First, I need to clarify something about my article a few days ago which some people are taking as me “slating Torreira.” I love Torreira and wrote an article for The Arsenal Review when Arsenal signed him which busted the narrative that he’s more of a Cazorla-type than a Kante-type.
I think having a Kante-type would put Arsenal in contention for the title and in my article, I predicted Torreira would be a Kante-type. Im short, I desperately WANT Torreira to be our Kante.
My problem isn’t with the player. My problem is specifically with the narrative that he’s already there, that he’s the muscle in the midfield, and that he’s made Arsenal better defensively. He absolutely hasn’t done any of those things (YET). I’m not slating Torreira. I’m slating the NARRATIVE. If and when he settles, gets that extra step, and learns to read the speed of the Premier League better, he will THEN be the player I see him becoming. He’s not there yet is all that I’m saying.
And when I wrote it I didn’t think it was a controversial opinion. I still don’t.
Ok, now on to an actual controversial opinion. The papers are reporting today that the Football Association plans to use Brexit to force English clubs to have a minimum of 12 English players.
Perhaps I’m jumping the gun a bit here, because they haven’t announced an actual plan and are only just slated to have discussions about how Brexit will effect football starting today. But the idea of forcing teams to have 12 Homegrown players is simply so stupid that I thought it might be helpful to get out in front of the debate.
First, the only thing that an affirmative action plan for English players will do is irrationally raise the price of English players. Chelsea paid £35m for Danny Drinkwater. Comparable non-English players typically don’t get purchased. Better players, like Torreira (SEE ABOVE PLEASE), cost less than £25m! Say this out loud: Chelsea paid more for Danny Drinkwater than they did for N’Golo Kante.
When Drinkwater transferred from Leicester to Chelsea transfermarkt listed his value as 9m Euros. Chelsea paid almost 38m Euros for him. He’s not the only player, this happens all the time to English/British players. Luke Shaw just signed a new deal with Man U and is on £10m a year. This is a player who has spent most of his career either injured or out of shape. But he’s English and he can dribble a little bit so…
Imagine how much Jadon Sancho or Reiss Nelson would cost a team in transfer fees right now? Now double that. That’s what English players are going to cost teams in a few years if the FA restricts foreign players.
It’s a problem of supply and demand. The supply of talented English/British players is very low. If you artificially increase the demand, it will artificially increase the price.
But ultimately, I’m a Gooner. This doesn’t hurt us too badly. I think Arsenal can afford to buy English players at a premium.
It would mean that Arsenal would have probably hung on to players like Aaron Ramsey, Theo Walcott, and Oxlade-Chamberlain. It means that guys like Chambers, Holding, and maybe even Jenkinson would play more. But the same would be true for all of the clubs in the Premier League. They would all be fielding players of that caliber.
This proposal just kills little clubs. Their best British players will be strip-mined by the big clubs and since they will be limited in the number of foreign players they can buy (which they are currently able to buy at cut-rate prices) they will have to field some truly poor English players. Basically, this already happens but by making it a requirement to have 12 instead of just 8, you’re just exacerbating the problem.
I also wonder what this would do to television viewership. I can’t help but think this would make the League less exciting and lower the quality. I’m still going to be a Gooner but I think younger fans are less interested in clubs as a club and more interested in the players. I wonder if those fans would go to leagues like the Bundesliga?
The Homegrown rule was a comically bad idea implemented in a moronic way which only served to artificially boost the price of certain British/Homegrown players. Now take that rule and increase it by another 50%. You aren’t going to create an English World Cup title out of that. You’re just going to get Carl Jenkinson on £150k a week.
Right, that’s about all for today. One last thing, not at all controversially, the Premier League will start using VAR to get calls utterly wrong starting next season.
I sure as hell hope this possible shit show doesn’t see the light of day. The Brexit thing I mean. About Torreira, it’s funny cuz I see him making us better attacking wise rather than defensively, which is a surprise. Personally, and you can call me crazy, all I care about is outscoring our opponents so I’d take a 4-2 win over a tidy 1-0
Completely with you on the Brexit and homegrown player mess. The big, rich clubs can probably figure this out. But there’s a huge risk it will just create more inequality.
Wonder if FA restrictions on the numbers of foreign players might also provide additional impetus for the formation of the proposed European Super League, which I find to be a quite horrible idea.
That’s a really good question.
The Super League is not an inevitability and if it were to come to fruition it wouldn’t last long. Rationally, who is driving it’s formation? The Italian teams and PSG. What financial incentive would there be for the five English teams? The Super League TV contract would be richer than the Premier League and Champions League ones… but combined? No way. The English domestic clubs would retaliate (because they stand to lose big revenue on the next Premier League deal) by refusing to play FA Cup or League Cup games against the traitor clubs. A club like Arsenal would be perpetually mid-table with no hope of ever winning a Super League title or Cup – how would that go over with fans long term – when will the novelty of getting smashed by Bayern Munich four times a year wear off? There are sooo many more logistical problems.
I don’t see the Super League ever happening. It’s a threat the big clubs in England are going along with at the moment to use as leverage in negotiating their share of the pie at the next Premier League tv deal. And no English teams, who’s left? A ten team league. Boring.
You’re making two assumptions here. That the SL would replace the local leagues, and that the PL’s TV deals will keep rising.
Even the Juventus proposal says the SL will be in addition to the existing leagues, where the SL clubs can agree to restrictions such as fielding more U21 players or something.
Plus, if it’s about getting the other clubs on board, then it becomes about sharing the wealth, so maybe a rotational system of invitation to the SL for a few years, the greater chance of winning the PL/SerieA/LaLiga, and greater transfer fees received from the biggest clubs would all help. It’s all doable, and I think it is inevitable because there will be interest in it, despite the cynicism, and money talks.
The greatest impediment to it, IMO, is not the cynicism or the opposition of the local leagues/Uefa, but the clubs’ ability to get together and form their own league structure. (I venture that’s what Gazidis will be doing in addition to his role at Milan) I see a corollary with Formula 1, where the biggest manufacturers threatened a breakaway but couldn’t come to an understanding, and F1 made some changes.
But football is bigger than F1, and the potential reward is greater. Especially once you consider that a few years down the road clubs in the Middle East, USA, China, India, and Africa will be ripe for investments in order to create a World League/tournament worthy of its name.
I’m also sceptical. It always seemed to me more like a ploy to create leverage for UEFA to shore up the CL which they did in parts. There’s virtually zero chance national leagues will be abandonded,
As far as I understood the plot, the intention of the big clubs to skip UEFA and to do that new league themselves. if this is the case, they will have to exit all UEFA competitions, and that include the local leagues.
For the moment, I don’t see as an option UEFA to agree to run such super-league themselves, because this would kill their Champions League franchise. Maybe times will change, but for the time being UEFA looks more focused on expanding CL and LE, rather than completely reshaping its setup.
For clubs to exclude from Uefa competitions would mean quitting the local leagues? Is that true? Uefa don’t run those leagues. They would try to exert pressure on the league to exclude those clubs, but that’s not quite the same thing.
The local leagues are part of UEFA and have to follow the UEFA rules.
You made a good point on how younger fans are more a player fan than a club fan. Ronaldo transfer to Juve showed just that. I am the same when it comes to my relatively less interested sports. Not only being young, It’s also much easier and takes less time to follow a player than to follow a club as a whole.
OK, Let me be the one to slate, if that is actually the term for a measured approach to a player who I’d much rather have in the famous red and white kit than not.
Torrierra:
Is he “the destroyer” we’ve all wanted since a certain Frenchman left us many years? No, and the Premier League game has evolved from those days tot he point that while it’s a nice-to-have, it’s no longer essential to be a top team.
Is he the consummate playmaker like my god Andrea Pirlo or my demigod Santi Cazorla? Of course not. There will only ever be two of those.
He can however be That Guy who can be the bridge between those two kinds of play.
He’s only turning 23 as of this February – all his best years are still well ahead of him.
The kid is a livewire, an Energizer bunny who can run circles around the opposition. He can tackle like a beast, he sees s^%t happening all over the pitch. He can string a pass. He compensates for his size in good ways. He gets stuck in. He’s neither of two but he’s more Kante than Drinkwater and he’ll only get better.
So f^&k you Lucas Torrierra, you’ve been slated.
I would prefer, if they do go the nativist route on quotas, to do something like require that a minimum of three homegrown players are in the starting line-up every game, rather than just see clubs accumulate homegrown players to fill out the bench. Sort of a reverse on the old Serie A rule (pre-EU) that a team could only field 3 foreigners at a time. I remember the good old days of AC Milan’s Dutch (van Basten, Guillit and Rijkaard) vs. Inter Milan’s Germans (Klinsmann, Brehme and Matthaus).
“I think having a Kante-type would put Arsenal in contention for the title”
Disagree. The gap with City is huge. It would take at least a couple more signings. There are simply too many holes in the team right now: centerbacks, leftback, deep-lying playmaker (Xhaka and Guendouzi are not at the level of a Cazorla), and the need for more consistent creative players (Ozil, Iwobi, Mkhitaryan don’t perform as consistently as a Silva or an Eriksen).
Kante is listed at 5’6″ and 150 lbs, Torreira at 5’5″ and 135 lbs. Neither player is “muscular” in the traditional sense.
According to Squawka in 1000+ minutes for Kante and just shy of 800 for Torreira, the Uruguayan has twice as many interceptions (10 vs 20), more aerials won (15 vs 21), one less successful tackle (13 vs 12) after attempting one less tackle (40 vs 39) AND completed just as many dribbles (4 vs. 5) while being dispossessed much less (10 vs 3).
Where Kante has been better is actually that he is playing much more offensively thus far this season. He has already created 15 chances, that’s only 5 more than Ozil, and 13 shots, that’s actually 8 more than Ozil (how crazy is that? Lad never shoots). So I don’t get the need for narrative busting, certainly based on objective measures Torreira has been a more productive defender this season than Kante whose defensive chops need no introduction. If you want to debate the value of these numbers for comparison of individuals, fine, but then we are also debating the value of any similar comparisons to Coquelin or whomever else.
And LT is only 22 in a new league on a new team, and playing a position the guy who defined it hadn’t mastered until his Celta Vigo/RealMadrid days.
Defensive mid is probably to most difficult position to learn well and there hasn’t been a player younger than 24 to truly own it.
Arsenal will most likely finish some 20-25 points below City so I seriously doubt one player , even if it were Kante , could close the gap , Tim.
As a matter of fact, after spending gazillion dollars on probably one of the two best defenders and a top three keeper in the league, neither will Liverpool.
Until Guardiola gets bored and leaves or City run out of money, the league is a forgone conclusion.
Well, you’ve certainly been consistent on VAR but I think it’s brilliant news (and the only bit of it for Brexit bashed Brits today), leading to far fewer bad decisions overall and introducing an added drama to key points in games. And, in the transition period while players adjust, to buckets of penalty goals as corner kick skulduggery and thuggery is picked up.
Agree with you, however, that bonus payments to Scudamore and increasing home grown player quotas are stinkers (…along with cliff edges and referenda of the first or second variety).
Mate, you make some good points but I don’t think that it is just English players that cost a premium. Remember Gylfi Sigurðsson went to Everton for £50million while Theo Walcott went to the same club for £20m. They were of a similar age with Theo joining later. I think we have a problem at Arsenal where we are excessively critical of our players and not objective about their performances – Xhaka (yes, I love him but, this is true) and Mustafi are possibly the most obvious examples and even at times Ramsey. After systematically and relentlessly lambasting our players on all media platforms, we wonder why get £20m/can’t sell for our players and other clubs get £50m. We all know that if Sigurðsson or Drinkwater played for Arsenal, there is no way would get £34m or £50m for them. After each and every game we draw (not even lose but just draw) their weaknesses would be mercilessly highlighted and the only point of conversation, irrespective of any good they may have done; creating a destructive narrative. We need to be objective about our players, which means appreciating and emphasising their strengths and weaknesses. If the fans don’t value the players no one else will.
I’m sure how English clubs could be part of a European Super League once the UK (but really driven by England) exists Europe. It would presumably make the logistics of such participation more complex?
Going the other way, Chivas, in Mexico is a traditionally an all-Mexican team who are competitive. Who wants to see only players from other countries all the time? Not me…
Anyway, the super clubs, if they leave to form a superleague can f-off, including the Arsenal, if the greedy bastard sTan the man goes that direction, he will be the one to profit from it. The Arsenal will be at the bottom as the money will be siphoned off.
England has such a small population compared to a country such as Brazil, that the cost would most likely always be higher for a premium British player at the top level.
If this is related to Brexit, it would be worse than just an increase from 8 to 12 HG players. Players like Emi Martinez, or Cesc Fabregas (two different ends of the spectrum) would not qualify as Homegrown (I’m presuming they won’t get in at age 16)
As of now, aren’t the current UK immigration rules for football that anyone outside of EU gets a work permit provided his transfer fee is over 10m? I don’t see why Brexit should lead to the FA/PL changing squad rules. The richest league in the world will be able to afford buying 18 players from abroad, as long as the current rules stay.
But I think the authorities are political enough, stupid enough and have enough hubris to do it. England are riding high on some impressive performances from their youth teams and I think they will assume this will last. They will also assume that just because they have the most watched league, that will continue in perpetuity.
I think it is important to distinguish between “Homegrown Rule” and a Brexit fallout.
The homegrown rule is an internal rule of the Premier League (or FA, whatever) aiming to achieve some internal objective (let’s say, to give the chance of more local kids to make it on the highest levels of English football). It is entirely up to them to define which person is “homegrown” and how many :homegrown” players are allowed in a club.
Brexit is something completely different. It is a nation-wide change of treatment of foreigners and their access to labor market in the UK. The UK government doesn’t define “homegrown”, it gives working visas. So the flow of foreign (and this includes EU-nationals) players will most likely be reduced, like in all of the other industries. So in the end players like Emi Martinez or Bellerin might not even be allowed to come and stay, in order to become “homegrown”. A problem we have currently marginally felt when players like Takuma Asano and Kelechi Nwakali were loaned-out in Europe due to UK visa issues will be much, much more common. I can only hope that the United Kingdom (and whatever of it’s agencies is responsible for handling out work visas) will apply lower criteria for footballers, but you never know…
That being said, what can the PL do with the fact that there will be reduced quantity of foreign players? They can try to re-balance it. If they leave it all to the market, it is clear that the top clubs will scoop the top foreign-players. the prices for them will increase, but they will handle it. The quality will probably decrease, but it will be the same for all of them (the top-clubs), so the competition between them will remain fair.
But the regular (I don;t want to call them “small”) clubs will suffer. Fulham, for example, will not be able to sign Jean-Michelle Seri because of much higher price, competition from the top-clubs, or simply because he won’t get that visa thing.
So by reducing the amount of allowed foreigners per club, the PL may try to actually do the only thing that is in their power: to re-balance more fair the shrinking numbers of those players coming in the country. And I don’t see it as that bad thing.
If the club wanted to a work permit for Asano and Nwakali they had the option of paying 10m for them to obtain the WP. This was brought in because the ‘special talent exemption’ was arbitrary. I don’t see why Brexit will change this in any substantial form, but we’re all only guessing.
If indeed the league wants ‘fairness’ they could also limit spending, bring in transfer/wage caps etc. (They would no longer be bound by European trade rules either)
But the league sells itself on the basis of their spending , and increasing the HG quota would ensure that spending says high, with or without foreign transfers, and I suspect that’s what they really want.
“If the club wanted to a work permit for Asano and Nwakali they had the option of paying 10m for them to obtain the WP. ”
To be honest, I am not familiar with this 10M rule, so you might be right, but in any case the youth prospects brought in the club at early age will be impacted. We cannot pay 10M for players like Jon Toral and Hugo Keito, hoping that in the end you will find one Cesc.
“If indeed the league wants ‘fairness’…”
I might sound naive, but what else could they want? The aim of the league is to make money, they make money by offering high quality competition, and helping out the more modest clubs is also part of that. This is why the TV money are spent relatively fairly at the moment.
Yes, it will affect youth transfers, and hence the HG rule, which in any case was defined the way it is because of the EU. That’s why I was saying its impact will be greater than just a 50% increase in HGs needed. The pool will not stay as is, but likely shrink, even as the demand will be artificially increased further.
So in terms of Brexit. Either the foreign players will become harder to buy and more expensive or they won’t, depending on how the rules are formed. But what will definitely happen by increasing HG quotas is that even the domestic players will become more expensive. How does that help the regular clubs, ie clubs with less spending power, maintain competitive advantage? I don’t get it.
I guarantee that if this goes ahead they will point to young English talent like Jadon Sancho and Reiss Nelson and say it proves that all they need is a chance, while ignoring that training and playing with and against good players from all over the world is what makes them better.
Fairness (competitiveness) vs quality is their tradeoff. I think increasing quotas would be taking the worst of both worlds. But it does keep transfer spends high and I am cynical enough to see that as one of their prime motivations.
Drinkwater would go from costing 35m to 70m to 35m. In the short term his price would skyrocket, but in the longer term teams will have less money, because the league will be weaker and poorer. It’s just 35m would be a bigger part of a team’s budget.