Further to our transcript of David Ornstein on the BBC last night, we missed a couple of little snippets in the original piece.
Here’s what he had to say about:
Lucas Torreira
“There’s one other potential generator of income and that’s been talked about online and in Italy a lot: that’s Lucas Torreira.
“He’s only a year into his stay. Suggestions he might be back to Italy with AC Milan. We’re told contrary to some reports, is not unhappy and Arsenal have no desire to sell him, although every player has their price.
“Milan who he’s been heavily linked with are keen on him, but they are not pursuing him because they have other targets.”
Torreira yesterday dismissed rumours saying he’d heard nothing from AC Milan and was happy at Arsenal.
Jaeson Rosenfeld
“There’s a key person I didn’t mention [in the recruitment process], and that’s Jason Rosenfeld who is based in the United States. He’s very big on statistics, so he runs the numbers on these players and I was told on Zaha there were differences of opinion on his physical stats.
“Different people had different opinions, so how are you going to find a consensus before you even go and begin to negotiate for a player?”
—
Jason Rosenfeld is the founder of StatDNA, the company that Arsenal bought in 2014 to improve the analytical side of the club. Many associate it with some of the iffy signings in recent years, including Gabriel, Mohamed Elneny and Shkodran Mustafi, but it’s also used to provide data to the coaching staff regarding our player performance, the opposition and more.
I am beginning to wonder, has Jason Rosenfield or Rosenpark ran the rule over a certain Hakim Ziyech? Because I am beginning to wonder why we are not seriously after him. He can play on the right, left or behind the striker in attack.
The business so far (or lack of) has me wondering whether anything has really changed since the last regime.
Emery has said that technique without physicality in the PL isn’t of much use, and the reason the PL dominated Europe last season was it’s physical level being way above any other European league. Arsenal fans (me included) were always perplexed why Arsenal moved away from a side of 6ft+ aggressive athletes, to a team of technically gifted lightweights. We need PL players, we’ve seen with the likes of Ozil + Di Maria that players who don’t fancy it, get eaten up in this league, regardless of how good they are on a technical level. I’d prefer we moved for… Read more »
The 1st part of this comment actually puts alot into perspective. We dominated the PL in the late 80s and 90s with a physical squad that were always up for a fight (hence the 1-0 to the Arsenal trend we set at the time). Following that we went into the 2000’s with a ‘physical spine’ and a touch of class (recipe for success in the PL). Since then we’ve lost our physicality with Wenger leading more to technical players to control the game with possession which at the time was lauded by some as we were even then compared to… Read more »
We dominated in the PL in the late 80’s and 90’s? We won in 1989, of course, and again in 1991 (before the creation of the Premier League, but leave that aside), but we were not even in the top three any other year from 1981 through 1997.
Some elements of this don’t make sense: is Manchester City loaded with “6ft+ aggressive athletes” or does that descriptor sound more like Cardiff City? The game has changed in England from what it was in the 90s, and Arsenal helped to change it — for the better. Emery made us more physical last season, and we ran more than we ever have, I think, but it didn’t add up to much in the end – no trophies, no CL football, no sense of identity. Emery could use some help through the transfer market, but he came to a sinking ship… Read more »
Very few clubs have the luxury afforded to Guardiola at Man City. He inherited the most expensively assembled squad in history, had months to plan his entrance, and choose £200 million worth of talent in his first window. He then finished pot less and fourth. He then spent another £180 million Then another €65 million in the January, in order to win the title. If Guardiola was in charge of our mess? With our budget? Then he’d have quit a long time ago…. It’s taken Klopp a while to get Liverpool going, only 18 months ago people were spewing the… Read more »
Nobody can afford to play like City these days; they are in their own league. Klopp assembled a great squad, and spent a large chunk of change doing it (Mane, Firmino, Salah, Ox, Lallana, Fabinho, Keita, Van Dijk, and Allison were not cheap transfers, if I remember correctly). We aren’t in that position, and won’t be for a few years. The reality at Arsenal is that we are going to have to work harder, from top to bottom, with what we’ve got. We have great athletes on our side, and just need to figure out how to get the best… Read more »
Not just Ziyech. There’s whole line of players that can definitely be signed by arsenal. Leon Bailey and Neres come to my mind just to name a few. The problem is with the manner in which the club has been handling their business on and off the pitch for years now. It’s is the indecisive over complicating approach to all matters.
The transfer window in Europe doesn’t open until july 1st so I’m not sure what you are expecting lol.
StatDNA: *monitors our players’ performance levels since 2014*
StatDNA: “Kill… me… “
?
StatDna: becomes sentient
StatDna: joins Juventus on a free
Top work from all involved ?
Now this comment deserves all the thumbs up in the world.
StatDNA says – Sell Serge Gnabry and buy Takuma Asano.
StatDNA: “What is my purpose?”
Arsenal: “To monitor Mustafi and Xhaka’s progress”
StatDNA: *Pauses*
StatDNA: “…Oh…my…God….!”
Arsenal: “Yeah, join the club pal.”
The iffy association with StatsDNA is quite telling; nobody associates them with the good players; the Torreiras and Guendouzis of this world, even though you can be turned they were involved. Instead they associate them with the dregs; the Elnenys, Xhakas amen Mustafis of this world. Yet if one is being honest, it always depends on how the data is used. There’s no denying Gabriel, Elneny, Xhaka and Mustafi all bear striking resemblance to previous Wenger players; Vermealen and Denilsons of this world, players who are first and foremost bought for their skills on the ball, rather than their defensive… Read more »
Gabriel and Elneny were bought for their skills on the ball!?
Well yes. Rather than Ben obtuse, have a look at it. There’s all these other metrics that are beyond just passing completion, final balls and vertical passes that take people out etc. My point is there is still a general attitudes towards data science in football as “laptop gurus”, which is scene in the references to StatDNA which almost always gets associated with our failures and nevertheless with our successes There was a massive uproar when Liverpool went a “data first” route and pundits and journalists mocked them for their “laptop guru”. 5 years later, no one isn’t laughing now.… Read more »
What exactly is a Wenger type player? You mean Henry, Vieira, Cesc, Nasri, RVP, Koscienly, kolo, Santi, Rosicky, Freddie, Pires, Kanu, Lauren. Those are Wenger type players to me. It is easy to cherry pick on a few bad players when the man recruited well over a hundred players to this club.
Those were early Wenger. The players he bought over the last three years were not in the same league. And if if hadn’t been for Mertesacker, Arteta and Kos busting a gut for us we would have been out of the top four a lot earlier. Wenger went steadily downhill and Kronke senior should have halted the decline much earlier.
Who ever signed those three is a genius.
I think this is where us Arsenal fans can try to be obtuse. There’s this idea that to criticise anything Wenger did is an attack on the man, as if this same place weren’t filled with vitrol for Wenger out for so long. It’s clear that Post-Invincibles he favoured a particular type of player, and I can’t understand why it’s not fashionable to deny that. The days of Campbell were gone, he favoured smaller faster and more technical CBs on the ball. Let’ not forget he didn’t even want Per for many years, only until the infamous trolley dash. Gallas,… Read more »
Being Kroenke over Usmanov is not the same as being pro Kroenke. Lesser of two evils id say. Also its interesting you noted the difference in players early Wenger vs last 3 years Wenger which coincided with… Kroenke involvement… However, im fairly certain the need to sell players to pay stadium debt was the largest impact to our player recruitment pre Kroenke. But the stadium move was necessary if we wanted to compete amongst the top clubs in Europe in the future.
Great post.
Though you left out Laca. Total AW kind a player.
As well Sagna, Clichy, and Diaby. And Aaron Ramsey. And RVP. And Edwardo (the Braziloation one.) (yes, yes; some still have a butt hurt how they left, but they were (are) brilliant footballers.)
Xhaka was a Systems signing too.
I mean was a a Statdna signing.Sorry
Xhaka is decent enough, he’s got a good amount of experience now, and is heading into his prime.
He has concentration issues, but he’s far from our biggest problem, if we got £50 million for him? We’d need to replace him, which would likely cost a lot of money.
Sorting out 2 full backs, at least 1 established centre half, and at least one, but ideally 2 wide players should be where our priorities lie.
If we don’t get the wide players, which does not appear likely, could you see Iwobi and Nelson, and possibly Maitland-Niles (if we haven’t already consigned him to right-back), as guys that could do the job?
This.
How many goals per season do we concede due to concentration issues?
It’s a big deal.
Which proves it can be good. One of the best passing ranges of any player in the country and a key player which is why Emery never drops him
Here’s a new thought for people to distract from the endless transfer rumours… Having players like Ramsey (£5m, 11 seasons) and Welbeck (£16m, 5 seasons) leave for nothing should not substantively negatively affect a club like Arsenal. They were not massive purchases, stayed for the full length of their contracts, and were often on relatively low wages towards the end of their contracts. It obviously leaves us with less money than we could have, but shouldn’t result in us with the little that we have! Another way to look at it is why does one of the richest clubs in… Read more »
We’re not trying to recoup £5m though, we’re trying to replace a £60m player.
If Ramsey had not processed and had remained a £5m level player that above model/description works. But he did. Massively.
Added to that the fact we have made an absolute shower of how we’ve managed decent player exits, such as sneezy etc., The deficit of players coming in and going out widens.
And we’re fully committed to the self sustaining model. Which requires great player investment, but even more so even better negotiations when players are leaving.
I agree, if we could get Rabiot on a free then no problem. We have the 5m we need for the next Ramsey, what we don’t have is the 60m we need for a current Ramsey, and unfortunately Arsenal is not as an attractive option as back when Ramsey signed for us.
Furthermore, the spuds net spend has been about a quarter of ours over the last 5 seasons. Yet, they are comprehensively out performing us. Our issues stretch well beyond our budget. If one considers what they spent on Kane, Alli, Walker, Trippier, Dier, Eriksen, Son, Lloris (the list goes on) vs what they are worth today, then their transfer strategy is vastly superior. They sit with cheap players that are performing well that are worth a lot and that they don’t want to or need to sell, whilst we sit with expensive players that cost a lot that aren’t performing… Read more »
Well said. And I think it is becoming clear that the ruins of the old regime are going to take more than a few years to rebuild — and perhaps our best way, and only way, to do that is by buying cheap, young players, and developing them into assets on and off the pitch. (Whether we have the right people in place to do this is another question, and a deep concern.) We really do need CL football, and it remains the goal each season, but more important is refashioning our identity on the pitch — we need to… Read more »
So you are happy with Ramsey leaving for free because we bought him for 5m 11 years earlier???
He clearly didn’t say that. Kids ey
Not happy but “content” then? He describes an “ideal” environment where a player we bought for 5m and served us for 11 years shouldn’t impact our resources. In the harsh Arsenal reality though, this is the exact opposite of what is happening. The transfer policy of the last 5 years has left us in shambles and we’re at a position where Zaha wants to join and Arsenal Football Club cannot afford him…
I mean the model would work perfectly if every year you bought a batch of these £5m 18 year olds who progress to elite level over the course of a decade so you have a continually refreshing stock but it’s not really feasible.
You lost the debate, lad. Let it go.
All this Zaha fervor. Its a total joke.
The guy is second rate. Not better than Laca. Not better than Auba.
But Zaha is not a striker, he is a winger that we badly need, all we have at the moment is a piss poor iwobi and a big prospect in Nelson for wing
So you compare a winger with Laca & Auba and you are telling me that I lost the debate?? Come on lad…
If you are happy for Ramsey to be replaced by a 5m player, and Welbeck a 16m player, then yes, it’s fine for them to go on a free.
How do mid-table clubs have more budget than us? Oh, how my heart longs for Stan Kroenke to fall to his death in a crocodile-infested swamp during one of his dubious hunting trips… Better yet, how joy would flood my heart if an international revolution got rid of the billionaire class that is shitting on everything we love and then selling it back to us.
It’s spelled Jaeson fyi
Ta
No surely that’s wrong
check the source: google.co.uk
Sorry that was a failed attempt at humour
ShatDNA
(transfer) Windows 95.
If only that shitty little paperclip thingy could help us sign a few players.
“I see you’re trying to compete in the Premier League with a Championship budget, may I suggest a billionaire sports tycoon owner?”
Can we use StatDNA to find a Barça DNA?
Don’t worry guys it’s all just a ruse, we’ve got 200 mil in the bank ready to blow ?
Probably true actually, just unwilling to spend it
StatDNA had Arsene Wenger believing Granit Xhaka was a box-to-box midfielder he could convert into a DM. They are the askjeeves of the football stats world; they won’t give you any information you’re not better served getting elsewhere.
We can generate income by selling statsDNA.
Makes me wonder about the success of statdna, as we made some of the worst transfer and contract decisions in the last 4 years.
Is it because it made directly incorrect decisions, or caused indecisiveness and incoherent transfer strategy.
It really went to sht when Wenger signed his final contract with reduced power and we got some real mixed strategies which coincided with Mislintat leaving.
I can’t see the benefit of us trying to generate income from selling one of our better assets in midfield. BC we will have to then add two to recover the same capacity since we are short on one as is beyond Torreira, Granit and Guendouzi. Willock needs to go on loan to play regularly and accelerate his development. Elneny is a mediocre player we need to put in a suitcase and drop off (anywhere) We will need to retain Torrerira AND add one more if we have any ambition whatsoever. Otherwise it isn’t improvement, it is moving sideways. If… Read more »
…another stat obsessed American. How they lost the Vietnam war.
Trust Gazidis to go for a player he has no chance of signing and doesn’t even want to leave. Apparently he wants Lukaku on loan as well! Says a lot about our transfer policy during the Kronke years. Just what the hell has he been smoking??