Arsenal turned down chance to sign Antoine Griezmann due to his stats | OneFootball

Arsenal reportedly turned down the chance to sign Antoine Griezmann from Real Sociedad before he moved to Atletico Madrid.

Writing in his book, ‘Football Hackers’, Christoph Biermann talks about Arsenal’s purchase of StatDNA and the work they did with Hendrik Almstadt.

He covers a number of interesting issues but one that caught my eye was contained in these paragraphs:

Griezmann eventually moved to Atletico Madrid where he was an undeniable success, scoring 133 goals (with 50 assists) in 257 games before moving this summer to Barcelona for £108m.

The forward has been playing with Arsenal fans recently, posting on social media details of him playing Football manager with Arsenal. What does it mean? Who knows. Most likely he’s doing it because of his good friend, Alexandre Lacazette, rather than any other reason we can come up with.

For those wondering about that tantilising ‘at first’ cliffhange, Biermann then goes on to add, in relation to Mislintat, “In his 14 months at Arsenal, Mislintat proved that his way of doing things worked in the Premier League. Arsenal’s newly appointed Director of Football, Raul Sanllehi, however, decided to put more trust in his network of agents as far as recruitment was concerned. Mislintat saw this startling development as a signal. His contract was terminated by mutual consent.”

I’d heartily advise, if you want to know more, that you pick up a copy of ‘Football Hackers’ by Christoph Biermann.

This post was not sponsored but I did receive a free copy of ‘Football Hackers’ by Christoph Biermann for review purposes.