By Tony Attwood
Here’s an interesting thought. Arsenal are yet to be defeated in the eight games Jakub Kiwior and William Saliba have started together in central defence. A thought which made me wonder how much the team has changed over the current campaign
For the first league game this season the team was
Raya
White Gabriel Saliba Partey
Rice Zinchenko Odeagaard
Saka Havertz Martinelli
William Saliba had now created a new club record of being on the winning team in 50 of his first 66 appearances in the Premier League. The previous quickest player to reach 50 wins was by Nacho Monreal who did it in 70 games.
And another interesting snippet. The starting lineup for the last league game (that against Everton) included Raya, Saliba, White, Rice – just four of the players who started in the first game.
Yet despite this enormous turnover – only a third of the original XI started the last match – Arsenal are undefeated in their last eight games scoring over two goals a game on average. And this despite Arsenal currently have four players ruled out of the next game (Jesus, Tomiyasu, Havertz, and Gabriel), with Rice and Saka being assessed after issues arising from the Real Madrid game, They are both shown on Premier League Injuries as having only a 50% chance of playing this weekend, which suggests to me they might both be rested ahead of the next Real Madrid match.
This change around in players, combined with being second in the Premier League, and with a very strong chance of being in the semi-final of the Champions League, surely suggests Arsenal do have a strong squad. They remain the fourth-highest scorers in the League, with the best defence and the second-best goal difference in the League.
This of course doesn’t mean Arsenal are actually winning anything yet or indeed will win anything this season, but even so, it is a better position than 18 other clubs with seven league games and between one and four Champions League games to go.
So it seems very reasonable for Arteta to comment that, “We lost maybe our best defender for four months, then Jakub Kiwior comes in and delivers the performances he’s delivering,” Indeed as the Guardian pointed out, “Arsenal are yet to be defeated in the eight games he (Kiwior) and William Saliba have started together in central defence.”.
In fact when we come to look at Arsenal’s figures for the number of players who have made a start in league matches this season, and the number of players who have started 10 or more league matches this season, the figures throughout are within one or two of the figures for both Liverpool and Brentford. It is true that with Chelsea, Arsenal have had more players start league games than other clubs (although Chelsea’s numbers are affected as a result of playing many of their reserve and younger players in their 11 Uefa Conference League games so far this season). But the difference between Arsenal and other top clubs is not great.
Brentford, whom we play this weekend, have only had 13 players play ten League games or more this season, and of course, their injury level has had a chance to be lower since they have no European competitions to play in. But overall Brentford have 19 players who have started in the League this season, Arsenal have used 21.
Such figures show that for Arsenal it is the fact that among the long term injured were key players – Saka and Havertz obviously come to mind – that has affected their performance and let Liverpool set up such a lead at the top of the table. Indeed we have noted before the difficulty of having top back-up players who are willing to remain back-ups to top players, thus taking the risk of hardly getting a game in the season. Young players will do it for a season or two, but after a while, they want games even if it is with a lesser club.
So in terms of the present situation, Brentford are shown with three players ruled out and two being assessed, against Arsenal’s five ruled out and two being assessed. It’s the sort of numbers we are used to. And yet Arsenal are second in the league and in the Champions League quarters, with a good chance of progressing.
