In a week in which Chelsea have signed Joao Pedro from Brighton as Manchester United decide whether to overpay for Bryan Mbeumo while Tottenham and Arsenal make plays for Mohammed Kudus and Eberechi Eze, we’re faced with two troubling realities: one old, one new.
Big Six clubs poaching the best of the rest has been commonplace for at least the last two decades. But this summer does feel particularly poignant in what has been a 21st century Premier League d*ck-measuring contest given the sheer number of these pillagings and because two of the raiders were worse last season than the teams they’re looting: United finished 14 points behind Brentford; Tottenham finished five points behind West Ham.
It doesn’t seem fair, but then neither does the Small 14 being able to plunder potential future Big Six stars from every other club in Europe outside your Real Madrids, Barcelonas and Bayern Munichs.
All of these players being targeted by the top (or formerly top) Premier League clubs are of a type. Managers, sporting directors, whoever’s making key decisions at football clubs these days, want forwards whose first thought is to dribble rather than pass. Matheus Cunha is another example and we suspect interest in Anthony Gordon and Morgan Rogers isn’t about to go away any time soon for the very same reason.
The desire to have these sorts of footballers in top teams isn’t what’s troubling – the opposite if anything. Who doesn’t want to see Eze or Kudus diddling defenders with the ball at their feet before letting fly from 25 yards? Yes please. It’s the impact of what’s clearly becoming a bit of an obsession on your classic playmaker that’s disturbing.
It’s the guys who have a picture in their head before the ball comes to them in a tight space and manoeuvre away from a defender before delivering a killer through ball, rather than drifting past or barrelling through them, that we’re concerned for. We’re looking at you, Martin Odegaard. And you, Bruno Fernandes.
We’re of course looking forward to the irony of Manchester United turning down £100m from the Saudi Pro League for their 30-year-old captain in the summer when by Christmas, after a year of Ruben Amorim trying to fit Fernandes into his entirely unsuited system, he’s sitting on the bench watching Kobbie Mainoo and Casemiro in the pivot with Mbeumo and Cunha ahead of them as his value plummets, but we would much rather be watching a United team with Fernandes in it.
We got a taste of what Arsenal would be like without Odegaard last season – both when he was and wasn’t injured, as he wasn’t the same Odegaard we enjoyed the season before – and it wasn’t pretty. It was robotic. We knew what each and every player was going to do on that pitch before they did it.
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We like a bit of that. We like that full-backs essentially know Bukayo Saka is going to run at them, jink inside and get a shot away because them being powerless to stop him is a thoroughly enjoyable display of his brilliance. But we would also like some mystery, some guile, some head-on-a-swivel-how-the-f***-did-he-see-and-play-that-pass stuff.
Odegaard must be concerned by Arsenal’s push for Eze; aware of the turning tide away from players like him as we are. It would have been unthinkable a year ago to imagine an Arsenal side without Odegaard, but amid this increasing desire for players who dribble past opponents to create overloads after a very poor season by his standards, there won’t be too many surprised to see a midfield three of Martin Zubimendi, Declan Rice and Eberechi Eze next term.
Hope for the future is retained in the hybrids – your Cole Palmers, Morgan Gibbs-Whites and Florian Wirtzs – who can dribble with the best of them but whose eye for a pass sets them apart.
But in a season in which Odegaard and Fernandes could lose their formerly nailed-on places we may be left thinking wistfully of Cesc Fabregas and David Silva, and wondering whether their regens will ever again be given the opportunity in a Premier League now valuing forward mobility over subtle craft.