Paul Scholes has argued that Arsenal\u2019s style this season could make them \u201cthe worst team to win the league\u201d if they finish top. The retired midfielder made the comment on his podcast The Good, The Bad & The Football and expanded on his view: \u201cIf you\u2019re thinking of picking a Team of the Season and picking the front four, nobody from the Arsenal team gets in that,\u201d he said. \u201cLook at previous champions\u2014Liverpool\u2019s forwards, brilliant. Possibly the only one is [Bukayo] Saka, and I don\u2019t think he\u2019s been brilliant. He\u2019s not scored many goals this year or assists.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mikel Arteta offered a measured rebuttal to that criticism. \u201cI hear completely the opposite,\u201d the Spanish manager insisted, \u201call around Europe that we are the most exciting team in Europe\u2014the most goals, the most clean sheets. <\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe I have different sources.\u201d When pressed about the English voices at odds with his continental admirers, Arteta added: \u201cI don\u2019t know which people,\u201d and invited names: \u201cYou send me the names, the addresses and the email and maybe we can talk but I can\u2019t give you a massive book of all the people.\u201d<\/p>\n
The statistics underpinning the debate are clear in parts. Arsenal lead the Premier League with 15 goals from dead ball scenarios. In open play they rank fourth with 28 goals, behind Liverpool (32) and Manchester United (30) and well short of Manchester City (41). The club\u2019s top scorers in the league are listed as Viktor Gy\u00f6keres (6 goals, 0 assists), Leandro Trossard (5 goals, 4 assists), Bukayo Saka (4 goals, 3 assists), Eberechi Eze (4 goals, 2 assists), Gabriel Jesus (2 goals, 0 assists), Gabriel Martinelli (1 goal, 1 assist), Noni Madueke (0 goals, 1 assist) and Kai Havertz (0 goals, 0 assists).<\/p>\n
Comparisons to past champions tempered Scholes\u2019s broad claim. Past title-winning sides have sometimes lacked forward representation in seasonal teams. Ultimately Arsenal must win the title to earn the label Scholes proposes. Through 24 games Arsenal show a mixed profile: win percentage 66.7% (22nd), goals scored per game 1.92 (26th), goals conceded per game 0.71 (8th), goal difference per game 1.21 (18th) and points per game 2.21 (23rd).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arteta rejects Scholes’ ‘worst team’ verdict, citing Arsenal’s set-piece and defensive superiority..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6460,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[230,192],"tags":[1162,826],"class_list":["post-6461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analytics-stats","category-arsenal","tag-analytics","tag-bukayo-saka"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}