What has been the more impactful miss this season, Odegaard or Saka?

A look at how the injuries to the key players has affected Arsenal this season

A season is always going to be a struggle when a team suffers injuries to key players. That has been the case this season with Arsenal losing several players to injury, but the most impactful injuries have been to Martin Odegaard for 12 weeks and to Bukayo Saka for six weeks and counting.

Injuries aren’t an excuse because they are part of the game and that is why a team spends money on a squad but they are part of the reasons why the team hasn’t quite hit the highest levels that we had expected for them.

Friend of the newsletter Kim McCauley and one of the authors at the Transfer Flow newsletter wrote this on twitter yesterday and got me thinking about this post.

This is like a classic American sports question of better vs more valuable/impactful and while it isn’t quite as pertinent in the modern games with advanced stats helping to give good estimates of both, it still comes up with RINGZ culture, and is obviously something that with the state of public soccer stats that we don’t have the same ability to point to the numbers and get a satisfying answer.

So let’s run a few things and see what we come up with.

With Odegaard injured

Martin Odegaard suffered his injury on international duty in September and missed 12 matches coming back into the Arsenal team against at the end of Champions League match against Inter Milan before playing a full ninety against Chelsea.

During this run, Arsenal no doubt struggled and clearly missed their captain. Over this run in all competitions Arsenal lost twice (three if you want to count the match against Inter where he was only able to play the final few minutes) and drew three times, winning seven.

They went 3-2-2 in the Premier League, 1-1-1 in the Champions League, and 2-0-0 in the League Cup. Here is what the stats looked like with Odegaard injured for Arsenal:

With Saka injured

Saka got injured in the first half of Arsenal’s match against Crystal Palace in the Premier League. So far, Arsenal have not looked at their best but they have mostly survived the punishing schedule about as good as they can. Since that injury Arsenal have won six, lost one, and drawn three (losing once on penalties after a draw) so far given that the injury is going to stretch through February at least and probably into March or worse.

They went 4-2-0 in the Premier League, 2-0-0 in the Champions League, 0-1-0 in the FA Cup, and 0-0-1 in the League Cup. Here is what the stats looked like with Saka injured for Arsenal:

Which Injury has had a bigger impact?

This is the big question and there isn’t an easy way to answer it because this isn’t a perfect experiment. I will look at this from a few different angles but it will probably still not be a satisfactory answer.

Starting with points, it’s close and this doesn’t really give us a satisfactory answer here,

The strength of schedule isn’t exactly even here but it is probably close enough, the time with Odegaard injured is also effected by two red cards, while the time with Saka only has the one red card to effect things.

Switching to a bit of a more performance-based look we can take the five-match moving average of weighted expected goals and goals for the season and highlight the times when both have been injured this season.

The time with Odegaard injured has had lower lows, but also had some higher highs driven by the big statistical wins of Leicester and Southampton. During Saka’s injury Arsenal has been a bit more consistent at a higher level but this is clearly below the best that the team can and has performed this season.

This is born out looking at the overall xG numbers as well.

Taking away the aggregation sometimes can be helpful as well. Here is what the oveall xG numbers look like with both players out of the team and with them in the team.

There is a drop with both of them out of the team but it is slightly larger with Odegaard out. This also includes Arsenal’s worst statistical match of the season (Manchester City away) that is heavily effected by a red card so without that it is much closer.

The big effect without Odegaard has been in the ball progression. Without him in the team the numbers for final third entries and progressive passes have taken a massive hit, these are items that Odegaard has come to be depended upon and really shouldn’t be a surprise.

Something that is a bit surprising is that the defensive numbers look basically unchanged. I have come to think of Odegaard as a key player for the press and how Arsenal stop teams from progressing but they have been able to minimize the impact without the captain.

With Saka out the biggest miss unsurprisingly has come in attack. Saka has been the focal point for the team this season, he is second in total shots (behind Havertz) and shots per 90 (behind Jesus), while he leads the team in key passes and shot creating actions.

The plan this season has often defaulted to get it to Saka and let him do something special.

So who have they missed the most?

I don’t have a good answer here.

I think that if Arsenal exclusively only had each injury they have more cover to be able to withstand missing Saka than they do with missing Odegaard. I think that overall Saka is the player that has a higher ceiling and is more likely to consistently be the X-Factor to create a game changing moment, while Odegaard has a larger total responsibility in all phases that is incredibly unique to him and his set of skills.

Both are given massive responsibility in the Arsenal team for how much they are expected to contribute to raise the level of the team.

Gun to my head I think that Arsenal are built more around the unique skill of Odegaard and that makes missing him a larger impact but the numbers suggest that this is a very close and not cut and dry judgement. It does also highlight just how hard it has been for Arsenal to have played 23 of the 36 matches (64%) this season where one or both of their key players have been injured, that’s a tough way to try and achieve the big things that Arsenal wanted this season.