Dušan Vlahović is broken and Arsenal want to fix him

I don’t recommend reading transfer rumour rags on a regular basis. They’ll give you brain damage. Let us absorb the brain damage for you instead.

But if you have been doing that, you might have noticed a ton of links between Arsenal and Juventus striker Dušan Vlahović. In reality, the all of the chatter can be traced back to this one tweet by Rudy Galetti.

Italian-language outlets wrote posts based on that, which allows English-language outlets to post about it citing “reports in Italy.” This makes it seem like the rumour is being reported by several different sources, lending legitimacy to it. But all of the dozens of articles, from different outlets and in different languages, came from one guy with one source.

But Arsenal do likely have the budget and desire to sign an attacker in January, and Vlahović seems like a realistic signing. He’s an early prime-age player, with big league experience, in a position of need, and his current club seem quite desperate to bin him.

As we’ve mentioned before on this newsletter, Vlahović has some pretty significant drawbacks as a player, despite his obvious strengths. He’s among the worst strikers in the big 5 leagues in StatsBomb’s passing and shooting OBV model. He played under a different coach and in a different system last season, but his numbers were largely the same. Vlahović consistently makes poor decisions around the box and gives the ball away cheaply.

His shooting map is not the kind of thing you want to see from a starting center forward on a top team. Maybe you can explain this away by blaming his teammates — and anyone interested in signing Vlahović will be doing just that — but the lack of high-quality shots here is pretty stunning. Signing this guy to a ~€50m contract seems insane to me.

I can already hear someone replying “just watch him play, nerd.” And yeah, his highlights absolutely pop. Vlahović is the kind of player I like to refer to as Coach Bait: His positive qualities makes coaches forget about the obvious flaws. If I just love him … err, I mean, give him the right coaching methods and tactical system … I can fix him!

He’s got the physique of a marble statue, he glides across the pitch like he’s on ice skates, and he’s got a left foot like a super-heavy howitzer. He’s also an attack killer whenever he’s not scoring goals and often goes entire months without making a positive contribution to the team.

But all that will change when Arsenal get him. Just imagine this in Arteta’s system. Getting on the end of Bukayo Saka’s cutback inswingers and Martin Odegaard’s through balls. He can change. You don’t see what I see in him. Why do you hate me, dad? Why don’t you want me to be happy?

If you enjoyed this newsletter, we’d appreciate it if you would forward it to a friend. If you’re that friend, welcome! You can subscribe to The Transfer Flow here. We also have a podcast where we go in depth on transfer news and rumours every week. We’re on YouTube here, and you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify by searching for “The Transfer Flow Podcast.”