Arteta says more goals are a priority; but that doesn’t mean we have to sign a striker

 

 

 

• Arteta allegedly banned, but it is not the behaviour of managers we should be looking at
• What Arsenal’s Season Tells Us About Progress, Pressure, and Prediction

By Tony Attwood

The headline says, “Arteta wants Partey to stay at Arsenal, and makes more goals a transfer priority” and continues, “We need a goal threat and we need the firepower.” 

And as ever such statements need a little back of background work to get a full picture.  So here we go…

The escalation in the number of goals Arsenal managed in the previous two seasons has been nothing short of utterly sensational, reaching 91 goals in the last campaign.  But then, as we can see from the table below, everything crashed…

 

Season	Goals	Top scorer	Top man’s goals
2018–19	73	Abuameyang	31
2019–20	56	Aubameyang	29
2020–21	55	Lacazette	17
2021–22	61	Saka	12
2022/23	88	Martinelli / Odegaard/ Saka	15 each
2023/24	91	Saka	20
2024/25*	67*	Havertz*	9*

• *2024 – 25: 67 goals scored with one match to play

Now the simplistic view would be that this was a catastrophic drop this season, for even if the club knocks in a few past Southampton next weekend we are still going to be a long way behind the heights of the previous two seasons.

On the other hand, we might consider after a moment or two, the level of injuries suffered this season to players who either play up front or who normally contribute a fair number from midfield to the overall total.  I can’t recall a season like it.

But whatever emphasis we choose to consider, our tartget is clear – to be champions these days the club needs between 83 and 100 goals to be scored per season.  And we can see that in the two seasons before this one, Arsenal were easily within that realm of goal-scoring.

And what makes this even more interesting is where the club has come from on the issue of goal-scoring.  Consider for example the 2013/14 season when Arsenal scored 68 while the league winners scored 102 and the second-placed team got 101.  We were so far off the target that it doesn’t bear thinking about.

In fact the last time Arsenal were the top scorers in the league was 2005 – exactly 20 years ago.   In that season Arsenal got 87, and the second-highest scoring club was Chelsea with 72.   

But to show how these things can move up and down, we might also note that fourth-placed Everton scored just 45 goals.   (Incidentally, in that season Bolton Wanderers came sixth and Middlesbrough seventh, neither still with us in the Premier League but both at that time still a way above Tottenham.  Times do change.)

So coming top in the goal-scoring league is not something that can be brought along as a matter of course, not only because top scorers are rare but also because just having a top scorer in the side doesn’t actually guarantee the club with the top man in its forward line scoring the most goals.

But on the other hand, we do have the extraordinary model of 2022/23 when Arsnal knocked in 88 goals and had three players sharing the top goalscoring spot.

This was a remarkable achievement not only because it was unusual, but because through its very nature, the opposition often had no idea how to mark the goal-scoring players since most of there were three of them.

There is also a secondary bonus that comes from having three goal scorers, and that is that if one of them gets injured the other two can carry on.  Now of course that hasn’t helped Arsenal this season, because we didn’t lose one or two goal-scorers, but the entire forward line and our most influential goal-scoring midfield players in Odegaard.

But this just shows that there is no absolute guarantee of goal-scoring success available.  However, there are things clubs can do to ensure to some degree that they are not trapped by the problem of opposition kickers doing a player in for the rest of the season.

Keeping Gabriel Martinelli, Martin Ødegaard, Bukayo Saka and Kai Havertz all fit and functioning in the way we like to see, is not going to be easy given the way opposition clubs view Arsenal, and the way referees seem to allow illegal tackling to continue, but it must be a target.   Then if we can just find one or two youngsters who don’t expect to play every week, but are ready to bide their time, and who can fill in when injuries occur, we could then be back to the 88+ goals a season mark, and all that brings with it.