Jagten

Wut

Extremely difficult to extract value prices from Arsenal players - see Balogun for 30-40m.

Consensus was we overpaid

I interpret the Barnes criticism as frustration that we didn't buy elite upside, and that we concentrated the skillset of our wingers, i.e. none of them are very good in 1v1s. Tonali was/is, for me, the greater question, re profile and value.

Agreed. I think he knows what he's good at.

Nothing new, but limitations obvious

Decisions with respect to personnel to maximise the probability of ultimately winning the Champions League vs being a functional Premier League team are very different and possess entirely different risk profiles, especially in the context of KSA funding. Margins are smaller, downside tail risk is less. If we went too early on Howe, would it even matter?

Which one is a massive underperformance? Forest gave accumulated that level of expected goals once this season, which was at home to Luton.

His influence has certainly grown. His nephew is "head of first team technical scouting".

Is this from Wikipedia?

His whole thing is a fairly complex pressing structure so inevitable it took time

If you're going to pull the trigger (I would not, right now) you ideally do it in the summer.

Fair enough. I have uncertainty, and I hope the outcome is positive. Re: talent ID, I don't think the r/r in 150m on Tonali, Barnes and Gordon is great, despite how little the former have played. I appreciate my apathy on Gordon is not popular.

It's not clear whether his tactical strategy is sustainable, and to what extent it has made us especially vulnerable to fatigue + injury. If our press doesn't work, we're liable to be comfortably beaten. It is not clear whether he can, or will try, to manifest an evolution. I think as his influence has grown our talent ID has become worse, and we have evidenced a doubling down on his approach here. With respect to the champions league, we were not great throughout (I suspect this is unpopular but whatever). We should have lost to Milan away, and, despite the unfortunate nature of our PSG draw, they smashed us. Our 4-1 reverse against them flattered us, with respect to quality and volume of chances created. We were probably the weakest member of the group over the games played. To be clear, I like Howe and many of our outcomes right now could not be any better

This is obviously the macro argument, which I broadly agree with, but it obfuscates important context, which gets you to the middle. Analysis can, and should, run deeper.

For sure, but reverse-engineering analysis from a small sample of outcomes is how you make the wrong call

Whilst I think there's legit questions as to the sustainability of our tactical approach, we're top four in basically every expected points model, and reliably higher than Villa. It's still mostly been really good, with a squad that is good but obviously flawed.

Think this is really unlikely. Staveley + whoever else will be unwavering. Our technical strategy has increasingly become long Eddie Howe. It would need to get so bad PIF were questioning their competency, and we are nowhere near that.

I jest, but low block, score goal through individual skill or luck, hold on. Mitigating circumstances, of course

Bruce-era tactics tonight too.

Augmenting football operations with data is essential, and we’re at the very early stages of building out our skills here. Someone with that level of technical skill is hugely valuable, especially given experience of application to decision making in football.

Phil Giles at Brentford would be most obvious interesting candidate. PhD in statistics, Brentford as well run as it gets, Newcastle fan. Honestly might prefer him.

Unless they are obviously the best person in the world, no. We need to hedge for the tail probability that, at some point, Howe might fail. Building a football ecosystem around him is not a good idea, nor is it the objective of a director of football who should protect the club’s long-term interests, independent of the manager. Richard Hughes might do this, but the probability is lower than it should be.

As much as I like Howe, we cannot appoint any more of his friends and family.

Whilst winning stuff is everything, it's fairly easy to construct an argument that in our new position - one where, in the next decade, we could win it all - this is not as correct as it was with Ashley (especially for the League Cup). The question is what would you sacrifice to increase the expected prob of winning the League or Champions League in the next decade? (Because qualification this year is a non-trivial delta). We didn't use to have this problem, but we do now.