Is This The Season That Arsenal Finish Outside The Top Four?

Since their historic Premier League Title win in 2003/2004, Arsenal have gone 12 seasons without winning the League. Whilst consistently finishing in the top four every time, they haven’t come close to adding another Premier League title, leaving Arsenal fans to become more and more frustrated. With the new TV rights deal giving clubs even more money to spend, the pressure is on for a reluctant Wenger to splash the cash. If he doesn’t, this poses the question; will Arsenal make the top four in the forthcoming season, never mind winning the league?

Do strikers win you the league?
The last five seasons of the Premier League have seen the Champions have their top goalscorer come in the top three league goalscorers for the Golden Boot; scoring at least 20 goals. During this time, only once have Arsenal had a player (Robin Van Persie) come in the top four, when he won the Golden Boot in the 2011/12 season. This would suggest that to win the League, you need to have a prolific goalscorer, someone who’s going to score at least 20 a season – Arsenal have only had one striker score more than 20 goals in the last five seasons, not exactly Premier League winning material.

So if strikers are this important in helping a club win the league, why haven’t Arsenal gone after a top striker to replace Robin Van Persie after he left to go to their big rivals, Manchester United? The following table shows the total amount of money spent in the last five years on strikers.

Incredibly, seven clubs have spent more money on strikers than Arsenal in the last five years. Arsenal have spent £48m in total on five players (Park Chu-Young, Olivier Giroud, Lukas Poldolski, Danny Welbeck and Takuma Asano). Yet Man City have spent just over £126 million on five players (Sergio Aguero, Stevan Jovetic, Alvaro Negredo, Wilfried Bony and Nolito) leading them to two League titles. This table could be misleading if a team had the perfect striker already – but do Arsenal?

5 x 5
The next table gives a top five ranking for each statistic over the last five seasons.

Man City finish top of every ranking – they’ve scored the most, spent the most money and won the most points. The most shocking statistic is the “Signings over £20m” column; before Arsenal signed Granit Xhaka for £37.6 million in the current window, they had only signed two players for more than £20 million (Ozil and Sanchez). In stark contrast, four other clubs have signed more than 10 players for the same fee. For the best players, you need to spend big money.

Aguero vs Giroud
Speaking of signing players for more than £20 million, in 2011 Man City signed Aguero for £38 million in what has proved possibly the best signing in the league over the last five years. He has scored 102 goals in that time, scoring at a hugely impressive rate of 0.68 goals per game. Arsenal’s most expensive signing of a striker is Danny Welbeck at £16 million; scoring 8 goals in 36 games at a rate of 0.22, but Olivier Giroud has been Arsenal’s main striker over the last four years. Let’s compare the stats of Aguero and Giroud since the latter’s arrival.

In every season, Aguero has scored at a better rate than Giroud, particularly the last three seasons where his scoring rate is phenomenal. Giroud has only managed in one season to score at over a 0.5 goals per game average. This really illustrates Arsenal’s need for a top-class striker and the possible difference between two league titles in five years and none.

“Can’t Afford to Outgun Competitors”
Recently in an interview, Wenger said the Gunners were going to “Spend big” before chief executive Ivan Gazidis contradicted him and said the club “Can’t afford to outgun competitors”. Going on what Gazidis said, why can’t Arsenal compete with other big clubs in the league? The Man City owner Sheikh Mansour is estimated to be worth £20 billion; Arsenal on the other hand are owned by two main shareholders, 66.64% by American Stan Kroenke and 30.05% by Russia’s richest man; Alisher Usmano – these two combined are estimated to be worth nearly £15 billion. So they obviously can compete they just choose not to move away from their “self-sustaining way”. Does their stubbornness to deal with transfers in this way risk them falling behind at a time when the likes of Crystal Palace are bidding £30m+ on players?

One thing is for sure though, until they splash some cash on a top-class striker, Arsenal may have to continue fighting to finish in the top four in a season where big rivals Man City, Man United and Chelsea have all changed their managers and will all be expecting to improve on disappointing campaigns last year. You really get a sense that Arsenal are a striker away from winning the league, but does Wenger have the same sense?