Is the lack of a goalscoring striker hampering the Gunners’ title chances?

Mikel Arteta has done sterling work at Emirates Stadium over the past five years, leading the Gunners from mid-table mediocrity to genuine title challengers. It was Arsenal that pushed Manchester City all the way in the Premier League title race last time round, while the team are expected to challenge again this season despite a somewhat indifferent start to the campaign. 

But if the Gunners again fall short, most people have already pinpointed exactly where the problem lies. Arsenal fans, pundits, the media and supporters of other clubs are all aligned on this one: the missing piece in Arteta’s puzzle remains a genuine out-and-out goalscorer. 

Is this really the problem? 

The very mention of a striker will rankle with many Gunners fans, who have been crying out for a genuine world class addition as the focal point to the side for quite some time. And it’s not hard to see why, because Arsenal have been, and remain, defensively excellent. Arteta’s side is creative too. Yes, that creativity has taken a hit recently with the enforced absence of key playmaker Martin Odegaard, but with Bukayo Saka, Kai Havertz, Gabriel Martinelli and Declan Rice, to name but a few, still in the team, Arsenal are not exactly lacking flair and an eye for a pass. But none of those players, or replacements Raheem Sterling and Gabriel Jesus for that matter, are genuinely going to get close to the 30 goals a season that title winning teams are supposed to possess. But do champions always have that kind of player at their disposal? 

The statistics don’t lie 

As the saying goes, the statistics don’t lie, but by checking out the numbers we can reach the conclusion that a missing goal-machine may not be hampering the Gunners’ chances at all. Manchester City have won the Premier League title for the last four seasons in a row, and despite having an embarrassment of riches all over the pitch, have always possessed a potent goalscorer up top. Or have they? Well, Erling Haaland has certainly been that man for the past two seasons, scoring 27 last time around and hitting an even better 36 in his debut campaign. That 27 last time out would have been higher but for a prolonged period on the physio’s table. But the two seasons before Haaland joined, it could be argued that City were very much like the current Gunners – providing a goal threat from all over the park yet lacking that definitive number nine. 

In the first of those four-in-a-row seasons, the Premier League top scorer was Tottenham’s Harry Kane, with 23 goals. The highest scoring City player? That was Ilkay Gundogan with only 13, which was in fact three fewer than Bukayo Saka managed for the Gunners last time out. Indeed, that season City scored 83 goals on the way to securing the title. Arsenal scored 91 in the 2023/24 campaign.  

The following season, 2021-22, Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah and Tottenham’s Son Heung-min shared the spoils at the top of the goalcoring charts. The highest scoring City player was Kevin De Bruyne with 15. City scored 99 goals that season, but that again is only eight more than Arsenal managed in the last campaign. 

The last time a team not named Manchester City won the Premier League title was Liverpool in 2019-20. That season Leicester City’s Jamie Vardy claimed the Golden Boot award with 23 goals. Liverpool’s highest scorer was again Salah, but he only managed 19. So perhaps we’ve been missing the point all along when stating that what Arsenal need if they really have ambitions of winning the title is a world class striker. It’s not as if those players grow on trees, either. 

This time around 

Yes, the Gunners have had a slow start to the season, but so have Manchester City. Liverpool have flown out of the blocks and currently sit as the title favourites among the best online sportsbook sites. And of course Liverpool do possess quality goalscorers, none more so than the evergreen Salah, who is still banging in goals for the Reds in his eighth season at the club. But it’s not Salah who currently sits at the top of the goalscoring charts, for again that is Haaland. Indeed, it may transpire that Haaland fires City to a fifth consecutive title, but it’s just as conceivable that Liverpool, by sharing the goals around through the likes of Salah, Luis Diaz and Darwin Nunez, steal the crown. Or why not Arsenal? Saka has proven himself to be a regular scorer, scoring 14 and 16 in his last two seasons. In the first of those two campaigns he was in fact outscored by teammates Martin Odegaard and Gabriel Martinelli, who both scored 15. Last season Kai Havertz and Leandro Trossard joined Saka in reaching double figures. 

So if Arsenal are to end their Premier league title drought, it won’t necessarily be because they fell upon a 30-goal striker. It may just be that the team shared around the goals once more, but ended up securing more points that their nearest rivals. That is, after all, the only thing that counts!