Performance Review time! Grading the Arsenal players

My thoughts on the season for every player

It is time to give the Arsenal players their end of season grades!

I have been avoiding listening to or reading other people’s end of season takes because I want to come in here fresh and unadulterated.

Now that I have this out and written I am excited to see how my takes differ from others because my unique view does often seem to diverge from others.

For this I have adopted the American grade system for the players and included my 0-10 rating for the player as well (5 is the midpoint and I am sticking with this rather than the silly starting at 6 convention). The grade and ratings are based on expectations for the player going into the season, how much they played, and how they performed.

This is roughly the scale that I have used for the players below.

We will start with the defenders and work our way to the attackers.

Goal Keepers

David Raya - B, 6.5

It was a good year from Raya but perhaps not quite as good as one might have hoped when he came in and displaced Aaron Ramsdale.

He did fine as a shot stopper but not particularly great, ending the season where his xG for shots on target matched pretty close to the actual goals allowed.

Part of this is that he faced the fewest shots on target allowed per match as part of Arsenal’s defense. Raya was a pretty big part of that with him doing well to claim the crosses so they couldn’t turn into shots in dangerous locations and sweeping up effectively behind the defensive line.

On the ball he always backed himself to make the passes but overall I wanted to see more value from him in the build up.

He lagged the best keepers on completing long balls.

He was middle of the road at the overall value of his passing.

While also lagging the best keepers at how often he was involved in play building up to a shot.

There could still be more to come from Raya but right now he looks like a good but not elite goalkeeper. Arsenal moved past Ramsdale for being this already and while I do think that he fits a bit better with Arteta’s style and doesn’t force a compromise it doesn’t fully feel like this is the answer for the next five seasons or anything.

Aaron Ramsdale - C-, 4

He got replaced as the number 1. He looked fine, if off of his best when he was called upon but just didn’t get the chances in matches to show if he should get another shot.

There isn’t a lot to say here on him and it looks like his Arsenal stay will end on a bit of a whimper.

Fullbacks

Ben White - A-, 8

I was very happy with Ben White’s season, he showed growth and the adaptability that makes him more valuable for Arsenal then he would for most teams.

Overall, it was a good all-around season for White. He looked good doing three different roles of the modern fullback, often in the same game even if he is not quite elite any of those roles. The ability to do it all is important for how Arsenal play and makes him a pilar of the starting eleven.

Oleksander Zinchenko - B, 7

I have already written enough about Zinchenko and I think everyone’s mind is made up about him.

It was a decent season from him where he did lots of good things, had some mistakes that were turned into highlights and widely spread. We will talk more about him in the Exit Interview series.

Jakub Kiwior - B+, 7.5

I don’t think Kiwior’s production was anything spectacular but his ability to step up during a time where Zinchenko, Tomiyasu, and Timber were all unavailable and play at a level where he was not a liability was something that helped to keep the season from falling apart.

Given that he is more of a center back than a full back my expectations for him as a fullback were not super high and he more than met them. Given his age there is still room for him to grow into a player that can get better in the position and his more natural center back.

Takehiro Tomiyasu - C, 4.5

I have never been Tomiyasu’s biggest fan and this season didn’t do too much to change my thought on him being a solid but unspectacular player who does a lot things pretty good but nothing great.

He takes a hit for his time missed with injury and I still think Arsenal could do better than him. Even if he has versatility to play right back, left back, and center back at a good enough level (but I don’t think every match starter level for a title level team) his time spent injured still makes it so that he isn’t dependable enough to be the backup or rotation option at those spots without more players also needed.

The choice to extend his contract is not a move that I endorse (even if it was really just a big raise and a short extension and team option) and I think could have him looking like Aaron Ramsdale in a year, on the outside of the first eleven but hard to move for much of a fee because he is on big wages.

Jurrien Timber - Incomplete

Hard to give him any other grade. He got injured in the first half of the first game of the season and didn’t play until the last game of the season. He showed flashes of talent but the injury made this a lost season for him.

Hopefully he comes back strong next year.

Center backs

William Saliba - A, 9

Saliba is a special player, stats will miss what he does for the team because with defense the goal is often to stop something from happening before you even need to make a defensive action and I think that fits Saliba and the rest of Arsenal’s defense well.

I don’t think I would replace Saliba for any other defender in the world right now and I think that says a lot about him.

Gabriel Magalhães - A+, 9.5

Gabriel gets the plus on his grade because I think he is one of the players that improved the most over the course of the season and with expectations playing a big part in the grade it helps push him up, even I would say Saliba is the better center back overall.

Overall, his partnership with Saliba is up there with the best I think Arsenal have had and with both still young there is room for it to grow. They seem to have a good understanding with each other and a skill set that seems well balanced between the two of them.

Midfielders

Declan Rice - A, 8.5

It was a very good first season for Declan Rice. He came into the team with high expectations and never seemed to show that they weighed on him at all.

He quickly established himself as a key member of the team and while it did take a bit of growing pains to mesh with his teammates it does seem like by the second half of the year both he and Arteta had an understanding of how he will work in the team.

There is still more room for him to grow, I think his passing can still get better and perhaps he can be given a bit more freedom to carry the ball to break lines but this was a very good first season and it looks like the fee paid for him was money well spent.

Martin Ødegaard - A, 9

After a slow start where I am pretty sure he was dealing with an injury, Ødegaard put together a phenomenal season.

He didn’t repeat his 15 goal season from last year but did still put up a strong 8 (6 non-pen) goal season that is solid for a midfielder. Additionally, he added 10 assists this season which is the best he has done in a big five league and I still think his ability to set up teammates has more room to grow where he could push a combined 25 goals and assists season.

Kai Havertz (as a midfielder) - C+, 5.5

This is one of the harder ones to grade for me. I think he was better than most people thought as a midfielder, especially early in the season. He never had the passing numbers that we would want or expect from a midfielder in an Arsenal team but he was a big part of the improvement that Arsenal saw out of possession.

He was also thrown into a situation where 2/3 of the midfield from last season changed and it often looked like they were still working through how to play together. The numbers overall for the season (including his time at forward so take that into account) show a player that I think started to figure out how to play as the shadow striker/midfielder combo.

The Havertz at midfield experiment is probably not over. It will probably remain a tactic that is best deployed against certain opponents and I think if Arsenal had Partey healthy more last season that would have been the case more often but it was not the injury luck Arsenal was dealt.

Jorginho - B, 7

I love Jorginho, he is a player that has always fit the style of midfielder that I enjoy. Some like pace and power in midfield and I can enjoy that but for me, it is a highly technical diminutive deep lying playmaker pulling the strings.

Just look at that passing rating below.

His introduction into the team with a bigger role in the second half of the season helped to fix some of the problems progressing the ball and helped cover for what was missing with both Zinchenko and Partey missing due to injury. I am glad that he is sticking around for a bit longer and can be a part of this team.

Thomas Partey - D-, 2

He is a player that I have already mostly said what I want to say in the Exit Interview series. I don’t think that this was a good season for Partey because he just wasn’t available enough and that is basically the story of his career and really cements that this transfer never really worked like it was supposed to..

If he is available more in the first half of the season, the adaption pain of Rice and Havertz is very likely lessened and I think there is a good chance Arsenal can get more than 40 points from the opening 20 matches and perhaps that is enough to change the title picture, but I don’t want to dwell on what ifs too much.

He can still pass but it was not quite at the elite level that he used to show and it seems everything else has been diminished with the injuries. There are lots of questions about him still and the injury concerns won’t go away.

Emile Smith Rowe - D+, 3.5

Another player that we have already written about with the Exit Interviews. I think the writing is on the wall for him unfortunately and it is sad.

I actually thought that when he did play this year he performed well enough most of the time to look like a part of the squad, adding some nice directness and speed of play change.

The hard pill to swallow is that it just wasn’t enough to make any sort of impact that would meet the expectations that we have for him and what a player in the first team who is no longer a youth prospect should be making.

Fabio Vieira - F, 1.5

Vieira gets one of the lowest grades for me this season and I think his story is very similar to Smith Rowe’s, just not enough time on the field making an impact. He had some good moments early in the season got a red card and then an injury and then was never seen again.

After the red card on November 11 he made just 3 appearances playing just 56 minutes as part of the mop up duty in some of the blow outs that Arsenal had in 2024.

You can just not have players on this part of the bench getting less than 400 minutes in the League and he was one of 3 players that well into this camp and the one that I personally had the highest expectations on.

Wingers

Bukayo Saka - A+, 10

My player of the season for Arsenal.

He has the highest expectations of any player in the team and basically always hits or beats them. He is ridden hard and really stepped up a level this season.

He is one of the best right wingers in the World and we should appreciate that more.

Gabriel Martinelli - B-, 6

This is a player that I think has gotten some unfair stick and suffers from playing across from Saka.

They have long been compared to each other but Saka has taken a massive step from very good young player to just elite player. Martinelli is still in the very good young player stage and I think suffered from a ball just didn’t go in net season after he had a ball go in net often season previously.

The difference between this season and last season is pretty small, where the overall numbers are all very close to what he did last season (with more defensive work) he just saw his finishing go from +6 to -1 compared to his xG.

I want to see Arsenal get another winger but realistically getting one that is better than Martinelli will be hard and most options in my opinion will still struggle to match his potential ceiling and if this is his floor that is still a dam good player.

Leandro Trossard - B+, 7.5

Trossard is a weird one, when you watch him play he can be frustrating for 90% of his actions and then he popped up in the right spot and scored a goal.

That was for long stretches how his season went for me.

He works hard for the team but he looks slightly limited and a bit of a tweener. He isn’t quite a forward, he isn’t quite a winger and he isn’t quite a midfielder. He is a guy that does well at getting on the end of plays and doing high impact things for the team.

His finishing came in strong this year where he was +4 on his xG and I think that he does have a knack to be a good ball striker that has reflected in him being a solid guy compared to xG (but maybe not quite as strong as some of the narrative that has developed this season suggested).

I am very happy to have him in the squad this season and going forward.

Gabriel Jesus - B, 6.5

This is his grade as a winger and I think he ended up doing quite well when he was pushed out wide.

I still like him best through the middle but he was the player that has the one-on-one skills in the squad to be able to fill in when one or both of Martinelli or Saka are missing.

It is hard to say what his role will be next season but I would not be surprised if it did include more time starting from one of the wide positions.

Reiss Nelson - D, 2.5

I don’t know why he stuck around with Arsenal. I guess the money is good but there just wasn’t anything in the last few years that suggested a role bigger than the one he ended up with.

I also put some blame on Edu and Arteta for this one and their tendency to hoard players that are clearly not trusted but waiting until the last second to make sure they are absolutely certain that a player has no future at the team before moving on, often after having put them on a new contract that makes moving on from them hard.

We will talk more about Nelson in the Exit interview series.

Forwards

Kai Havertz (as a forward) - A-, 8

Havertz ended up playing the most minutes for Arsenal as a forward this season and he did a damn good job of it.

His emergence and performance is probably been enough to change Arsenal’s transfer plans from needing a “proven” and expensive option here to being fine going for more upside and a younger player.

Here is what Havertz looks like as just a forward this season in all competitions.

I think we would all gladly take that over a full season.

Gabriel Jesus - C, 4.5

I am still on the record that a healthy Jesus is good enough to be the starting striker on a title winning Arsenal, we just saw this season that when the team had to try and cover for him not healthy it was tough and how big of an impact he can make at the start of the 2022/23 season.

It is just I have more doubts now about how healthy he will be going forward. His play this season still showed good things but with a MAJOR deficiency.

You can thrive with still with his poor finishing when he was putting up elite xG numbers but when it drops to just good it becomes a problem. 0.24 goals per 90 from a player that spends that much time in the box is just not enough no matter what else he gives you in the other facets of the game. That is just the cold hard truth.

If he is going to have a role through the middle he will need to have better finishing (doubtful) or find a way to get back to generating more high quality looks for himself. Maybe a summer off and one where he can get the knee back healthy fixes him but this season was a real bummer for him.

Eddie Nketiah - C, 5

My expectations for Nketiah were never super high and I think he roughly hit them. I am not going to bash a player that I never thought was good enough to play regularly on a title level team for not being good enough to do that.

I put the fact that he played as much as he did (I think to the detriment of the team) on Arteta and to a certain extent Edu as well for letting him be on the team for as long as he has been.

He started the season as the backup striker and I think that was a mistake, he should in my opinion never been more than the third or fourth choice behind Jesus, Havertz, and Trossard. He just doesn’t offer the same high end skills of those players and it hurt the team

Leandro Trossard - B+, 7.5

Trossard ended up playing 8 matches as a forward for Arsenal and a bit under 6 total 90s. I think that him not playing more here is another situation where we can look and say what if (even if I really don’t want to do that).

His production at the position, like Havertz was just really good and often makes the team look more fluid and connected. His skill set as a tweener I think matches up well with what Arsenal want to do in attack.

Seeing this I really would be pretty comfortable if Arsenal signed 0 strikers this summer (even if they probably still will) and still sold Eddie Nketiah for whatever price is out there.

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That is the end, it is a lot and let me know what I got wrong or what you don’t agree with.