Devil in the detail

Mariona signing and Kafaji interest suggests Eidevall wants greater unpredictability

Very broadly speaking, there are three reasons that you buy a player. One, you buy a position. Maybe you have a clear gap in your squad (maybe you only have one left-back, for example) and you buy a player to fill that gap. Two, you might buy a player to upgrade on what you already have.

In January, Arsenal sold Noelle Maritz to Aston Villa and brought in Emily Fox from NC Courage. That represented a straight swap at right-back and it would have happened because Jonas Eidevall believed he was upgrading in that position. The third reason that you buy a player, is not necessarily because you have a shortage in a position or because you are looking to upgrade on a player.

Sometimes you buy a player because they have attributes that you don’t have enough of in your squad. Arsenal don’t really have shortages, per se, in the positions where Mariona Caldentey and Rosa Kafaji typically play but these players do have qualities that Arsenal’s play lacked in the final third last season.

FBRef plots Kafaji in the 94th percentile for successful take-ons in the top nine women’s leagues across the world. It is imperfect data because the Damallsvelsken runs to a different time period to most other European leagues, so the sample size only features her last 692 minutes. Nevertheless, it tells you a little about what Arsenal see in the player.

I spoke to Swedish journalist Amanda Zaza about Kafaji last week (a conversation you ought to be able to hear for yourselves soon!) and Amanda colourfully described Kafaji as ‘a fuck you player.’ Someone that plays with swagger and attitude. I certainly think there were times when Arsenal’s attack and approach play have been a little bit ‘nice’ over the last year or so.

The loss of Victoria Pelova also means that Arsenal have lost a good ‘provocative’ presence as a player who drives the ball forwards well and commits defenders. (The next step for Pelova, when she returns, is to be more confident about playing that cutting final pass). Following the harrowing defeat away at West Ham in February, I put it to Jonas Eidevall that there were plenty of opportunities to deliver cutting final passes that players eschewed during that game.

‘I don’t know if it is a good sign or a bad sign when you and I have the same idea when we see a game back!’ He joked in response. ‘Maybe with so much time in press conferences I am thinking more like a journalist! I totally agree on that, we try too few high risk high reward passes in the game.

‘There is always a balance in that, how much of a direct, opportunistic team do you want to be? How much control are you looking for? I think there were a handful of situations in the first and second half where I say, ‘I think we should go for that pass.’ And we opted to do safer passes.

‘We have too much quality in our players on and off the ball so we should be able to look for those situations and look for them with determination. In those situations we are so well balanced it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t come off all the time because that can just create another good counterpressing opportunity for example. For me that was one of the major findings from the game.’

Kafaji’s pass completion for 2024 is around 65%. That number clearly needs to come up but it does also suggest that Kafaji is in the category of player that has a predilection for the riskier pass. That risk reward dial probably needs fixing a little but Arsenal could certainly bear to have a player who, on balance, takes too many risks, as opposed to too few.

As Eidevall said in the quote above, losing the ball in the final third gives the team the opportunity to counter press and they have players well capable of that. I have already written about Mariona and what she can bring to Arsenal’s creative game, so I will not repeat myself too much. Suffice to say that, at the time I wrote that piece, I thought that Mariona might play as a 10 with another winger added to the group.

I now think differently and while I suspect we will see plenty of Mariona centrally, I think she will play from the left wing often too, as she has for Barca. It could be that Arsenal see adding Kafaji’s dribbling power from more central positions as a good salve for some of their issues.

Wherever she plays, Mariona is a ‘drifter’ positionally. If she starts wide she often drifts centrally and vice versa, she is a release valve player that moves according to the rhythm of the game and to give a teammate a passing option. Again, this represents something of a departure in the type of attacking player Eidevall has previously favoured.

Mariona was second only to Patri in the Barca squad for progressive passes last season, this is incredibly unusual for a player who ostensibly played as a centre-forward and shows you how often she came away from the frontline and played the ball to players running beyond her. Only Caroline Graham Hansen averaged more take-ons in the Barca team, though Mariona had a higher success rate with her take ons and she had the highest number of carries into the final third.

Mariona’s data around take ons maps closely to Caitlin Foord’s, whose job in Eidevall’s team has been to hold the width, isolate the right-back and drive at them from wide. But Mariona certainly represents a departure in the type of winger Eidevall has favoured because, while she too commits opponents, she rarely does it from the touchline. She drifts around looking for space before taking opponents on and often does it from the half spaces or more central areas, she is far more of a ‘wide 10.’

Eidevall’s attacking play is typically very structured and that is why Arsenal’s record against the bigger clubs has improved so markedly. But against deep blocks, they have missed a sense of devil, players who break the structure and, in doing so, break opponents. I suspect they also see Kathrine Kuhl as a player who can do this in the future but I believe there is a fair chance she will go out on loan again this season (though I am not currently aware of any impending deal).

In Beth Mead, Arsenal have one superb example of this. A player who drives at opponents, tries difficult crosses and passes and who has the confidence to take on difficult shots. It’s why her output is always incredibly high. She isn’t scoring all those goals and making those assists out on the right touchline. But Arsenal do need another option or two who will sprawl across the map a little and don’t necessarily conform to the structure all of the time.

Of course, the balance has to be right, you really only want a bit of structural chaos to be a condiment rather than the main dish. Players can’t just go veering off course either, relationships need to be built so that players understand one another’s movements. But I think the signing of Mariona and the probable signing of Kafaji suggest that Eidevall is prepared to introduce some spice to the attacking recipe.