By Sir Hardly Anyone
Two stories are circulating. One is that Arsenal are going to have a major turnaround of players in the summer transfer window. Indeed this is one of the lead stories of the moment.
The other is that the battle over SuperLeague is not over and that Uefa will be challenged in the courts as being anti-competitive. We’ve done a lot of SuperLeague of late so let’s now go back to transfers.
Football.London has six men who are on the way
- Alexandre Lacazette,
- Eddie Nketiah,
- Matteo Guendouzi,
- Ainsley Maitland-Niles,
- Lucas Torreira
- Hector Bellerin
The media have been talking up the sale of Joe Willock, although they now seem to have changed their mind and think that he is staying.
- Runar Alex Runarsson
- Rob Holding
- Dinos Mavropanos
- Sead Kolasinac
- Mohamed Elneny
- Dani Ceballos
- Hector Bellerin
- Joe Willock
- Willian
- Reiss Nelson
- Eddie Nketiah
- Alexandre Lacazette
But I wonder if anyone has really thought about what would happen if all 12 do leave. For that would be an awful lot of new players to integrate into the team all at once – and we’d have to be careful in terms of making sure we got the right number of Englishmen.
Here’s our squad – the third column reflects what will happen to them, according to the all-seeing eyes of the media commentators. The final column gives those who are left a number in the 25. The under 21s don’t get a number at this stage, although they are clearly part of the squad.
| English? | Player | Out? | After |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bernd Leno | 1 | ||
| Héctor Bellerín (vice-captain) | Going HG | ||
| Kieran Tierney | 2 | ||
| Gabriel | 3 | ||
 ENG |
Bukayo Saka | U21 HG | |
| Dani Ceballos (on loan from Real Madrid) | Return | ||
| Alexandre Lacazette (3rd captain) | Going | ||
| Martin Ødegaard (on loan from Real Madrid) | 4 | ||
| Willian | 5 | ||
| Rúnar Alex Rúnarsson | Going | ||
| Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (captain) | 6 | ||
| ENG |
Rob Holding | Going HG | |
| Cédric Soares | 7 | ||
| Thomas Partey | 8 | ||
| Nicolas Pépé | 9 | ||
| ENG |
Calum Chambers | 10 HG | |
| Pablo Marí | 11 | ||
| David Luiz | 12 | ||
| ENG |
Reiss Nelson | Going | |
| Mohamed Elneny | Going | ||
| ENG |
Eddie Nketiah | Going | |
| ENG |
Emile Smith Rowe | 13 HG | |
| Mathew Ryan (on loan from Brighton) | Return | ||
| Granit Xhaka (4th captain) | 14 | ||
| Gabriel Martinelli | 15 | ||
| ENG |
Folarin Balogun (under 21) |
U21 HG | |
| William Saliba | U21 |
Arsenal thus have 15 players who are over 21 of whom two are home grown. So in this scenario we would be able to sign ten players but only four of whom who are of non-home-grown origins. The remaining six would have to be home grown.
The question is: could we find six home grown players we would like to sign for our first team? If not would it not be worthwhile keeping Hector Bellerin and Rob Holding? That would take us to 17 players of whom four are Home Grown.
We would then have vacancies for eight players, of whom four must be home grown assuming of course that we manage to keep Martin Ødegaard.
Either way the list below is our squad
| English? | Player | After |
|---|---|---|
| Bernd Leno | 1 | |
| Kieran Tierney | 2 | |
| Gabriel | 3 | |
| ENG |
Bukayo Saka | U21 HG |
| Martin Ødegaard (on loan from Real Mad) | 4 | |
| Willian | 5 | |
| Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (captain) | 6 | |
| Cédric Soares | 7 | |
| Thomas Partey | 8 | |
| Nicolas Pépé | 9 | |
| ENG |
Calum Chambers | 10 HG |
| Pablo Marí | 11 | |
| David Luiz | 12 | |
| ENG |
Emile Smith Rowe | 13 HG |
| Granit Xhaka (4th captain) | 14 | |
| Gabriel Martinelli | 15 | |
| ENG |
Folarin Balogun (under 21) |
U21 HG |
| William Saliba | U21 |
Which raises the question of how do we integrate eight new players at once into the squad? And since by common consent of the bloggers and journalists we need these new players because the rest of not good enough, how are we going to afford all these players when we are going to be getting low prices for our not-good-enough players?
So our income will be small but we will need to be buying eight new players, four of whom come with the premium cost of being English, and all of whom will cost more than we will get from our players.
It’s going to be a tough summer.
The proof that something is seriously wrong with football refereeing and reporting
- Results from crowdless games are different from those with crowds. Why?
- How even a serious science magazine has used fake data on football
- Someone is trying to fake football stats – and doing it rather well,
- Crowdless stadia stats reveal fallacy of PGMO claims
- Proving unconscious bias by referees
- How clubs manipulate referees through their tactics
- Referees are not 98% accurate but only 75% accurate
A big job for sure but maybe not quite as big as the numbers make out.
Let’s look at who might go and barely be missed:
Kolasinac – not part of the squad, no impact
Mavropanos – not part of the squad, no impact
Torreira – not part of the squad, no impact
Guendouzi – not part of the squad, no impact
Nelson – barely plays, very little impact, no need to replace
Nketiah – barely plays, little impact, Balogun will cover his role
All of these players could be sold, without being replaced and have very little effect on the squad.
Let’s look at who might go and might need to be replaced:
Elneny – rarely plays and AMN could fill his role without integration concerns. If AMN is sold, another player will be needed
Ceballos – Willock could be asked to fill his role without integration concerns. If Willock is sold, another player will be needed
Luiz – Saliba could be asked to fill his role with some integration concerns. If Saliba is sold, another player will be needed
Ryan – if he goes, he will need to be replaced
Odegaard – if he goes, he will need to be replaced
Lacazette – if he goes, he will need to be replaced
Bellerin – if he goes, he will need to be replaced
They will also need to buy a back-up left-back to cover Tierney
That could mean as many as 8 new players, 3-4 of them being obvious starters. That is a very big job for integration.
Not all of these players will go though and I expect a maximum of 5-6 new players, with 2-3 of them being obvious starters. That’s a far more manageable task and likely one a manager would relish.