Saliba played for a club that had the 2nd most possession in Ligue 1, so he was gaining experience in a system roughly similar to Arsenal, where he would be on the ball, making progressive passes, and trying to snuff out counter attacks. Not exactly the same, OM used a back 3 often, but close enough. Reims are 3rd to last in possession, so I assume they play a lot on the counter. Arsenal had another player who racked up a ton of goals in France playing on the counter - Pepe. So I'm not convinced what Balogun is doing now will for sure translate. My preference this summer would be to sign him to a new contract thru 2027 as a reward and then find him a new loan, either at a top level club abroad to see how he plays in a ball dominant squad, or to a PL club to see how he fares against PL competition.
Balogun scored a goal against PSG and you are now gassing him up, while Eddie has four goals in three starts against Chelsea and United. What are you even saying here? Well first I said Balogun may be more talented than Eddie, just like Saliba is more talented than Holding. Second, and more importantly, Eddie is actually performing well in premiership starts while Holding was third or fourth choice last season. I have no idea why you are hostile against Eddie who is actually performing right now. Balogun may be better long term but these “short bursts” from Eddie is helping the club win matches.
If he was ‘useless’ earlier this season it’s because he wasn’t playing. His ‘bi-annual short-term’ purple patches coincide with the times he got starts. Balogun is doing extremely well, but he’s scored 10 non-penalty goals in a half season in France. I just don’t see how that’s sustained excellence if what Eddie is doing isn’t.
I'm not dissing Eddie here, I've been pleasantly surprised by how he's played. Balogun and Eddie have almost identical shooting and scoring numbers, but Balogun's doing it on a team where he's the only option: both are right around 3.5 shots/90 at .2xG/shot (and both have underperformed their xG significantly). But Balogun's getting on the end of good chances on a team that doesn't have the ball as much and doesn't have the quality of passers that Arsenal do. And Balogun's a better passer than Eddie is to boot. More ball progression and slightly more key passes, despite ten fewer touches per game. Though note that Eddie seems to be a much more willing presser.
At the moment I think this argument is a push. Balogun is slightly hotter (goals per 90) in France than Nketiah is In the Premier League. The difference in the quality of the leagues is at least in part offset by the difference in the quality of the creative players at Arsenal. I don’t think we can settle this argument until after the season at the earliest. But if Balogun does, improbably, win the Golden Boot in France, ahead of Mbappe, there are going to be a lot of fans on the Balogun side of the argument. At the moment I see two yet to be confirmed arguments for Balogun. First, I believe he is more flexible, more capable of being effective on the wing than Nketiah. The second is a long held personal theory based on a cursory review of the data, I believe that most goal scorers don’t mature until they are about 23, Nketiah’s age. This is attributable to a physical maturity, which we see in Nketiah this season, and experience. The exceptions, the players that become prolific before 23 often become elite.
To add to @casoccerdad47... Admittedly I have not watched much Reims but the general impression I get is that they are heavily counter attack based offense (all of Balogun's goals seem to be coming on counter) and while that doesn't discount his skill, it is very different being a counter attack vs possession forward (see Pepe). It is entirely possible that Balogun shows well enough this season that we are essentially forced to make a tough decision. Ideally I would like to see him loaned 1 more season to either a mid (ish) table EPL or a top half team from France, Spain or maybe Portugal (I'm a bit iffy on forwards out of Germany & Italy right now) that plays with style of offense that is more similar to Arsenal. That will give us a much better measure of where he is as a ST that would fit Arteta. Another note... may not be a popular option but if Eddie continues to play well and Balogun plays well enough that management feels that we need to integrate him... would it be completely off base to make Balogun & Eddie our ST rotation with Jesus rotating across the front line?
I don't think there's a dispute that Balogun's potential is higher than Nketiah's. I'm saying that Balogun, right now, is a better player than Eddie is, and that's largely because I think Balogun is a better passer and is more able to drift out wide and interchange with Martinelli and/or Saka.
The good thing is that we have like 4 months to get a lot more data on both of them! Who knows, maybe Eddie keeps this pace up or maybe he goes dry again.
Like all comparative debates of player A vs player B, it's probably not completely settle-able. But one thing I'll say is that to get closer to an apples-to-apples comparison, it would good to see Balogun back in the EPL (whether with us or on loan). And then (though this is a bit of a stretch) play within a system that's similar to Arsenal's. Yeah right! So really the only way to really get close to settling this is to have both Eddie & Flo here at Arsenal, getting a bunch of starts each, and then compare. Something tells me that's not happening real soon.
Leaving this here for no reason at all: Here were all of Balogun's shots from yesterday https://t.co/ABjrxW73My pic.twitter.com/eb7GAmEwZq— Mohamed (@MoeSquare) February 2, 2023
Makes you wonder if Balo goes on loan for one more season, or we bring him back because with the league, CL, FA Cup and League Cup there will be plenty of games to go around next season.
Somewhat interesting discussion on BBC Football Daily today which included Balogun, his current coach @Riems, the trilingual 30YO Will Still, etc (both of those are in the second half of the show) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/football-daily/id261291929?i=1000597792356 They also talked about Chelsea ridiculous window, Enzo AND how they apparently really botched Ziyech’s loan to PSG… LOL
Hard to say based on his play with Reims. His off the ball movement in possession is interesting, seen some interesting one touch play, but good lord his shot selection. It's Townsend-esque.
Just noticed this bit of trivia today. In Europes top 5 jeagues only Haaland, Kane, and Osimhen have scored more league goals than Balogun and no one has scored a higher percentage of their team’s goals Player Goals Team Goals Contribution 1 E. Haaland M. City 26 44% 2 V. Osimhen Napoli 17. 31% 3 H. Kane Tottenham 17 40% 4 F. Balogun Reims 15 50% 5 J. David Lille 14. 35% 6 R. Lewandowski Barcelona 14. 33% 7 A. Lacazette Lyon 14. 40% 8 I. Toney Brentford 14. 39% 9 W.B. Yedder Monaco 14. 27% 10 N. Füllkrug W. Bremen 13. 42% Table from WhoScored.
I saw that Sambi started for palace yesterday so I decided to watch it this morning. He played pretty good. Nothing spectacular, but he was tidy in possession and looked to play some progressive passes on occasion. Played about 64 minutes and looked satisfied approaching the bench, shaking hands. I felt happy for him.
It looked like a 2 to me, and I immediately thought about how he just may never fit in Arteta's system. But there's no doubt that him coming good would a boon for the club so that they don't have to reinvest.
Tavares seems more and more like a winger not a LB with another goal. Should be considering bringing him back in this position?