There’s an article/interview/conversation by Dennis Bergkamp on the BBC this morning and it’s a lot. It’s like a cover letter for a job interview which doesn’t exist, which he wants to invent, and which he’s not really even sure he wants to do.
And given that it’s a transcript of a conversation it’s also a stream of consciousness piece where he jumps from topic to topic: hitting on how important it is to practice, how the game has changed, and why he doesn’t fully trust the stats. And of course, he’s even got a bit about “the kids these days” and how they don’t get to play enough football because those darn video games.
It’s a brain dump of sorts and when you get a brain dump from one of the best players in the history of the game it’s always a fascinating pile to pick through.
Just to be clear, I don’t disagree with anything he says (even the stuff about too many distractions). And his critiques of stats are right on: there are a ton of things that stats don’t tell us*. And I got a huge chuckle when he argued back with Wenger saying that an 80% Dennis Bergkamp is still insanely valuable:
I had a discussion with Arsene once about them, and he said to me, because I was in my 30s: ‘I can see from your stats that your level is dropping after 60 or 70 minutes, that’s why I take you off most of the time.’
I said: ‘OK, boss, but your statistics don’t show that even at 80% I can make the important pass before the goal.’
DB10 also points to Firmino as a great example of a player who doesn’t stuff the stats-box but who you can watch play and see why he’s so important to the team. And he’s right!
Last season at Liverpool, Firmino made just 2.08 final 1/3 passes, 1.05 passes into the penalty area, 1.48 key passes, and a career low 3.13 progressive passes on an average of 108 yards forward for Liverpool. He scored 9 goals and had 8 assists which isn’t bad but when you look at someone like de Bruyne who led the League with 7.09 shot creating actions per90 last season and there’s Firmino in 58th place with 2.83 you should be asking yourself, what else is going on here? and what am I missing or what are the stats missing?
Of course, Dennis Bergkamp also does say that he was relieved that Kevin de Bruyne won PFA player of the year last season. And Kevin de Bruyne absolutely stuffs the stats!
As stats folks we do ask these questions. So, it’s always odd to me (and extremely annoying) when I publish a stats article and go to great lengths to illustrate in the story that stats don’t tell the whole story only to have someone invariably say “yahbbut statsdonttellthewholestory”.
And this is the thing right here. Arsenal are after Houssem Aouar – very much so with multiple credible reports – and when I look at his stats I see.. Firmino. I don’t mean a Firmino-type of player, I mean a player whose stats (other than dribbling) don’t really stand out.
I know that there’s a radar from two years ago which shows lots of very filled in sections and so he looks like a really killer player. I know because every time I mention his stats not looking great people share it to me and say “but did you see this for when he played under..”
But then there’s this radar as well:
I’m not posting these radars to say that either of these stats folks are wrong but rather how this illustrates that which stats you pick are just as important as the stats themselves.
This morning I also heard Julien Laurens compare Aouar to de Bruyne, saying that he could be Arsenal’s de Bruyne. That’s some incredible praise for the Frenchman, though the step up from where he’s at right now – a combined 10 xA over the last three seasons – to where de Bruyne is – he had 18 xA last season alone – is massive.
I think it might even be a bit too much of a leap. But, he could be our Firmino – not in the “plays as a false 9, collects the ball and orchestrates the final assault” way but in the “does a lot of things that just don’t show up in the stats-sheet” sense.
Aouar’s dribbling is fantastic and while his long passing has tailed off a bit over the last two seasons (indubitably because of his change of position/manager), his turnover rates have gone up, while his defensive stats have plummeted, he’s still an exceptionally gifted footballer. And frankly, I would take a 19 year old who can complete 80% long passes all day. And if that same guy has an eye for throughballs and can dribble? Sign me up.
I also have to admit that the billion dollar multinational corporation who seem eager to spend millions on a player, probably have looked into this player in an extremely detailed way. Arsenal Football Club won’t have just “gone on fbref and had a goosee and tut tut at his progressive passes per90”.
Over the years of working with stats and seeing how players look after they come over to Arsenal it’s been interesting to see which ones have done well and which ones haven’t. I have been a big supporter of Nicolas Pepe and picked him on this blog last year as the wide player I most wanted Arsenal to sign (well, 2nd to Jadon Sancho but that was never going to happen). And I have to admit that he’s not quite hit the highs that I expected**. So, it’s been a good year of reflecting on stats and how to interpret them.
No matter what happens with this player – and I feel like this deal is going to fall through because we are dallying – if he signs for Arsenal I’ll be one of the first to get excited and to stay excited. Because Arsenal need quality in midfield and from what I can tell, he’s a quality player.
*Please for the love of the gods don’t make the bikini analogy.
**One major reason is the lack of playing time and amount of the ball he is seeing in forward areas. At Lille he was basically THE man. Here at Arsenal he’s expected to contribute to the team in a ton of ways, not least of which is to make the final pass to Auba.
This is part of what makes football magical. How many insanely great strikers are better than Firmino. How many can walk into his role and perform better both individually and for the team.
This reminds me of Newcastle’s tricky winger. You watch him and expect more each match but he just doesn’t do much yet ball hogs.
The unknowns basically. We can’t be all knowing. Such is life and it’s beautiful.
I just wonder how will the rest of the transfer window pan out.
As Tim said, we aren’t getting Partey. Atletico don’t seem desperate for cash (partially because we offer them a super convenient loan-with-option for Torreira), the player doesn’t seem to be interested enough to rock the boat from inside, and at the end Arsenal will not hand the 50m required (all upfront, cash).
Which is all observed closely by Lyon. They know how desperate are Arsenal. They know that we have to buy a player, and that their player is the only one left on our list. So they wait, and lift the price higher.
And in the end Arsenal are forced to make a 50m purchase in a corona-deflated market. Or they simply refuse, buy no one, and finally decide to give Emile Smith Rowe a chance.
Just by watching though, Pepe looks awful. Really disappointing. No sign of any particular ability in open play.
“It’s like a cover letter for a job interview which doesn’t exist, which he wants to invent, and which he’s not really even sure he wants to do.”
Yes, that’s exactly how I read it. He sounds like he is pitching for a job and making it pretty clear what he thinks the job should or shouldn’t involve. Did it say he hadn’t worked for a couple of years? I seem to recall him working for the youth set up at Ajax. Did that all come to an end? A fabulous footballer. It would be tempting to think he must have a lot to offer as a coach, but that doesn’t always follow. Some of Arsenal’s best coaches had pretty ordinary playing careers. Pat Rice, John Cartwright, Don Howe weren’t world class players by any means. They certainly knew how to coach, though.
Regarding Emile Smith Rowe, assuming he’s fit again, I would certainly be looking to give him a chance. He plays in the part of the pitch where we are currently lacking.
You may have seen this already but an interesting article on Arsenal’s shooting problems
https://nograssintheclouds.substack.com/p/arsenal-still-have-one-huge-fundamental
Gonna save everyone the trouble of reading post match reviews and just spell out the fan reaction for all the possible score lines:
0-0: Arsenal so boring
0-1: Arsenal so boring and our players suck
0-2: Arsenal so boring and our players suck and we can’t defend
0-3: turned off the game to watch the election coverage, passive aggressively tweeted something
0-4: Never turned the game on, instead argued on Twitter about how many Arsenal players could start for the women’s’ team
1-0: Yabbut Auar and Partey……!!!!!!!
One thing that stats don’t pick up very well is complementarity – in other words some players play better with certain other players and not as well with others. There are a multitude of reasons for this, but they include factors such as time playing/training together, playing styles, cultural reasons, etc
Reminds me of an ice hockey example…..The coach Brian Bemmel came to the Vancouver Cannucks and built an excellent team that took them to the Stanley cup finals. He then went to the Toronto Maple Leafs and could not replicate the success and one theory is that he just did not gel as well with the management and players over there. He had less complimentarity with them.
Put Firminio with another set of players and his stats may go up but he might be less impressive.
The implication for statistical analysis is that, when assessing the suitability/effectiveness of a player you need to be careful about inferences based on simply the analysis of the individual. You want to include as many factors as possible, including those not directly related to the player, but weight them in some way (like in a regression analysis). They are presumably doing a lot of this at StatDNA. A problem with young players like Aouar is that there is less data and therefore more uncertainty, so there’s more risk involved in any transaction.
Or you could just ask Denis!
That’s an interesting point. Immediately I thought of Coutinho. Never was he worth £140mil but for a while, in that Liverpool setup, he did. In the same way Firmino is currently.
Couldn’t agree more, my good doctor! It’s how players “combine” that counts. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. I won’t bore the readership with another history lesson, but I have lost count of the number of times great partnerships between fairly ordinary players get broken up because the club has sought to bring a new shiny player in to replace one of them. Very often doesn’t work at all.
Can’t believe I watched the Carabao game. Genuinely one of the worst games of football I’ve watched in a while.
Cheer up, we beat Liverpool, again!
Yes, that is nice.
On the plus side, it did appear that the team worked on breaking the high press. Also, Leno had a great game!
My view on Auar is that he is a sort of glue guy that holds a team together in a technical sense. This is a very raw, uninformed view that mostly comes from my perception of what I believe Mikel Arteta believes the team needs, plus a pinch of the little I know about the player: He’s quick, technically adept, dribbly and creative. None of those are adjectives we can apply to recent iterations of our midfield. But much more importantly, he’s a guy who I believe the boss will charge with being the technical leader Ozil was supposed to be. He will be the conductor at the heart of things, making the team tick, and occasionally supplying some individual end-product too. He may not be a 90 on FIFA in any one category, but I do think he will be the guy on this team who can turn out of tight spaces, knit moves together, always available for a pass, who draws fouls, and keeps the team on the front foot. A sort of attacking engine room, if you will. I think that’s the sort of thing Tim’s getting at with the Firmino comp. I’m going reach into my hat of Arsenal comps and pull out… some of you might hate this but he was a fabulous player for us… Alex Hleb. Prime Alex Hleb would make a world of difference for this Arsenal team in an attacking sense. Let’s hope we get our man.
As Arsenal manager, Mikel Arteta is unbeaten in all cup matches. There, I’ve just gone and jinxed him now, haven’t I?
Err we lost to the Greeks in EL
Am I the only one who really wants to hear the ‘bikini analogy’?
Something about a plan going t!ts up?
nope.
“I also have to admit that the billion dollar multinational corporation who seem eager to spend millions on a player, probably have looked into this player in an extremely detailed way.”
I’m really not sure about this.
I remember Xhaka being hailed as a ‘tough tackling’ defensive midfielder (by Michael Cox! no less)* before Wenger came out and said he’s “not a natural defender”. I remember Pepe being a “very good player”**, before Emery said he actually wanted Zaha.
There has been a long disconnect between recruitment and manager, with the manager getting some of his preferences, but also a lot of random opportunistic recruitment. This season, if you’re that serious about Aouar (and that cash-strapped), why recruit Willian?
I have a feeling that after Lyon’s 2020-21 revenue projections came in (no CL + COVID), Juninho called up Edu and said we’re looking to move players, we can let you have some on a discount. Of course in reality, Lyon doesn’t do discounts.
Feels v similar to when Madrid said we need to offload somebody, we’ll just tell you who in a second, and so we landed Ozil on deadline day. In both cases we already had a lot of very-good-if-not-world-class creative options, the priorities should’ve been elsewhere, and the quality of the new player was/is unlikely to offset the balance issues.
* https://www.fourfourtwo.com/features/michael-cox-how-granit-xhaka-has-justified-wengers-confidence-euro-2016
** https://www.goal.com/en/news/pepe-is-a-very-good-player-emery-praises-arsenal-target-as/11ydyvumtehrs1f120jx7l7n4m
Thanks Tim – just catching up and hadn’t seen that Bergkamp article.
Is he applying for the Llungberg role? The guy that progresses players from between Youth and Senior squad?
But I caught a hint of ‘managers want to control too much/ don’t want individualistic players’ from Bergkamp’s piece and Arteta may be that too (I believe Devlin here was suggesting as much).
tbh I’d simply see if he wanted to come to training as Pires did and see whether he’s worth a wage based on what he says and sees…