Happy Saturday people, from a warm garden in the Algarve. Today I thought I’d have a think and muse about our forward line and, of allof the functions in our side, it’s the one that is the most intriguing when you think about how the season unfolded.
For the first half of the season I don’t think there was an Arsenal fan that didn’t hypothesise that an extra ‘elite’ striker could be the key between wrestling City’s control over the league would be our Golden Goose, but by the end of the season we’d seen an Arsenal side that had scored more than any other in the Premier League, had managed to equal City on goal difference and was playing a guy who we thought was Xhaka’s replacement as our main man leading the line.
At the beginning of last season I had been left thoroughly bemused by the signing of Kai Havertz, so I think starting with his form at the end feels like the right thing to do. Because as we all know, he showed himself to be such an amazing signing in the end and as I always say, I like nothing more than to be proved wrong when it comes to The Arsenal. Kai absolutely did that. Last season he got nine goals in all competitions for Chelsea. The season before that it was 14 and the season before that it was nine again. But he’d ostensibly played as a centre forward. This season he spent half of it as a left eight and yet STILL by game week 38 he’d managed 14 goals and six assists. He’s been a revelation in an Arsenal shirt in 2024; he’s an aerial threat, he’s scored important goals, then in his final five games he got four goals and two assists. He scored the winner on the final day of the season at the death against Everton. He’s provided us with more of a target man than we thought we needed. He’s a hard worker and great pressing off the ball. And he has one heck of a great chant that rings around The Emirates. Waka waka lad, you’ve been brilliant.
And he’s also a reason as to why this summer, regardless of who we bring in, we’ll all be more trusting in Arteta and Edu, because they absolutely got it right in signing the German. So much so, that there’s plenty of us wondering whether we even need another striker at all as our next move. I suspect the answer is still ‘yes’, but we don’t need a Haaland, we need a versatile player who can play with Kai, or deputise, rather than as the main man.
I love his edge too. It threatened to boil over once or twice – he was probably lucky to stay on the pitch at Newcastle earlier in the season – but he’s kept it in check and next season from week one I’m confident he can have his best goalscoring season in the Premier League if he manages another 50+ games for us.
On the right hand side we have our Starboy who, once again, has beaten his own records and bagged over 30 goal involvements in all competitions. In fact we should probably change his name, because ‘boy’ he know longer is; this guy on our right wing is very much a ‘man’. Saka gets kicked all over the place and yet still he gets up and becomes our key player. On the Same Old Arsenal podcast earlier this week we talked about our player of the season and whilst in my head I spoke about Rice and his impact, I think it speaks to the consistency of Saka that nobody really talked about him much in that vein. That’s because he just delivers. Every. Time. For. Us. He’s brilliant. He’s improving every year and providing he keeps himself fit, I think within the next two year’s we’ll be talking about arguably the best player on the planet. There’s a reason Arteta plays him for every single minute, which is because he’s arguably the most reliable player in this Arsenal squad. And to think some of us were questioning his form within the first month or so of the season. People can talk up Foden as the Premier League player of the season all they like in the Premier League, but for me it’s Saka all day long, and I make no apologies for my extreme bias.
I’m just so excited to see what he does next season. Fingers crossed he remains fit though. It does feel as if there could be some big injury on the horizon, given the volume of games he plays, but also the way opposition players are allowed to clatter him with impunity.
Then we come to the supporting cast. Leo Trossard has gone from rotational option to our first choice left winger and again, like Kai, he’s had some really important goals he’s scored for us at the business end of the season. Sometimes he looks like he’s a bit cheesed off when he scores, like he’s got a chip on his shoulder or something, but now we all know that’s because he doesn’t get to spend as much time with Ann Hathaway as he’d like to.
His form unfortunately came at the expense of Martinelli, who picked up that injury against Sheffield United and never really managed to get back in to the team, but the beauty of having a squad like we have is that other players like Trossard are waiting in the wings to step up. The fact Martinelli is so young is also something in his favour; he’ll be back next season and he’ll be better, I’m sure of it.
Whether Nketiah or Jesus are back remains to be seen though. I suspect for Gabriel Jesus we’ll see him again, but we do need to have less time on the treatment table and more on the pitch, because that’s two season’s in a row that he’s gone missing for big chunks of the season through injury. Hopefully he gets that surgery he spoke about a month or so ago and can have a proper pre season; missing this pre season last summer had quite a detrimental effect I think and he never managed to get himself a cadence of regular football to see if he might ‘bang’ for us. As for Nketiah, we need to be thankful for his contribution this season, but I think it’s time to make some cash on the Englishman; he needs to be a main man somewhere and I think most of us are in agreement that it won’t be at The Arsenal.
The same goes for the likes of Nelson, who barely played, but had a couple of nice moments. Time for us to make some money on some of these youth products and I suspect we will.
Right, I’ll leave it there for today. I’m off for a cycle and then a bit of seafood by an Algarvian rio. Have yourselves a good one and I’ll catch you all tomorrow for some thoughts. I suspect we’re getting close to the ‘talk about transfer nonsense’ period of the season.
