Why Jurrien Timber To Arsenal Shouldn't Work....But Does
Arsenal look to have secured another major summer transfer, with Dutch defender Jurrien Timber arriving from Ajax. However, the Gunners have moved for Timber when a host of Europe's top clubs have been hesitant to, so what exactly has Mikel Arteta seen that others haven't?
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00:00 *Intro*
00:03 Hello there, bonjour, arrivederci and hallo as they say in Dutch.
00:07 Adam Clear here from 442 and what are we talking about today?
00:10 Durian Timber.
00:11 According to the latest Ornstein Bomba on Twitter,
00:14 Arsenal have finally agreed a fee with Ajax,
00:16 it's between like 50 and 60 million pounds
00:18 and he will be their latest signing.
00:20 And that, oh okay.
00:22 See the thing is, I really, really like Durian Timber,
00:25 but that is because I love chaos.
00:27 And that's why this is a transfer for Arsenal
00:29 that has the potential to be an absolute masterstroke
00:32 but also at the same time could go quite spectacularly, comically wrong.
00:37 Let me show you.
00:38 *Ding*
00:40 Alright, so before we start I'm going to make two presumptions here.
00:42 The first is that you're probably an Arsenal fan who's curious about this
00:45 and even if you're not, you're sort of familiar with how they've been playing last season
00:48 so I'm not going to get bogged down in the details of their current system.
00:52 And two is that if the Durian Timber tree falling in the woods jokes were ever funny,
00:56 you've already heard five or six of them and they've gotten the paltry laughs out of you
01:00 that we're going to get, so we won't be making any of those.
01:02 It'll just be... *Screams*
01:05 Sorry, I just needed to get that out of my system.
01:07 Anyway, this was Arsenal last season.
01:09 This is the set-up that took them almost to the cusp of winning the Premier League,
01:12 Arteta's 4-2-3-1.
01:14 But of course, as you're no doubt probably aware by now,
01:16 it wasn't really a 4-2-3-1, was it?
01:18 Arsenal were one of these teams that had one of these box midfields
01:20 and second only to Man City I would argue,
01:23 they were the best in the league at it.
01:25 So what that worked was when they were in possession,
01:26 Xhaka would push up into attacking midfield alongside Odegaard,
01:29 leaving this space here.
01:31 Sinchenko would come across, he would invert,
01:33 which just means playing on the inside when you might be playing on the outside.
01:36 He'd come across to be the other one in the double pivot
01:38 and the defence would shuffle around into a back three.
01:41 Box midfield.
01:43 And of course, the reasons teams do this is because most other sides
01:45 have like three players in central midfield
01:47 and this allows you to get a numerical advantage of having four players there
01:51 without having to just play four players in central midfield.
01:54 Because then that'd be rubbish.
01:55 You've still got a degree of width provided by your attackers
01:57 and your outside centre backs.
01:58 Then you've got two lads here who can sort of get involved with the defending
02:01 and two more lads here who can get involved in the attacking.
02:04 So it's concentrated, but it's still flexible.
02:06 Now, frankly, none of us know how any team is going to play next season.
02:10 You can have the best formation, the best system, the best tactics in the world,
02:13 but then you get into pre-season, you make some signings
02:15 and you change everything completely.
02:17 But Arsenal do seem pretty set based on the players they're buying
02:21 that they're going to want to stick with this.
02:23 And that's because the players they've already signed look like really natural,
02:26 almost perfect upgrades on the players already in this system.
02:30 Granachaka, for example, did an excellent job in this system,
02:33 but he was very much just doing a job.
02:35 He didn't really provide the level of attacking threat you would want
02:37 from a forward-looking number eight.
02:39 So getting Kai Havertz in gives you that.
02:41 And the reason you can afford to have a far more creative,
02:44 far more attacking, less sort of defensively minded player in that role
02:47 is because you get Declan Rice in instead of Thomas Pardy.
02:50 So you can do the heavy lifting of pretty much two players in that role,
02:54 so you can be a bit more fun,
02:55 which is what makes Jurrien Timber such a curious sign-in.
02:59 Because if you look at this, this is how Arsenal are going to want to be doing
03:01 the majority of their attacking.
03:03 And obviously for a team at the top end of the league,
03:04 the majority of your attacking is the majority of your football.
03:07 He doesn't really seem to be a natural fit anywhere.
03:10 But before we solve this particular riddle,
03:12 let's have a look at who Jurrien Timber is, if you're not familiar.
03:15 So basically, he's a 22-year-old Dutch centre-back currently playing at Ajax
03:19 who is hotly thought of across Europe,
03:22 but nobody else is currently going in for
03:24 because while there are several positives to his potentially being a Premier League footballer,
03:29 there are also several fairly obvious drawbacks.
03:32 Chief amongst them is his physical stature.
03:34 He gets a lot of comparisons to Lissandro Martinez
03:36 because while he's very, very good on the ball, he's not very big.
03:39 Somewhere between about 5'9" and 5'10",
03:41 which does actually make him taller than Martinez,
03:43 but crucially, he isn't anywhere near as...
03:46 What's the right word to use for this?
03:48 F***ing insane.
03:49 Like, Martinez gets away with being that tall in the Premier League
03:51 and resoundingly shut Jamie Carragher up
03:53 because he's just absolutely bananas.
03:56 He'll go for every ball, he'll win every header
03:58 because he doesn't care how tall you are.
04:00 He's bigger in his head.
04:01 And Timber doesn't have that.
04:02 He doesn't have that sort of physical confidence about himself.
04:05 He loses headers he should probably win
04:07 because he's just reserved about going up for them.
04:10 Timber is somebody who you can target and you'll probably beat.
04:13 The main advantage to him, though, is his on-the-ball ability.
04:16 Like, he's fantastic with the ball at his feet.
04:18 Now, if I just flash up these numbers here,
04:20 wow, that's not him in comparison to the Eredivisie.
04:22 That's him compared against the top five leagues,
04:25 Premier League, Serie A, La Liga, all the big ones.
04:28 That's how he ranks compared to them.
04:30 You would not be wrong in looking at that and thinking,
04:33 "This is the best ball-playing centre-back in Europe, surely."
04:37 Thing is, those stats are quite misleading.
04:39 Pythagoras in Boots did a fantastic video
04:42 on how these numbers are largely very inflated
04:45 because of how conservative he is with the ball at his feet.
04:48 Like, from a technical standpoint, he is absolutely fantastic,
04:51 but again, he has this almost psychological reservation
04:55 about taking too many risks.
04:57 He doesn't play low-percentage passes because he doesn't want to give the ball away.
05:00 He plays sideways, he plays back, he gives the ball where he knows it's going to be safe.
05:04 And that's not necessarily a bad thing.
05:06 You don't want a centre-back who takes far too many risks,
05:08 but when you are as good on the ball as he is,
05:11 that kind of feels like a total waste.
05:13 If you just look at this clip here,
05:15 that's unbelievable play in the final.
05:17 That's genuinely amazing.
05:19 You would never believe that's the same player who made this decision.
05:22 It's kind of weird, actually.
05:23 It does sort of feel like when he gets out of his defensive third,
05:26 when there's not as much peril to losing the ball,
05:28 a weight comes off and this barrier is lifted.
05:31 He's got, I think, the highest number of passes into the final third
05:35 of any defender across the top five leagues and his league.
05:40 He also carries the ball exceptionally well.
05:42 A lot of progressive carries from centre-back are mind-boggling.
05:45 And in the tackle, there's no way you can inflate those numbers.
05:48 He genuinely is one of the best ball winners in the world.
05:51 Now, of course, all of this has to be caveated with the fact the guy is 22.
05:55 You know, he's still developing as a footballer.
05:57 Any one of these attributes can improve or decrease over time
06:00 depending on the coaching he gets or the situations he finds himself in.
06:03 It's all still a play for.
06:04 But purely in terms of the raw ingredients and what we've seen of him so far as a footballer,
06:09 he's a really weird purchase for a Premier League team.
06:11 While he's excellent on the ball and great in the tackle,
06:13 he lacks all of the other physical attributes you would want out of a Premier League centre-back.
06:17 He's not particularly strong. He's not particularly good in the air.
06:20 He's something that would be targeted by other teams, so you wouldn't buy him to play him there.
06:24 And while he's great at carrying the ball and can play on the right-hand side,
06:26 he doesn't really have any long passing ability.
06:28 He can't go past players, so you wouldn't want to play him as a right-back either.
06:32 So then why does Mikel Arteta want to spend that much money on him?
06:35 What does he think he's identified here that other managers across Europe haven't?
06:39 I'll tell you, it's this system.
06:42 His unique combination of attributes doesn't just mean he would fit into this system really well,
06:46 inverting from right-back into the centre of the pitch.
06:49 It also means Arsenal would be able to do something with this system that Man City currently can't.
06:55 So I'll just, look, I'll reset this and I'll put it to you this way, right?
06:58 Let's say Arsenal do exactly what they did last season and they want to play their 4-2-3-1.
07:03 Now we know what happened last season was Zinchenko came across from that side,
07:06 he played in the middle, but ultimately he's not particularly great at that.
07:10 He wants to be doing his best work out wide, he's just doing a job there.
07:13 So instead, what Arsenal could do is they could play Kieran Tierney at left-back,
07:17 because he's fine to play at a four, he can get up and down the wing,
07:19 but as we've seen for Scotland, he's really comfortable as a left-sided centre-back in a three.
07:23 So what they'd then do, and let's just presume they've got Declan Rice at this stage,
07:26 is you could have one of these midfielders push up, probably have it,
07:28 Rice leaves a little bit of room, and then it's Timber who inverts across.
07:32 The back fours know a back three, they all shuffle across,
07:34 and all of a sudden you've got three incredibly comfortable centre-backs in that position.
07:37 You've got Tierney, you've got Gabriel, you've got Saliva.
07:39 But now what you've got here, instead of Zinchenko, who's just sort of filling in,
07:43 doing a job, recycling possession, trying to be alive to the danger,
07:46 is someone who is defensively absolutely excellent,
07:48 but can also play really well in tight, intricate situations,
07:52 and if he does get into the final third, seems to come alive with the ball he's able to play.
07:56 He's much better able to then cover for, let's say, Declan Rice,
07:59 if he decides to move up and get involved with the play, because he likes to carry the ball.
08:02 If he does that, Timber is used and accustomed to defending central spaces,
08:06 far more than Zinchenko is, so he even allows you to go that gung-ho with it.
08:10 Now that is an improvement on the system Arsenal already currently play,
08:13 but what it would enable them to do, which Manchester City currently can't, is this.
08:18 Sometime, probably in the next season, teams are going to come up with a,
08:21 not a guaranteed counter, but certainly a system which offsets how good that box midfield is.
08:26 They're going to come up with strategies to deal with it,
08:28 and it's almost certainly going to be something that targets the player
08:30 who is doing the inverting, the player who is forming the box.
08:33 They'll either mark him out of the game, or they'll put somebody up,
08:36 they'll do something that'll stop him doing that.
08:38 And what Arsenal, with Timber on the side, would actually have the ability to do,
08:42 is change the way they invert mid-game.
08:45 So you've got Timber on the side because he'd be really, really good in this box midfield,
08:48 but he's also, naturally at heart, a centre-back.
08:50 So if you've got Zinchenko, or you could even try doing it with Tieny,
08:53 you can still have the two players push up into the eights,
08:56 you can still have Declan Rice leave a bit of room,
08:58 but now you bring the other player across,
09:00 you completely change the way you form in the box,
09:02 these three shuffle over, and again, what have you got?
09:04 Three natural, really solid centre-backs.
09:07 Now whether Arteta's comfortable allowing Tieny to be the player to do this,
09:10 I think he would probably be pretty good at that,
09:12 although he's not really been tested too much,
09:14 but it would give you the option of just subbing him off for Zinchenko
09:17 and allowing him to do that.
09:18 So you've got a way, mid-game, that you completely change the way you form this build-up.
09:22 And that could be an absolutely enormous tactical advantage,
09:25 to be giving your team mid-game.
09:28 Like I talked about this in the Newcastle video,
09:29 it's all well and good being able to fix problems on the training ground,
09:33 but the ability to fix them on the pitch is so much more valuable.
09:36 And thus, in Timber, Arsenal could have a player that fits in perfectly
09:40 with several different things they could do in the same game.
09:43 And that's like all you're ever really trying to do
09:46 when you sign a footballer for your team.
09:48 Like, have you got a way of using them in your system
09:50 that will maximise the stuff they're good at,
09:52 which in Timber's case is getting on the ball,
09:54 helping with the build-up, winning ground tackles in central areas,
09:57 but also cover for the stuff they're not good at,
10:00 which in Timber's case is kind of getting exploited in central defence,
10:03 because he's maybe physically not as big or not as strong as defenders need to be.
10:07 And, yeah, they do.
10:09 But of course, as ever, do let me know what you make of all of it in the comments below.
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10:44 And until next time, go buy the magazine, please.
10:47 It's the World Cup special. I said Euros last time.
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10:52 Goodbye. Goodbye.
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