If you’re inclined to believe some of the noises that were emerging yesterday from some of the more well-informed ITKs, then today is Zubi Day, with the club set to announce the Spaniard as their latest signing from Real Sociedad. It makes sense, really, after they made a fairly significant announcement on the women’s side yesterday with Chloe Kelly officially confirming herself as an Arsenal player. I’m not a regular watcher of the women, but the increase in coverage on Sky has enabled me to become a little bit more invested in the team and this feels like a significant signing. Last summer Man City were benefitting from the issues Viv Miedema was facing in not getting game time under Jonas Eidevall and they got themselves a class player on a free transfer which stung a bit for a lot of Arsenal fans. But this summer it appears to be our turn; a quality wide player who is an England international and a hero with her goal for the national team who won the Euro’s back in 2022. So there’s a player with pedigree who has signed for The Arsenal and that’s quite a coup for the club. So for me it makes sense for us as one club to be able to make a song and a dance about it yesterday. You don’t want any announcement for a men’s team signing to overshadow that arrival for the women.
But today is another day and I suspect we will finally get that announcement. The chain of events will probably be an Arsenal and Sociedad jointly timed announcement, perhaps from the La Real side with the player saying some kind of goodbye message posted on some socials at some stage thereafter I suspect. I doubt it will be as amazing and heartfelt as the one that Jurrien Timber posted on the Ajax site when he left, but I’m sure it will be one that expresses gratitude and love for his boyhood club.
For us, we’re getting ourselves somebody who is an interceptor, a ball winner and who was in the 92nd percentage quartile of La Liga players last season for clearances. At five foot 11 he’s not the tallest guy in the world, but I was surprised to learn that he’s in the 85th percentage of players in the league who won aerial duels. He’s a man who loves a challenge, loves to be at the heart of the build up of moves and will look to play progressive passing football through lines from deep. I’m not sure whether I’ve seen enough of him to know if he’s a quarter back though; so I don’t know if we’re going to get somebody playing long diags to the likes of Martinelli or Saka from deep to spring quick traps on opponents, but we will get somebody who will look forward at every opportunity. This is no Denilson-style crab master; Zubimendi is somebody always looking forward and always looking to get the ball into that space in between the midfield and defence of opponents.
I think Martin Odegaard is going to love him.
Last season we saw Odegaard picking the ball up a little deeper at times and I think that takes him away from where he does the most damage. Odegaard in between the midfield and defence of whoever we are playing is where I think he can do real damage. Think about the goal towards the end of the season against Bournemouth; Odegaard popped up in between their lines, he reverse-passed it to a diagonally-running Rice, who ironically took it beyond Kepa and then slot it home. Now imagine what it might mean if Odegaard is given specific instructions to occupy those positions more, because Zubimendi is going to be looking for him. That’s what I think (and hope) we’re going to get from our incoming Spanish international. There’s also the small matter of them having played together whilst Odegaard was on loan.
Don’t get me wrong, the clearances, interceptions, duels won, etc are all important. If we know anything about Arteta he gets upset when he loses a duel! So we know that the defensive side of his game will be important. But I think this move is Arteta’s way of trying to speed us up through the park this coming season. Partey was a master at receiving the ball, quickly turning from his man and then shuffling out into space so he could release it, but I felt at times he spent a little too long getting the ball moving. Towards the end of the season especially, we saw one or two too many touches and I think that contributed to the general feeling amongst the fanbase that we were too slow in build up. It was all too methodical and sometimes we needed to go from back to front more quickly. My hope is that this signing will allow us to do that more from deep and if it means we aren’t seeing Odegaard pick the ball up and travelling with it from halfway inside our box (because he’s already on the halfway line when the ball turns over) then I think all of us will be a little happier.
There’s a lot of talk about the striker this summer and I get it, I want that guy in too and soon. But I suspect the reason this work on Zubimendi got done so early, the reason that they were courting him for the last year and even more so from this winter just gone, was because I think Arteta views getting the right player in this position was his most important move for the way we want to play next season. It probably helps that Arteta knows that position so well too; he will know exactly what he needs in that role and by getting his man, his first choice, he has an exact idea as to how he’s going to deploy him.
I do think Arteta wanted to keep Partey, but I think (and I suspect most Arsenal fans do too) that the idea was for Arsenal not to become reliant on the Ghanaian and to have him serve an additional year as the Jorginho guy. Partey not wanting to do that (which I suspect is why he asked for more money just in dcase that was the situation i.e. at least he gets a big wage whilst sitting on the bench) has resulted in the Norgaard signing, which will of course probably be announced tomorrow I suspect.
