dedicate more than 3 minutes of airtime to our goalkeeping situation. The opening of the segment resolved that debate within 30 seconds. The fact they then continued to debate for 3 minutes longer shows they are going out of their way to try and destroy us.

Let’s start by looking at those statistics in full:

Raya has more clean sheets than Ramsdale, but has played more games. So lets turn that into a percentage:

Clean sheets
Raya: Kept a clean sheet 46.6% of games this season
Ramsdale: Kept a clean sheet 46.6% of games this season
Raya leads 1 round to 0

Goals conceded
Raya: 13 goals conceded at 0.9 per game
Ramsdale: 8 goals conceded at 1 per game
Raya leads 2-0

Save percentage
Raya: 65.8% of shots saved
Ramsdale: 61.9% of shots saved
Raya leads 3-0

Pass accuaracy
Raya: 74.3% passes complete
Ramsdale: 65% passes complete
Raya leads 4-0

Errors leading to goals
Raya: 3 errors
Ramsdale: 0 errors
Raya leads 4-1

xG prevented
Raya: -0.8 behind par
Ramsdale: 2.01 behind par
Raya leads 5-1

So of the 6 key statistics Sky Sports presented, Raya leads in 5 of them. So why the need for a 3-minute long debate?

The stats above prove what I have long said about Aaron Ramsdale.

Ramsdale does not make too many glaring errors that lead to goals – although as Theirry Henry pointed out, he has been saved this season by his team mates quick thinking. But he also lets in a lot of goals that a better keeper would have saved.

During the run in last season, there was a constant debate as to “whether a better keeper would have saved that” as we lost leads against Liverpool, Southampton and West Ham. The feeling in the pub was that whilst Ramsdale might not have made a glaring error, another keeper might have made the save.

So we now have David Raya. He makes those saves that Ramsdale does not – which is proven in both the xG prevented this season and last. Raya had a +5.9 xG prevented against Ramsdale with a -1 (for those who do not understand, that means Raya conceded nearly 6 goals less than he should have, whilst Ramsdale conceded 1 more than he should have).

But Raya also makes more errors that lead to goals. And it is these errors that lead to people thinking he is the worse keeper. Let me paint a scenario:

2 goal keepers face the exact same 10 shots

Keeper 1
Saves 8
Concedes 2
1 of which goes down as an error leading to a goal

Keeper 2
Saves 7
Concedes 3
0 of which goes down as an error leading to a goal

Which is the better keeper? Keeper 1 who has conceded 2, or keeper 2 that has conceded 3? It would take a lot of mental gymnastics for you not to answer Keeper 1.

The error leading to the goal is what gets debated, what gets replayed on MOTD, on Sky Sports and on Twitter. Yet over the course of the 10-shots Keeper 1 has conceded less.

Keeper 2 might not have made a glaring error to concede any of his 3 goals, but he also saved 1 less so is making smaller errors that do not get highlighted as much.

And that ultimately is where Arsenal are.

Raya is quite clearly the better keeper, he also makes more errors that lead to goals. But even when you factor those errors in, he still stops more expected goals than Ramsdale.

Back Arteta, back Raya. On to Villa.

Keenos

Luton tears over 23 seconds, New boys come good, Arteta suspended and More

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Luton tears over 23 seconds

Declan Rice’s winner nestled into the bottom corner on 96:23. An extra 23 seconds of injury time.

This has led to pundit such as Alan Shearer to throw their toys out of the pram about where this extra time came from. He has had support from Luton, Tottenham and west Ham fans.

Firstly, I am sure if it was Newcastle scoring 23s after the minimum of 6 minutes were up, Shearer would not have been prodding the losing manager for a response (side note: fair play to Rob Edwards for batting away his baiting).

Secondly, when the clock ticked over to 90 minutes, the ball was out of play. It did not come back into play until 90:29. Anyone who has watched football (which Shearer et al have watched a lot of of), will know that if the ball is out of play at 90, the referee will tend to only start the injury time once play has restarted. So straight away, due to this delay, play was always going to on to 96:29.

Luton, as all clubs will do, took every opportunity to run down the clock. One throw in took 23 seconds. Takehiro Tomiyasu was sent off for taking a throw in quicker! By the time you add they elongated goal kicks, it should not have been a surprise to anyone that the game was still going on as the clock ticked mid-way through the 97th minute.

It is also fairly normal for ref’s to continue the play whilst a team are attacking. Whilst this does frustate me (time should be up when it is up regardless of where the ball is on the pitch), Martin Odegaard was always going to be allowed to pump the ball in for one last attack.

I bet if it was Luton with the ball on the edge of our box and the ref blew up, the Kenilworth Road air would have been filled with a congeries of boo’s and claims that he blew up early to protect Arsenal.

You then would have had Shearer et al recording the entire time the ball was out of play to highlight that Luton were hard done by.

Finally, injury time is a minimum. If there are further delays during injury time (which there were), the ref can add them on (which he did).

It feelt like throughout the game that Amazon were after a story. They wanted their Brentford moment. The commentators were almost cheering on the home side, and all the pundits bar T) were gutted. Declan Rice ruined their fairytail.

New boys come good

Declan Rice will rightly get the plaudits for scoring the winner. He has been a sensational player and has found a new level in his game.

Whilst at West Ham, there was plenty of debate whether he was World Class, his move to Arsenal has cemented himself as the best defensive midfielder in the world. I could not name anyone better.

When the deal was eventually done for £105m, Hammers fans went into defensive mode, celebrating their windful and saying that Arsenal had overpaid. I think it is now clear that had we paid £150m, we still would not have overpaid.

Scary to think what would have happened to the Premier League had Rice signed for Manchester City.

Rice’s fellow big money summer signing also had a fantastic game against Luton, and perhaps his best Premier League performance in an Arsenal shirt.

The sort of goal he scored was a key reason why he was signed.

With Gabriel Jesus’s movement deep and outwide, Havertz has the awareness to drift into the empty space and toepoke a goal it. Those late runs into the box are what made his name for Leverkusen. His finish against Luton was not too much different to that against Lens!

One area where Havertz is fairly underrated is his aerial play. No player won more aerial duels than the German on tuesday night. And when you consider how Luton play, and the size of their team, that is a huge achievement. He gives us the option to go long and break quick.

Havertz passing still needs to improve, and he needs to get invovled in our build up a bit more (32 passes @ 62% completion v 67 passes @ 89% for Odegaard), but then he is one of these players that is always on the fringes of the game and then comes live in the box.

With 3 goals in his last 4 games, we are now seeing on the pitch what Mikel Arteta spoke about on the training ground. Havertz is clearly a top, top player.

We come away from Luton with 3 points, with the 2 new boys playing a huge part in victory. Onwards we go.

Arteta suspended

So Mikel Arteta got a 3rd yellow card of the season for daring to celebrate a 96th minute winner. His booking was for being a meter out of his technical!

This behaviour by officials just further highlight the point Arsenal have made to the
PGMOL – that Arsenal are officiated differently tro other clubs.

In recent times, we have seen the likes of Robert de Zerbi knee slide onto the pitch, Jurgen Klopp run down the touchline, and Pep Guardiola join celebrations on the pitch. I have no issue with any of these. We want to see passion from players and managers.

Do referees in this country want managers to be robots. To sit there and politely clap and say “well done old chap” to the coach sitting next to them?

It does feel the ref was looking for any reason to book Arteta, knowing it would lead to a suspension. This would then support the Daily Mail-led narrative that Arteta’s behaviour is a danger to grassroot referees.

Arsenal continue to be the poster boys for the Daily Mail after daring to criticise the poor refeering in the Premier League. This despite us having only recieved 2 yellow cards for dissent (against Fulham with 11 and Newcastle & Tottenham with 8).

As for Arteta and his coaching staff’s behaviour, Luton was the 5th booking for our management team. That is less than Brighton and Fulham, with Tottenham and Brighton frecieving 2 reds for coaching staff, and Liverpool and Chelsea getting 1. But Arteta will be the problem…

I am sure between now and Christmas, Arsenal Twitter will highlight plentry of Premier League managers stepping further out of their technical area to celebrate goals and not get booked.

David Raya

When Aaron Ramsdale made his errors against Brentford, I refused to pile-on. I will do the same with Raya.

For Luton Town’s second, a keeper being out jumped and out muscled at a corner happens. Raya is not the first, and will certainly not be the last. Elijah Adebayo is a a 6 4 centre forward and I am sure he will bully other goal keepers this season!

Thierry Henry did a fantastic analysis of Luton’s third.

The mistake looks worse then it did as the ball slide under Raya’s body, but as Henry pointed out, this was because he should have gone with his feet and not dived for it. It was a strong shot by Ross Barkley and by diving, Raya could not get down quick enough.

We are top of the league, let’s back all our players. Not try and pile pressure on one player just because you prefer the personality of another.

UTA!

Keenos

https://twitter.com/SheWore/status/1730685563550769478