Why Arsenal do NOT need a new striker: Mikel Arteta’s side scored 91 goals last season in a system tailor-made for his wingers, while Kai Havertz’s stats don’t get the attention they deserve

Benjamin Sesko. Ivan Toney. Viktor Gyokeres. Victor Osimhen. Aleksander Isak. These are just some of the many strikers Arsenal have been linked with since last summer.

Sesko in particular seemed to come closest. According to reports, agreements in principle had already been made before the summer about the personal conditions, but the Slovenian striker messed up his game at the European Championship.

Toney has also been linked with a move in absentia, having been sidelined for months following a ban for breaching betting regulations. However, it appears his fate lies elsewhere as he was absent from the Brentford squad last weekend.

There is no shortage of names, and yet Arsenal have remained steadfast and refused to partake in a deal for a number 9, only because they have been repeatedly told that without a Premier League title they will not win a Premier League title. But is that really true?

Of course, it would be easy to just look at the last two attempts and use them as evidence to suggest that it’s apparently not in the cards, but that might be a bit simplistic.

Kai Havertz scored his ninth goal for the Gunners in 17 appearances as a striker on Saturday

Mikel Arteta’s attacking system is designed to get the best out of his goalscoring wingers

Bukayo Saka scored 20 goals in all competitions throughout the 2023-24 season

Arsenal scored 91 goals last season – more than five of the last 10 Premier League winners – and were just five goals behind Manchester City, who in Erling Haaland have a player who lives, breathes and functions solely to score.

Not bad for a team without a player with the “natural instinct to score” or who “just knows how to be in the right place at the right time” or whatever other clichéd phrase Pep Guardiola proved to be largely unfounded in 2020-21.

Simply put, Mikel Arteta’s attack – or at least the current iteration of it – is built around Kai Havertz getting deep and claiming the space between the lines as a false nine.

This then creates a vacuum, which sucks one or ideally both centre-backs in its wake to the ball, which then creates huge gaps for Bukayo Saka or Leandro Trossard or Gabriel Martinelli to steam into and exploit. And you’d be hard-pressed to argue that it doesn’t work.

Havertz’s game is more than just a false nine – at 1.93m he is a brilliant aerial threat, as he showed against Wolves – but at its core it is the system that is getting the best out of the squad.

So no, Arsenal don’t have a player who can score more than 25 league goals a season from midfield, but up front they have a depth of goalscorers to match most teams.

Saka scored 20 in all competitions last season, closely followed by Trossard (17), Havertz (14), Martin Odegaard (11), Martinelli and Jesus (eight). Arsenal’s starting defence against Wolves on Saturday scored 11 last season. Only one outfielder went more than 450 minutes without scoring last season, and that was No. 6 Thomas Partey. Goals are everywhere.

Arteta has developed an attacking system that gets the best out of his best player, Saka, and is specifically designed to exploit the strength of his wingers and get them into scoring positions, rather than channelling the threat through his nominated striker.

Arteta wants his strikers not to be the main focus or source of goals, but to be the facilitators

Goals are being scored across the Arsenal team – the four defenders who started on Saturday had 11 between them last season

However, the Gunners do not have an Erling Haaland-style striker who can score 25-30 goals per season

You could argue that it’s more pragmatic to rely on three or four players to score around 15 goals a season than to hope your striker can score 25-30. If Haaland were to be sidelined for six months, that would be a bigger loss than if Havertz were to miss the same period, or Trossard, for example.

“At Arsenal, all the players seem to score goals and I think that’s how Arteta wants to win,” Daniel Sturridge told Mail Sport at the launch of Amazon Prime’s Champions League coverage.

“He wants to win with a team that scores from anywhere on the pitch. What Havertz brings is special and he is a great team player next to Jesus. You have wingers there who score. Maybe they sign a left winger who can score as well.

‘Saka always throws in, but Martinelli is not so consistent on the left, Trossard scores when he comes off the bench. I think if the manager wants to change his style, he will bring in a real goalscorer, but I don’t see that happening.’

There were signs early in the Arteta era that his system was reliant on his wingers scoring the goals rather than his striker.

During training, clips emerged of the manager getting his wingers to receive the ball with their backs to the touchline and facing the pitch, encouraging them to receive the ball positively and aggressively in the danger zone, rather than being smothered by a defender.

That touch immediately sends the winger into the middle of the pitch, rather than backing up to his own defender or trying to turn and attack his defender. In the time it would take to turn and get away, Saka is already five yards out and preparing to cross.

‘I think if you have goal-scoring wingers, you don’t need a striker who’s going to score 25 goals a season. But you could also have a striker who scores 25, and wingers who can’t score 20. So how do you want to score goals? Do you want your wingers to score the goals and a striker to throw them in?

Daniel Sturridge believes the current system would not benefit from a genuine striker

Gabriel Martinelli is sometimes less productive in front of goal from the left flank than Saka from the right flank

The England star benefits greatly from the playing system that Arteta has developed at Arsenal

‘Normally if it’s a false 9 (you want) around 10-15 league goals, with wingers scoring 18-23 if they’re having a great season like Saka or (Cole) Palmer. But open game goals, you want players to be in double figures.

The way the Gunners build and approach attacks is hardwired for their wingers to make an impact. Havertz or Jesus coming deep opens up the opportunity for Odegaard to play diagonal slide rule passes that bring Saka and Martinelli or Trossard into play with devastating impact.

“If you look at how Arsenal play, you see Odegaard playing passes between the centre half and the left back, which separates them and allows Saka to run diagonally. It’s rare that they play the ball behind the centre half,” Sturridge added.

“If I were to play for them, I would have to have a different style of play, and that’s why Havertz and Jesus work. When you have real goalscorers, you can’t have goalscorers – you can have one, but you can’t have two and a striker, because then everyone tries to shoot.

“It’s becoming less fluid. The best teams historically have one of the three that makes the sacrifice and says ‘I don’t need to score’ and you have to have that flow and camaraderie in your attack. When you have that, you can create scoring chances, you don’t force it.”

Despite that, Havertz still has 17 goals in 14 games as a striker for the Gunners (nine goals, eight assists). For a player who steps back in front of goal to allow others to flourish, you can’t ask for much more.

Questions were raised over his £65million price tag, as evidenced by the popular cry among the Gunners, but after an initial difficult period of integration, he is proving to be one of the club’s smartest signings in recent years.

Jesus was reduced to a less frequent role last season due to injuries, but still scored eight times

Havertz has become one of Arsenal’s most financially sound signings in recent years

Arsenal don’t have a true number 9 in their ranks, but rather than spend £100m or more on a conventional number 9, Arteta has decided to utilise the fearsome talent he already has at his disposal and get the best out of his team.

Arteta isn’t reinventing the wheel in North London, far from it. He’s simply adding a few new alloys to a design already developed by his former mentor Guardiola.