Arsenal are ready to overhaul their plans behind the scenes and move to a new analytics model, according to The Sun.
What are the latest Arsenal rumours?
The report claims the North London giants are prepared to swap their scouting network for an analytics model and rip up scouting networks across the globe in favour of relying on data instead.
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As a result, The Sun suggest fans are unlikely to see major deals - such as the £72m signing of Nicolas Pepe in the summer of 2019 - as they look for targets at least somewhat under the radar in an effort to improve their recruitment policy.
How involved is Edu in these kind of transfers?
Speaking to The Evening Standard in September, technical director Edu shared some insight into how such a strategy works behind the scenes.
“I want to work with less people,” he said.
“I want to work with StatDNA a lot more, which we have internally here at the club and is very important.
“The people I want to work with, I want them to be very close to me. I want to create a group of people working together.
“I don’t want individual people working in one area or for one country. I want a group working together. Less people with much more responsibilities."
Within that report, it is claimed summer signing Gabriel Magalhaes was made a top target as they used data to search for a suitable left-footed central defender and, while this has been a difficult campaign for Arsenal as a whole, the Brazilian has adapted to life in England well, at least on an individual basis.
Indeed, back in November, Sky Sports pundit Jamie Redknapp waxed lyrical about the player following a win over Manchester United at Old Trafford.
"He’s a leader and the way that he wants to play, and to press high up the pitch, he loves to do that," he said (via football.london).
"He loves to win challenges, he got booked early in the game, but I think he still kept his composure, made good tackles and I like the way that he’s aggressive.
"He wants to win the ball, he’s composed as well.
"He looks like the real deal."
How is data used in football transfers?
Given the chaotic nature of risk involved in buying players as Arsenal have experienced, spending huge money for little in return, placing a greater reliance on data has been a way in which clubs battle against that.
A report in The Independent in 2017 quoted Rory Campbell, founder of C&N Sporting Risk as saying: "there is the most opportunity to gain a competitive advantage if you use it right. This is why poker players make more money than chess players. Because in chess the best player almost always wins, and in poker there’s variance and luck, and that’s a good thing.”
“There is a big difference between data and analytics. Data are pieces of information – not necessarily numbers – about things that happened in the past. Analytics is using that information to help better predict the future. So if the data doesn’t have predictive utility, it’s useless. I don’t want to know happened in the past because it happened, I want to be better at predicting what is going to happen in the future.”
How many changes are there likely to be at Arsenal this summer?
Interestingly enough, The Sun also claimed back in February that manager Mikel Arteta was prepared to sell a number of players in order to help fund signings of his own this summer.
With that in mind, and the apparent changes on an operational basis, this looks to be a busy summer for the club.