Apologies in advance since this is a long post but it's something I've been thinking about a lot in the last week or so. I think that everyone has lost a bit of the plot in terms of expectations for a new striker signing. Or rather, what we will need out of a new striker signing in terms of output given the team around him. For this exercise I am only speaking about Premier League performance/scoring.
Looking back at the last 8 seasons, the winner of the title has scored the following amount of goals: 86, 96, 94, 99, 83, 85, 95, 106. That's an average of 93 goals scored with a high number of 106 (17/18 Man City) and a low number of 83 (20/21 Man City) with a median of 94.5. In the last three seasons, Arsenal scored 69, 91 and 88 goals. Clearly last season's output was subpar but we were close in the previous two seasons, although we would have only scored the most goals in 2 of the last 8 seasons. To me, we need to figure out a way to get to 95+ goals in order to win the title given how dominant our defense can be. I think that's conservative and we could likely get away with 90+ goals but let's be ambitious. This would require an increase of 26 goals from last season. I'm a big believer that we can spread a lot of the goals around but clearly we need our top scorers to improve their output from last year.
Injuries definitely affected things for players like Saka and Havertz who went from 16 and 13 goals in 23/24 to 6 and 9 goals respectively. Havertz's goals per 90 remained almost the same (0.44 to 0.43) but he played in 14 less matches. Saka's goals per 90 decreased significantly (0.49 to 0.31) while playing in 10 less matches but he also had more matches played after coming back from injury at a reduced capacity than Havertz did. I could go into more detail about other players but essentially my point is that we should expect increases in output for a few players in the squad from last year to this year and I don't think it would be outlandish to expect an additional 10-20 goals from the current squad with some positive regression and hopefully better health. On the flip side, we are also losing Partey's 4 goals, Jesus's 3 goals (maybe he comes back in 2026 but not counting on him), Tierney's goal and potentially Trossard's 8 goals. That's a loss of 16 goals from the squad, which leaves us at needing to make up 42 goals from the returning players last year plus our new signings.
This is purely conjecture and I didn't really approach this too scientifically/mathematically, but just provided some of my own predictions based on injuries/negative regression last year. Here is how I could see our goals output looking in the league this year, assuming optimistically that we bring in Eze and Rodrygo in addition to Gyokeres:
- Gyokeres: 15 goals
- Saka: 13 goals
- Havertz: 10 goals
- Rodrygo: 9 goals
- Eze: 8 goals
- Martinelli: 7 goals
- Rice & Odegaard: 6 goals (12 total)
- Gabriel: 5 goals
- Merino & Nwaneri: 4 goals (8 total)
- Saliba: 2 goals
- Timber, MLS, Kiwior, Calafiori, Zubimendi: 1 goal (5 total)
- Own Goals: 2
This would take us to 96 goals total and as you can see, Gyokeres is "only" at 15 goals. I think it's definitely doable although I could see my predictions being a bit bullish on some while at the same time I might be underselling guys like Saka and Rodrygo. We scored 5 own goals the previous year and then went down to 2 this last year but that's a completely random stat so I just stuck with the bottom end. I am a believer that a rising tide lifts all boats so if we can get our attack clicking more this year with the addition of a pure goal scorer and some additional goals and chance creation from the wing (Rodrygo) and midfield (Eze), we could see positive regression from players like Havertz, Odegaard and Rice.
All of this is to say that I am really convinced that we don't necessarily need to have Gyokeres come in and score 20+ league goals next year if we can just get some better health, a little positive regression for a few players and some extra goals from new recruits in the attack outside of ST. And then any over performance by Gyokeres or other players would just be the cherry on top. Sorry again for the novel - brevity has never been one of my strong suits!
