Claudius
We have certain players we rely on tactically and others we don't.
For a few seasons our tactical foundations have been stable: keeper, central defence, our 6 and our right flank plus Martinelli. Raya/Ramsdale, Gabriel, Saliba, White, Partey/Rice/Jorginho, Ødegaard, Saka, and Martinelli.
The likes of Havertz, Jesus, Trossard, Zinchenko, Xhaka, Calafiori, Tomiyasu have been fit into this structure rather than forming it. Because of their traits, quality, enigma or durability they don't hold the same importance. The first list of players are the personnel who have defined our game model: which of course can and should change.
My framework (formerly "RST"):
- we should emphasise signing and retaining either bona fide ready-made elite players, or immense young talents to execute the game model
- we exploit any Starlet level players from the academy, obviously Nwaneri and Skelly are an amazing gift
- we go for high quality, fully developed value buys in the form of specialists and wild cards à la Trossard where we need to plug holes
- we neglect no position but always target the areas of greatest potential bang for our buck
Signing Havertz when we did looks like a mistake today. We'd be better off if our centre forward position was locked into our game model. Instead we've got an enigmatic Raumdeuter who's been dropped for the constantly injured chaos agent, and now is back.
The vacuum at centre forward has increased both Martinelli's tactical workload and the pressure on Saka.
In this framework Trossard is a Substitute and Skelly is a Starlet and neither are key to the game model. White is a Starter but he looks like he might be on the way out due to physical decline and the rise of Timber, who looks a great signing as a Starlet today.
I think we should sign:
- a centre forward Starter who can become part of the game model, while we retain Havertz as a unique utility Substitute
- a left winger who offers greater goal threat than Martinelli and has reduced tactical importance due to the centre forward, or just play Trossard there
- a 6 because we're in deep shit given Partey and Jorginho are ageing out
Last summer didn't go too well with the benefit of hindsight.
Calafiori was a dodgy signing. He's good but he's brittle and he's come to us in the no-man's-land of age and quality between Starlet and Starter. He's not part of our tactical core. We have Skelly too.
Merino was a dodgy signing. He should be part of our tactical core but he doesn't look good enough or settled enough. We've pretty much signed a Jorginho replacement a year early (not his traits, just his Substitute role padding the midfield numbers).
Our recruitment would look more efficient if last summer we had:
- sold Martinelli and signed someone like Olisé
- passed on signing Merino and Calafiori in summer
And right now we:
- were about to sign Vlahović, Šeško or a similar tall central forward who can act as a focal point, even for an obscene amount (or we had done this in summer)
- were truly lining up Zubimendi, or were making a reactive winter midfield signing to cope with injury
Then we'd currently be looking at starting Vlahović, and benching Havertz so as to bring him on and have him do the very modest bit part Merino has been doing.
Defensive midfield is the position where we'll most need to protect our squad's level, and centre forward is where we've left ourselves the biggest room to improve, because we signed Havertz and he's a good player who's no good to build around tactically. We've been a bit confused not to act on either issue.
