Ceballos is a Must by AI
It is clear how poor Arsenal are in the midfield. We are almost bereft of quality through the middle in the attacking third. How we got into that situation is clearly up to our squad planning and management.
Stacking up on young, cheap creative midfielders has a better return on investment than on young, cheap defensive midfielders, for example. Creative midfielders are worth more in the transfer market and are far harder to come by. A team that gets itself into a situation whereby it desperately needs top quality attacking midfielders is in a worse situation than one that desperately needs quality defensive midfielders.
Attacking midfielders are some of the best assets in football. We sold Chamberlain and Iwobi for 70 million euros combined, for instance. Imagine if we had taken 30 million euros out of that and went after both Martin Odeegard and Thiago Almada when they were both unproven rough diamonds?
There was a reason when under Arsene Wenger we always bought creative midfielders. Midfielders are simply some of the best assets in football. We could dominate teams with our abundance of midfield talent, despite an average defence and attack. And those creative midfielders are worth a lot in the transfer market.
Yet here we are. Since Wenger left, we haven’t bought one single creative midfielder. And now we are in desperate need. Guess how much they cost.
For the past three windows, we’ve watched players like Sarabia, Fekir, Paredes transfer to teams for relatively mediocre sums. Any of these would be a huge improvement to our midfield today, and we could have gotten them cheaply much earlier. This is why Arsenal must sign Ceballos. It is obvious that Ceballos is unwanted by Zinedine Zidane at Real Madrid. It is obvious that Ceballos has no problem signing for us. And it is obvious that his transfer fee won’t be a problem if we negotiate well.
Ceballos can play as the deepest midfielder and further forward. He has enough quality to be an asset in everywhere in midfield. He has proven himself in the Premier League. He’s only 23. He’s part of the Spanish national setup. He’s one of the bargains available in this transfer window and we have got pole position.
If we don’t sign Ceballos, it will be difficult to find another comparative top talent like him for the same price he’s available for. Even if we did sign someone like him, they’d still need to go through an adaptation process. Ceballos is ready made, loves the club, can only get better, and is cheaply available.
It is difficult to do better. If we don’t sign him, we’d need to have to sign at least two first-team midfielders for serious money. Now that’s a situation Arsenal must avoid.
Agboola Israel
