Arsenal sign Jorginho

Arsenal make a prudent deadline day signing

Arsenal have signed Jorginho from Chelsea on deadline day.

Fabrizio Romano @FabrizioRomano

Jorginho has completed medical tests and he’s set to sign the contract as new Arsenal player until June 2024 with an option until 2025 🚨⚪️🔴 #AFC £10m plus £2m fee confirmed. 🎥 Ziyech-PSG talks continue, Enzo, Amrabat and more: bit.ly/3Dsvbh0

The news of this breaking was enough to turn Arsenal Twitter toxic but this is a prudent move for Arsenal and I will do my best here to try and convince you of that.

The first and most obvious reason that this make sense is the injury to Mohomed Elneny that will see him likely miss the rest of the season after knee surgery.

Arsenal @Arsenal

We're all with you, Mo ❤️

That throws the depth at defensive midfielder into disarray. Yes, Arsenal could have done things like move players from different positions to try and cover for an emergency but like seeing Granit Xhaka as a left-back in years past, or Emile Smith Rowe forced into a false nine position, these are things that are really desperate and shouldn’t be a team that is trying to win the Premier League’s plan B.

The most obvious and best course of action would have been to just bring in a player in that position that you trust to play in that situation. That is what Arsenal have been chasing in the latter half of the window. Moisés Caicedo was an exciting name but Brighton were in a very strong negotiating position looking to force Arsenal to break their record for a transfer fee by a significant margin and ultimately Arsenal just didn’t seem to go that high over their internal valuation (and waste time on the chase that didn’t seem guaranteed to yield results).

Arsenal's Caicedo quandary

That is how we got here, with Jorginho.

So let’s take a look at what Arsenal have in him. Basically, Arsenal have gotten an above-average (maybe even that is underrating him) Premier League defensive midfielder.

Does Jorginho have flaws? Yes, he has some pretty obvious ones in that he has below-average foot speed, and at 5’10” and just 150lbs he is small where he can be overpowered by opposing players. If you want to earn some easy engagement on social media a comp reel of him getting dribbled past or getting beat by a faster player would do well for you right now.

I think that does paint a distorting picture of him, however. He is good enough at winning those duels where he is basically average (49th percentile). He is also, basically always in the right position to try and win those duels, and engages in them at a very high rate (95th percentile for attempting to tackle dribblers).