Yeah, I’m much more concerned with other positions. We have Kai & he offers something different. It seems to be a less technical, but faster and more powerful version of Laca
Looks like RB weren’t budging from wanting at least 90m for Sesko. I’m glad we’re getting a striker before preseason and that it’s not a project
not my first choice and definitely worried about how much of his production came against bad competition, but will be happy when it’s over. think we’ll regret not getting Sesko in a few years but a trophy or two in the meantime would make that easier to deal with.
I was team Sesko but he turned us down twice and never seemed like he really agitated for a move to Arsenal. Fuck em’. Huge talent but no way to we should be paying €90m up front for a guy who scored 13 goals in Germany. Gyokeres will score goals for us, but I don’t think he’ll ever be the first choice striker. Seems to have an elite mentality though, and he was begging for the move. Not ideal, but I’ll take it.
I have no issue with Madueke if: 1. the price is right (he's not worth 50) 2. it doesn't impact potential for Eze or for Rodrygo him coming from Chelsea isn't a negative for me; they clearly can identify talent (even if they haven't been able to figure out how to use everybody yet). how this impacts Ethan is interesting.
I rate him. Madueke is really just Saka insurance & doesn’t solve for the left, based on how we’ve set up for the last several years. There might be a shift tactically though, that we aren’t aware of… It’s an either/or with him & Rodrygo Adding Eze to the equation balances everything out - don’t think he’s as necessary with Rodrydo, but almost mandatory with Madueke.
Grabbed a Cannon Stats sub for the season... seems to have ramped up content. Will share what I get access to, as it comes in
First Share - don't think I saw this here... Spoiler: Productivity & Martinelli Do Arsenal get enough output from the left wing? Adam Rae Voge I’ve lost count at this point of how many pieces of mine have started through my stumbling across a Twitter conversation, but here’s another one to add to the pile. Gabriel Martinelli, as you may be aware, was relatively credibly linked to Bayern Munich over the weekend. That should, as I ended up stating directly at one point, tell you all you really need to know about whether Gabriel Martinelli is actually a good player. But we’ll get into that more in a bit. The idea of selling Martinelli naturally stirred up some feelings. Some people lamented the idea, which led to some backbiting, which leads me to what I saw. That’s right, I’m here to talk about the idea that Gabriel Martinelli is not productive enough off the wing for Arsenal! Particularly over the two seasons following his 15-goal outburst in 2022-2023 season, this discussion has persisted. Not everyone believes it, but a lot of people do. “This aint good enough.” That’s a question worth digging into, isn’t it? Martinelli’s got 14 Premier League goals over two seasons (no pens counted), while Saka’s got 15. Trossard, it should be noted, has 20. And that number doesn’t exactly blow you away at first blush. Mo Salah scored 20 not including penalties all on his own this season. Bryan Mbeumo scored 15, Luis Díaz 13 and Jarrod Bowen 12. So, are Arsenal’s wingers…unproductive? One of the most obvious points to be made here is that cumulative totals are incredibly reliant on total playing time. This framework has been weaponized, intentional or not, against the likes of Šeško, Havertz, Eddie Nketiah, and it’s been done so again here. Sure, Saka’s 15 and Martinelli’s 14 pale in comparison to Salah’s 32 or Bowen’s 25, but Bowen has played 14 full PL 90s more over the past two seasons (about 1,250 more minutes) than either Arsenal winger. Bryan Mbeumo has played about 30 more 90s! Salah is about 13 ahead. When you break it down per minute, the list of more productive wingers gets short. Among those who’ve played at least 40 total PL 90s in the past two seasons, here’s the ranking for np goals per 90: Foden Salah Trossard Bowen Son Diaz Brennan Johnson Mbeumo Semenyo Saka Callum Hudson-Odoi Martinelli FYI - The gap between Mbeumo and Martinelli here is that between taking 283 minutes per goal and about 309 minutes per goal. So, Arsenal have three of the top-12 most goal-scoringest (counting this as a word) in the league, according to math. This should probably also include assists, which are key to the whole scoring thing, so for the record: Saka jumps into fourth in the PL in goals + assists per 90 (behind Salah, Son, Foden) over the past two seasons Trossard falls down into eighth Martinelli falls one spot to 13th On underlying expected goals numbers, things look pretty similar. Bukayo Saka is 2nd in the PL in npxG+xAG per 90 minutes, again behind only Salah Trossard is 9th Martinelli is 13th The good news is that after a slower start (likely influenced by Arsenal’s overall injury issues), Martinelli closed out 2024-2025 averaging 0.61 npxG+xAG per 90 minutes from his post-injury return in March through the final game of the season in May. Those numbers put you into top-five conversations instead of top-10, and would be exceptional to see continue. That should give some idea of where Arsenal’s wide attackers rank in terms of recent output, now just how easy would it be to upgrade on that? I put together a couple of quick graphs that I think help paint a solid picture. In the first, you can see where Martinelli and Saka line up against some of the more popular shouts and links from recent memory on a per-90 basis. Saka is Saka, while players like Nico Williams and Jamie Gittens have matched or exceeded real goal contributions per 90, but not the underlying. In those cases, there’s some reliance on the player himself or his teammates remaining clinical to keep the numbers up, meaning that could be something to keep a close eye on. Another thing I’ve been looking at more and more lately is output through the framework of usage, which at least in theory should measure efficiency of a player’s involvement. Adjusting these same numbers to be per touch in the attacking third does some interesting things… That’s weird, right?! Because I know a lot of Arsenal fans, and not even unreasonable ones, who’d call Martinelli wasteful. And here he is scoring or assisting more per touch, as well as generating more underlying xG, than Bukayo Saka. That’s very likely influenced by Saka being a high-touch player and facing heavy numbers near the box, of course, and that’s the kind of context that watching games can add to metrics like this. But seeing Martinelli on par with someone like Kvaratskhelia, whom many Arsenal fans swooned over in the spring, is a very interesting thing. Rodrygo, as I’ve said in my winger ranking piece, is another who is very high-usage when he plays, so it’s no surprise that his per-touch numbers are not as significant, particularly when you factor in the fact that this past season was a down one for him. Perhaps all of this is a lot of hot air to you, but it feels worth consideration to me. And Bayern Munich’s directors certainly seem to think Martinelli’s is a name worth considering among the likes of Diaz, Barcola, Mitoma and Leão. So perhaps upgrading on this player, after all, isn’t quite so easy.
Choosing to believe that Gyok has just a psychotic need to prove himself, he only wanted Arsenal, and he’s going to just throw himself head first into any challenge this year hopefully
What give me hope is his shot placement seems really good. Ok maybe the Portuguese defenders are shit but he’s still putting it out of the keepers reach, often bottom and top corner.
Can he play any other positions outside of the 9? Ex 10/ second striker seems most every outfield player in the squad can play two
I believe he has a little bit of experience playing on the left side but I doubt they’ll put him there unless something has gone wrong with injuries
Chelsea apparently asked for Dowman as part of a Madueke deal. That's on top of sniffing around Ethan. Why in the FUCK do we continue to do business these pricks? Again, the player is fine. And I get that Chelsea have a million of talented players on their books. But these fuckers have zero respect for Arsenal and clearly see them as an easy mark. There is plenty of talent out there that isn't on their books...go and get Bakayoko for half the price and let some other club help Chelsea persist with their insane asset hoarding.
Spoiler: Arsenal pick Gyokeres/ https://open.substack.com/pub/canno...s?r=1tae0b&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email This is the first big bet from Andrea Berta and I have to say that I am nervous about it and I don't know if that is the right choice. Scott Willis A resolution to Arsenal’s striker hunt looks to be coming into focus. After going with a dual track approach on Benjamin Sesko and Viktor Gyokeres all summer long, with an Ollie Watkins stalking horse as a backup the process has boiled down to Arsenal seemingly choosing Gyokeres. There have been a flurry of updates today and it was capped off with the very reliable David Ornstein of The Athletic reporting that Arsenal are in advanced talks with Sporting for him: Arsenal are in advanced talks with Sporting CP over a deal to sign Viktor Gyokeres. A move for the 27-year-old striker is not done as discussions continue over the transfer fee — but the situation is progressing towards a conclusion. Personal terms are in place on a proposed five-year contract, the Sweden international having prioritised a switch to Arsenal for some time. This is in light of news from Hand of Arsenal (always a bit weird to type up people who are anonymous online like that but his track record this season has been very solid, but ymmv): For the last 2 weeks Marcel Schäfer (DoF) for RB Leipzig refused to negotiate lower than €90 million. The mission then became very clear. Arsenal now trying to close a deal for Viktor Gyökeres. Talks ongoing over the structure of the fee and add ons. This seems to generally track the narrative that seems to have played out this summer where Sesko was the first choice at striker for Arsenal. The club was close to signing him last summer but Sesko decided that he wanted another year as the starter at RB Leipzig and signed a new contract that included a new higher release clause of €70m (£58m) that reportedly could fluctuate but after negotiations this summer and reporting now that release clause didn’t seem to be very iron clad or maybe it hasn’t been very well reported on how it could deviate from the base number. I am disappointed about this development because Sesko was largely the player that I favored but I can’t blame the team for having a valuation and sticking too it and not wanting to move too far off of it. If Arsenal wanted a deal done in the region of £50m to £60m and Leipzig were not budging off of their £78m that’s nearly a 35% and £20m difference in valuation and that is hard to bridge. I don’t envy the decision makers here having to make the call because Gyokeres at £50m to £60m isn’t exactly a cheap gamble either. This is a BIG bet from Andrea Berta who by reports was one of the people behind the push for the player compared to others at Arsenal that were not convinced by him and it is one of the more impactful decisions that Arsenal will have this summer. We have written and talked about Gyokeres a bunch already and it would be good to distill things down here now. No denying his Portuguese numbers Gyokeres scored 39 goals in the Primeira Liga last season on his way to being the highest scoring player in any domestic league this season. That is a pretty great data point to have and that will be the starting point for the bull case for him. The most important job of a striker is that he scores goals and he did that a lot last season. This also isn’t just a one season wonder for him (even if last year was by far the biggest one) or just a result of him having a ton of penalties (he did have that with 12 last season and 17 total over the last two). He still leads with 51 non-penalty goals scored over the last two years in his domestic league. He backs up the gaudy goal scoring numbers with excellent shooting volume, lots of touches in the box, good carrying and dribble numbers, and solid creative numbers for a striker. Based just on his numbers in Portugal this is by far the best statistical forward in the world right now. Looking at his numbers it is impressive as hell. His shooting numbers are excellent, he’s got volume, plus quality chances, plus adding value with his accuracy and power. This is a story that holds for his career too: He has shown a solid track record of beating his xG and it is backed by his skill of shot placement and power which would make me think that this is actually a durable skill for him and not just noise. His big finishing hot spots are exactly where you want your striker taking shots from as well, dominating the center of the penalty area. His finishing looks strong across the board as well, when he gets solid looks at goal he does an excellent job of turning those chances into goals at a high rate. If Arsenal fans are worried about the dreaded “Big Chances Missed” this is a player that generally has not had that struck him (he will still miss them because everyone does and getting big chances is better full stop). One bit of a red flag here in the data ignoring level of competition (that will come below) is that he is not a good header of the ball. For a player that has his athletic traits and size (6-1½) he is poor in the air. If scores at the rate he has previously with his feet people won’t care but it something that can’t be passed over and not mentioned when talking about the player. This probably dovetails with his lack of heading ability but he is also not a threat on set plays for how prolific of a scorer he has been. Outside of penalty kicks he has just 3 set play goals in his career from 20/21 to present. For Arsenal maybe there are better looks here for him but another one that’s a bit of a red flag. For a striker, and a player that Arsenal would be wanting to come in and get a team that was missing open play goals and threat there is a lot of good news here. How they translate to the Premier League however is open for debate Now we get into what makes this a very tough transfer to get a read on. The Portuguese League, like many leagues outside of the top two or three is one where teams at the top are very good but the quality beyond that drops off significantly. Here is a graphical representation of this using Club Elo ratings comparing the Premier League, the Championship, and the Portuguese Premiera Liga. The top teams in Portugal are quite strong, they back this up performing well in the Champions League generally and would be about on the edge of the European places in the Premier League. Once you start getting past the top 5 teams however, that quality of team drops off significantly past that and the teams are rated as below the level of the Championship. This is a bit like when we see players kill it in Cups playing against teams from the Championship or League One or even in Europe playing against the minnows. It’s impressive and you can only play the people in front of you, but it can be a data point that you take with a grain of salt. There are a few things that we can do to try and account for this but nothing is perfect here. The first thing would be doing an adjustment for the strength of opponent and the differences in teams. I attempt this using Club Elo data and here is what Gyokeres’ data looks like after that: That is a pretty large drop off and difference here. He goes from one of the statistically best players in the world to maybe something between good and very good. This isn’t an easy task and this should be more of a ball parking exercise than something that is the gospel truth. The next method would be only looking at his games against other strong teams. For this I have set the cut off of at an Elo rating of 1725 which is roughly the top 50 teams in Europe, this is also about where 17th place in the Premier League is cut off. I have included the last two seasons here because otherwise the sample size would be very small. Compared to his overall numbers the drop off is pretty significant here. His goal scoring this season has been beating up on lots of bad teams. Looking at the breakdown of goals scored in the Primeira Liga it looks like this: Goals vs the other top teams (top 3) - 1 (0 non-penalty) Goals vs the teams in 4th through 7th - 7 (6 non-penalty) Goals vs the bottom 11 - 31 (21 non-penalty) He can only play against the teams on his schedule and he can’t control that the teams that he is playing against haven’t been very good, and he has destroyed them, but there is clearly room for doubt here. Final thoughts for today I can’t help but feel a bit mixed today on this news. I thought that Sesko was the guy and I thought that he fit in with what the vision of the club was perfectly. It would also be a chance to sort of right the mistake (with hindsight) that they made with Alexander Isak. Sesko is far from a certain thing because there is no such thing but he represented very good present talent with super star potential. His age was also perfect to be the rotation for, while able to play with and sometimes in the place of Kai Havertz for Arsenal. It looks like baring a last-minute shift from Leipzig on his valuation that won’t be happening. Gyokeres ends up as a bit of a weird middle ground. His age isn’t bad but he’s in the middle of his prime and there isn’t probably another level to go to here with him. He’s been great in his domestic league but only pretty good when he has come up against competition that is of the caliber of the Premier League. If Arsenal wanted a win now option guys like Ollie Watkins or Victor Osimhen were there and probably guaranteed more floor while having similar or better upside. They came with other issues, Watkins maybe has less runway given he’s older and Osimhen has seemed to want a massive pay day so maybe that swayed the decision here. It does seem that the price is going to be manageable but I am curious to see what sort of wages he will end up on because that will help shed some light on if this is a striker that they expect to be the number one guy (and I’d be nervous about that bet) or if he is more of a rotation option (more comfortable about that). It is hard to read the future but I am coming from a starting point that this is not a player that I would be expecting to displace Kai Havertz from the starting position. Let me know how you are feeling about this one.
This bit right here: He has shown a solid track record of beating his xG and it is backed by his skill of shot placement and power which would make me think that this is actually a durable skill for him and not just noise. His big finishing hot spots are exactly where youwant your striker taking shots from as well,dominating the center of the penalty area.
Read the Phil Costa piece on arseblog and immediately came away with that sounds just like Xabi Alonso. Was coached by him at Real B too(just learned that). Would say this would be a great summer if we get Gyokeres and a winger. Would certainly prefer Eze but Madueke brings a dribbling and speed element which could help break down low blocks.
big fan of our recruitment strategy this summer being bringing our former academy players back home. first kelly and now hinds you’re next, eze
Thought this was a good interesting write up on Reddit. A Swedish perspective on how Viktor Gyökeres grinded to footballs biggest stage Hej Gunners – I’m Swedish, been following Arsenal since I was a kid, and now that it seems official with Gyökeres, I thought I’d share some stuff you probably won’t find in the usual transfer rundowns. Most people are watching clips from Sporting now. Me too, he’s been a beast. But then I realized we’ve probably have some interviews with him on Swedish sites. so to understand who we’re signing, you kind of have to go back a little in time Viktor Einar Gyökeres was born in 1998 in Hägersten, a southern district of Stockholm. Grew up in Gröndal. A nice bloomy area with a lot of football pitches. Gröndal even means ”Green Valley”. His dad’s side is Hungarian. Viktor’s granddad fled Hungary and settled in Sweden, where he met Viktor’s grandmother. That’s where the surname comes from. [’djökeresch]. is how you would say it with the pronunciation (thank you for the correction /u/Wyskalker). Like you say "Bird". The football journey started at five. His first club was IFK Aspudden-Tellus. Not a big academy. Just a local club with grusplaner – gravel pitches – and no fancy resources. His dad, Stefan, had played in lower divisions and became his coach. His mum, Sofia, kept the family steady. His little brother still plays. From age 5 to around 14, Viktor stayed loyal to Aspudden-Tellus. That’s nearly a decade. Most talented kids switch clubs early in Sweden, but not him. He trained, scored goals, played on crappy winter pitches and learned the hard way. He was spotted by Brommapojkarna (BP) around 2012. BP is like Sweden’s version of Ajax / Arsenal Academy – they produce national team players like clockwork. So Viktor was invited to train with BP, and he wanted to go. His dad said no. Said he needed one more year in Aspudden. That says something about his path – slow and stubborn. Eventually, he joined BP in 2013, and that’s when it started to click. He featured in a national documentary called Fotbollsfabriken (Football Factory in Swedish ), about BP’s 98-generation. You can spot him there – quiet, tall, working hard. He wasn’t the star. Kulusevski was. But Viktor scored goals. That’s what he did. At 16, he made his pro debut for BP. One year later, he had 13 goals and 8 assists in Sweden’s second tier. That caught Brighton’s eye. In 2017, he signed with Brighton. But instead of a debut, he got a ticket to the U23s. For over a year. No Premier League minutes. Just U23 games. His one appearance came in the League Cup against Southampton – then back to the shadows. He was loaned out to St. Pauli in Germany. Did well, scored goals. But Brighton didn’t seem interested. He came back, scored in another League Cup match… then immediately loaned out again. This time to Swansea. There, he caught Covid. Struggled with long-term symptoms. Barely played. Another false start. In January ’21, Brighton sent him to Coventry. Another loan. He was 22 by then. Time was running out. But Coventry saw something. Coach Mark Robins understood him. Used him as a real striker. No more left wing experiments. He scored 3 goals in half a season, clearly not amazing, but enough for them to sign him permanently for just over £1m. That’s when things changed. But you already know the rest. Why am I sharing all this? Because most people will see a guy with 54 goals and some Bane-style celebration and think it’s just another late bloomer. But to me – and a lot of Swedes – Viktor’s story is about grinding in silence. Staying loyal. Getting overlooked. Losing time in U23s. Being misused. Being ill. And still coming out the other side. He’s not a product of hype. He’s a product of gravel, patience and sheer jävlar anamma (look that word up). If we get him, we’re not just getting a finisher. We’re getting a story. Let me know if you want links to some deeper Swedish articles – I’ll gladly translate more. COYG / A Swede with gravel memories too Credit to Fredrik de Ron, Paul Skagerlund and Makoto Asahara
I don’t see a scenario where it’s Madueke and Eze, we’re not Chelsea or City and never go crazy like that. I’m happy for 1, Gyokeres alone with the 3 others already met my expectations for what we’d do.
FWIW Ornstein is running with 3 attackers coming in & theorized: 8/10: Eze Rogers MGW LW: Rodrygo Gordon RW: Mbeumo Madueke Maybe, just maybe we are changing with the times and have learned from our mistakes past - and don’t plan on starting our season one to two men short again
just realized this new coach is the guy that was a disaster at Atlanta United. always skeptical when I see an Argentinian with a German last name.