Why You're WRONG About Jorginho's Transfer To Arsenal!

Hello and welcome to Why You're Wrong, a new show where I look at some of football's biggest narratives to separate fact from fiction and let you know what you might be missing, as well as pointing out some mistakes of my own. And on today's episode we're kicking off with a look back at the Arsenal fan base meltdown which greeted January's arrival of Jorginho. Arsenal went into the winter transfer window needing two things, a versatile attacker and midfield cover. And though they did in fact end up with both those jobs done, the last-minute shift from Moises Caicedo to Jorginho has rankled with the Gunners fan base. Trading the £80m pursuit of a 21-year-old star on the rise for another ageing Chelsea cast-off has brought up bad memories, and in a team full of energy, pace and dynamism, the willowy, static Jorginho seems a strange fit, prompting calls for Edu's head from some quarters of Arsenal fandom. Pretty funny when you remember they're on track to match the best team in Premier League history. So what makes this perspective so wrong, despite a horror debut against Everton for the Italian? The first thing we should point out is that this signing has little in common with some of Arsenal's previous purchases from Chelsea. David Luiz and William were both signed as starters, with the former handed a three-year deal and the latter given two. And that meant the club suffered when they were bad and would have lost a huge sum if the winger had ended up seeing out his contract. But Jorginho is not remotely in the same position. The Brazil-born playmaker has not been brought in to replace Partey, or cover Xhaka's box-to-box responsibilities, but to take the place of Mohamed Elneny, who suffered a long-term injury in January. Even the most committed Jorginho hater, and I count myself as one of those, can't argue that he's not an upgrade on the Egyptian. And let's remember, this is not a move Arsenal are making in the middle of a rebuild. It's a dice roll aimed at securing a first title in 18 years. In this position, not taking a risk is the more foolish decision. The cost also puts this in the sensible category. Reports put the transfer fee at £12m and the contract length at 18 months, meaning that if Jorginho earns the same £110k a week he has done with the Blues, the total cost of his time in north London will shake out to £20m. Isn't that a reasonable fee to try and close out a title run? And being objective, Jorginho should genuinely help in that aim. Even if he only plays in the Europa League, that will rest Arsenal's starters for domestic fixtures. But Jorginho could have a bigger role under a coach who pursued him at Man City in 2020 and finally landed his man in January. An exceptional passer, Jorginho is slightly below party's progressive passing numbers this season, with 4.9 per 90 to 5.5. But in his early days in London, and particularly at Napoli, he was among the best distributors in the world, playing incisive passes over 10 times a match. He's also dispossessed less than the Ghanaian, and if he were to step into the Gunners midfield, he'd benefit from phenomenal support too. Zinchenko ranks close to party for touches in the middle third this year, with 44 to the former Atleti man's 50, and the Ukrainian is by far the best in the squad for playing through the lines, while Ben White adds cover and progression on the right. Meanwhile, in Gabriel and Saliba, Arsenal have two of the division's most mobile defenders, the Frenchman ranking 8th in the league for recovering loose balls, party is 10th, Jorginho, interestingly, is 6th. And as important as party has been, the difference between Arsenal last season and Arsenal this season is not the number 5 going to another level. Yes, his passing into the final third is excellent, at 7.5 a game, but that's not as good as the 8.4 he managed in his first year when the Gunners came in 8th. 3.6 defensive actions per 90 is run of the mill, while his tackle success is just 48%, actually trailing Jorginho in both categories. And his dribbling, always held up as some of the best in Europe, has been less prominent too, with just 0.7 completed take-ons per game, a huge drop from a high of 2 per 90, plus his success rate on the dribble is also down from 80% to 60%. None of this is to claim that he's been bad or that Jorginho would be better, the point is that the player can perform the role Arteta has set for him, and his mistakes or raw stats are less important than the overall functioning of the machine in which he is just one cog. If Arteta wants to bring in Jorginho it's not because he's stupid and hasn't noticed that the Italian is weaker, less positionally sound and less athletic than Partey or Rice or Moises Caicedo, it's because he thinks Jorginho can perform a particular role and that the team can still be good with him in it. It's not expensive, it's not poorly planned and it won't derail the project. This move is fine. I've always been a Jorginho hater, unless you're a Inter Milan fan the man is basically impossible to love, but even his biggest supporters have had to accept that the Portuguese has slowly become less effective as a manager at the highest level. The young Mourinho, who'd whip up a media storm to protect his players, somehow turned into a man willing to hang his team out to dry after a rough performance. And tactically he seemed to be tiring too, with a win rate of 69% before 2013 dropping to 57% since, and even his famously stout defensive setup starting to fail, conceding more than a goal a game for the first time in his career during his tenure at Tottenham. So I had little expectation that the special one would do anything special at Roma, and while Giallorossi fans were delighted to break their European duck in last season's Europa Conference League, that seemed yet another step down for Mourinho. Champions League winner in 2010, Europa League winner 2017, Conference League winner 2022. But Mourinho's work at Roma this season has actually been excellent, and for once the manager may deserve slightly more praise than he's getting. The club rose from sixth to third last weekend, but remain a hefty 16 points from top spot, and they'd be lower if not for the points deduction handed to Juventus. They've scored the seventh most goals in the league, and three teams boast better defences. And in just over 80 games with the capital club, Mourinho has lost more matches than he did in his entire first spell with Chelsea, but none of this paints a fair picture of his work since returning to Italy. Routinely decried as a checkbook manager, Mourinho has spent just €9m on players this season, less than 17 of the other 19 clubs in the Italian top flight. And while wages make that up a little, with the monster signing of Paolo Di Bala Roma's chief expenditure, it's still impressive for him to be in touching distance of teams outspending while making a transfer profit of €40m. But if the bounces had gone his way, Mourinho might well be outstripping those rivals. According to XG, Roma would be predicted to have scored six goals more and to have conceded three fewer so far, giving them a goal difference of plus 19 compared to their actual plus 10. That would be the second best in the country, about the same as leaders Napoli if you look at their underlying numbers, and would also make the best in Europe, allowing just 0.7 goals per game compared to the 0.8 predicted for Man City and 0.9 for teams like Arsenal and Newcastle. Despite rating Bang Average for pressing, the team excels at stopping opponents getting into their zone, with just 77 passes completed within 20 metres of their goal this season, a whopping 21 fewer than the next best Napoli and Fiorentina. Vintage Mourinho, and an indication that his methods can still work 20 years after he made his name with Porto and lifted his first league title. None of this would convince me that Mourinho deserves a move to a more high-profile club. That part of his story is rightly over, and his last few seasons in the Prem with United and then Spurs seemed to sour the 60-year-old, wearing away the charm and wit which made him a guaranteed box office star when he arrived at Stamford Bridge in 2004. But by the look of things I was wrong to call him finished, and with the right signings, and investigations into other top Italian sides ongoing, he could even challenge for a title again next season. Delivering a long-awaited Scudetto to Rome, just the fourth in the club's century-long history, would be some way to cap his remarkable career. So that's why you're wrong for this week. Thank you for watching and hit us up with your suggestions of other things I got wrong, as well as your most treasured football opinions, and you could be featured on next week's show. Get your entries in the comments below, don't forget to like and subscribe, and we'll see you next time.