Last week I wrote about Arsenal’s attack and my belief, which I believe to be widely shared, that the team needs another reliable game breaker other than Bukayo Saka and Nicolas Jover. I will also preface this piece by saying I don’t believe Arteta’s coaching or system is any kind of impediment to Arsenal’s attacking game.
The team scored 91 Premier League goals last season, Bukayo Saka has not been stifled from becoming one of the game’s great attacking players and Arsenal dominate every opponent they play, more or less. When they score one goal, they don’t sit back and defend, generally speaking. They have scored five away at Sporting and West Ham inside the last month.
I think they have a personnel issue in attack. Martinelli isn’t quite doing it. Trossard isn’t quite doing it. Havertz isn’t quite doing it in front of goal. Sterling isn’t doing anything useful and Jesus blows hot and cold to say the least. I think it is very much an issue of recruitment and not coaching. So the question comes, should Arsenal have done more to address this during the summer?
If I was to act as the defence counsel for Arsenal, I would state the following. They tried to sign Benjamin Sesko from Leipzig, who is very much an unpolished gem. That attempt didn’t come off. They recognised the need for an extra attacker to the point that they bashed the Sterling button on deadline day and didn’t sign off on the release of Reiss Nelson on loan until that deal was complete.
It might not be a point that people like, it might be inconvenient, but the market was pretty bare. Liverpool signed Chiesa on a cut price deal because he is so injury prone that Arsenal might as well have signed him as a left-back. City did not replace Julian Alvarez. Even the most reckless spending club in the world, Chelsea, signed Neto and Sancho, who have contributed little this season. (Frustratingly, Neto’s only worthwhile contribution came against Arsenal!)
I think some of the arguments about Arteta not prioritising attackers are pretty fatuous when context is applied. Saka and Martinelli started the last Premier League game and both were at the club when Arteta arrived. Arteta also arrived into a situation where Arsenal had spent about £162m on a front three that had totally flopped in Lacazette, Aubameyang and Pepe (only one of those attackers provided close to their transfer value).
Granted, Arteta and Arsenal very much got a bye when Willian was willing to leave some money on the table to go away after his disastrous year at the club. But that also serves as a warning about what can happen when you get it wrong. If you spend £100m or so on an attacker and get it wrong, you probably can’t buy another one for a while.
While I would argue that Arsenal probably are in ‘we have to hit the button on something now and hope it works’ territory, I think it’s disingenuous to pretend this is an easy choice or one that isn’t inherent with great risk. The counter to that is that Arteta has been willing to gamble on more defensive players.
Partey’s minutes were managed very carefully at Atleti. Calafiori has an incredibly serious knee injury in his past and Arsenal decided to roll with it. I guess the difference is that these players cost £50m whereas gambling on an attacker will likely set you back double that.
I don’t think Arsenal should be presented any sort of ‘at least you tried’ cake, but big money bids for Vlahovic and especially Mudryk suggest there is an appetite for risk in attack. It doesn’t get riskier than being willing to blow the budget on Mudryk. It’s a competitive market for attackers. You can get a defender relatively uncontested, when you go for an attacker in this market, you are likely in a bidding war.
However, I am more receptive to the idea that Arsenal don’t really need the Goldilocks attacker if one is not available. I think upgrading on Havertz and Martinelli probably is difficult (if not totally impossible) in the current market. I think there is a pertinent question as to whether Arsenal have upgraded on Nketiah and Nelson.
Currently, Jesus and Sterling’s output is not exactly putting Nketiah and Nelson in the shade. Hopefully, Jesus’ hat-trick last night acts as a set of jump cables for this season but, we should also remember that Eddie Nketiah scored a hat-trick last season too. Repeatability is what we need from the Brazilian.
While I believe that Arsenal probably do need another ‘game breaker’, a better solution from the bench than Raheem Sterling modelling the latest Arsenal tracksuit would still represent an improvement. Leo Trossard improved Arsenal’s attacking output and he was far from the perfect signing.
The interest in Sesko suggests that Arsenal are not waiting for Goldilocks in an attacking sense, Sesko would have been a ‘project signing’ which illustrates where the market is. I think it was also interesting to hear Arteta say that he sees Ethan Nwaneri as a number 9 in the future.
I think developing him there would be a really smart thing to do. If the market for strikers is going to continue to be impoverished and, therefore, economically prohibitive, choosing to develop the most talented academy player you have into the most difficult position to fill in your squad makes a lot of sense. Especially as the other two positions he looks most suited to are filled by Odegaard and Saka.
My Arsenal Vision colleague Elliot posed the following thought experiment- if you could travel back in time and influence events, would you rather Arsenal signed an attacker in the summer? Or to take away the three red cards from earlier in the campaign and stick with what we have? I think that’s a really interesting question that probably tells you where you are on the question of whether Arsenal should have taken a bigger risk in attack during the summer.
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