This summer, everyone wanted a striker.
First, Chelsea signed Liam Delap from Ipswich Town and João Pedro de Brighton. Then, the Arsenal signed Viktor Gyökeres from Sporting CP, and Liverpool signed Hugo Ekitike from Eintracht Frankfurt. Then, Liverpool tried to sign Alexander Isak of Newcastle, before he publicly declared that he no longer wants to play for Newcastle.
Except that Newcastle was about to sign Ekitike, a surprisingly similar player to Isak, until Liverpool jumped. Then, Newcastle did not have an Isak replacement, but I was playing for the team that was also trying to acquire Isak.
Then, Newcastle tried to get Benjamin Sesko from RB Leipzig, but the same thing happened. A bigger club, Manchester United, got involved, and Sesko was there. Of course, United would never have signed Sesko if they had landed someone like Delap, Gyökinos or Ekitike before in the window.
Someone like Atlético and Chaotic Darwin Núñez would have lit well in the transition from Eddie Howe, but Liverpool did not transfer a player to a rival of the Premier League. However, the main suitor of Núñez, Napoli, could not pay the transfer of Liverpool. and The player's salary application, so he moved to Al Hilal in Saudi Arabia.
In other words: the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia gave Liverpool € 53 million to sign a player Al Hilal that Liverpool is trying to replace with another player who plays for another team owned by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, in Newcastle.
If Isak's transfer to Liverpool will happen, it could still happen because Chelsea signed two players that Newcastle tried to sign earlier this summer, Delap and Pedro, which means that Nicolas Jackson has fallen through the hierarchical order in Chelsea and could be available for Newcastle to sign.
However, it may not happen, because Manchester United also signed the support strikers Bryan Mbeumo de Brentford and Matheus Cunha de Wolves, so Brentford does not want to lose Yane Wissa, whom Newcastle also wants, and the wolves do not want to lose Jørgen Strand Larsen, whom Newcastle also I want, but Brentford has just acquired Dango ouattara of Bournemouth, so maybe …
Meanwhile, Victor Osimhen de Napoli, who is 26 years old and finished eighth in Ballon d'O or voting two years ago, moved for 75 million euros last month, to play for Galatasaray in the Turkish league.
There has been a lot From the movement of the interconnected striker this summer, and if one more movement occurs, a lot of other movements could also happen immediately. But in the midst of all the strikers exchanging shirts this summer, there is a persistent question: did any of these teams improve?
Here are three unnamed players, along with their attack statistics last season:
• Player A: Age 22, 0.51 goals without penalty+assists for 90 minutes, 0.48 expected objectives+assists
• Player B: Age season 21, 0.42 Objectives without penalty+assists, 0.34 expected objectives+assists
• Player C: Age season 23, 0.61 goals without penalty+assists, 0.67 expected objectives+assists
Therefore, you have two prepress players that obtained and created an average number of goals or slightly below the average, and did so with a slightly worse underlying production. Then you have another player who is about to enter his best moment, who scored and created a number of goals above the average with an even better underlying production.
He probably knows where this is going: player A is Pedro, player B is Deap and player C is Jackson. And although Pedro definitely makes Jackson more in possession, I am not sure that he can make a convincing argument that he overcomes the gap in the production against the goal.
Now, this does not mean that Pedro is not better than Jackson in Chelsea, has started very well, with four goals in his first appearance, but there is not much out of the randomness of sport and the most widely human athletic performance that suggests that he will be. Delap, meanwhile, is much more a project than any of the other two, and its lowest transfer rate suggests it.
Chelsea could be better this year. However, through two games, I already suspect that it could be due to a different player from any of the new strikers. He is only 18 years old and has only started one game, but his new Brazilian end Estêvão has created 1.5 goals and combined assists, more than all but five players in the league.
On the one hand, Gyökeres has two goals in its first two openings of the Premier League. Keep that high speed, and break the record of a single season of Erling Haaland.
On the other hand, Gyökeres has tried two non -criminal shots in its first two openings of the Premier League. Keep that high speed, and the season will end with as many shots as Arsenal emergency No. 9, midfielder Mikel Merino, tried last year.
Although he could have felt safer of 27 years, Gyökeres was a massive Risk almost precisely because He is a 27 -year -old. We had not yet seen Gyökeres play in one of the five best leagues in Europe, much less play well. In addition, a great proportion of his goals for Sporting Lisboa occurred against the teams in the lower half of the Portuguese League, that is, teams that would fight against the descent in the Second Division of England.
2:10
OLley: Arteta has no excuses after Arsenal's summer firms
James Olley evaluates the hopes of Mikel Arteta for Arsenal this season after a busy transfer window.
It is still too early to say something definitive. Arsenal's performance against Manchester United in the first game was so stylistically different from anything we have seen under the manager Mikel Arteta in recent years that it seems that the team is testing something new, and perhaps it does not try to optimize its performance. There were growth pain, down and all over that game.
Through two games, Gyökeres has been quite clumsy in the ball, and has been really poor in possession, potential weaknesses that would not have been tested in Portugal. If I were trying to predict if this movement would be successful or fail, it would move the percentages a little more towards “fail” after the first two games, but only slightly.
I also believe that the first two games put all this puzzle in perspective. Arsenal was already such a good team that it is really difficult to find players that can improve the list. But since Arsenal was already such a good team, it means that its firm of out of the marquee season can try only two shots in two games, and they can still win those two games by a combined score of 6-0.
You can take those same ideas and apply them to Liverpool. When you are one of the best two or three teams in the world, it is really difficult to improve. And if you take a step back and look at Liverpool's summer, they don't even seem to be trying to improve for this season. No, all those who have signed so far are 24 years and less. They are trying to improve this team during the next five to seven seasons.
But: the strikers. For all its warts, Núñez leaves Liverpool with a rate of 0.70 non -criminal objectives+assistance for 90 minutes, backed by an elite goals rate of 0.87+expected assists. But even with all the end of the flock, 0.7 g+A per 90 is “headline in a champions league contender.”
If it weren't Darwin, then Luis Díaz was frequently playing as an impromptu striker last season, and did almost everything: he scored and created goals, progressed in the field, pressed as crazy and rarely lost possession. Going on Diaz, 28, made sense from a team construction perspective, but that does not mean that Liverpool has not lost one of the best attackers in the League either.
And then there was the impressive and tragic death of Diogo Jota. When I played regularly, he was one of the most productive strikers in the world. He has gone, too soon.
2:03
Hislop: Newcastle can react to Isak Transfer Saga vs. Liverpool
Shaka Hislop and Craig Burley planned Liverpool's visit to St. James' Park after trying to sign the Newcastle striker Alexander Isak this summer.
Liverpool became younger with the movement for Ekitike, and has two goals and a assistance in its first two games. But the movements for him and Florian Wirtz are not necessarily to improve the liverpool attack; It's about maintaining your level in the future.
If Liverpool also gets Alexander Isak, then there is a world where the manager Arne Slot solves a configuration that carries it, Wirtz, Ekitike and Mohamed Salah in the field, and works, and are almost unjustifiable. Also on paper, I could be convinced that these attackers have more talent than last year's group.
But in practice, especially with how unbalanced and dysfunctional the team has examined its first matches of this new iteration, it is difficult to see how to spend 300 million euros in two central strikers does not quickly reach a point of decreased yields.
I feel quite sure to say that Manchester United is better than last year because it is almost impossible for them to be as bad as last year. But are they going to be better for the striker they have signed?
While United signed Matheus Cunha and Mbeumo after years of career in front of the goal, both finished their possibilities of rates, it is incredibly unlikely to be repeated, each of them are attackers of the Premier League of the Premier League. They will not be part of what is the next great Manchester United team, but they will improve an attack that scored less goals than all four teams in the League last year.
As for Benjamin Sesko, the potential results are everywhere. In the FRBF database, which dates back in the early 90s, 163 players have scored and helped at least 30 goals before their 22 seasons in one of the five large leagues. In the upper part, it is Kylian Mbappé with 142. At the bottom, it is a group of players that includes Aaronon, Florent Sinama-Pongolle, Alexis Sánchez, Phillipe Coutinho, Solomon Rondón, Stephen Ireland, Nicklas Bestner and Rafael Leão.
Sesko has 34 goals+assists: the same amount as Rodrygo del Real Madrid and Cole Pale de Chelsea had at the same age, and the same as Lewis Holtby and Luka Jovic also had at the same age. The higher the list of goals+assists, the more likely a player has a great race. But despite his physical tools, Sesko, 22, has not had anywhere near the production that he had needed to have confidence that he will be a star or even a solid squad player for Manchester United.
In other words: it could be the next Luka Jovic, it could be the next Alexis Sánchez, or it could be the next Nicklas Bestner.
They lost Callum Wilson during the summer. Isak still refuses to play. And have not signed any central striker.
In the long run, if Isak stays, he starts playing and starts playing as his former self, then they will be better than they are at this time. But as they have found in the player after the player, first to add to an attack led by Isak, and then, after their star striker pressed for an exit, they have created a situation for themselves where the best scenario is that they stepped on whatever for four months … and then potentially do all this in January again.
While all these other clubs have a lot of uncertainty around their investments in advance, Newcastle is the only club where we can say: summer has definitely worsened them.
