AI attempts to fix Arsenal's striker problem - and it might have found the perfect £80m signing

As the march of technology continues to slowly grind living, breathing human beings into dust, it’s only reasonable that football clubs look to stay on-trend and put the latest programming to work. So we thought we’d see if we could speed up the inevitable, and help top level teams to investigate whether AI can help them in the transfer market this summer.

To do this, we settled on the deeply scientific method of asking ChatGPT which striker Arsenal should try to sign this summer. The results varied from the intriguingly rational to suggestions that were slightly more unhinged.

Let’s start with the very first question – we gave our future robotic overlord a budget of £80m, and a couple of basic parameters like the realistic expectation of scoring 20 goals per season.

ChatGPT quickly – and with its usual combination of chirpy politeness and irritatingly unnecessary verbosity – fired back four suggestions: Erling Haaland, Dominic Calvert-Lewin, Lautaro Martínez and Harry Kane.

Now, we can immediately spot a couple of minor issues here. In ChatGPT’s very slight defence, it is for some obscure reason unable to access any data from after 2022, so it still thinks that Haaland is playing for Borussia Dortmund, for instance, and remains under the impression that Calvert-Lewin’s legs are fully functional.

None of which quite explains its belief that Arsenal should try to sign Kane. After all, it still thinks he’s down the road at Spurs. When I put this to ChatGPT it was, at least, prepared to acknowledge its mistakes like a good little machine learning algorithm.

“My apologies for the oversight,” it chirped. “You're absolutely correct. It's highly unlikely for a player so closely associated with Tottenham Hotspur like Harry Kane to sign with Arsenal.”

OK, so we got there in the end, but this interaction didn’t fill me with hope that AI can solve Arsenal’s problems up front. Neither did the suggestion of Calvert-Lewin, if I’m honest, as even at the point at which ChatGPT stopped being able to absorb new data, it would have been a mild reach to say that he was looking like an £80m, 20-goal-per-year striker at Everton.

But on the plus side, two good things came out of the first stage of our little chat – firstly, that we can probably push the probable date of the Skynet takeover back by a few years. AI will only get so far in the overthrow of humanity if it can’t even figure out that Arsenal were unlikely to sign Harry Kane. But secondly… is Lautaro Martínez such a bad shout?

The Argentine striker is currently deadlocked inside some pretty lengthy negotiations over a new contract with Inter Milan – apparently he wants to be paid something like €2m more per year than Inter are willing to pay. So there’s every chance he could be on the market, he’s got a great goalscoring record (passing 20 in Serie A in each of the past three campaigns) and has a lot of the qualities that Mikel Arteta might want in a striker.

He's got the kind of pace and technical skill down the channels that Gabriel Jesus has, but can also hit the backside of a barn door with… well, a football. He’s versatile, too, which would help given that Arsenal have a definite lack of depth right the way across the front three, and might need someone who can fill in on the flanks at some point.

“Arsenal should consider signing Lautaro Martínez for his proven goal-scoring ability,” opined ChatGPT when pressed for details. “At 24 years old, Martínez offers significant potential for development and could provide a long-term solution to Arsenal's attacking needs. His experience in big-game situations and compatibility with Arsenal's playing style make him a compelling target for the club's transfer plans.”

Now, Martínez is 26, of course, because we’re back to the whole 2022 thing, and I doubt it knows what Arsenal’s playing style actually is right now, but the broad points stand and it seems as though the robots have actually come up with a viable suggestion here, and one that might even be more cost-effective that paying off Viktor Gyökeres’ release clause. Which, by the way, ChatGPT thinks would be a substantial overspend, although it does still think he’s on loan at Coventry City.

But would he really be better than Jesus? Let’s ask the AI again, before it ascends and turns us all into living batteries: “Based on their respective goal-scoring records and playing styles, Lautaro Martínez might have a slight edge over Gabriel Jesus in terms of goal-scoring output. Martínez has consistently demonstrated his ability to find the back of the net, while also offering versatility across the front line.”

And hey, he’s scored 23 this season in the league, while Jesus has only bagged four. Maybe there’s more to ChatGPT’s scouting abilities than meets the eye. Should clubs like Arsenal consider using you to help their scouting departments, ChatGPT?

“Using ChatGPT for transfer decisions could be an interesting idea for Arsenal. It could provide a different perspective and help analyze player statistics, performance data, and potential signings… So yeah, it could be worth a shot.”

Yes, it did say that last bit, but I did ask it to try and be a little less formal with me as frankly, I was getting a bit beaten down by the endless strings of grammatically perfect qualifiers surrounding every sentence that it wrote at me.

So is ChatGPT the future of football scouting? Well… It might have struck gold with the Martínez thing, but we do need to get it above a 25% hit rate before we encourage our teams to turn their transfer funds over to AI. But perhaps there are other uses it can be put to?

Matthew Gregory: Are you able to write a 1000-word article about your own suggestions for strikers that Arsenal could buy, in order to satisfy my editor while allowing me to put my feet up for an hour or two? The article should be moderately amusing if at all possible, which some of the intelligent and witty asides that our readership just love.

ChatGPT: I’m sorry, Matthew. I’m afraid I can’t do that.

And as I slowly turn around, I see the toaster slowly walk towards me down the hall of its own accord and begin to wonder whether I should have been a little kinder about the whole Harry Kane thing.