It was Arsenal’s mixed sentiment night on Tuesday.
Mikel Arteta lost another player to a hamstring injury, this time Gabriel Magalges, but the team scored all three points at Fulham’s house, and Bukayo Saka took the long-awaited return.
Additionally, the Hale End icon scored what turned out to be a winning goal in the game just seven minutes after leaving the bench.
The importance of the return of the British cannot be overstated, but it can be written about trouble for one of the club’s leaders.
The importance of the slope to Arsenal
Saka injured his hamstring on December 21st, and was away to Crystal Palace. Since then, the point gap to Liverpool has grown from just 7 to 12 points.
If that wasn’t enough evidence of the Winger’s importance, the North Londoner dropped six points in the 13 league matches he missed this season, including an away loss to Bournemouth.
These included four draws against Brighton & Hove Albion, Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest and Manchester United, as well as losses against West Ham United and Cherry.
Arsenal PL Records | ||
---|---|---|
data | Saka and | No Saka |
game | 17 | 13 |
I’ll win | 10 | 7 |
draw | 6 | 4 |
loss | 1 | 2 |
Points for each game | 2.11 | 1.92 |
All data through the transfer market |
In comparison, Gunners have dropped points in just seven of the 17 league games Mercurial Winger has played this season.
That is, when Saka played in the Premier League this season, the gunners averaged 2.11 points per game, but when he wasn’t playing, they averaged 1.92, which is a huge drop.
In short, the fact that he acted is great news for the club, but it may not be that great for one of Arteta’s regular starters.
Arsenal stars who may be in trouble
So there may be many you who assume that the player that can be overlooked for Saka’s Return is Ethan Nuwaneri, but that’s a completely logical assumption, but not.
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In fact, in an impressive form of the teenager himself this season, he scored eight goals in 1153 minutes of action and provided two assists, and it’s more than he can play in the middle of the park, so you won’t be surprised to see Arteta move him into the game tomorrow instead of Martin Odegaard.
Yes, the danger of a starter is nothing more than a club captain. The club captain may be an incredibly talented midfielder himself, but he is undoubtedly poor this season.
For example, despite the fact that he should be the team’s creative hub, Drammen-Born International has only scored five goals and provided eight assists in 33 appearances this season.
This is a less significant drop from 48 appearances last season, 22 goals involved in averages one appearance per 2.18 games, and worse, he’s been far more frustrated this year as he’s consistently struggling to mark in the game.
Recent seasons in Odegaard | |||
---|---|---|---|
season | 22/23 | 23/24 | 24/25 |
exterior | 45 | 48 | 33 |
Min | 3404′ | 4053′ | 2579′ |
the goal | 15 | 11 | 5 |
assist | 7 | 11 | 8 |
Involvement of goals for each match | 0.48 | 0.45 | 0.39 |
Per target involvement | 154.72′ | 184.22 | 198.38′ |
All statistics through the transfer market |
It was the same story on Tuesday as Standard’s Dom Smith awarded him a 6/10 match rating and wrote that he should have done better on the occasion he received, and that “it didn’t happen to him at all” in the evening.
Also, fans are beginning to lose some patience. While content creator Remedy claims he is “not on the level” at this point, fellow content creator Alex Moneypenny claims he is “falling out of love” with the Norwegian after another tragic show.
Ultimately, Odegaard is a very talented player, but he hasn’t shown that Saka can return to the right field and Nwaneri in the form of Red-Hot to attack midfield this year.
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