Go Wide!

Morning all.

I watched Man City beat Chelsea yesterday afternoon, a result I didn’t necessarily want to see but one Chelsea deserve for myriad reasons. Enzo as captain? Ugh. John Terry would have been proud. Anyway, Erling Haaland did what Erling Haaland does. He scored a goal, and statistically he’s ridiculous.

100 games, 91 goals, 15 assists, 9 hat-tricks. How can you argue with it? Yet, at one point early in the second half I had a look at the in-game stats and he had touched the ball just 5 times. To be fair, he got a bit more stuck in during the second half, and ended with 17 touches, still 6 fewer than Savinho who was taken off at half-time with an injury. His pass completion was 37.5%, which is so low that’s a figure you rarely see at the end of 90 minutes from a professional at this level – especially in a Pep Guardiola team where possession is ten tenths of the law.

It got me thinking about the ongoing discussion about Arsenal and whether we need a striker or not. For comparison, against Wolves on Saturday, Kai Havertz had 44 touches of the ball, completing his passes at 78%, and ended up with a goal and an assist. He did spend some of the final stages in midfield though, but I wondered about whether a striker is really what we need.

I’ve seen some people will say that ‘a Haaland’ (if you could even find one), wouldn’t be a good fit for a Mikel Arteta team, and I can see that point of view. The flip-side, of course, is that when you have a player who can do what he does, you make them fit. As Guardiola has done. Haaland is not a Pep player in any traditional sense, but his talent and quality is such that even the best managers, even the ones most wedded to their principles of play, have to compromise for the benefit of the team.

That said, I think the Norwegian is pretty unique in the modern game, and trying to find one like him just because that’s what City have is a fool’s errand. I know we went after Benjamin Sesko who – physically at least – could be seen as a kind of Haaland analog, but that didn’t go through. And, when it comes right down to it, we have a 6’4 centre-forward right now who got a goal and an assist on the opening day of the season, more or less picking up where he left off last season when his form and end product was very, very good. I also think the reportedly imminent arrival of Mikel Merino to play in midfield pretty much cements Kai as the first choice up front, and probably means he won’t play as often in midfield.

As I said in yesterday’s blog, just before Saka scored I was a bit concerned about him because he’s had such a short summer holiday. I looked at the bench, and I wasn’t craving a striker, I was looking for another wide player who could come on to make a difference and give him a break. The goal prompted a change, Leandro Trossard on for Saka, but the midfield departure of Declan Rice to cramp (a sure sign that he and others are going to struggle a bit in the opening part of the season), meant Havertz dropped back into midfield and Gabriel Jesus came on up front.

I like Jesus a lot, I think he’s got plenty to offer across the front three if he stays fit, but that question mark over his availability will only start to fade when we see him play week in, week out. Even then, like a couple of other players in this squad, there’s an element of risk with banking on his fitness simply by virtue of what we’ve seen from him since his arrival two summers ago. All of which is to say that with 11 days of the transfer window left, if there is to be an attacking addition (and I really, really hope there is), then I would prefer someone who can give us something in the wide areas rather than up front.

Whether that player is also versatile to give us an option as a 9, we’ll have to wait and see. Arteta has Havertz, Jesus and Trossard available for that spot, each of them giving us different qualities, but the ability to unleash something different on the flanks would give this side another dimension that could be very, very useful over the course of a long season. To me this makes more sense than trying to find value in the centre-forward market which, right now at least, seems low on options – at least in terms of the amount we’re likely to spend. There’s zero chance of a £100m+ Osimhen, for example, not that I think that’s a deal we should do anyway.

So, let’s see what happens. The ongoing futures of Eddie Nketiah and Reiss Nelson will play a part in the final part of this window, and if there’s any movement there this week then I expect Arsenal to be active in the other direction.

Right, I’m gonna leave it there for now. Please join us for a brand new Arsecast Extra a little later on. Keep an eye out for the call for questions on Threads @gunnerblog and @arseblog with the hashtag #arsecastextra – or if you’re an Arseblog Member on Patreon, leave your question in the #arsecast-extra-questions channel on our Discord server.

Pod should be out mid-morning. For now, have a good one.

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