Breaking news: Arsenal Football Club need a striker.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few weeks, you’re aware of the fact that Arsenal are basically down to two senior strikers at the moment, both of whom aren’t contracted beyond June 30. The other could be sold or loaned out in January to smooth over the rocky situation there.
The club have, not surprisingly, been scoping out strikers in England and beyond. Some of the more common links so far have included Dusan Vlahovic, Jonathan David, Arthur Cabral, Richarlison, and Dominic Calvert-Lewin, with the latter possibly costing £70 million to secure.
With the Everton striker a common fan favorite and frequent media mention, I started to wonder: Would he be worth that big of an outlay? After all, Benjamin White cost £50m and faces near-nonstop criticism. A few years have passed, but Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang himself was £56m.
Let’s take a look at DCL’s performance in the Premier League over the past two seasons, when he was 22 and 23, to get an idea of what we might be getting into.
Starting with the good: DCL charts very well as an aerial threat, and quite well as a goal-scorer. It’s no surprise why Arsenal fans should want an aerial threat: Auba was something like 35% in the air coming into this season, while Lacazette is 27.4% for his Arsenal career. Neither of those marks are good.
DCL, on the other hand, is one of the best aerial threats among Premier League strikers. Here you can see how he stacks up against some of the best to ply their wares in the league over the past two seasons. Only Benteke has been consistently better.
The ability to hold possession is also key to Arsenal’s fortunes, and DCL does awfully well in that area, too. You can see here that he’s among the best at winning duels and keeping the ball among strikers on my watchlist. Only Ivan Toney really challenges DCL in the Premier League. Tammy Abraham and Patrik Schick are two other possibilities in the hold-up-play-and-win-aerials camp, if that’s what Arsenal were going in for.
Calvert-Lewin also has 28 Premier League goals over the past two seasons, but I’ll get into that a bit later.
For now, let’s focus on the parts of DCL’s charts I don’t like. He’s not a dribbler, which is fine. What gets me a bit more is that he hasn’t been an exceptional presser over the past couple of seasons, nor has he been a good passer.
Let’s talk about creation first. DCL has only completed around 66 percent of his passes in the Premier League, worse than both of Arsenal’s senior strikers. He has created 106 shots in the past two seasons, around 1.8 per 90 minutes. That’s about the same as Auba, but 1 full SCA less per 90 minutes than Lacazette. I’m of the opinion that a striker who can create is important for Arsenal, and that’s showed through against West Ham, when Laca was credited with 8 SCA in what became one of Arsenal’s best performances under Arteta to date.
Above, you can see how some of the top Premier League strikers have fared in shot creation over the past two years. DCL isn’t far below average, but he wouldn’t be a big step up in this area from Auba.
Now, pressing. Laca recorded 8 successful pressures against West Ham, and another 15 against Leeds United, both of which were exemplary performances for a striker.
The ability to press seems to be important to Arsenal and Arteta moving forward. So can DCL do so effectively? It’s hard to say. He was in just the 22nd percentile in successful pressures per 90 last season. He did a bit better the season before, in the 35th percentile. Auba was 25th and 17th percentile, respectively.
Here you can see DCL’s last two seasons of pressing and shot creation, charted against some of his contemporaries. Last season was less than inspiring, while 2019-2020 was a bit better. It does seem his lack of creativity is player-based, but perhaps the lack of pressing is by design? He did record seven starts with five or more successful pressures last season.
Now, scoring. At first blush, there’s nothing to fear: 29 goals in two seasons is pretty good! None of them were penalties, and DCL performed right around what xG would have predicted.
Here’s what’s worrying me, though: Last season, DCL scored his 11th goal on December 5. He scored five more goals in the nearly six months to follow, a span that included 21 starts and 22 total appearances. That streakiness is certainly worrying.
Here you can see DCL’s goals laid out, as well as his xG, in a line graph. Notice how the goals line from last season plateaus, even as the xG line moves upward. What once was a huge xG overperformance is negligible by the season’s end.
I worry about this because DCL scored his first 11 goals in just 11 games, a blistering start. He did so on 7.3 xG, suggesting a great deal of luck, skill as a finisher, or both.
In the next 11 games, by contrast, he scored just twice, while racking up chances worth 3.1 xG. A similar level of finishing would have put him on around four or five goals.
And in the final 11 games, he scored 3 goals worth 5 xG. Again, the same level of finishing would have results in around 7 or 8 goals. This all suggests to me that there was some luck involved here. Calvert-Lewin’s chances also dried up somewhat in the same stretches, but Everton continued winning at around the same rate, so I’m not sure any issues with the schedule or the team functioning can be blamed.
Here’s the thing about Arsenal’s striker possibilities: There isn’t a golden bullet on the market, or at least not one that Arsenal could likely afford or recruit without Champions League football. DCL fits the age profile of the squad, he’s experienced in England, he’s homegrown, has scored a lot of goals, and has a good physical profile. Given how good last summer’s haul is looking, an Arteta/Edu endorsement may be all we need to really believe he’s a good fit.
Even if it does cost the club dearly.
What is my personal belief on DCL? My heart tells me it could be a really good move, even if my calculator is a bit more inconclusive. As always, it would be great to know everything about budget and other needs, as well as the cost of other alternatives. All considered he’s probably not my first choice due to the cost. But if he came in tomorrow, I’d be ready to back him.
Let me know your thoughts on the comments below.