Here's who the stats back for Arsenal's number 9 signing

It's obvious which position leads Arsenal's summer business...but whom to sign?

The age of Mikel Merino the striker has been a surprisingly fruitful one. Not only did the Spanish midfielder record an incredible total of six goals and three assists in 11 appearances (so far) in which he started or played primarily atop the attack, he stepped up in a massive way in the club’s biggest tie in decades, performing prominently en route to a 5-1 shock win over Real Madrid.

But as does tend to happen, the output couldn’t outrun underlying trends forever, and the man of about 0.1-0.2 npxG per 90 did eventually stop producing a goal every time out. For all his achievements, he’s not a born-and-bred frontman and doesn’t do a lot of the little things Arsenal will find in a trained striker, nor does he provide the instant goal threat and shot volume you’d get from a natural number 9.

Of course, Arsenal shopped for a number 9 last summer despite Kai Havertz’s emergence, and were even on the precipice of signing Slovenian wonderkid Benjamin Šeško before the striker decided to stay in Germany. But in a market with few opportunities, they opted to stand pat once that opportunity didn’t work out.

That’s not likely to happen this summer, both because Gabriel Jesus is out until autumn with an injury and also because the need has been magnified and emphasized by club officials and Mikel Arteta himself. That can mean just one thing, dear reader: It’s time to make a big list.

I’m very, very excited to say that this time we’ve got the benefit of advanced stats for more than just the major five leagues, so there will be MORE CHARTS! I’ve got a full 25-man ranking below.

I always do my disclaimers in bullet form, but let’s go with paragraphs this time just to mix things up. Some things I’d want to point out here about methodology before we get started:

These rankings are based on statistics only. I always have and always will encourage a healthy dose of the eye test before making any final judgment on players. Things like league strength, clustered goals and many more can impact counting stats and skew averages, so buyer beware.

Please also note that my charts are *not* adjusted for league strength, but the final scores leading to rankings are. So that means some better-looking charts will be below worse-looking ones. One possible reason for that is league strength.

Another possible reason - this ranking is based on the past two years of play. I’m only going to chart what they’ve done this season, but scores include both the 2024-2025 and the 2023-2024 seasons.

In terms of how one qualifies for this list, I started with a minimum of 450 league minutes played this season. Players who have been more available this season scored better. And while I didn’t utilize a hard and fast age rule here, the idea is to try and match the age profile of the squad to the extent possible. We’ll discuss case by case below.

Oooh! One thing I want to point out that’s new below: In my never-ending quest to bring players onto the same level however I can, I’ve adjusted all of these attackers to touch-based output. Will this prove to be a good idea? I don’t know! But we’re going to find out together, so please make a note of it.

Otherwise, I think that’s it. Should we talk about some guys?