Buying early, lessons from Isak that could be applicable to Sesko

Alexander Isak and Benjamin Sesko share similarities, does Isak blossoming point to Arsenal needing to up their risk tolerance and buy now?

Buying potential is one of the ways that teams that are rich but not the richest can close the gap that financial realities create.

This is the reality for Arsenal.

They are a rich team, number seven on the latest Money League ratings but they are still often the third to fifth richest team in their own league. The spending power is growing but there is still a gap and it will remain that way in the medium to short term.

The spending power has given them the power to do things like buy Declan Rice but that might still be the exception for the club rather than the new normal, where they need to flex their muscle to buy before the player is that 90-120 million player.

One of the key focuses this summer, is going to be strengthening the forward line. That has been a need for a couple of windows but the right move hasn’t been there for Arsenal. It has been risky to wait and burnt Arsenal this season and it is coming to the point where the team will need to pull the trigger on a player.

The ideal player is obviously Alexander Isak. That is looking like it might be a long shot and it would need some other dominos to fall to move from a dream move to an actual realistic option. Isak however does present an interesting jumping off point for thinking about buying the next player who can follow his path from highly thought of prospect to genuine superstar.

As a starting point I pulled the players that have put up big goal numbers at an early age.

Players 21 and under that in the 2017/18 to 2024/25 seasons that have scored 14 or more non-penalty goals in a top 5 European League

Looking at this list is pretty interesting, there are some obvious players that looked like young superstars in the making, and it was clear early, some that have had good careers but maybe not hit the elite, and some that have been one season wonders/flops or have settled into a much lower level.

You have Kylian Mbappé on the list three times here, Erling Haaland twice, Vinicius Júnior, Alexander Isak. These are the guys I’d class as the superstars and they showed their potential early.

There are players that have been a bit more mixed but have made it big clubs. Arsenal’s current striker, Kai Havertz fits this but we also have Dušan Vlahović on here twice, Jadon Sancho and another Arsenal player Gabriel Martinelli.

Then there are the ones that haven’t really kicked on, failed after a big more, or have settled in the tier below the highest level. I’d put Tammy Abraham, Folarin Balogun, Maxi Gómez, Luka Jović, Rony Lopes, and Jean-Philippe Mateta in this group.

Last you have the guys who hit it last year where it might be a bit too early to make a call on them, with Maximilian Beier and Benjamin Šeško.

We will come back to Šeško but first lets take a detour on Isak.

Are there lessons to learn from Isak?

It is kind of easy now with hindsight of what he has become to point to Isak as an example of the payoff of investing in a talent that could blossom into a superstar.

His £60-65 million transfer fee looks modest right now but it was enough to make him the 10th most expensive under 23 forward transfer ever at the time.

It is one thing to be willing to be willing to take a risk on a young player with potential but it does take some serious trust in your scouting to be willing to make that bet.

I don’t want to pretend I would have made a perfect call on scouting the player, I have a bit of writing from the time that I think mirrors what I would say here as we dig in. Here is what I wrote back in 2022:

Isak is similar to DCL in that he has had a down season after a breakout type year.

Isak however hasn't had injuries as the reason for his drop in performance. The big question that will be hard to answer is which season is more important for making your judgement on the player. This is also something that happens frequently with players, and part of the reason for first season flops, which in my opinion are more often down to a player making a move after a career year and coming back towards their "true talent" level.

The thing to remember too is that player development isn't smooth and linear, it can come in fits and starts, with two steps forward and one step back at times as teams adjust to what made a player successful and the player must find new ways to counter.

Given his age and the level he is playing at, Isak still looks like a very good talent but now with a bit of tarnish on him.

I would love for Arsenal to still be interested in Isak, I am encouraged that his shot production has held steady, but a little worried about the drop in quality. His link play and creativity has improved this season which is a positive because it points to him learning to help the team in other ways (also it is positive that he has continued to play).

He could be a buy low type player now, but probably still on the expensive end.

Even with hindsight I think this stands up well and I am proud of 2022 Scott for that report. I think I called out the potential upside that was still there and that it could have been a good opportunity to buy potential at a discount.

Looking at things now, I would write something similar but maybe be a bit higher on him (I can’t help but know that the good things are things that turned out to be really good for his future).

Here are the radars for his last three seasons in La Liga before his big move to Newcastle:

Doing this in his age 20 season is very impressive, I have come to strongly believe that playing time early with even above average overall production is a massive green flag for projecting what a player will become. Isak had that with strong shot numbers, backed with above average quality on his shots and all around play that wouldn’t make me concerned.

This was his breakout year, he took a step forward with the shots and was able to up his quality. The real positive here is that he was doing an excellent job of converting touches close to goal into shots, he was getting an open play shot on 35% of his touches within 25 yards of goal, up from 31% the season before. The other very positive from the time here is that there was not massive air in the goal numbers with them tracking with the xG that he produced.

This was an exciting season for a player that suggested a massive ceiling was possible.

The last full season before his move was the one that was a down year. With hindsight you can still see the positives (and I called them out at the time too), he maintained a strong ability to find shots going from 2.2 from open play to 2.4 per 90, maintaining the 35% shots per deep touch ratio.

The goals cratered but it does look like that was cold finishing, even if his xG numbers also took a step back from his season previous.

I like the phrase I used at the time “very good talent but now with a bit of tarnish on him” because I think that fit really well. The tools were there, the track record of previous good performance was there, it just wasn’t front and center shiny and new and he didn’t pop when you sorted players by goals.

It’s hard to not have what he’s done color this next sentence but looking at the three seasons before the move and think that even if he didn’t fulfil his potential the floor of the move was high.

If I was tasked with trying to come up with the case for making the big fee, this probably would have been one of the things I used to justify it. It is easy to talk up the upside but I think at the time of the move you could talk up that there was reasonable justification to think that the 30-50 percentile outcomes for the player were still pretty high.

I never envy the people that have to make these calls, because there are so many things outside of your control and what you can possibly know that can make you look smart or dumb, even if you follow the same process every time.

So what about Šeško, how does he look doing this same thing?