I Danced With The Devil

If Arsenal Can't Land Cristhian Mosquera, Here Are Some Statistically-Backed Young CBs to Watch

I once said in response to a CB stats thread request that CB stats are the devil, and I don’t dance with the devil.

That was back in 2022, and I’ve stood firm in this since. You’ve never seen a formula-based CB ranking on this site with my byline in the interim, nor have you seen a CB radar.

Well, a man with time on his hands is a dangerous thing. And now I’m here to share some CB stats with you.

Before we dive into the meat of this piece, a quick rant: No, Mustafi over VVD was not actually a stats-based thing. Yes, Mustafi had more tackles and interceptions than Van Dijk, but that was it. All the other parts of that stupid meme-worthy graphic were either 1) appearances, which isn’t really an accomplishment or 2) team accomplishments.

Arsenal may have had some metrics of some kind that they felt strongly enough about back in 2016, but football data analysis has come a long way even just in those short nine years. For example, I think you could show the below to a lot of fans, certainly followers of this page, and many probably wouldn’t read too much into it.

And that’s been the challenge of trying to craft a formula-based ranking system that finds top-performing CBs. We know what they look like, right? Saliba is one. Van Dijk is another. Depending on your perspective, you may throw Gabriel, Bastoni, Rúben Dias and many others out there for consideration.

What do they have in common, statistically speaking? It’s not always so easy to tell, particularly before they join the top sides who’ve found them and turned them into superduperstars. So, that’s what I’m trying to do here.

Of course, Arsenal are heavily linked at present to Cristhian Mosquera, a lanky, newly 21-year-old center-back with a very high ceiling. Click on his name there for my film study (I like him). Valencia, it’s been reported, are trying to convince him to stay, while Arsenal view him as an ideal backup option.

Before those links even started, I was tinkering with these numbers, so perhaps Arsenal close this deal and below all turns out to be a little bit of a moot exercise. But we like to have fun here, so why not list some guys anyway?

Disclaimers:

• This is fully based on stats, watch games too, yadda yadda

• As this is a newer formula, I’d like to emphasize that I have a lower confidence level here than some of my others that have been through adjustment after adjustment. Most are literally tinkered with after every piece I publish.

• Charts are *not* adjusted for league strength, but the final scores leading to rankings are. So that means some better-looking charts will be below worse-looking ones.

• Any rankings also are not necessarily indicative of my own personal preferences.

• Finally, because Arsenal already have Saliba, Kiwior and Gabriel at the club and are targeting a 21-year-old as depth, I’m intentionally attempting to match that profile in terms of each of: age, cost, current club and ceiling. That means that while my formula was very high on Dean Huijsen, he wouldn’t be here because of the cost. Ditto for Illia Zabarnyi, Marc Guéhi, Jorrel Hato (yeah I did it, so sue me) and the like. Got it? Good.

Now, let’s talk center backs, yeah?