But as they also pointed out----more mileage on Sterling's legs because of how young he burst onto the stage.
Yeah, that was the point. Which made it surprising to me and Andrew and presumably others. Sterling seems older because he's been around for so long.
I remember recently on a pod or article where they basically say when you hit a certain amount of matches or minutes it ages you, and how guys who were in the first team from the age of 18-20 end up looking 35 when they are in the 28-30 bracket because the stress of playing at such a high level from a young age. Its why we need to rest Saka so that we either don't have him break down when he is 26/27/28 and in his prime, or so that when he hits 30 his body isn't crocked and constantly injured.
There is a similar idea in basketball, that regular season + playoff minutes add up and players hit a limit. But then you have a freak like LeBron who plays more minutes than anyone with minimal decline. Some combination of training regiment, good genes, avoiding major injuries and luck.
Yeah. With you on this one. Arteta seems to be riding Bukayo too hard. Burnout, injuries, and/or truncated career are all concerns. So if the Sterling acquisition somehow induces Mikel to manage Saka’s minutes better, that’ll help me get on board Raheem’s train.
Its how I view Messi and Ronaldo. Both broke out early, and have a lot of matches and minutes under their belts, and we are only starting to see a decline now. For most players who have played the amount they have it would have hit between the age of 29-32.
Yes, and this has also been influenced by improved doping tech er I mean good diet and yoga, which create extreme outliers. But it still sees tough for clubs to predict. For every player who seems to defy gravity like Kroos, there's others like Ozil, Ramsey, Alexis, RvP who went pretty predictably off the data cliff at the end of their 20s My guess is that Trossard will age much better than Sterling, not least because Trossard does not depend on explosive pace etc The point about the youth prodigy is also important (see Ozil). I see Sterling already has over 500 first team appearances Does he have another 50 top performances? I'd definitely be against buying him for this reason.
Swiss Ramble has some more transfer data - but unfortunately most behind the paywall. The idea we were bad at sales is the opposite of true. Arsenal Arsenal’s £112m gross spend was their lowest since the 2018/19 season, which was not overly surprising, given that they had splashed out around half a billion pounds in the previous two seasons. Their largest purchases were Riccardo Calafiori from Bologna and Mikel Merino from Real Sociedad, while David Raya’s loan from Brentford was made permanent. The Gunners also sold well, as their £92m was the highest the club has made from player sales since 2017/18, including two Academy products, Emile Smith Rowe to Fulham and Eddie Nketiah to Crystal Palace, plus Aaron Ramsdale to Southampton. Their net spend was only £19m, which was firmly in the bottom half of the Premier League. You have to go back as far as 2012/13 for the last time it was this low. Arsenal also made two important loan signings on deadline day, namely Raheem Sterling from Chelsea (reportedly paying less than half of his wages) and Neto from Bournemouth.
Not Arsenal related, but this story is mad: Victor Osimhen negotiated the move to Galatasaray without his agent, report Il Mattino. 🇳🇬 He negotiated with Gala himself and with the help of an intermediary https://t.co/VOhWCEKNdp— Get Italian Football News (@_GIFN) September 3, 2024 His agent is terrible, and it costs him a lot of money and his career at Napoli.
Nah, Messi and Cronaldo been declined. Look at how Manchester United's version of Cristiano Ronaldo played versus the player at Madrid 5-6 years later. He lost a lot of his pace, some how declined technically and decided to be a CF. Messi wasn't the same player after his knee injury in 2013. He used to be a pressing monster but gave up on that as well. They both aged well, but neither player were at their best in their later 20s.
Yeah only since being back in Toronto and being TFC adjacent have I really started to understand agents and their role more definitively. A lot of scarcity in the market imo is agent driven to move their best assets repeatedly.
While fair, his agent did the opposite and I would wager was working on behalf of Napoli and not him.
Speaking of age curves, next summer Arsenal won't have any outfield players that are age 19, 20, 21 or 22. Calafiori is the youngest in the senior squad and turns 23 next May. Sesko and Nico could have addressed that this summer and there are the u18 academy kids, a few of which will hopefully break through. But might be a good idea to target those types of players in the future.
Napoli should have cashed in last summer coming off their scudetto. Hard decision but would have been the smart move.
Oh yeah sorry wasn't commenting on that specifically just how open corruption the middleman position is.
I don't follow average age stats but even so, I could tell we're aging up. And that supports my theory that we are engineered to win now, or at least soon. The Merino signing was another data point for this theory. Although they'll never say it publicly, I think we may be at (or very close to) the 5th stage of Mikel's 5 stage project he talked about several years ago. That's all good planning, except for one thing... Pep, Haaland & Citeh are still a thing in our division.