Raphinha Alternatives for Arsenal (or Chelsea or Barca)

With the Raphinha transfer saga seeming to change with each passing day it seems prudent to start thinking about other potential players that could do something similar for Arsenal.

I did go into detail about Raphinha earlier this week, during the days where it looked like Arsenal were on the brink of closing the deal.

Crab StatsScott Willis

Instead of using the similarity tool (because in reality, I think we want a player better if possible) I am going to go with my rating system. Here are the players most similar to him where there was some overlap with the list that we will have below.

I am going to go through a list of eleven players that I think are at least somewhat potentially available (no guarantee that it would be for remotely the same type of fee). I built this list using my Attacking Midfielder rating system and limited this to players with at least 900 minutes who were 26 or under on January 1st 2022.

11. Moussa Diaby, Bayer Leverkusen

Diaby was a bit further down in my ratings but he is a player that put up double-figure goals in a big five league at 22 years old. He looks to be a good all-around player coming out pretty well in pretty much everything but ball-winning. His main skill right now is his creativity.

Overall I think between the almost non-existent defense (which could be a role thing) and just okay scoring ratings I think his fit for Arsenal is probably just okay.

10. Nicolás González, Fiorentina

Gonzalez is interesting as he also comes up on the similar player list as well as this one.

I think this one could potentially get interesting. What if a swap could be worked out with a reduced fee for Gonzalez as part of a swap for Lucas Torreira? It is still probably unlikely but I would potentially explore it.

Gonzalez rates very similar to Raphinha with the biggest difference being that he looks to progress the ball more with the ball at his feet rather than through passing.