Are we better or worse, WTF is going on - Summer 2021 transfer thread.

my apologies for being unclear. i was not suggesting they should make a direct swap but to take woodman as a makeweight because, while newcastle would be the biggest suitor for willock, they will not have remotely close enough cash to make it worthwhile.

i mean, i'd take woodman + 10-15 with some sell-on, even if part of that 10-15 had to be delayed or on appearances.

in my opinion, if we got woodman, there would be no need to sign onana. he, apparently, had a great season in the championship last year and a year behind leno, playing cup games should put him ready to take over next summer. and we'd have an HG between the sticks.

 

I could see signing Woodman if Leno leaves. I don't think you pass on Onana, he seems like a steal at 8m or so and I'm kind of expecting some other club to jump in and steal him away. But his suspension and AFCON mean another option is needed, and having a HG keeper like Woodman who can start or be a very capable #2 would be wise.

The Lokonga offer gives me some optimism that Edu and Arteta are casting a wider net than just England or players they have had on loan. Not concerned at all about the opening offer being rejected, that's how business is done. Like the age profile, position of need, club captain.

Odegaard still has upside and Arteta was able to watch him up close and personal for a few months. But I don't think he would be good value for the money Madrid are asking for and kind of glad Madrid are saving Arsenal from themselves.

 

The only reason I don't like signing Woodman as a backup to Leno is that I think we need an improvement on Leno anyway.

That setup would mean Leno for another year, then a guy who only just reached Leno's level the next.

Onana gives us a better chance of improving our GK department.

 

You’re being to logical.

 

For us here at Arsenal being an Arsenal fan as well as an Inter fan..definite targets to look at for us to bring in this summer:

- Reunion with Aaron Ramsey of Juventus
- Or we go after other names like Nabil Fekir, Sambi Lokonga, Ruben Neves, Gabriel or Locatelli

 

Haggling is what you do when you’re working with a limited budget. If they step up meet Anderlecht’s €20m valuation in the next week or so, I think we can be optimistic about the size of the transfer budget, if they continue to haggle or move on I’m less optimistic.

 

Arsenal had a couple bids for Tierney rejected before Celtic eventually agreed to the deal. Arsenal probably offered €15m with a lot of it deferred. Anderlecht probably wanted €20m with most of it up front. They can haggle on the total cost, the payment structure and any bonuses or add-ons.

Not sure how much this tells us since I would expect Lokonga to compare favorably to other Belgian league midfielders, but gives you an idea of his style of play.

Today, one of the biggest talents in @ProLeagueBE -

Albert Sambi Lokonga (21)

Defensively pretty good

Elite Ball progressor - one of the few who can progress ball via pass & carry both!

Really good long passing from deep midfield (5.18 long passes/90, 60.3% accuracy) pic.twitter.com/v0vuydGAj3

— SMukherjee (@DrMukherjeeS) May 26, 2021

 

After my initial response to this post, I went looking for numbers on progressive passing to justify my opinion that Adams wasn’t a guy to replace Xhaka. What I ran across was an article by WhoScored.com from 2020 that included a graph comparing a players pass completion percentage to the percentage of their passes that are played forward.



With the caveat that these numbers are impacted by both the overall quality of the league and a team’s style of play the graph offers some interesting insights. This season Xhaka with a 90% pass completion rate and 30 percent of his passes played forward would sit above and slightly to the right of Winks. Locatelli with 88% pass completion and 31% forward passes sits almost directly above Jorginho. Lokonga’s numbers 86% and 34% are above and to the left of Locatelli’s numbers and Adams at 86% and 30% is is to the left of Jorginho pretty near the median. It’s also interesting to look at the percentage of their passes that are defined as long passes. Twelve percent of Lokonga’s passes were long passes, Locatelli’s number was 10%, Xhaka 8% and Adams 5%.

While this is an interesting exercise by WhoScored I think it might be interesting to take it a step further and identify where players fit in their team’s style of play, e.g. do other midfielders at Anderlecht have similar forward passing numbers to Lokonga or are their numbers, on average, significantly lower.

 

Out of those players I mentioned I want Locatelli or Ruben Neves

 

Arteta is a clown. He covets Odegaard but keeps trying to replace Saliba.

 

I'm not quite sure how to translate this information. It describes playstyles, but it doesn't really have any obvious relationship to a player's value. There are very good midfielders scattered all over that plot. I suppose we'd try to look for someone with the same style as Xhaka who takes less time/touches?

 

As long as they get it done and the sooner the better.
I do think it's a bit petty to try and save about 5 mill but I guess that's why I am not a millionaire.

 

TheAFCBell, who got a lot of stuff right last summer re: Partey, is saying that James Maddison is a target. Not sure why he would leave Leicester. And he would cost a small fortune.

Also said Bellerin is visiting Villareal.

 

Can we go back to gerbils pls.

 

I guess 51m isn't bad in the context of 40-50m for Ben White. Here is the Twitter thread, I'm trusting the twitter translate function since my Arabic is rusty (more accurately, non-existant).

تكشّف لجرس أرسنال أن أحد اللاعبين أ/أ+ الذين تواصل النادي مع معسكراتهم في الأشهر الماضية هو جيمس ماديسون. مصادر مطلعة أكدت أن اللاعب على لائحة أهداف النادي ولا يمكن القطع بعدم وجود أي تحرك مستقبلي من قبل النادي في مرحلة ما هذه النافذة. pic.twitter.com/0WuQUhmpNT

— TheAFCBell 🇵🇸 (@TheAFCBeII) June 15, 2021