Why everyone criticises Arsenal's youth policy - and why they are all wrong Next Post Coming Soon...

First the access issue. You are here so you are able to get into the site, but if you know anyone who has been having a problem - here is the solution...

http://www.untold-arsenal.com/ used to work ok but now it doesn't. I'm sorry. What needs to be typed into the address line is https://untold-arsenal.com/ And honestly, it wasn't my fault.

Now moving on...

We have had mountains of information (if you can have a mountain of information) passed around that Arsenal need a new centre forward and is about to buy a new centre forward and then what do we find: suddenly all the talk is about Riccardo Calafiori, a defender.

Such a situation reveals two things: most of the people who propagate transfer rumours really have no idea what is going on, until a deal is almost there. The other is that most of the people who tell us what Arsenal need (as in Arsenal desperately need a new centre forward) don't think in the same way as the Arsenal management.

Now that leaves us with an interesting question to answer. Should Arsenal take note of a bunch of journalists who have no experience in running a Premier League club, or should we acknowledge that Arteta knows something?

I think the latter, and we might be getting closer to the truth about what Mikel Arteta is doing with the team with the issue of left-footed players: he rather likes them - to the extent of moving toward having half of the outfield players as left-footed.

Now this is not just because there is an obvious benefit in having a left footed left back or left winger - the fact is that left-handed people (which is about 10 percent of the population) have a genetic makeup which is different from right-handed people and which provides a series of benefits to the left-handed person in terms of the way they see the world (including the way the individual sees the football pitch).

Indeed it has often been noticed that a disproportionate number of people who reach high office in democratic countries are left-handed. From Bill Clinton to Barak Obama, from Winston Churchil to David Cameron - left-handed people don't dominate the lists but they occupy more than the 10% of places their numerical position in the population at large would suggest.

In fact Arteta's first signing was left-footed: Pablo Mari - and that tendency has continued so that by last season we were putting out teams which quite often had five left-footed players: Gabriel and either Tierney or Zinchenko at the back, Odegaard and either Xhaka or Havertz in the middle, and Saka up front.

Now when Arteta talks about his overall football strategy he often talks about having a team that is unpredictable, and that is certainly true when a team has more than the expected one or two left-footed outfield players coming up against a team that is dominated by right footed players who are themselves used to playing against right- footed players.

And we should not think it is just which foot is being used to pass the ball - it is the whole angle of the player as he beats a defender. No matter how much the right-footed defender tries to work it out, the left-footed midfielder or attacker invariably takes him by surprise.

Now as it happens signing left-footed players is not as hard as one might expect because it seems that a lot of managers - themselves previously right-footed players - have a prejudice against left-footed players, suggesting that they "don't like" the way they play the game.

Fortunately for Arsenal, most football journalists are right-handed and have no interest or inclination to break new ground by talking about left and right-footed players. No one else brings this up (except the New York Times which reminded me of the issue) and so the traditions carry on. Arteta won't rotate, Areteta needs to buy a new centre forward... say the same old things enough and they become almost believable.

Spreading left-footed players across the pitch gives Arsenal possibilities and options that teams dominated by right-footed players don't have, and can't defend against.

And fortunately, me mentioning this here won't make any odds because prejudices in football are so deep that it takes a very radical free-thinking manager to re-align his views.

Of course, I have a bias because my father was a left-footed footballer - although not at the high professional level. But it was good to see the NYT article pick the issue up - as they had noted that the two regular penalty-takers Arsenal have are both left-footed, while most goalkeepers are right-footed. These goalkeepers practice saving penalties every day... and 90% of those they practice against are right-footed forwards. They simply don't get the chance to practice against lefties.

Footnote: That scoring of more goals last season than in any season for 71 years obviously indicates Arsenal's desperate need for a new centre forward, so you can take all this talk about left-footed players as ambidextrous gibberish.

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