Stats are from FBRef unless stated otherwise.

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So Liverpool have their second signing of the summer, and he’s not quite what I expected.

Make no mistake, Dominik Szoboszlai is an attacking midfielder. His 27.6 touches in the final third per 90 were more than any Liverpool midfielder last season. “[I can play] attacking midfielder, as a No. 10, can play on both 10s, left and right, on the sides also”, Szoboszlai explained. If Liverpool fans wanted a solid midfielder to keep things ticking over, he is not that. He’s a forward thinker who will keep this team on the front foot.

And he’s been impressive at it. No player in the Bundesliga had more shot-creating actions per 90 than Szoboszlai’s 5.52, though he falls down to sixth on the list if you strip out set pieces. His strong creative threat isn’t quite matched in terms of scoring himself. 61% of his shots are taken outside the box (as per WhoScored), making him more than a little scattergun. He’s been praised for his shooting ability but, when including European games FBRef tracks as well as the Bundesliga, he’s scored a pretty normal 16 non-penalty goals from 15.1 expected. He’s not the finished article at age 22, but if he wants to take his game to the next level, he needs to work on better decision-making than continually shooting from range.

Szoboszlai has been in the Red Bull system since he was 16, so you know he’s been properly coached on how to press. He backs this up with a high work rate, with The Analyst explaining that Szoboszlai had the 11th most sprints per 90 last season in the Bundesliga. He wants to win the ball high up the pitch and will put in the effort to do it.

So how does that fit into Liverpool? I think it’s very clear by now that Jürgen Klopp is doubling down on the tactical tweaks he made towards the end of the season. That means Trent Alexander-Arnold moving into a deeper central midfield role next to Fabinho when Liverpool have the ball, while Andy Robertson stays deeper with the centre backs to form a back three. The two number eights can then push up and provide more threat in the box to support the striker, while the wingers stay wider than they have done in the past. It starts as a 4-3-3 but becomes a 3-2-2-3.

If Alexis Mac Allister was signed to be the left-sided “free eight” then Szoboszlai will be his equivalent on the right. Don’t take the graphic above to be absolutely Liverpool’s first-choice lineup next season; it’s just an example of what they might do on a given week. If the 3-2 shape at the back is supposed to provide defensive stability, then the front five are expected to press high and defend from the front. Szoboszlai will start in that right half-space, his most natural position. But I wonder if we’ll also see some more rotations.

The biggest loser in this formation is Mohamed Salah. The system needs the wingers to stay wide, while his game is all about cutting inside on his left foot and getting into the box. So I suspect we might see Salah and Szoboszlai swap at times, with the Hungarian drifting out to the right flank to make space for the Egyptian to do damage in the box. Szoboszlai is comfortable moving out into those wide areas, as he has done in RB Leipzig’s weird 4-2-2-2 formation with two number tens who are also sort of wingers. This seems the clear role where he can fit into the side and help others.

£60 million is not a small chunk of change, especially when the release clause demands upfront payment. The better news is on wages. “While [Mason] Mount is understood to be commanding around £250k a week at United”, Chris Bascombe reports, Szoboszlai will be earning less than half that salary. Mount’s £250k a week works out at £13 million per year, so let’s say Szoboszlai is getting slightly less than half at £6m. Along with Szoboszlai and Mount, Arsenal and Tottenham have signed similar players this summer in Kai Havertz and James Maddison. Based on reporting out there, this is what I think each player will cost those clubs over a five-year contract, including both transfer fee and wages. Take these numbers with a pinch of salt, because we’ll never know the reality. Because the add-ons for the Maddison deal haven’t been disclosed, I took only the guaranteed transfer fee.

Havertz: £150m1

Mount: £120m2

Szoboszlai: £90m3

Maddison: £84m4

It doesn’t look a bad deal in those terms. There is the perennial “Bundesliga tax” risk, which I do have concerns over, but I think the risk is a bit smaller for more physically dominant players. Szoboszlai is 6’1 (1.86m), physically strong, fast and energetic. I don’t think there are quite the concerns someone like Jadon Sancho’s had dealing with the Premier League physically, but it’s still part of the risk.

I’m not quite in love with this deal, but it ticks a lot of boxes. At 22 years old, he still has time to improve as a player and really show how good he can become. I’m broadly in favour of this one.

Hi, I’m Grace and I write about football, or soccer if you want to be American about it. If you like this post, be sure to hit subscribe (free or paid) and get the next edition in your inbox.

Stats are from FBRef unless stated otherwise.

I doubt anyone is surprised by this transfer. If you asked the average Premier League fan where James Maddison might end up, they’d probably say something like “I don’t know, Tottenham?” Arguably Spurs’ biggest personnel problem in the last couple of years has been a lack of creativity. Last season under Antonio Conte, Spurs would generally play a pretty functional double pivot of Pierre-Emile Højbjerg and either Rodrigo Bentancur or Oliver Skipp, while the wing backs were instructed to stay wide and disciplined. Dejan Kulusevski offered something at times, but didn’t show the consistency he’s capable of and suffered from fitness problems. At times, the only people picking out a pass were Harry Kane and Son Heung-min, who are supposed to be getting on the end of those.

Maddison instantly changes the equation. His 0.34 xG assisted per 90 last season was better than anyone in a Spurs shirt. And it’s not as though he had brilliant strikers to create chances for. He formed a strong connection with Harvey Barnes, assisting the winger four times, but others struggled in front of goal. Maddison was also the side’s second highest scorer, such was their reliance on him in attack. He could certainly feed Son and Kane.

There are a few issues with this. Obviously, one of them is that Kane might not be at the club. In truth, they should probably cash in now rather than waiting for him to leave for free in 2024. Maddison could offer some of the goal threat Kane would take with him, but nowhere near all of it. Maddison’s shots were taken, on average, 21.1 yards (19.3m) away from goal. Kane’s shots were 24% closer to goal at 16.0 yards out (14.6m). Like Kane, Maddison is legitimately skilled at shooting from range, but he’s never going to replicate the kind of goals Kane frequently scored in the box. He’s obviously someone who would ideally supplement the main goalscorer.

The next is tactical. We don’t quite yet know what new manager Ange Postecoglou will do with this team. What we do know from both Celtic and Yokohama F. Marinos is that he likes to keep his wingers very wide and invites the central midfielders push come forward. If we look at Maddison’s touches last season, provided by Opta Analyst, we can see that wherever he starts off, he likes to end up in those central number ten positions.

I don’t think that would be acceptable for a winger the way Postecoglou ideally wants to use them. If he plays out wide, I’d think he’ll be instructed to stay out on the flank until the side gets closer to the box. I can’t help but think about Jack Grealish at Man City. Grealish has understood and adapted to what Pep Guardiola wants from him, but there were long spells in that first season when people were frustrated that he wasn’t able to do the things that made him stand out at Villa. We could see a similar adaptation process for Maddison.

The other option would be as a more advanced central midfielder. He does fit the model for what Postecoglou wants here, but you worry about his defensive quality. I think this is the more likely role just because of how aggressive Postecoglou is with his midfielders. But he still needs to adapt without the ball. And, yes, since I always bring it up, he needs to be better about deciding to pass rather than shoot.

Of course, Postecoglou might do something different at Spurs. He’ll want to get the best out of Maddison right now because, at age 26, this is a purchase for the player’s prime years. I’ve criticised Maddison a bit in the past, but £40m is a reasonable price for a player who absolutely fills a need on this team. I like this transfer.

Hi, I’m Grace and I write about football, or soccer if you want to be American about it. If you like this post, be sure to hit subscribe (free or paid) and get the next edition in your inbox.

Stats are from FBRef unless stated otherwise.

When Chelsea signed Kai Havertz three summers ago, I had a pretty straightforward question: what is he supposed to do in this team?

I don’t think they really knew. The plan in that transfer window was to sign a striker (who ended up being Timo Werner), a winger (Hakim Ziyech), a centre back (Thiago Silva) and a goalkeeper (Édouard Mendy). Manager Frank Lampard, technical director Petr Čech and chief executive Marina Granovskaia would have been happy with that summer. But Havertz suddenly became available. The pandemic meant Bayern didn’t have the cash upfront to get the deal done. Chelsea did. This wasn’t what they planned for, but you can’t turn down the chance to sign one of the best young players in the world, right?

That strategy had worked at Chelsea in the past. They didn’t know why they wanted Eden Hazard or how he would be used, but when they got the opportunity to sign someone of that quality, they took it and figured out the rest later. Hazard quickly nailed down the left-sided role and went on to define an era at Stamford Bridge. Havertz, they thought, could do the same.

Three years on and Havertz is leaving Chelsea without anyone quite figuring out what they bought him for. His three managers at Chelsea tried him as a lone striker, as part of a front two, out wide, in an attacking midfield role, you name it. Everyone knew he was good enough to start for this team, but no one figured out where it would be.

If Havertz doesn’t succeed at Arsenal, it won’t be because they didn’t know what they wanted him to do. Much more than Lampard, Thomas Tuchel or Graham Potter, Mikel Arteta has a very clear vision of how he wants his team to play and drills them relentlessly on it. It is not his job to find a way of playing to suit Havertz. It is Havertz’ job to fit into the way Arteta wants to play.

That apparently means he’ll be in midfield. “[Arteta’s] vision re-casts Havertz as a left-sided No 8 afforded the freedom to link play in the final third”, The Athletic reports, and join attacks from midfield, arriving late into the penalty area while Oleksandr Zinchenko or Kieran Tierney shift across from left-back into central midfield behind him”. He’s the replacement for Granit Xhaka. Imagine telling anyone that two years ago.

Arteta clearly favours a left-footer in this role. Arsenal’s most used side last season contained five left-footed outfielders (Gabriel Magalhães, Oleksandr Zinchenko, Xhaka, Martin Ødegaard and Bukayo Saka), which is obviously the perfect amount. Left midfield is probably a key position for this, because he always uses a right-footed winger on the left flank so that Havertz can provide the balance on that side of the pitch. Arteta could have moved Ødegaard across, but presumably didn’t want to mess with an effective right side of the pitch.

I’m a little surprised by how much I like this move considering I’ve never been a Havertz superfan. He was good at Bayer Leverkusen, especially for his age, but I don’t think his form there quite merited the hype as a future superstar. If he hadn’t been scoring about 37% more than his xG over those last two seasons, I think he gets rated more as a promising young player than a potential Ballon d’Or winner. Add to that the decent list of players who struggled to recreate their Bundesliga form elsewhere and I really do think he was overhyped at Leverkusen.1 Expectations are definitely more muted now.

We’ve seen Havertz’ quality in fits and spurts, which is what you might expect from someone who hasn’t had a clearly defined role. Arteta has a plan for him and he’ll be relentlessly working towards turning the German into a midfielder. It could fail completely, but I like the vision here.

It wasn’t a great game, but big finals rarely are. We were spoilt rotten by the World Cup final last December, and this is what we should generally expect from showpiece matches. I doubt any of Man City’s fans or players will care a tiny bit.

Just as in his previous two Champions League final wins, Pep Guardiola did not overthink it. He played what has been broadly the template for the second half of the season. In the only real “surprise”, John Stones started at right back instead of centre back, but still pushed into midfield. That meant City often had a back three of Manuel Akanji, Rúben Dias and Nathan Aké, with Stones joining Rodri deep in midfield. Both Kevin De Bruyne and Ilkay Gündoğan had licence to push forward and join the attack, but De Bruyne (who was replaced by Phil Foden through injury) in particular could look like a second striker at times. Jack Grealish and Bernardo Silva would hold wide positions, while Erling Haaland was obviously the focal point. We’ve seen this all before. It’s the reason City rallied from looking like they might lose the title race to winning the lot (minus Nathan Jones’ valiant efforts). It’s good and it works.

Except it didn’t work particularly well here. Inter pressed City high from the start, though the aim wasn’t to win the ball back as much as disrupt Guardiola’s side’s build-up play. Few Premier League teams play with two strikers against Man City, meaning Edin Džeko and Lautaro Martínez were able to press Akanji, Dias and Aké in a way that made the build-up uncomfortable. This meant Ederson and the defenders had to play it long more often than Guardiola would probably like, and couldn’t get the fluidity in possession to create their usual chances.

As strategies to stop Man City go, “make them play it long” isn’t a bad one. And they were pretty sluggish in the opening period of the second half with Inter starting to take control. And then they worked it from side to side as they liked for one of the first times in the game, allowing Rodri to arrive late in the box and score.

“In all team sports”, Guardiola explained in Pep Confidential, the book chronicling his first season at Bayern, “the secret is to overload one side of the pitch so that the opponent must tilt its own defence to cope. You overload on one side and draw them in so that they leave the other side weak. And when we’ve done all that, we attack and score from the other side”. I’m sure he’s said the same thing to the City players many times, because it’s exactly what they did. They work it from side to side a couple of times, sucking Inter players towards the ball, before finally getting enough space for Rodri to score from a low cross. It was a scruffy goal. It wasn’t the beautiful positional play goal we associate with Guardiola. But it was absolutely a goal that came from his methods.

Seven sides have won the “treble” in a top-five league. Apologies to Celtic, Ajax and PSV Eindhoven, but they were long enough ago that I’ve never watched those teams and it’s harder to comprehend how difficult it was. So we’re left with the following sides:

Man Utd 1998/99

Barcelona 2008/09

Inter 2009/10

Bayern 2012/13

Barcelona 2014/15

Bayern 2019/20

Man City 2022/23

Of those teams, I definitely think the two Barcelona sides were the strongest. The first had the best possession control any of us have seen, marrying Guardiola’s methods with players coached in Cruyffian ideals all their lives. The second has become underrated, keeping the underlying principles but going a little more direct to Lionel Messi, Neymar and Luis Suárez. Are City the next best? I personally don’t think Man Utd could control games to this extent (they were better in 2008 for my money), and Inter were more defensively solid but less good in possession. Bayern 2012/13 could make a real case, but today let’s give it to City.

Hi, I’m Grace and I write about football, or soccer if you want to be American about it. Let’s talk about two very different players leaving the Santiago Bernabéu.

Do you remember Karim Benzema’s first season at Real Madrid?

He was not the highest-profile signing that summer. That title obviously belonged to Cristiano Ronaldo, the man bought as Madrid’s answer to Lionel Messi. Kaká brought his own stardust as the Ballon d’Or winner two years earlier. Xabi Alonso, meanwhile, would bring the all-important Spanish passing game to the country’s most successful club.

But Benzema was a little underwhelming, mainly because it wasn’t supposed to be him. It was supposed to be David Villa, one of Spain’s great new stars who couldn’t stop scoring goals for club and country. But they couldn’t agree a deal for the Spaniard, so French prodigy Benzema would have to do instead.

Madrid fans might have wondered why they bothered. He scored just eight La Liga goals in his first season at the Bernabéu, with manager Manuel Pellegrini strongly preferring Gonzalo Higuaín. Madrid lost the title by just three points that season. It might’ve been reasonable to ask if Villa would’ve scored enough goals to make up that gap and bring the title back to the capital.

His next season didn’t start any better. New manager José Mourinho didn’t seem happy with his striking options, and viewed Benzema as little more than a busted flush. Such was the situation that Madrid signed Emmanuel Adebayor on loan that January to fill an apparently desperate void. They had Ronaldo scoring for fun on the left, but they just couldn’t figure out the right striker to support him.

Then Benzema figured it out.

He figured out how to score goals while also facilitating Ronaldo. He adjusted to exactly what the team needed. When the time came to sell a striker in 2013, Madrid chose to let Higuaín leave and keep Benzema, largely because Ronaldo preferred playing with the Frenchman (well, they’re technically both French, but only Benzema played for France). Florentino Pérez changed the balance of the side that summer by selling Mesut Özil and buying Gareth Bale, taking away a selfless creator and adding in someone who scored more than he assisted. Benzema had to adjust again, dropping deeper at times, but it wasn’t a problem for him.

When the time came to sell Ronaldo in 2018, there was a lot of pressure on Benzema to step up as the team’s primary goalscorer. I think this is harder than people realise. Footballers rely so much on instinct and muscle memory in attacking situations, so it’s not easy for someone like Benzema to change the voice in his head to say “shoot” instead of “pass”. He adjusted. He figured it out. He always figures it out. Benzema wasn’t just a great goalscorer but someone who could do whatever the team needed. The great former Liverpool manager Bill Shankly once said a football team needs “eight men to carry the piano and three to play the damn thing”. Benzema could both play and carry the piano whenever you needed him to.

Eden Hazard, on the other hand, is strictly a piano player and always has been. His Chelsea career really took off under José Mourinho, when he became clearly one of the best in the Premier League. For almost his entire time at Chelsea, Hazard was the one player with genuine tactical freedom in the side. Typically you’d see Hazard on the left with Willian playing a very disciplined role on the opposite flank and the midfielders doing more industrious work (apart from Cesc Fàbregas). Despite generally working for disciplinarians, Hazard had genuine freedom to express himself with and without the ball.

He wasn’t a prolific goalscorer, averaging under 10 non-penalty strikes a season in the league. But what he did was cause problems through his sublime dribbling and creativity, sucking opponents towards the ball and always finding the right pass to a teammate in space. As I wrote in 2018,

“Hazard is, to put it plainly, really good at football. He was the only player in the Premier League last season [2017/18] to achieve more than 3 dribbles per 90 (of those who played at least 2000 minutes). While another three players (Wilfried Zaha, Rajiv van La Parra and Ruben Loftus-Cheek) amassed over 2.5, none came close to combining the dribbling threat with Hazard’s deep progressions. When it comes to moving the ball into dangerous areas, there is simply no player in England’s top flight like Hazard. That he still manages to advance the ball so much and then add 0.28 xG assisted in open play is absurd. His status as one of the Premier League’s very best players should be in no doubt. Just don’t expect him to be a prolific goalscorer.”

Real Madrid signed him after a disastrous first season without Ronaldo. I don’t quite know what they thought they were getting. Hazard isn’t anything like the Portuguese megastar. As Logan Roy would put it, he’s not a killer. You have to be a killer to make it as a Real Madrid forward. Even in his very best seasons, his work was about progressing the ball rather than goals or assists. It didn’t make sense with the pieces they had.

Of course, Hazard didn’t help with his form. Injuries might have played a part, but Hazard never looked dedicated enough. In all honesty, he might not have struggled with injuries so much if he was taking better care of his body. His Real Madrid career was about totally failing to adapt to the environment he was in. Benzema understood every challenge asked of him while Hazard didn’t, and that’s why one is getting a massive payday in Saudi Arabia while the other might be considering retirement.

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Hi and welcome to another Quick Hit. The big game this week was obviously Manchester City’s 4-0 win over Real Madrid. I’m writing a longer article on Man City, so let’s just focus on the Real Madrid side of the story today.

We know Carlo Ancelotti’s blueprint for these Champions League knockout games. We’ve seen it work many times. They’ll sit deep and try to contain, then kill the opponent in a few big moments on the counter. Sometimes they only really need to play well for 20 minutes. Across 13 Champions League knockout matches during Ancelotti’s second spell at the club, Madrid have averaged 46% possession. During the first 20 minutes at the Etihad, it felt like another one of those games: City would have all of the ball and camp out in Real Madrid’s half, but Madrid would get a few huge opportunities on the counter to steal the tie.

And then it just… didn’t happen.

A lot of that is about Man City’s structure. When the home team lost the ball, they covered the space of the opposition half so well that Madrid just couldn’t play their way out. You could see Madrid try to build out from the back, realise there were no good passing options, and just revert to Thibaut Courtois booting it up the pitch and into nowhere. The plan was to play it out in slick transition moves, but City pressed and covered the space so well that they couldn’t find the passes.

We all know Real Madrid believe in putting players before tactics, so they usually solve a system problem with an individual solution. Luka Modrić has been a cheat code at playing through a press like this in the past, with his generation-defining ball control in tight spaces to work through the midfield and find those passes. Modrić apparently wasn’t completely fit, which at least justifies his stinker on Wednesday night. But Madrid should not be this reliant on a 37-year-old midfielder, even one as brilliant as Modrić.

Another brilliant midfielder, Paul Scholes, once had a similar moment in his career. “I should have realised”, he explained, “that the very fact I was still playing for [Manchester] United at 38 years old was a sign that there was not enough pressure on us senior players from those coming into the side”. Scholes retired in 2013 and Man Utd obviously haven’t won a league title since. I don’t think the situation is anything like that at Real Madrid, a club with exciting young talents throughout the squad. But for this supposed youth revolution, you’d think they’d have found an answer for how to cope when Modrić isn’t fully fit.

Mario Cortegana reports that Real Madrid are not currently intending to replace Ancelotti. I think that’s the right call. Unless they want to totally change course and hire a “system” coach, they won’t find someone better at this than Ancelotti. I saw some suggest this season means Madrid have gone too far with an emphasis on youth, and should refocus on experienced players. My view is the exact opposite. If Real are to continue this player-first approach, they need to find fresh individual solutions to matches like this. Perhaps Jude Bellingham can come in and become the heir to Modrić? Perhaps they’re making another play for Kylian Mbappé? I don’t know. But the answers are in looking forward.

Ten years ago, Barcelona looked totally unique with their possession-focused tactical identity. But, as John Muller explained, that approach is now the norm in football, and Barça feel like everyone else. Madrid, by contrast, now seem distinct and refreshing just by staying the same against the tide of Barçafication. I don’t think they should ditch that. But if the approach is to work, they need to keep refreshing those individuals and move past the era of Modrić and Toni Kroos.

Hi, and welcome to what I hope will be a recurring feature on here: Quick Hits. As the name suggests, they’re going to be shorter and punchier newsletters responding to things that are happening in football. This is in addition to my other writing and shouldn’t cut down on anything else.

So let’s get into today’s story: Granit Xhaka is on the verge of leaving Arsenal. Reports indicate he’s about to agree a four year contract with Bayer Leverkusen, who will be paying Arsenal about £13 million for the midfielder.

This would’ve been welcomed a couple of years ago, when Xhaka was a much less popular figure. But he’s had an excellent season this time around in a slightly more advanced role. Moving to a genuine 4-3-3 shape with Xhaka and Martin Ødegaard as “free eights” was a key factor in Arsenal’s improvement under Mikel Arteta. Breaking up a team that came so close instead of just adding more quality feels wrong, but he turns 31 in September and has only a year left on his deal. Presumably Arsenal offered Xhaka a shorter contract, which he rejected in favour of Leverkusen’s four year deal. It happens, and that means you have to sell him now. He’s good, but he’s not irreplaceable.

So Arsenal need to replace him. The players David Ornstein (who would know) says Arsenal want the most are Declan Rice and Moisés Caicedo (probably just one rather than both). To be honest, I don’t really like either as a Xhaka replacement. West Ham use Rice as a box-to-box player who can cause problems in the final third, but I’ve never thought that scales up to a bigger club. He’s West Ham’s best player, so they have to get him as involved as possible. But when he plays for England, alongside the calibre of players closer to Arsenal’s standard, he never sets foot in the final third. His job is to be a classic defensive midfielder, which he is genuinely excellent at, then calmly pass the ball to players with more technical quality than him. I think he makes far more sense as a long term successor to Thomas Partey than a Xhaka replacement.

Caicedo is a little bit more of an unknown because we haven’t seen him in an environment with lots of good players, but he again reads as much more of a defensive midfielder to me. Maybe Arteta is planning to change the system, perhaps with Jorginho starting as a regista in a double pivot, but I don’t know why he’d fix what isn’t broken. If Arsenal are looking for a genuine Xhaka replacement, I don’t think they’ve found one in Rice or Caicedo.

Mason Mount has been linked to just about every big club in England, and he’d make more sense here. I don’t think it’d be hard to just swap in Mount for Xhaka. More curiously, reports emerged that Arsenal are sniffing around at João Cancelo. He’s obviously not a midfielder. But I wonder if there’s a world where Cancelo starts regularly at left back playing the role exactly as Oleksandr Zinchenko does (they both did it for Man City of course), while Zinchenko fills Xhaka’s midfield role. Zinchenko started his career as an attacking midfielder, and with his left footed technical prowess, he’s surely the most similar player to Xhaka in the current squad. Obviously, Man City might not want to sell Cancelo to Arsenal. But it’d be an interesting way of solving the problem without changing the overall team structure.

Arteta has been a smart tactical problem solver at Arsenal, and I’m sure he’ll find the answer. Right now, though, the post-Xhaka midfield is a little unclear.