With Balogun will Arsenal be heading toward goalscoring records

Folarin Balogun is 21 and he is on loan at Stade de Reims. They are 11th in the French top division having played 21, won six, drawn 11, lost four.  Overall they have scored 26 goals and rather interestingly Balogun has scored 14 of these goals in 20 games he has played.  That is a goal scoring record of 0.7 goals a game.

Which is even more impressive than it sounds in that for three of his 20 appearances he came on as a substitute.

Now Harry Kane has scored at a fractionally higher average level (0.76 goals a game), and obviously, Erling Haaland who is scoring at a rate of more than one a game (1.32 if you must know) is outdoing our young man in France.

Third highest in the Premier League is Ivan Toney with 0.72 goals a game but after that there is no one scoring at the Balogun level.   Fourth in the Premier League is Aleksander Mitrovic who is on 0.64 goals a game.  So Balogun is scoring at a higher level that all the Premier League centre forwards except three.

As for Balogun’s future that is most likely to see him joining the Arsenal first team next season, which is yet another reason why all the journalistic talk about Arsenal needing desperately to buy a striker following the injury to Gabriel Jesus was a load of codswallop, which much of the media propagated and no one has apologised for since.

But there is more thing to anticipate than the arrival of Balogun next season.

So far this season Eddie has scored nine goals, Odegaard eight, Saka eight and Martinelli seven.  What this means is that when Gabriel Jesus returns he will not be forced straight back into a goal-scoring role, with all the pressure that brings.

Indeed we might remember that Gabriel Jesus did not score in ten games  before his injury, but he worked like mad pulling defenders out of position so that others could score – and they have continued to do this since Gabriel was injured.

And it is this collection of goalscoring talent, which Balogun will join next season, that is a major reason why Arsenal are top of the league and the second highest scoring team in the league.

Plus there is another factor.  Many young players take a while to adapt to the Premier League and all the pressure that comes from starting matches with expectations built up by the media.  But just by being on the pitch next season, Balogun will distract defences.  Already they don’t know who to mark… Eddie, Odegaard, Saka, Martinelli.   Next campaign we will hopefully also have a full-firing Smith Rowe playing once again, and Balogun, and Gabriel Jesus.  

Now obviously they can’t all play in the same team, but with nine players on the bench, Arsenal will be able to include a couple of proven strikers as backup for each game.

Even without Balogun, if Arsenal keep scoring at the current rate they will end up with 90 goals this season, a number they last reached in 1963/4 playing not 38 games as now but 42.  The last time the club exceeded 90 goals was the title-winning season of 1952/3.

Our best premier league season for goal scoring was 2004/5 when the top of the table after 19 games showed two more goals scored but a worse defence and thus a goal difference that was four worse and nine points less achieved.