What Does "Good Enough" Look Like for Bukayo Saka?

Setting the expectations for what a successful season would be for Arsenal’s best attacker

Bukayo Saka is Arsenal’s highest paid player and most important attacking player.

Arsenal are often criticized as not having a world class attacker and I think that the term “world class” is not well defined and varies too much person to person to have much meaning but if there was a player that should be in that conversation it is Saka.

Because I believe that he does belong in this discussion, I have high expectations for him. He’s shown in the past when healthy that he can do extraordinary things and I think that he still has more that he is capable of showing on the pitch.

Given that the spotlight is bright on him this season after his new contract, this got me thinking that he would be a good player to put down a public marker for what I want to see from him this season.

Some of the early talk about him has bugged me and I think has missed the mark describing what he has done as disappointing or underwhelming. It is still a small sample which will give you noisy outcomes but even still… his overall production has been damn good.

Narratives can get out in front of reality at the start of the season, and panic over a small sample size is something of a tradition for fans. Rather than getting bogged down in the vibes, I want to publicly plant my flag for what a successful season for Saka looks like.

I have done weekly updates and tracking like this in the past and I have found it very helpful. It helps you to clarify your thinking and it makes sure that you don’t move the goal posts along the way.

I am excited about this so lets get into what would be good enough for Arsenal’s talisman.

What is good enough for Saka?

When I am thinking about this, I wanted to focus on Saka’s scoring output. I have never doubted his ability to create chances but if he is going to take things to the next level, and really fill the need that Arsenal have in attack, the main focus should be on this end product.

I want to see more goals from him but that can be a bit random, so rather than focus solely on goals, I am also looking at shot production and to a lesser extent expected goals numbers. That gives us what we want to look at and now we need to set the levels. For this I think it would be tough to say that he needs to be the best or even at an “elite” level for this but I think that he needs to be very comfortably above average and should be perhaps just below that.

I think that setting the expectation at the 90th percentile for wingers will be the right baseline. That is very good but not so high that he would need to be putting up best ever type numbers.

I am using the general winger population (so both left and right), with a minutes floor set to 1,200, of which at least 60% came while playing as a winger or wide attacking midfield. I have also limited this to the last 10 seasons and will have it be the combined Domestic League (Big 5 only) + Champions League.

For scoring, this will set our baseline expectation at 0.4 goals per 90 for Saka.

This would be a bit lower than my initial guess or hoped for value of 0.5 but I will trust my instinct here and say that 0.4 is a good reasonable goal. I would be thrilled if he could push 0.5 but that is closer to the 95th percentile outcome for wingers over this period.

In the short season so far there is some concern that his finishing has been a problem, I looked at this already going in depth and think that this is mostly a blip.

Is Something Wrong With Bukayo Saka's Finishing?

If he continues to get into the good locations and get opportunities at the volume that we want this shouldn’t be a problem at all. Speaking of that, let’s set the baseline for how many shots we’d like to see from him.

My initial expectations estimate that I had been going with was at 3.0 per 90 and that was right on the money here.

The baseline of the 90th percentile is just a tiny bit above 3 shots per 90.

This is big but doable

Saka has never quite hit these numbers in his career but that doesn’t concern me.

I want to see him go to the next level here and it is the right amount of an uplift on what he has done in the past. For his career he has been near this mark averaging 0.27 goals and 2.5 shots per 90. Over the last few seasons he has been even closer.

• 25/26: 0.24 goals and 2.94 shots

• 24/25: 0.39 goals and 3.16 shots (basically got it here)

• 23/24: 0.34 goals and 2.83 shots

• 22/23: 0.32 goals and 2.44 shots

This will be setting an ambitious target, but it is based on what he has already shown that he can produce. I am not expecting an unprecedented jump in performance, rather I am looking for him to take a small step from the ceiling that he had already established.

If he is able to hit this over a full season the debate on if he is a “world class” player should be settled and this will go a long way to Arsenal winning the big prizes that they want this season. I can’t wait to watch this over the rest of the season.