Ayto placed on gardening duty. https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6183061/2025/05/23/arsenal-sporting-director-ayto-exit/
That’s because he is leaving. No reason to stay around when the job you had and interviewed for went elsewhere. I wish him well on his future endeavors. Seems he got blamed for Tim Lewis and the Kroenke's fiscal management.
Plettenberg claims that we are actively negotiating with Rodrygo but we may have a hangup with his salary demands (10m/yr euro net). This would make him our highest paid player. Though I question this info given 10m net would be nearly double his Real salary.
I had never heard of Plettenberg until two days ago and now all of the sudden he's the new ArseHorse?
It's always said 'Arsenal has the best defense in the league' , true but we are on 33 goals against. Liverpool has 40 goals against and won the title handily. Why? They scored 85 goals. Some pundits were saying we could challenge the EPL record for goals against prior to the start of the season. I'd take 25 to 28 goals against next season as the bare minimum. I am hoping we can get under 25 somewhere between 20 and 25 goals against. With the quality of our defense and team defense we shouldn't be losing leads to teams outside the top 3 or 4. We shouldn't be giving up a late goal even when winning easily. The larger issue for me is scoring. We have 67 goals. Liverpool, City and Newcastle have more goals than us. We should get to 75 goals minimum next season. A winger and striker should solve the goals issue. The main reason I don't want Rodrygo is he is lazy on defense. We play a pressing defense and he's weak on that. Maybe he can learn but I'm skeptical. We are linked to other players who are far more active and track back and effective going forward on the wing. Rodrygo is the best attacker we are linked to but he'll possibly hurt us when we are trying to press.
I went back a little bit to see what the top 2 GF/GA were for top 2 teams. 18/19 City 95:23 Pool 89:22 19/20 Pool 85:33 City 102:35 20/21 City 83:32 ManU 73:44 21/22 City 99:26 Pool 94:26 22/23 City 94:33 Arse 88:43 23/24 City 96:34 Arse 91:29 24/25 Pool 85:40 Arse 67:33 The main takeaway is with the exception of the covid season, the team with the most goals scores the league. Its not a shock, the old saying is "goals win leagues, clean sheets win cups" aka tournaments. Our defence nearly got us to a UCL final. If we had another 10 goal a year scorer on the books we beat PSG but we likely still don't win the league by a decent margin. There was only 1 year where the top 2 had under 25 goals against, and I think with how balanced the league is at the moment those days might be gone. This year the top 12 were all capable of big scoring games. Liverpool this year are potentially the blue print going forward. They conceded more goals than any of the last 7 champions but every game they could blast teams and win 3-1 or 4-2 etc. Meanwhile we were Draw FC because we lacked firepower. The clear and obvious issue we have is we just couldn't score enough. Saka was injured while he was on pace for crazy assist numbers, Martinellis productivity just isn't there, Havertz is good for what he is but he will never have a 20 goal season, and Odegaard dropped off badly too. If we want to win the league, we need a serious lift in goals. Part of that comes down to Artetas game style this year being way more control influenced, and part of it was due to form drop off and injuries. Saka had 10 assists and 6 goals in 24. Could easily see him with 15 assists and 10-15 goals next season. We will need a LW, be it Martinelli or a new wing. He has 8g4a this year in 32, thats fine as a back up but if he wants to start it needs to be up to the 12-15 goal mark and 8-10 assist. And a legit goal scorer with tweaks to our system will score 15+ comfortably. But we need more than 4 goals from Rice, we need more than 2 from Odegaard, we are going to lose some of Merinos goals but have to hope Trossard continues his output.
I think Zubi opens up Rice & MO. Now we just need to add a ST that can net 20+ or can draw defenders to open space for the Ws while scoring 15.
16 last season looks good but 6 were penalties. If he is the primary penalty taker, he needs to be closer to 20 next season, with 12-15 if someone else takes them. A bit harsh, he only started 24 times and played 24.7 equivalent 90's. His goals per 90 are the same as Saka. Production-wise, I'd say the Trossard/Martinelli platoon was fine, but will be interesting to see what happens with their playing time next season. For sure. If Havertz can still score 6-8 while not being the primary striker, that's good enough. An understatement. I don't see any striker target getting 20+ in the league unless he is also the primary penalty taker. Salah has 28 this season, 9 are penalties. Haaland had 20 npG the year before. Isak has 19 npG this season. 15 would be great, maybe 20+ in all comps.
Thanks for the stats. I addressed both sides "The larger issue for me is scoring. We have 67 goals. Liverpool, City and Newcastle have more goals than us. We should get to 75 goals minimum next season. A winger and striker should solve the goals issue." This season in particular, we lost a lot of points from not defending leads. We had injuries to the attack (Saka, Jesus, Havertz) and players who support the attack (Odegaard). Our defense was fairly steady till Gabriel M got injured and even so (surprisingly to me) Kiwior stepped up. Again, we got too many draws from not simply defending as we could have. We definitely need scoring and its why myself, you and everyone who is fan, is debating which striker and right winger to bring in.
Penalties were mentioned in a prior post. I love Saka but I don't want him taking PKs. I simply don't have confidence in his style.
You made many of the points I was going to make in response to @And_ROOS . I would add that the 12-15 goals he wants from Martinelli next season is extraordinary production for a player, whose primary role is on the left wing. Luis Diaz scored 15 for Liverpool, but more than half of his goals came when he was lined up as the center forward. In fact, this season the only player I could find in Europe, who spent most of his time on the left wing, who has more than 15 goals was Raphinha. Vini Jr. has 11 league goals and 8 assists, this season. In fact he has only equaled or exceeded 15 league goals, twice in his career. Rodrygo, playing out of position on the right, has 9 goals this season and in his best league season only scored 10 goals.
The true test next season for me is away to Forest, Villa and Newcastle. Can we score first? And then can we defend? Even at home we have issues with them too much. Not only them but a few other teams that are tough to break down when they are in the mood (Fulham, Brighton to name some). I'd love to win at Anfield for a change and we came close last year but at City as well. Before most people's time but when we won in '98 we also won at Old Trafford for the first time in eons.
Liverpool and City are built to score goals. They'll simply out score you, but to cherry pick prior seasons, it was defense like in the Chelsea 2005 season that got them the title. 2005 Season Chelsea GF 75 GA 15 Arsenal GF 87 GA 36 Other seasons clubs who won averaged less than 2 goals a game . 2006 season Chelsea GF 72 GA 22 Man Utd GF 72 GA 34 2009 season Man Utd GF 68 GA 24 Liverpool GF 77 GA 27 Chelsea GF 68 GA 24 Arsenal GF 68 GA 37 That said, again, I would like to see our team get 75 or more goals next season and mid 20s goals against. Both are very feasible. Most of all STOP turning leads to draws with late goals. Some are understandable like City away. I recall a couple years ago being 2-0 up at halftime away to Anfield. I knew in my bones we needed one more goal.
Arsenal should try to get Gonçalo Ramos from PSG. They may be willing to sell him at the right price. He is no 5 in their forward rotation. He may not be Luis Enrique type of player is a legitimate goal scorer and will give you 18 / 20 goals a season.
I feel like if we make a few tweaks, get Sesko in, we are putting up 95+ goals next season. We create a shitload of chances just don't have the right players to finish.
We definitely need better finishing. Especially in tight games against Liverpool, City, where you don't have many chances. We've been decent more or less but they seem to score off their first or second shot on goal. Whether its true or not, it seems like it. We also haven't been scoring from corners as we used to. Its a great way to get a goal against mid and low block sides.