8 goals and 10 assists already this season a third of the way through, that's crazy. The scary thing is I think he's only now just hitting form.

He's come up trumps this season after some questionable form. Stylistically, he leaves a bit to be desired but goddamn is he effective.

It must be hard to express your style if you're hacked down the moment you receive it, and pretty much doubled team.
The times he did have air, he was too basic and predictable. Whole front line poor so it's not all on him.

25 days later

Interesting bit of writing, although it might be more enlightening if they'd compiled some stats about Saka's output versus his cumulative minutes, or versus some sort of moving average of minutes played.

The main argument it makes is that Saka's dropped off in form since the start of December, which sounds about right.

Last season Saka experienced a steep drop in form midseason, one that turned into an extended trough. That happened hard upon the brilliant performances for England which saw him finally properly anointed as a national superstar by the pundits.

20 days later

He has been nowhere near as good as last first half of the season but his stats suggest otherwise...

Felt like the more touches we have in the box was due to hesitancy and extra touches don't help us score more but rather delayed attacks and allowed defenders to get blocks in

With Saka he dropped off a long way after Feb last season. I think we tend to compare his best last season with his worst this season (same goes for the team as a whole).

Any gooner who isn't instantly suspicious of a stat like "accumulated penalty area touches" obviously hasn't been paying attention since the 90s anyway. Just a sign we don't get our shots away and we play against extremely deep and organised defences.

Surely they're not counting literal touches in the box? They should call it possessions in the box, or something.

    I want a stat for how many times you're found in a good shooting position per match. That's vs how many shots they manage would interest me.

    Coombs they count literal touches in the box.
    In theory it’s a stat that’s highly correlated to your overall attacking ability. Think of any football game you’re watching - the team in the opposition box is taking more shots.

    Arsenal has one specific complication - we take bad touches which reduce xG quality or shot creating actions. We are a confounding team at times.

        Claudius Arsenal has one specific complication - we take bad touches which reduce xG quality or shot creating actions. We are a confounding team at times.

        Arteta needs to get Dennis in for a session with our forwards - he'd have them right in no time.

          Qwiss there’s an analysis out there on this. I need to dig it up. But someone ran the numbers on xG when our attackers receive the ball versus when they take the shots and included player position charts. And what you see is that we are too tentatively resulting in defenders covering our guys and giving us harder shots.

          You just want the boys to hit it early. They all do this - Odegaard, Havertz, Jesus, Trossard etc. just hit it like Lampard once in a while

            Claudius they shouldn't, because it's how many times you have possession in the box that correlates to goals. Additional touches are only indicative of not shooting. Possessions in the box (i.e. receiving in the box or carrying into the box) would tell us a lot more.

              17 days later

              Looks back to his best.

              Some time off/away definitely helped, and to me it reinforces my concern Arteta over plays him.

                10 league goals for the season and likely to pass his tally from last year. Even more impressive considering he's not played too well prior to the Dubai break

                MistaT definitely a lot more lively and sharp since the winter break. We need to bring someone in who can give him that rest more often. Or maybe just bring in a striker and let Jesus do it because I think if you want someone quality to cover for him they're going to need to play multiple positions. Jesus can do that as good as anyone you are likely to get plus he can play with Saka when needed too. And I think we have to accept that Jesus isn't a 2 game a week player anyway, he needs to fall into the rotation bracket rather than first XI.

                  6 months away from being world class imo. Need a big CL campaign and a strong Euro’s and assuming he keeps the numbers up in the league he will our first WC player under Arteta.