PARTEY STAYS, BUT AT WHAT COST?

Thomas Partey has officially been omitted from the Ghana squad. Chris Hughton weighed up the severity of his operation, the reality that he has no form to speak of, and the worry that rehabbing him during an international comp might break the player and ruin his chances of winning a trophy.

This is the most unexpected smart decision of 2024 so far, no doubt.

So there are some layers to this:

1. If something new happened with his recovery, then this is not good news for us. My understanding was Arsenal were working to get him fit for AFCON. So the fact he’s not going is a surprise because that hasn’t been the plan

2. If it’s just a case of caution and Partey is on a similar schedule to before, then he could be ready for Palace or at the latest, Forest.

Whatever the scenario, having him rehabbing with Arsenal is massive. Great pitches, brilliant facilities, the best minds in the world working with him, and no chance he’ll be sneaking out to nightclubs with his international teammates.

I have said this before: There is no better midfielder in the world to bring into this side than a fit Thomas Partey.

The internet has been a very downbeat place since the Fulham loss. Fans don’t seem to be able to process pain these days, so every dip is catastrophic.

This post from Bhavs summed it up.

Look into the underlying stats of Arsenal’s 5 game blip & you’ll be surprised.

Expected points: 9.75 (highest itl)
Expected goals for: 9.79 (4th highest itl)
Expected goals against: 5.40 (4th lowest itl)

Make of it whatever you will…

— Bhavs (@bhavss14) January 1, 2024

Now, you can tell me that you don’t want to hear about underlying data, but the reality of the game these days is judgements by all the top clubs are made as much on underlying data as they are on actual output. Emery’s new Arsenal contract was yanked from Raul’s hand because of underlying data and that was the correct decision. Klopp was signed by Liverpool after a shocking end to his Dortmund career because underlying data said he’d been very unlucky.

Underlying data will almost always get you closer to the truth about performance. You can talk about the Liverpool on-paper score from yesterday and deduce that it was a close game that was decided by a horrible penalty call. Or you could look at the absolutely disgusting Newcastle metrics to ascertain that Liverpool was UNLUCKY with their scoring output after generating 7.87 xG.

Can we just quickly speak to this: Wow, Newcastle have totally collapsed since they got lucky against us. Players seem to have given up. They were monsters the past two seasons, now they look midtable average. What has Eddie Howe done?

Back to it:

Arsenal is a team in a mini-transition. We lost Xhaka, Partey, and Aaron Ramsdale this season and we’ve brought in new players who have had to adapt to our new system. A system that Arteta tweaked after the Wolves game to get more chance creation into the system. We were in a great position heading into the West Ham game, our xG deserved a win, but we lost, and the wind was taken out of our sails, which probably fed into the dreadful performance against Fulham.

5 points off top. We’re underperforming our xG by 8, Liverpool are overperforming by 8. Arsenal are bang on for their xPts, Liverpool are 6.21 better off than they should be.

Arsenal is chasing Liverpool. They have difference makers that means they’ll likely overperform xG all season. Though I’ll put money down on that blowing up at some point. They don’t feel like title-winners to me. They are very open and literally everything has rolled for them this season. It’s not the same Liverpool from a few years ago. Still very, very raw.

We outperformed our points expectation by 11 last year. The difference this season is the system is still bedding in with new players – and I don’t think our ‘share the goals around’ approach has quite clicked this season.

It has to. It will. We just have to get our ‘trust the process’ hats on again instead of worrying about all the ways this could fail. This young team always confounds expectations, this manager always finds a way, Arsenal is going through football hell at the moment, and they need to keep on going. There is a Promised Land at the end of this.

Arsenal needs to sell this January, though I am struggling to work out who is going to leave. Someone told me they were speaking to a relative of Aaron Ramsdale and they don’t think he’s going anywhere as it stands. He’s a big asset for us, so that’s a worry. The West Ham ex-employee guy is saying that David Moyes has an interest in taking Reiss Nelson in the next 6 months. That would be massive, doubt the fee will be what we want, but let’s move him on because Arteta doesn’t like him and we need to find someone he has time for. Emile Smith Rowe is getting zero love, he should go, he feels like an Aston Villa signing, but there’s little chatter right now. Eddie is being linked to Palace, just not sure we’re go knowing we’ll not get a replacement in. Ivan Toney will be the chosen one and there’s simply no way Brentford would sell a £60m player for a £40m premium if that meant them losing Premier League status.

The best thing Arsenal can do this January is not sign anyone.

Fans chase these pipedreams that signings this month can make a difference. They never do, at least not at the top of the table. The value is in the summer market. That has proved out time and time again. Anyone peddling that deep squad changes in January make a difference are picking outliers. We cannot be Manchester United signing Wout Weghorst. Money is finite, and we do not have the squad space to land a waste man. Arsenal already has the problem of Arteta refusing to trust the players he’s signed off on. Panic buys set the project back, we need to be forward-thinking and we need to lean on Arteta to figure this out without going Manchester City on the problem.

Partey will come back into midfield and offer us a double pivot from heaven and slightly more ambitious progressive passes from deep. I don’t want to see him as a right-back.

Tomiyasu is now fit; maybe he’ll drop from Asia Cup? If not, he’ll be back in the mixer in a few weeks and he’s on fire this season.

Timber will hopefully touch grass this month, then the countdown is for him to be back by late March. He was such a massive piece of Arteta’s plans this season, don’t underestimate what a body blow it was to lose him.

If we can get to the winter break without any new injuries, Arteta can spend time rebooting confidence and the system. The key to a prolonged challenge is to cut out the errors, trust that we’ve fixed the defensive aspects of our game, and work on our confidence in the final third.

We’re gonna be alright.

Ok, that’s me done. See you in the comments.