Martinelli has failed to kick on, what does the data say is wrong?
He hasn't taken the next step we hoped he might, he is also not as useless as many would have you believe, what does the data say is going on here with Martinelli?
There is no player currently with Arsenal that has seen their stock fall further than Gabriel Martinelli. He was a player that was one of the crown jewels of a young team in 2022/23 and now there is frustration and anger among a fairly large portion of the fanbase to see his name in the first XI.
This summer has also been a big one where his place in the squad has the most uncertain and under threat since he and Emile Smith Rowe were competing for minutes. He won that competition, but it is far from certain that he will do it again.
Arsenal have spent big, bringing in three attacking players, including two in Eberechi Eze and Noni Madueke, that would be direct competition for his place, while the incumbent Leandro Trossard sticks around as well.
This is a fertile topic here at Cannon Stats, with Adam and me analyzing and opining on him numerous times over the last few years.
In December 2023, the first hints of trouble were brewing, leading to my first look into what was different for him in 2023/24 than his impressive 2022/23 season.
That next summer, Adam took up the mantel looking at the question that was starting to percolate in the fanbase on if Martinelli was still the best long-term choice and if he had slipped from being at the level required.
In October 2024, it was my turn again as Martinelli was off to a good start in 2024/25, regaining a bit of form.
This spring, it was Adam’s turn to highlight that Martinelli’s level of play after returning from injury had picked up pretty significantly. This is still probably something that is under appreciated as people have seemed to dig in on him.
The most recent article on Martinelli came again from Adam this summer. This time looking at him from the perspective of his overall productivity.
That catches up with the present.
In this piece I don’t want to retread too much on what has already been written previously but rather look more at the question of what has changed for him and if he has been able to adapt to these changes and still be able to put himself in the best positions to provide an impact for Arsenal.
The good place to start is looking at how the numbers have changed over the last four seasons for him.
This last season is interesting/worrying because it is one where none of his stat’s were at their best for this four-season span. The high-level numbers really hit this point showing that last year while not bad, was a down year for him from his previous level.
Open Play Shots, the best was 22/23, this current season is down 14% compared to the average the previous three years.
Non-Pen Goals, the best was 22/23, this current season is down 7% compared to the average the previous three years.
Assists, the best was 21/22, this current season is down 26% compared to the average the previous three years.
Open Play Key Passes, the best was 23/24, this current season is down 9% compared to the average the previous three years.
Dribbles Completed, the best was 21/22, this current season is down 42% compared to the average the previous three years.
Progressive Passes Received, the best was 23/24, this current season is down 21% compared to the average the previous three years.
It’s discouraging to see these declines (not every stat showed decline from average but still not great) and important to try and get an idea of how bad this is, what changed and why this decline/plateau is happening.
So onward we go into the details here for a deep dive into Gabriel Martinelli.
Shooting
The shots and goals are the area of Martinelli’s game that have (had?) the most potential to add superstar value.
This was the calling card for the player when he broke into the team, he played with an almost single-minded focus to find a way to get into the box and take a shot. The other big bonus for him was that this was not a player padding his stats taking most of his shots inside of the penalty area and doing so with a high average quality.
This is where seeing the volume of shots fall gets discouraging because if that does not return it is hard to see him be more than a good player.
He has maintained the good shooting locations, and the high average quality for his shots. He has even done quite well at converting those into goals (last season was only second to his 15 goal season on goal scoring rates) but the ceiling on what you can produce when you are taking 1 shot fewer every three games starts to add up.
His shooting rating reflects this; he was in the 90th percentile in his big season and dropped into the 66th percentile last year.
Looking at things a bit more granularly you can see that there has been a bit of a change in the shooting profile but nothing all that massive.
The big 2022/23 season with 15 goals was a season where he was +50% on his expected goals and even the best finishers don’t hit those levels over and over again consistently.
Overall, here the shooting locations are pretty strong, especially for a player that starts wide.
The majority of the shots are inside the width of the six-yard box and there is a big cluster inside of 12 yards. He does have a fair amount from distance and from tough tight angles on the left but he also able to tuck two of those away and put several on target so it would be hard to tell him to stop that (those are also the types of shots that pushed the goals above xG so much).
2023/24 was a tough follow up season for him. The expectations rose on the back of the 15 goals, and he just never really got it going.
He had two spells of injury that saw him lose three weeks each, one in the fall and the other in the spring. The injury absence in the spring especially seemed to hurt him as he was starting to come into some form and got piped down the stretch by a hot Leandro Trossard.
In the two months before his injury, he had 4 goals and 2 assists (over 1.1 G+A per 90) and was doing it on 0.6 xG + 0.6 xA with over 3 shots per 90 and 4.3 shot creating actions per 90. When he came back, he had just one start in the final 10 matches and that was on the final day of the season.
The big drop off here was that he went from +50% on his xG to matching it, even with solid numbers on the post shot xG and good on target numbers the big hot finishing didn’t continue (Trossard was instead the player that got that +50% season and pushed him to the periphery).
The shooting locations continued to look strong here, but he lost some of the big chances very close to goal inside of the six-yard box. He did still maintain his shot volume overall here and even cut out some of the real low-quality shots from distance and tight angles.
That brings us to the last season.
Here his goal scoring numbers picked back up again, and he was again over 0.3 non-penalty goals per 90 and did so on an xG that was just marginally worse than his 22/23 season (0.339 vs 0.345, going to three digits to show just how marginal it is). He even produced a similar level of extra boost from his shot placement adding 24% goal expectation in 24/25 compared to the 26% he did in 22/23, it just ended up where he only matched his xG and didn’t have the hot finishing season.
If the hot finishing is reversed and he gone 10 goals at 21 and then 12 goals here in an injury shortened season the story and narrative about him is almost certainly different but hey that’s the world we live in.
The granular story of the shots in this season is pretty interesting, the refinement of his shooting choices continued, and he is focused almost entirely in the “prime” scoring zones. He cut out almost entirely the speculative long shooting attempts, here is the percentage of his shots from different distances/zones in the Premier League over the last three seasons:
22/23: 46.3% in prime, 25.4% from the corners of the box, 20.9% from outside the box
23/24: 55.1% in prime, 28.5% from the corners of the box, 12.2% from outside the box
24/25: 50.0% in prime, 39.1% from the corners of the box, 8.7% from outside the box
The absolute elite wide players will be taking a bit more than a shot per 90 in those central zones in the box and Martinelli is just off of that taking 0.9 shots from open play in these spots.
The overall shot volume at just 2.14 puts him just below the 70th percentile range for wingers and the trend and overall decline from previous seasons is a bit of a concern; it is mitigated somewhat by his higher proportion of shots in more dangerous locations (85th percentile for shots in prime locations, 88th percentile for xG per shot).
It would make us all feel better if when we went to his FBref page that bar next to shots was green rather than grey and adding a few more shots would be helpful, even if they were a bit more speculative efforts is something that the team could use.
This transitions well into the next section I want to look deeper into and that is the change in where he is receiving the ball and his overall touches, and if this can explain the decline or suggest ways that he could bounce back.
Receiving
Martinelli’s receiving numbers have varied quite a bit over the last three seasons.
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