Klaus wrote:
It's funny how people keep forgetting Podolski. It might be because we signed him so early but he still counts as a signing. Having him in the starting eleven and Chamberlain in the squad instead of Arshavin will probably account for 20 extra goals from a wide position next season. I'm pretty happy with that.
My gut instinct when I saw that was that it was pretty optimistic (though not ridiculous). I guess it depends on a few things:
1 - Robin stays, and his goalscoring tally not dropping off too much. He played all 38 league games last year, starting in all but one.
My prediction: Without assuming the worst, I think I'd be extremely happy if he can get 20+ next year. Not because I think he'll get much worse, just because I don't expect him to quite repeat this year's feat, and simply I don't want him to play as much - he should rest more (especially if we've just signed him to a contract through his age 33 season!)
2 - Podolski pretty much takes Gervinho out of the equation within the first month or two of the season, as well as filling in for Robin on his 'rest' days.
My prediction: I'd say we're looking for an absolute minimum of 10 league goals from Podolski, and anything around 15+ would be a big success next year.
3 - Oxlade and Theo pretty much fill in the remaining gaps. Theo started 32 last season. Assuming both he and Robin and Podolski start 90 between them next season (unless Theo gets overtaken by Ox altogether, which is possible I suppose), that leaves 24(ish) starts for Ox, though realistically we'll be seeing Gervinho in there too.
My prediction: I know the stats are a bit crude at this point, but my prediction for Ox & Gervinho is about 6-7 goals over 24 starts, with Theo repeating on 8-10 in 30. Maybe slightly more if Oxlade plays more than Gervinho, slightly fewer if not.
Obviously we're going to have injuries, and players I've not mentioned yet are probably going to get games in those positions as well, and we might line up differently from time to time. This is a very flawed set of predictions, but I don't think I've been excessively pessimistic with any of them?
So last season, a front 3 of Theo, Robin and Gervinho / Oxlade managed 44 goals between them. Based on the above, I think we're looking at somewhere between 45-60 from that group plus Podolski (wide margin for error that!), though that doesn't predict for any kind of serious injury crisis, or Robin & Theo leaving. So a prediction of an EXTRA 20 goals seems a bit heavy to me, without a significantly higher input coming from the players behind them. It should, however, put us in a position where the burden is shared around a little more, and that will, I think, benefit the whole squad, solving one of our biggest issues this year.
What we need now is creativity. I don't think we created enough last season. We committed too many players when going forward to compensate for it and got outnumbered easily as soon as we were dispossessed. Wilshere will be able to take that responsibility if he picks up where he left off a year ago, but it's a pretty big if. Rather than wishing for Arsenal to break their transfer record on a holding midfielder (which was the one midfield position that actually worked last season) we should hope that we're going out of our way to bring in a playmaker this summer.
Edit: I see that Asa managed to sneak a similar post in before me.
Absolutely spot-on here.
