Arsenal are winning the transfer window and there’s nothing you can do about it – The Warm-Up

TUESDAY’S BIG STORIES

Crumbs From The Top Table

A theory: the reason a lot of football followers seem to prefer watching and supporting their team in the transfer market, as opposed to actually playing the sport, comes down to a question of agency. Winning a game of football is beyond the fan’s control, after all, apart from the possible impacts of a lot of shouting. But winning the transfer market is an exercise in competitive storytelling, and everybody gets to play.

And like Gabriel Jesus, Zinchenko has worked with Mikel Arteta before. So, both are serial winners, both are upgrades in their best positions and useful cover as well, and both should be able to slot right into their new surroundings. Transfer stories don’t get much better than that.

Of course, if you’re minded to be cynical, then the other version of events goes something like: this might well help Arsenal get from fifth to fourth, but it’s hard to see it pushing them much closer to first. Because if either of them were good enough to be playing first team football for Manchester City, they’d be doing that, and if City felt threatened by the prospect of them moving to Arsenal, then the moves might not have been quite so straightforward. The baseline for a move like this is that City think they’ve got a replacement that’s as least as good.

Both can be true! You just have to choose your favourite. And it’s probably a little more complicated in any case: players don’t just slot in and out of teams, they combine with the players around them. Zinchenko the first-choice midfielder may be a much more important player than Zinchenko the back-up left-back; Gabriel Jesus the dedicated No. 9 a much more prolific scorer than Gabriel Jesus the utility option.

All you can ask from any given transfer is that the team get better, that the squad gets deeper, and the vibes get better. On the level of storytelling, which is all we have to see us through to the actual start of the season, Arsenal seem to be ticking all three boxes. Seem is the important word here: the real secret to winning the transfer window is that you only need to persuade yourself, and your club only needs to give you permission to persuade yourself.

Eight Down, Eight To Go

Lucky for us, we didn’t write it down anywhere. But we definitely said it, out loud, on at least one occasion. Yeah, Italy look a bet to get out of Group D. Maybe even as winners. Maybe they could even do something surprising in the knock-outs. What fools we were.

Maybe we meant knocked out of Group D? That would have been a good call. Maybe we said “oh yeah, bottom of the group with one point after scoring just two goals in three games”. That would have been spot on.

Italy’s funk means a place in the knockouts for Belgium, although Sweden will be strong favourites there. But the other three quarters look delightfully poised. Logic suggests that England and Germany will overpower strikerless Spain and overachieving Austria, while France should have too much for a Netherlands side held together by sticky tape and prayers. But then we’ve listened to logic before, and come away looking very silly indeed. You won’t get us like that again, Euro 2022. Oh no.

Heads Gone

This doesn’t come out of the blue, but rather marks the next step in football’s increasing engagement with the neurological consequences of smacking a football with your head. Youth coaches are already advised not to practise heading with any child 11 or under, and it’s supposed to be gradually introduced between the ages of 12 and 16. And professionals are supposed to be limited to 10 “full-force” headers a week in training.

Naturally, we were wondering what a game without heading might look like, if it was entirely banned. We thought first of the deliberate, manufactured headers: goodbye to the big inswinging corners, farewell to those really annoying faded free-kicks to the back post. And what a boost for goalkeepers! Finally able to reclaim the skies above their penalty area, now that the marauding meatheads are gone.

But then a Belgian player tried to flip a curved through ball over the top of the Italy defence, and the defender just nodded it gently back to their goalkeeper, and it became clear that the much larger impact would be this kind of incidental header. Footballers are already forbidden from using their arms – add the head to that, and the entire halo of space above and around the shoulders becomes undefendable.

How might that shake out? Endless little dinks over retreating defenders, who cannot jump but must turn and scramble. Even more balls fired in at head height, in the knowledge of chaos to come. That all presumes that there will be some kind of punishment for heading the ball; maybe it will swing the other way, and they’ll outlaw playing it above head height instead. Five-a-side writ large.

Ultimately there isn’t really much of a question here. If heading a football has a deleterious neurological impact, then it has to go; if it might do, then it makes sense to limit the exposure for children. But based on our idle speculations, it would be a change many more times more disruptive than outlawing the backpass, or the two-footed tackle. Something more like the introduction of the offside rule: a fundamental reconfiguration of the space of the game. And what we get out the other end might well look like a completely different sport.

IN OTHER NEWS

Is there a Tuesday equivalent of #MondayMotivation? Maybe it just carries over. Anyway, we’re saying that this, from Servette’s Ronny Rodelin, has enough to see you through the whole week.

A lovely photo here too. Look at that expression!

IN THE CHANNELS

This starts out as a lovely conversation about a Fran Kirby mural that’s gone up in a south London housing estate. And then, about halfway through, we discover what else the residents have been up to. You think you are supporting England? You are like a little baby.

HAT TIP

Breaking away from our usual format of linking out to an article, here instead is a link to the Twitter thread we’ve all been waiting for: Swiss Ramble does Barcelona.

How did they get into this mess? How big a mess is it? And how on earth are they hoping to get out of it? Obviously, we don’t know. But Mr Ramble has knowledge and pretty charts.

COMING UP

A Euro 2022 rest day today, so we recommend staying cool, staying hydrated, and maybe watching some professional footballers jog around at half-pace. Manchester United vs. Crystal Palace. Have some watermelon. Sporting vs. Roma. Have a nap.