To demonstrate how fast football moves…

Yesterday I woke up feeling terrible. I’d started to come down with a fever on Tuesday afternoon and by the time the Arsenal game on I was running a high temperature and got barely any sleep, going to bed straight after the game. That mean that yesterday morning I really didn’t feel like doing anything and the only thing I could really muster was 300 words from my iPhone for the BBC Sport ‘Fans Voice’ that I do after each Champions League game. Even that was a bit of a struggle. But a day of rest and sleep has helped to make me feel a little more human again, yet it feels a little belated to write a match review following the 4-0 victory over Atletico Madrid.

Certainly for Mikel Arteta and his Arsenal team, there will be very much a focus on Crystal Palace on Sunday, with Arteta even commenting on his pleasure at Saliba caught watching Atletico’s game against Osasuna on the team bus coming back from Fulham last weekend. That exemplifies the mindset Arteta wants to instil in his team; relentlessness in the pursuit of silverware and for us Arsenal fans it is a real positive that the players have been built with this mindset over the five+ year’s that Arteta has been in charge.

Enjoy the win, savour the moment, but then park it, because the next game is around the corner and your game face needs to be on way before you’re in the tunnel.

I’ve said it before, but we can enjoy the win, it’s just the players can’t. We can enjoy the victory maybe 48 hours afterwards and even last night as I was going to sleep I was thinking about how good the goals were for us. The first one because it boils the piss of rival fans that we’ve got another set piece. The second one was just a brilliant all-round goal from MLS’ mazey dribble in the middle of the park (which we’ve seen on display a few times now and really is a potent weapon for us), the third one because it got the monkey off the back of Big Vik, then the four won because it enabled us to see a little bit of fun at the end with Big Gabby and Big Vik doing their alternate versions of the ‘Bane’ celebration that is his own.

I also think that him getting up to five goals in all competitions is good for him too, because he’s a striker and will ultimately rank his season based on the goals he scores. There has been plenty of talk outside The Arsenal fanbase about this goal drought, as media narratives always need to be written about The Arsenal, but for us and Arteta we’ve known what his effort and contribution has been. He is not the goal-machine that some were expecting (I will say that I never thought he would be), but that’s because of the style of football we play; teams just don’t give us the space and he’s perma-marked by centre halves. So he is never going to get three-to-five shots away every game. But he needs to be in the spaces like Tuesday night to give himself a chance.

I actually think he’s on track for where I would have expected him to be. In my head – and I think I said this at the start of the season – a goal tally of 20 in all competitions is absolutely fine. In 2023/24 we got 113 goals in all competitions. We had Saka on 20, Trossard on 17, Havertz on 14 and Odegaard on 11. Those were our creative players on double digits. I think Saka probably has to be looking at a 20-goal all comps season. I think Havertz must be looking at 15. If we’re targeting similar numbers, we probably need to see Big Vik, Havertz, Saka, Martinelli and maybe one of Eze/Trossard/Odegaard on double figures too. As it stands, with us just about to hit the quarter way through the season, we have in all competitions:

  • Big Vik = 5
  • Martinelli = 4
  • Saka = 3
  • Leo = 3

Odegaard has barely played, Havertz has had a few minutes at the start of the season as a sub, Eze has assists and a goal in the League Cup, plus we have guys like Calafiori, Big Gabby, Mikel Merino and Noni Madueke who are all known to be goalscorers. Heck, even Ethan proved it yesterday. The point I am making here is that I think we have enough goalscorers in the side to get us to similar numbers to 2023/24 in all competitions and if we get to those numbers, I think we’re winning one of the big prizes. If you take the above as a cumulative of where the players are at then you have Big Vik on 20 for the season (I’m arbitrarily taking each tally and going x4 on the numbers), Saka on 12, Martinelli on 16 and Leo on 12. Remember, these days with players like Leo, Martinelli, Havertz, Saka, etc, we also look at assists too but for this comparator of where we’re at, I’m just looking at getting the requisite number of goals. And we’ve already missed some of these players through injury already.

I think if you look at the difficulty of opposition in the opening quarter of the season, you can mitigate the fact that we haven’t scored a hatful of goals, but we still have a pretty decent tally. Everyone is making – rightly – a big deal of our amazing defence and clean sheets, but we’ve also scored 25 goals so far this season. If we get to this weekend and get a couple or maybe, hopefully, fingers crossed, more than that, we’re knocking down on the door of 30 foals from the opening quarter of the season and if you’re looking at some numbers to give you projections on where we’re at based on what has transpired, that’s 120 in all competitions. I’ll probably take that the way the league is structured these days, because I would be surprised if teams reached the heghts of the City team from a couple of season’s back that scored 149 goals in all comps. That City team also conceded 54 in 2023/24 and the way we are going at the moment, it feels like you could half it!

I know what you’re saying, “there’s a long way to go” and I hear ya, but we’re in decent nick at both ends of the pitch and I think the initial numbers (when you have the context) look good.

And with that positivity I’m going to leave you be for today.

Catch you all tomorrow.