Wrighty4eva
Established Member
Not exactly where I want us to be (scraping for 4th), but you go ahead and celebrate mediocrity if that's your thing.
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Squad Analysis 2021/22
- Thread starter BigPoppaPump
- Start date
- Replies 157
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CaseUteinberger
Established Member
Country: Sweden
Best you can hope for with a squad that is pants!
Wrighty4eva
Established Member
True indeed, but it doesn't change the fact that the squad is pants, basically out of all competitions by April and clinging to a 4th place 'trophy' is not the Arsenal I grew up on, definitely need significant investment, as the squad is still pants.Best you can hope for with a squad that is pants!
It’s not the squads fault. It’s the manager. He’s ****.
The squad isn't pants. We've got multiple quality young defenders, a top class DM and multiple quality young attacking players. Provided we get CL, we are 4 or 5 additions away to having a very very competitive squad squad for the next 5 years.
drippin
Obsessed with "Mature Trusted Members"
Country: Finland
Ugh, I'll update this because I didn't realize there's only 5 attackers for 3 positions and thought we can't afford Gakpo overall. I'm not sure how realistic Osimhen is, how much transfer budget we have. Someone like Abraham might cost 20 million euros less.
I also take RB out, because Hickey and White can play there next season too, and Norton-Cuffy needs a path. And I add Gakpo back because we need 6 players for 3 positions and the rumours resurfaced. Martinelli can play RW too, and ESR & Tielemans can cover Ødegaard.
Squad plans next season:
GK: Ramsdale, Turner, Okonkwo
LB: Tierney, Hickey, Tavares (?)
RB: Tomiyasu, Cedric
CB: Gabriel, White, Saliba (?), Holding
DMF: Partey, Elneny, Sambi
CMF: Tielemans, Xhaka
AMF: Ødegaard
LW: Gakpo, Martinelli, ESR
RW: Saka
ST: Osimhen, Jesus (=RW cover, can start LW too I think)
New players:
Hickey 20 million, 50k
Tielemans 40 million, 180k
Gakpo 40 million, 90k
Jesus 50 million, 200k
Osimhen 100 million, 200k
Total 250 million 720k
That would be 24 players. And ~170 million spent after sales. Balogun is coming back, but will he go for another loan?
I would like a bit more quality to the midfield though with the great summer window for midfielders. But the budget doesn't seem to give us likelyhood for that. I'd really want to get some under 30 million midfielder in addition, but how could this transfer plan be changed to allow for it? 170 million spent after sales is already a lot to assume, isn't it?
CaseUteinberger
Established Member
Country: Sweden
Yes, it is, but whatever Edu and Arteta can get KSE to spend I am all for it!
MartiSaka
Join my "Occupy A-M" movement here 🗳
Look at Liverpool they didn't become an elite club instantly but continued to progressively build., They went from a good team with some weaknesses to having an elite first team with minimal squad depth to the point now where they have an elite first 11 and elite depth. We should be hoping arsenal can do something similar we are not going to recruit over the next yr, and suddenly become the best in Europe.
Country: England
Arsenal: Lowest average age in PL - but how do they compare to other youthful sides of the past?
Arsenal have risen to fourth with a youthful squad - but how good are they compared with other young PL teams in the past decade?
theathletic.com
Arsenal: Lowest average age in PL – but how do they compare to other youthful sides of the past?
James McNicholas, Art de Roché and more May 12, 2022Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta may be on the precipice of taking the youngest team in England’s top flight into the Champions League.
It is the consequence of a deliberate strategy: an attempt to rejuvenate the squad and kickstart a new cycle of success at a club who won the title three times in seven years from 1998 to 2004 but have not done so once in the 18 years since. The approach has already guaranteed a place in this season’s top six, but their sights are set higher still. The fillip of Champions League football come the autumn could be another catalyst in this young group’s development.
But how young are this side as compared to the rest of the league? And how does that compare to other seasons?
The Athletic has looked back at the past decade to see how this group’s performance fares when measured against other youthful teams from the recent past.
It’s remarkable that such a high proportion of the players Arteta has regularly used through 2021-22 qualify to play in this season’s Premier League 2 competition for clubs’ under-23s sides: Aaron Ramsdale, Takehiro Tomiyasu, Nuno Tavares, Martin Ødegaard, Emile Smith Rowe, Bukayo Saka, Eddie Nketiah and Gabriel Martinelli are all young enough to have been fielded in the under-23s without impinging on the ‘over-age player’ quota.
Arsenal have comfortably the youngest average age in the Premier League this season at 25.2 years — a full year younger than Brentford, the next youngest. Interestingly the clubs in closest proximity to Arsenal, Brentford and Southampton, are both regarded as hothouses of talent development. Arsenal’s project is somewhat different: they don’t intend to become a selling club to be picked over by the game’s financial superpowers but to develop and retain their stars.
So many of Arsenal’s direct competitors for European qualification have substantially older squads: West Ham United, Liverpool, Chelsea and Manchester United are all among the eight highest average ages in the league. It seems that at the business end of the table, experience is preferred. Tottenham (27.3) are a little younger, but still not close to Arsenal.
This should bode well for Arsenal, who could reasonably expect their performance level to improve as many of their squad move into their peak years.
While this Arsenal team is the youngest in the Premier League this season, it is not the youngest in the top flight’s modern history.
Of the top 20 youngest teams in the division since the 2010-11 season, they rank 15th, with Aston Villa’s 2012-13 team having the youngest average age of 24.1 years.
It is important to note how small the margins are between these teams, however, with Arsenal just a short gap away from the seventh youngest team — Sunderland in 2010-11.
Despite not being the youngest Premier League team of the past 12 years, Arsenal 2021-22 are one of the best performing teams in this group. Their tally of 1.9 points per game is the second-highest since 2010, with Mauricio Pochettino’s 2016-17 Sp**s team the outright leaders averaging 2.3 points per game.
Albert Sambi Lokonga, Tavares, Ramsdale, Benjamin White, Ødegaard and Tomiyasu were all 23 or younger upon signing. White turned 24 in October and Ramsdale does so on Saturday.
Mixing these signings with promising academy graduates has paid off at different points in the season. Arsenal were heavily reliant on Saka and Smith Rowe to thrust them forward in the opening months.
The Athletic wrote a series of pieces looking at the age profiles for Premier League squads in November and for Arsenal, as well as having a significant number of players pre-peak years, that duo from the club’s Hale End academy stood out statistically.
As the season has progressed, the influence of other players has increased.
Ramsdale, Tomiyasu and White helped solidify the backline early while contributing in possession too. Ødegaard began to find his rhythm in December and is now ranked second in the league for shot-creating open-play passes (94). On top of that, players signed from previous windows such as Kieran Tierney, Gabriel Magalhaes, both 24, and 20-year-old Martinelli are also having an impact.
The experience that comes in the shape of Granit Xhaka, Mohamed Elneny, both 29, Thomas Partey, 28, and 30-year-old Alexandre Lacazette has also been vital at different stages.
Lacazette is out of the side now due to what 22-year-old Nketiah offers in his place, but played an important role between October and the New Year, his game-changing cameo in the home game against Crystal Palace a prime example. Partey and Xhaka’s partnership helped the midfield run smoothly mid-season, while Elneny has helped sure things up recently to help Arsenal return to the top-four race.
“It’s the team we’ve been building for the last two seasons and we’ve been trying to find the balance between the senior players, the experiences they had, their qualities, and the numbers we had to manage to get the best out of the group,” Arteta said on the make-up of the squad ahead of the north London derby away to Sp**s tonight (Thursday).
“It’s no different to the time I joined and hopefully we can do it.”
Interestingly, Arteta the player joined Arsenal halfway through their two other youngest Premier League seasons since 2010.
The average age of 24.8 in 2010-11 was the sixth youngest across the league in our sample, but also the fifth most successful, averaging 1.8 points per game — a tally equalled in Arteta’s debut season at the club a year later (a squad with an average age equal to the current one’s 25.2).
The promise of that 2010-11 season, where Arsenal were six points off eventual champions Manchester United with six games to go, was backed up by the present and potential quality of that squad.
The settled starting XI was: Wojciech Szczesny; Bacary Sagna, Laurent Koscielny, Thomas Vermaelen, Gael Clichy; Cesc Fabregas, Alex Song, Jack Wilshere; Theo Walcott, Robin van Persie, Samir Nasri.
Of that side, two were arguably the best in their position of Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium era (Sagna and Koscielny), three left in the summer of 2011 before winning multiple league titles elsewhere (Fabregas, Nasri and Clichy), two did the same a year later (Song and van Persie) while Szczesny’s successes have come in more recent seasons with Juventus in Italy.
While that 2010-11 side was largely broken up and reassembled in the windows that followed, by contrast, there is the example of that 2016-17 Sp**s team. The majority of that squad stayed together but grew stale in the late Pochettino era and failed to truly build on their title near-miss from the previous season and 2018-19 Champions League final appearance.
The fact much of this Arsenal squad were either signed last summer or have given new contracts in the last two years bodes well for the idea of individuals continuing to evolve at the Emirates, unlike their 2010-11 predecessors. Reinforcing that with quality in key areas is what will help build on the foundations of this season, with centre-forward and central midfield obvious areas for improvement.
Given the return to European football and the ramifications playing this year’s World Cup in November and December will have on Premier League scheduling next season, the importance of that reinforcement is heightened.
Regardless of the number of young players in the squad, Arteta has been able to be very consistent in his selection. That has presumably helped the less experienced players become settled in the side.
So far this season, Arsenal have named an unchanged XI in consecutive games on seven occasions — only West Ham have managed more, with Sp**s also on seven. At the other end of the spectrum, Chelsea haven’t managed it at all (Tuesday and Wednesday night’s matches are not included in the table below).
The big outlier here in the chart above is Arsenal’s fourth game of the season — the home fixture against Norwich City in September. That is when Arteta made seven changes to his XI, bringing in a host of the new signings such as Ramsdale, White and Tomiyasu, and effectively rejuvenating his team.
Since those sweeping changes, he has largely made small tweaks with the same trusted pool of players.
There’s a general trend of fewer changes as the season has worn on. This can be attributed in part to the slimming-down of the squad that took place in the January transfer window, and partly to Arteta settling on a preferred selection. Arsenal have doubtlessly been helped in this consistency by their lack of European football — and the fact they exited the FA Cup at the earliest possible opportunity.
They are already qualified for the Europa League, and still hope to reach the Champions League for the first time since 2016-17. It will be interesting to see how this young team handle the demands of a busier fixture list next season. More rotation is presumably an inevitability for 2022-23. The size of the present squad (21 players) will not suffice when fighting on multiple fronts.
Whatever happens next season, the achievements of this one can’t be taken for granted.
Arsenal have had to rely on young players throughout the year and they have delivered, whether it be Saka and Smith Rowe early in the year, Ødegaard and Martinelli at the mid-point or Nketiah in recent weeks.
Those players handling that pressure may surprise those on the outside, but they have all had to mature quickly before reaching this point.
Saka’s bounce-back after his decisive European Championship final penalty shootout miss for England is the most obvious example but Ødegaard overcame large periods of disappointment at previous club Real Madrid, Smith Rowe played a key role in Huddersfield Town retaining their Championship status while on loan there in 2019-20, Nketiah fought to start at both Leeds United and Arsenal that same season, while Martinelli had a long-term knee injury to recover from in the second half of 2020.
None of them have had it easy and Arsenal have reaped the benefits of that this season, with those five players in particular all contributing at least 10 goals and assists combined across all competitions.
Now it’s down to them to cash in on all that hard work and back it up in 2022-23.
Wrighty4eva
Established Member
Pants just like I said.
You've waited till we are 3 down in a North London Derby to respond and still haven't said anything of value, whatever floats your boat mate.
Wrighty4eva
Established Member
What you on about ?, my opinion didn't change, this backs it up though, bottle jobs and mid table to lower league players, must hurt to look silly.
At least 18 good quality players next season. This season we took massive risk and manager trying to get guys like Cedric Elneny holding and Eddie secure us top 4. Credit to them they trying to do that.
But with European football next season the quality has to raise the difference from starting 11 and our depth is huge and our team already young
But with European football next season the quality has to raise the difference from starting 11 and our depth is huge and our team already young
Riou
In The Winchester, Waiting For This To Blow Over
Country: Northern Ireland
Player:Gabriel
Again, the squad have giving everything more or less.
Issue is, it's a Europa League squad right now, so of course we will have games that show that real lack of quality...but since there is only 3 Champions League level teams right now, we have a chance this season...won't blame the squad if we finish 5th, tbh.
The forward line is a joke, for a Champions League fight.
Honestly, we used to have one of the best attacks in the league/world, not that long ago...now we have Eddie and old man Laca, who bring energy but not much else.
Henry, Van Persie, Sanchez, Auba...Eddie, so bizarre
Issue is, it's a Europa League squad right now, so of course we will have games that show that real lack of quality...but since there is only 3 Champions League level teams right now, we have a chance this season...won't blame the squad if we finish 5th, tbh.
The forward line is a joke, for a Champions League fight.
Honestly, we used to have one of the best attacks in the league/world, not that long ago...now we have Eddie and old man Laca, who bring energy but not much else.
Henry, Van Persie, Sanchez, Auba...Eddie, so bizarre
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Maybe
You're wrong, no?
Still trying to understand where did 220M go and our best player is an academy product
- Thread starter
- #116
BigPoppaPump
Reeling from Laca & Kos nightmares
Don’t ever want to see Xhaka or El Neny playing for Arsenal again but I know I’ll see them starting next season.
Country: England
Majority of it went on defensive signings that haven’t improved our defensive numbers. We still collapse when the pressure is on and players still make individual errors that cost us goals.
Ødegaard and Willian are literally the only attacking players we’ve signed since Arteta arrived.
Maybe
You're wrong, no?
100M went into midfield, I can't really see any improvement over Torreira, Ramsey and Douzi after that investment.
The team clearly still far from perfect 2nd half season showed alot of our players just crumble quickly new signings also showed they not finished article Ramsdale suddenly can't keep clean sheet white became bit shaky Tomi can't handle the PL intensity got injured Ødegaard still good games and bad games there no consistency yet from him Tavares look league 1 player at times. And it's 2022 we still seeing guys like holding Elneny and Cedric starting for club that want top 4 finish.
Next season its where we need to make sure the quality of squad and depth raise we got our goals this season by getting back to Europe now to improve it further target more players who can do it week in week out and not get injured.
Don't read too much about how much money spent a club like ours should spend 150m a season in today market. Aston villa can spend that
Next season its where we need to make sure the quality of squad and depth raise we got our goals this season by getting back to Europe now to improve it further target more players who can do it week in week out and not get injured.
Don't read too much about how much money spent a club like ours should spend 150m a season in today market. Aston villa can spend that
Nunowoolmez
Established Member
Arteta sometimes refers to mistakes he has made. I'd wager he is referencing the handling of some player situations.
We really didn't handle the Guendouzi situation well & he is a player that would be perfect for us right now. For what? To make an example of him? Fck me, should have just give him a bollocking & played him! Instead he let pride take over & his set of values has become the proverbial rod for our own back.
Same with Saliba, but that one less so as it can be argued that his loan season has been exactly the development he needed & showed us he is ready to compete for us. Whether he wants that is another thing entirely..
AMN & Nketiah have both been messed around. AMN was playing well, in the England set up & just won the FA Cup. That one is a bit more complicated regards players positional preferences, but he never really had any really poor games for us or let us down..
Then Auba. I'd really love to know what really went on there...
We really didn't handle the Guendouzi situation well & he is a player that would be perfect for us right now. For what? To make an example of him? Fck me, should have just give him a bollocking & played him! Instead he let pride take over & his set of values has become the proverbial rod for our own back.
Same with Saliba, but that one less so as it can be argued that his loan season has been exactly the development he needed & showed us he is ready to compete for us. Whether he wants that is another thing entirely..
AMN & Nketiah have both been messed around. AMN was playing well, in the England set up & just won the FA Cup. That one is a bit more complicated regards players positional preferences, but he never really had any really poor games for us or let us down..
Then Auba. I'd really love to know what really went on there...
