- 5/29/2025
Arsenal are (apparently) the first major movers of the transfer window with the €60m signing of Martin Zubimendi from Real Sociedad. But with The Gunners desperate for a new striker and other attackers, why has Mikel Arteta instead splashed the cash on a defensive midfielder. Adam Clery dives deep into his game, and Arsenal's issues, to explain why it actually makes sense.
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00:00Hello everybody, welcome to the Adam Cleary Football Channel and Martin Zubamendi,
00:07great name. He is Arsenal's first transfer of the summer window despite it being f***ing May
00:14and unlike Rice, Marino, Partey and Major League Skelly who can all play number six on their
00:20lonesome, he is a number six on their lonesome and considered one of the best in the world at it as
00:27well. Now that's very exciting obviously but given that everyone and their gerbil has said that what
00:32Arsenal really need is a new centre forward, new left-sided attacker, more creativity at the top
00:38end of the pitch, why instead have they gone so early and so hard on what your dad would call
00:44a defensive midfielder? Well that's what this video is about, I'm going to tell you.
00:51Okay so personal bio, Martin Zubamendi is 26 years old, great age and has played his entire career
01:04at Real Sociedad breaking into the team in 2020 and being a mainstay ever since. Like genuinely I sat
01:11down and I counted all of this. In the last three seasons he has started all but four of the games
01:18he was available for and has been available for pretty much the entirety of those three seasons.
01:25And say it with me friends, what is the best ability? Availability! He also broke into the
01:33Spain squad in time for the Euros where he replaced Rodri at half-time against England. Yep, that still
01:40hurts and has subsequently then replaced Rodri in Spanish Hearts during his injury. He started all
01:45but one of their games since then and Spain, just like Sociedad, just like Arsenal, play in a 4-3-3 shape.
01:56Interesting. But where Arsenal tend to differ from both Spain and Sociedad, as well as just
02:01obviously geographically, is while they have a single pivot, they like to get another player involved
02:07in this area. You will routinely see one of the fullbacks, usually Lewis Skelly, inverting into that
02:13area. Declan Rice drops in when they're being pressed by a really good team to give them a
02:17double pivot and Martin Erdegaard will occasionally come all the way back, even as deep as the centre
02:23backs, to give them better quality on the ball and make them able to resist said press. Now that
02:30is important because if you look at Liverpool, who ran away with the league this season, they're not a
02:35perfect tactical setup by any stretch of the imagination. You can't get at them, but the one thing they have
02:41is the ability to rely on Ryan Gravenberch and Ryan Gravenberch alone to manage this part of the
02:50pitch. He will resist the press, he will turn out of pressure, he'll drag you up the field without
02:56needing to pull a body away from a more dangerous area to help him do that. And thus, when Liverpool do
03:02get quickly into attacking areas, they tend to find themselves with a lot of options ahead of the ball.
03:09And Arsenal fans, you literally saw this in Anfield when you played them just to the other day.
03:15Compare the options, both the quality and quantity of them, available to Martin Erdegaard in this
03:22situation, with the options available to Mo Salah in an almost identical situation before that. Now
03:29don't get me wrong, that is a bit of a nuanced thing. Arsenal's strength isn't really creating those
03:34kind of chances, but part of the reason for that, it goes in a circle, is because they have so many
03:39bodies in the build-up, ensuring that they don't lose the ball and they reliably move up the pitch.
03:43And as a result, one of the hallmarks of this Arteta side is that they virtually never give the
03:49ball away in their own build-up, which is really good, but the cost of that is they sometimes can get
03:54a little bit stuck trying to play out from the back. Just to lay that out in numbers so it looks like
03:59I know what I'm talking about, they're really low down for tackles against them in the attacking
04:04third. And just, you have to sort of mentally factor in the possession when you look at that
04:09stack, because it's like, oh wow, Fulham and Bournemouth, they don't lose the ball there, but they hardly
04:13ever have it there compared to Arsenal. Like, for Arsenal to see as much possession in this area
04:18as they do and lose it the same amount, that's way more impressive to me, I think. But anyway,
04:24the downside to this is that they go long from goal kicks way, way more than Chelsea, Tottenham,
04:30Man City, Brighton, basically all of the other were really good in our own third teams. And again,
04:35that is also a bit of a nuanced stat. Sometimes they go long just because there's better options
04:40up there and David Reyes is a fantastic kicker, but sometimes it is because they have too many
04:45bodies in this part of the pitch and they struggle to find options further up. And that fundamentally
04:49is why they have bought Martin Zubomendi. He is a one-man solution to a two-man problem.
04:58I just found this. Now his passing numbers may underwhelm you when you see them because he
05:02actually doesn't get on the ball as much as you'd expect from a player in this position in a side
05:08that has the ball as much as Sociedad do. They're like the fourth highest possession team in La Liga.
05:14Now, if you want to be kind, you can look at that as he maximises his contributions. He doesn't
05:18want touches or passes purely for the sake of it. He's trying to do things when he gets the ball.
05:24But if you don't want to be kind, you would say that if involvement is a real thing, that's
05:29something he should be looking to improve. Weirdly though, and this is my stat head subscription
05:34absolutely paying for itself, if he's having an average of 65 touches per game this season,
05:39which I don't know why I said if, he is, and you look at all the games where he's performed
05:43above that average. These are the six top teams in the Liga that are not Sociedad. The games he has
05:50been most involved in this season have been Athletic Club, Atletico, Real Madrid. So the
05:56suggestion that he's a bit of a big game player, he certainly seems more involved in games where you
06:02would expect him to maybe be involved less. And I'd say that is quite the positive. But okay,
06:07I'm aware we're quite far into the video here. What does he actually like do? Well, aside from
06:14allowing you to play out on his own, evading the pressure, breaking the lines, finding the space,
06:19all that good stuff. If we look at his numbers in possession, they paint a picture of his strengths.
06:26Loads of touches in the defensive and middle third, not a shock, but hardly any midfielders
06:31getting on the ball more in their own box. Hmm. And that's interesting because it's partly
06:38because he's incredibly comfortable dropping between the two centre-backs in possession to
06:43allow the full-backs to play a little bit further up to find the space. But also, and more on this
06:48later, because he's an incredible defensive asset as well. Ah, here's the best bit though. Not a lot
06:55of take-ons, but in the top 10% of midfielders in Europe for beating a player. And just take a second
07:02to think how many attacking midfielders who are great dribblers are going to be included
07:06in that statistic. He's almost certainly the only holding, deep-lying, number six type midfielder
07:12posting those sorts of numbers. And if you sort of do a little bit of mental extrapolation here,
07:17the combination of these numbers show you how difficult he is to press. Because you will just
07:23find the space wherever that is to get on the ball and help them get out. But he also has the ability
07:28to beat a man if that space doesn't exist. And what that means for Arsenal is there's considerably
07:33less need for players like Erdegaard, like Rice, like Lewis Skelly to get dragged into these central
07:39areas. They can stay higher up. They can be more focused on how you hurt the opposition rather than
07:45just how you play through them. His presence in this midfield will occasionally, and I stress the
07:51word occasionally. He's not Superman, right? But occasionally give you way better options
07:57further up the pitch. He's really good on the ball as well. He sets the tempo nicely. He's got a really
08:02good range of passing. And again, it's not stats that are going to leap off the page at you. But you
08:07can see plenty of them are forward. Plenty of them are into the final third. And watching him,
08:13you can see how useful he becomes at backing up other members in this attacking line. He tends to
08:19shadow where the play goes. If they do have to turn around, he can then spread it into a more
08:24dangerous area. He plays when you watch him very horizontally across the width of the pitch,
08:30helping out where he feels he needs to. He's got a really, really good eye for a through ball. But
08:36again, they're more a case of like quality over quantity. And he used to be really, really bad
08:43at long passes. There's a real massive weakness in his game for a number of years, but they do seem
08:49to be improving. You'll notice I don't use the word good there, but I'll definitely say improving.
08:55But the thing is, if you're buying Zubomendi for his contributions in this part of the pitch,
08:59you've already made an enormous and very expensive mistake. What you buy him for are his contributions
09:05in this part of the pitch and not just with the ball. Now, I gave a little tease before what he
09:12liked, a little scamp about what a defensive asset he can be. When you look at the numbers,
09:17there are things there that start to catch the old eye. Really high ranking for tackles in the final
09:23third, really high ranking for stopping people dribbling past him, blocking shots, clearing the
09:27ball, intercepting. He lines numbers up against Thomas Partey, presumably the player who will be most
09:32affected by his arrival. You can see there's not really any physical or defensive downgrades.
09:39And in many respects, he's actually performing better than the player he's going to be replacing,
09:44albeit in La Liga. And obviously, up to you how comparable you find stats there with stats here.
09:50But for me personally, I would say close enough. And yeah, I know what you're thinking. A press
09:59resistant, number six, who's really aggressive in the tackle. That's not unlike Bruno Guimaraes at
10:07Newcastle, is it? Yeah. You see the vision now. And also, also, also, also, just to lean even further
10:14into the hole, he lets other players be more aggressive. He's got no issue whatsoever dropping
10:19between the centre-backs, not on the ball, but off the ball to help them win headers and to give you a
10:25back three. So your full-backs can go off and have way more fun. His aerial presence in there is
10:29really, really good for a midfielder. He's got a great leap on him that allows him to win the ball
10:34there way more than you'd expect for someone who's 5'10". It's obviously not why you buy him,
10:40but it's a nice little bonus. So on the pitch, bringing Zubomendi in makes Arsenal probably
10:44look like this. No wholesale changes to the way they set up, but hopefully a few noticeable tweaks
10:51to the way they play. See what I mean? This is Martin Erdegaard's seasonal heat map from this
10:58season. And what ideally you're looking to change here by buying Zubomendi is this bit,
11:05because this is bigger than it has been in previous seasons. He's getting dragged into this part of the
11:10pitch more than he usually does to help him build out, to help him resist the press, and in turn,
11:16means he can't contribute as much in this part of the pitch. Don't get me wrong, you still want him
11:21to be able to get involved deep, as and when he feels like that's the smart play. But by and large,
11:27you want him to know that if he isn't going to do that, things are taken care of. He can stay in an
11:31area where he can do the most damage. Just to sum all this up nice and neatly for you, Arsenal have
11:37not gone and got Zubomendi in because they're somehow unaware of the goal scoring and creativity
11:42problems they're having in this part of the pitch, but precisely because of them. Theoretically,
11:48if he works out, and that is an if, by the way, I think Zubomendi is a fantastic player, but to do
11:55all this for Arsenal at the top of the Premier League requires, in my opinion, a big step up from him.
12:01So if he works out, then all of a sudden, you start getting a lot more out of all the players
12:08in front of him. Now, not going to be wrong, they've still got some serious shopping to do, but if you want
12:12my two cents, this is a really smart, like-for-like upgrade that should help get more out of what
12:20you've already got. So it's a really good transfer, provided it's not the only transfer.
12:27And do I personally think this is a good transfer? Well...
12:31Found this as well.
12:39So anyway, yeah, that's the Martin Zubomendi to Arsenal video, which I'm pretty sure that it has
12:46happened, hasn't it? Like, Romano's gone with it, everybody else has gone with it, but the club
12:50haven't yet. So is that because of the transfer window? I never know how these things work anymore.
12:55But anyway, presuming that transfer has happened, that's how I believe it will go. So thank you very
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13:29until next time though, thank you enormously for watching. The new graphics are done.
13:36And they all look as good as that.
13:41See you next time.
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