It’s Wednesday, it’s the start of a bit of a heatwave here in the UK, it’s sure to be an announcement day today with Christian Norgaard expected to be announced as the latest Arsenal acquisition. Why? Because as we all saw on the socials yesterday, somebody snapped him arriving and getting his video done as he walked through the doors of London Colney yesterday afternoon, as they were leaving.

So we know that one’s in the post and I don’t know whether to ‘go for it’ and start having a look and giving some thoughts on the signing in a little more detail now, or wait until it is officially confirmed. I think I’ll go now, in the absence of any other news other than the fact it appears that Arsenal players descended en masse (sort of) yesterday at Wimbledon.

Norgaard is an interesting selection choice, but the value of the deal – reported by Ornstein as £10million+£2million in bonuses – is certainly a brilliant one as far as we are concerned too. I have already spoken about the finances in this deal making total sense compared to the wages of Partey here, but I wonder about the stylistic change that we’re gonna get between him and Jorginho, because that’s the replacement we’re getting in midfield, so my comparison’s with Partey are probably a little wide of the mark. I think it’s just because the two deals are being seen to be done around a similar time (because we all already knew about Zubimendi months ago), plus it feels like this deal was done in response to Partey not accepting new contract terms.

But in reality this is the Jorginho replacement and so I thought I’d look at what we’ll get that is different – but also what is similar – and the first thing that strikes me is that we have replaced leader for leader in the dressing room. Norgaard was captain for Brentford, he played 34 times for them last season and racked up over 2,800 minutes. So from a footballing point of view we’re getting a guy whose engine is up and running; he’s not been out in the cold and barely played, which we cannot see with Jorginho on nine starts, six sub appearances and 700+ minutes. In his time last season Norgaard got five goals and four assists and guess what folks, he’s a threat on set pieces in scoring four of those chances from crosses or set pieces. When it comes to Set Piece FC, we have ourselves another lieutenant, that’s for sure. And as this article shows, he’s a guy who will attack the ball in both boxes, either to score or to clear it.

I decided to also have a look at the two players at the same age too, because I thought to myself that Jorginho is a little older, maybe there’s a bit of a decline in there, so let’s do like-for-like. Jorginho’s 30-year-old season was in 2022-23, Norgaard’s was last season. They both played around the same number of matches (32 vs 34 for Norgaard), although Norgaard had an extra 700 minutes, which might skew the numbers more as he was on the pitch. But that aerial threat from Norgaard was clearly something that made him stand out from an attacking perspective, because in their respective season’s Jorginho only had two goals and one assist, both of his goals were penalties. That impacted his xG which was 1.9 to 4.3 in Norgaard’s favour. Clearly in Norgaard we’re getting somebody who should probably be contributing more in the penalty box.

What we’re not getting, however, is a progressive passer or carrier of the ball. In their respective same season, Jorginho made 28 carries to Norgaard’s 14, whilst passes was 179 to 154 in Jorginho’s favour. We kind of knew that already – that Norgaard was a breaker of play and somebody who anchors the midfield – but I think it is important to note because even though Jorginho wasn’t used much last season, we knew that when he was going to be used, he would be more analogous to Partey than Norgaard will be to Zubimendi, who is also a very progressive passer of the ball. This tells me we’re probably going to see quite a difference if that rotation option happens with those two players at number six this season; we need to be mindful of that I think.

Norgaard also takes waaaay more shots, again leading to his increase in threat compared to Jorgi. In their respective season’s, we see that in a 39 shots by Norgaard to nine shots for Jorginho. I can picture that; Jorginho would always look to that final pass rather than having a go himself – that great strike against Villa stands out for that very reason – he didn’t do it very much.

I think most of us knew this already, but it’s still worth pointing out, which is that Norgaard will also not be the metronomic footballer that Jorginho was, or Zubimendi is, because event will 700 more minutes Norgaard only just misses out on total number of touches (1833 to 1802) and Jorginho made nearly 200 more passes in that season compared to the Dane. That could be because Brentford go long more, whereas Arsenal/Chelsea certainly play shorter, but I do think it also speaks to the players and their styles too; Norgaard will sit, break up play, distribute to the nearest guy close to him and then reset himself back into his position whilst others do their thang going forward. I don’t necessarily think there is anything wrong with that, but depending on the opponent, I suspect we might find that we will need to change up the approach, or even not play Norgaard at all and drop Rice into the number six role. Imagine a low block, at home, where we’re having most of the ball in the opponents third. You don’t really need a destroyer sitting back. You might use his aerial threat in the box, but I personally would probably think that a Rice in there and the opportunity to play a more attacking left eight, would be a better option for me. If you’re playing a side like City and Zubimendi is not available, then sure, you’re going to use Norgaard as that extra bit of protection.

So in summary, whilst we don’t have a like-for-like comparison, I do think Norgaard brings value to the squad in terms of who is as a footballer. We just need to be mindful that injuries and suspensions to players won’t give us the same – or similar – options for Arteta like Jorginho and Partey did.

Catch you all tomorrow.