With pre-season fixtures looming, Arsenal wasted little time securing their fourth summer signing in Chelsea forward Noni Madueke.
But who is the England international, what will he bring to the side and why is he costing (up to) £52 million?
Phil Costa reports.
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It’s an old adage that familiarity breeds contempt, and for many Arsenal fans there is certainly contempt towards Chelsea and the players their club keep buying from them. Some have worked out, others not so much, but having dipped their toe in the private equity pool earlier this summer with Kepa, there was a full, cannonball sent with Noni Madueke also coming into the club for a sizable fee, with £48.5m fixed, and a further £3.5m in potential add-ons.
Take away the name and his badge, and I think most supporters would have been excited by a 23-year-old, England international who made their name abroad after leaving Tottenham’s academy – but the initial reaction was quite visceral. This was obviously motivated by some major Chelsea fatigue, which feels boring and uninspired because there’s a whole world of players out there and we’ve somehow landed there again.
Then you get into how much the club were paying, anxiety over the future of Ethan Nwaneri and the long-awaited need for more firepower, which all mixed into this perfect cocktail and sparked the reaction we saw; on top of our sheer desperation to win something which puts every decision under the microscope. That’s the great thing about football – it provides an escape from the difficulties of everyday life.
So why did Arsenal and Mikel Arteta especially push so hard for this player? His stats from last season don’t immediately jump out, with 7G + 3A in 32 league appearances and even then – 50% of that tally came in two games against Wolves and Southampton. But pull the curtain back and his underlying metrics look a lot more positive, which seems to have triggered Arteta’s I can save him gene that every coach will recognise.
Beyond their glaring need for depth and competition in wide areas, there’s a feeling that Arsenal lack penetration from their wingers (Bukayo Saka aside); chaos factor, some unpredictability, and Madueke brings this in spades. His first thought when receiving the ball is centred around provoking defenders and driving towards goal, which means you can isolate him without too much focus on the overall setup – you just wind him up and let him go. This was especially valuable for Chelsea who rely heavily on ball progression and carrying to create danger under Enzo Maresca, second only to Manchester City who have changed the dynamics of their team with Savinho, Jeremy Doku and others.
There are two specific metrics to love when assessing the 23-year-old; per FBRef data, he currently sits in the 95th percentile for progressive carries (6.82 per 90) and the 98th percentile for carries into the box (4.12 per 90). Those are big numbers and actually, Mohamed Salah-esque numbers in that he isn’t the smoothest dribbler but still very direct, penetrative and always finds himself in the penalty area to create danger or shooting opportunities for himself.
And why does that help Arsenal? Because those qualities are major factors in helping break down low blocks, which they have struggled with over the past two seasons. I made the same comparison on social media (which went down amazingly well) but their action areas, heat maps and shot locations are all very similar, especially when coming in off the flank towards that top corner of the box.
More impressively, he ranked first among all Premier League players last season for shot-ending carries per 90 (1.63) and averaged more shots per 90 than any other top flight winger (3.64). Why do we like Madueke? He gets on base.
He also loses the ball quite often which will frustrate people, but I don’t mind that in players who are tasked with breaking games open. Centre backs or midfielders losing the ball is another issue, but wingers need a certain level of grace to try things because you need high volume guys to wear down defences. If they try something 20 times and it comes off once, that could be the difference between three points and one; or one point and zero.
Those who have watched the forward will notice his slightly awkward mechanics. You can’t fault the athlete, because his speed over the first five or ten yards is killer and that ability to launch from a standing start is priceless; especially at the highest level where the margins are becoming increasingly fine. But he’s very upright when he runs, quite gangly and there’s a Bambi on ice quality to his game which means not everything looks clean and put together.
His first touch can be loose, others feel bobbly at full pelt and if I compare him to Saka whose technique is faultless in terms of shaping his body, protecting the ball, locking down your first touch – Madueke is way off. But maybe the club are willing to overlook those technical inconsistencies in favour of more pace and directness, especially having played (fairly well) on the left side towards the end of last season where he could offer something different to current options.
His final third instincts need polishing as well; too often he is guilty of keeping his eyes glued to the ground when getting to the byline and crossing to nobody, or when cutbacks do present themselves – they aren’t always accurate or played with the receiver in mind. The 23-year-old also has this weird habit of running back into traffic despite having acres of space to run into, which kills promising counter attacks and transition moments.
We know there were talks with Leroy Sane earlier this summer, who is another upright, pacy, two-sided winger but he’s opted to make his great-great-grandchildren multimillionaires at Galatasaray instead. Maybe the ex-Spurs forward is a signing in that mould? After all, Arteta was credited with a big impact on his development during his spell at City.
Another big conversation around this signing has been his attitude, or supposed attitude issues which were part of the reason he felt expendable at Chelsea. Many people will point to the penalty situation with Cole Palmer and Nicolas Jackson last season, and even Maresca singled him out on several occasions last season with key themes like working harder, and training harder in mind. But there are others who have praised Madueke’s work ethic and drive to succeed, after working with him at PSV and for the England national team.
Ultimately, we’re in the dark here because we will never know why those problems came up elsewhere, which sound like potential red flags for Arteta – who runs a very tight ship. But the fact they are going ahead with this deal tells me that all the relevant conversations and background checks have taken place with a satisfactory conclusion.
His injury history is also worth highlighting, because the forward missed a lot of football at PSV during his four seasons there although those worries seem to have settled at Chelsea. Despite being the same age as Saka (23,501) and Gabriel Martinelli (15,402), Madueke has played significantly fewer minutes (11,826) than his now new teammates; which could either be a positive or negative depending on whether your glass is half-full or half-empty.
Without tapping into the online discourse too much (because social media ≠ real life), some of the outrage against this deal was weird. You can always question what business your club is doing and why they are doing it, but forcing someone to turn off their instagram comments, circulating petitions and defacing fan art is extreme touch grass behaviour.
There are many reasons why you might have doubts over this signing and most have been explained in this piece – I have doubts myself. Mostly they fall around price and his overall ceiling, but maybe our heads need rewiring because this is just what young(er) Premier League forwards go for now; Anthony Elanga, Mohammed Kudus, Matheus Cunha and eventually Bryan Mbeumo will all cost between £50-65 million.
That’s just where the market has been set and Madueke could even be cheaper in the long run due to his lower wages. We have been crying out for added depth and quality in wide areas for years now, and support for Saka who has played basically every game since he was of legal drinking age. Don’t forget, Kieran Tierney was playing as a makeshift left winger against Real Madrid last season, with Nathan Butler-Oyedeji and Ismael Kabia sitting on the bench against PSG. At a minimum, if Madueke ticks those boxes alone it could prove a successful signing.
It’s clear this player arrives with more questions than answers, but maybe the real intrigue is not knowing what he could become.
