The transfer of Lucas Torreira from Sampdoria two years ago was a highly lauded piece of business by Arsenal fans. Many supporters and pundits had craved the presence of a specialist, destructive defensive midfielder at Arsenal for some years and buying one that happened to be Uruguayan appealed to our sensibilities and, maybe, some of our pre-conceived notions about Uruguayan footballers. The signing of Torreira was also supposed to signal a new era of smart recruitment headed up by Sven Mislintat. Mislintat, we are told, simply punched Ngolo Kante’s statistics into his database and Torreira showed up favourably in the ‘similar players’ field. Buying a 22-year old Uruguayan from...
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