Eddie Nketiah's unfair scapegoating
Eddie Nketiah's unfair scapegoating
Arsenal's back up striker has come in for some criticism, I think it is mostly unfair
After Arsenal’s performance against PSV it felt like people were thrashing around looking for a scapegoat, one of the players that seems to have been landed on is Eddie Nketiah.
I will grant that Nketiah wasn’t especially great against PSV but I don’t think he was particularly bad, all in all it was a very typical Nketiah performance. He was a threat in the box, taking four shots (0.5 xG) from 5 touches in the box, he didn’t do a ton to get teammates involved in play, but was a decent outlet for Arsenal to progress the ball towards (8 progressive passes received). The big thing was that he didn’t turn any of his decent chances into a goal (none of these were ‘clear’ with the best coming in the 78th minute, which was a 1-in-4 type on his weak foot).
I am going to resort to a bit of armchair psychology here and say that a lot of this also comes from the worry about Jesus and not feeling like Arsenal have a dependable goal threat for a striker. That is a valid concern but I think one that was always going to be here with Arsenal building a team where the plan is to get goals from multiple sources rather than just a couple of forwards.
The other concern that is popping up is that Nketiah is overpaid. I think that this is flat out wrong but we will get to that in a bit after we look at his overall performance so far. If you want to skip ahead you can here.
Nketiah’s Performance so far
This part was why I was reluctant to write this, the sample size of his performance so far this season is too small to draw any conclusion from, but still there isn’t anything that would look like a massive red flag.
His Premier League numbers are solid, but still just 2 overall 90s worth of time on the field even it is coming in 11 appearances.
Adding in his Europa League performances helps get his minutes over 6 90s but even then that is still a small sample size where a couple matches hold a lot of weight. The stats still suggest a player that is looking solid with no big red flags.
If we expand the horizon to include his time last season we are getting into a more solid level of minutes and I think a more accurate look at what he can do. This is for his time from December last year through this year and includes Premier League and Europa League matches.
This is feeling like a pretty accurate picture of Nketiah. He looks like a poacher-type striker, who is very active at defending while also doing enough of the ‘other’ stuff to make you feel comfortable playing in Arsenal’s system that asks a lot from the striker.
The biggest question and the one that I am still not sure on is what is Nketiah’s actual true talent level. My baseline assumption was and mostly still is, he would be a starting caliber player for a midtable Premier League team, his run at the end of last year piqued my interest in raising the potential ceiling of ‘hey maybe there is an upper PL level player here’ but really only updated that to now, midtable Premier League starter with more potential upside.
There is nothing in the small sample of performance this season that makes me want to reevaluate that stance.
So perhaps the people that are making the criticism of him now got a little too carried away into his run of matches at the end of last year and are now also overreacting to a small run of matches where he has been just solid.
Nketiah’s Contract
One of the things that is now happening after Nketiah matches that are a bit of a disappointment are things like this:
Nketiah is well-paid.
Nketiah’s total cost to Arsenal is actually very cheap compared to alternatives and is in line with where I think his ‘True talent level’ is as a lower to mid-table starter.
Both of these things can be true.
Nketiah and his agent were very smart, they ran down his contract to where he was able to start negotiating as a free agent. If he signed with a Premier League team the team would have had to pay Arsenal a tribunal fee but it would have likely been fairly minimal, meaning that he would capture most of the total cost to acquire him in wages/bonuses than a player who comes in with a transfer fee attached.
For a club these are essentially the same, they are costs associated with acquiring and keeping a player but for fans it seems like these get ignored.
Nketiah is on similar wages to Gianluca Scamacca (a realistic comp who was linked to Arsenal to do the Nketiah backup role). However, Scamacca’s total cost per season to West Ham is significantly higher because he cost £35.5m to be bought out of his contract at Sassuolo. That means that he costs an extra £7.1m per season in total cost to West Ham.
The performance for that cost is also weighted in favor of Nketiah! Over the long run maybe Scamacca or another player might be better but I believe that the ability to keep Nketiah on a relatively low-cost basis freed up the budget for Arsenal to improve in other areas of the squad.
It is hard to know for certain, but I think there is a good chance if Arsenal have to commit a larger portion of their budget to a striker I think that comes out of the team’s ability to sign other players and improve in other positions.
Final Thoughts
Nothing is without trade-offs, we can’t know with certainty what would have happened had different decisions had been made.
The gist of why I think the scapegoating of Nketiah comes down to a misunderstanding of what a player truly costs a club. Fans are too quick to ignore the cost of a transfer as part of what a player does to a team’s budget.
Nketiah’s cost to Arsenal is in line with what I think his true talent level is and is well in line with his role as a backup rotation-type player. Yeah his wage is higher but that is because he and his agent took on the risk of running down his contract to maximize his earnings rather than have that go to the club that sold his contract.
On a per-season basis his cost to Arsenal is in line with Sambi Lokonga (2.6m in wages plus 3m a year in amortized transfer fee). The hand wringing is silly if put into the proper context.
This is the big reason I don’t worry if it is time to move him on. There isn’t a big worry about selling Sambi and re-couping something close to the transfer fee Arsenal played. I think that is true with Nketiah as well. Yeah, Arsenal may not get a transfer fee and make a profit but that would be roughly the same if Arsenal moved on Sambi for essentially the same fee now. This is not a worry for me.
The argument that I might have more time for is that maybe it was more important to improve a backup striker than say get a marginal improvement at left-back or an exciting prospect to rotate with an attacking midfielder.
I think it was a choice the team made and it is hard to know for certain what might have been. Seeing who actually came in I feel pretty good with the choice of Oleksandr Zinchenko and Fabio Vieira in the squad over say a lesser cost version of both.
How you feel about that will be your own value of what different positions bring to Arsenal.