I don’t think that anyone could dispute that Arsenal need to improve their attack this summer. It is abundantly clear that Mikel Arteta thinks so. The first thing that Arsenal did last summer was to bid for Benjamin Sesko. The last thing they did last summer was to reluctantly sign Raheem Sterling on loan on the basis that, with a fair wind, he might be better than nobody. (*Looks ruefully to camera and awaits narrator’s voice*)
The only thing Arsenal did in January of any note was to bid for Ollie Watkins as Arteta repeated over and over and over again, ‘my kingdom for a striker!’ Arsenal’s attack needs a spring clean and those issues were abated by injuries, at different junctures, to Odegaard, Havertz and Saka, which turned an issue into a catastrophe.
As such, it is difficult to fairly judge the contributions of the attackers that were left behind. Not least Leandro Trossard. Consistently inconsistent, he is difficult to pin down both in terms of his form and in terms of his position. I have always viewed him as a kind of inverse cooperative with Kai Havertz. If Havertz is a striker who drops into midfield, Trossard is a kind of midfielder who drops into more advanced positions.
However, that underplays Trossard’s toolbelt. When he played in the false 9 position over the Easter period when Merino was carrying an injury and suspended for the Champions League semi-final against PSG, Trossard was a false 9 who predominantly popped up on the right wing, allowing Saka to take up more central positions.
The enigma of Trossard is that his game is built on drifting away from his principal position. At the end of 2023-24, he hit a purple patch of form in front of goal. Leo Trossard’s career shows you he is an XG overperformer. He has 46 Premier League goals for Brighton and Arsenal from an XG of 38.0. An overperformance of eight goals across six Premier League seasons- so his finishing earns him roughly 1.6 extra goals per season.
Not bad. However, in 2023-24, he wrecked that curve, scoring 12 Premier League goals from an XG of 7.9 (all numbers from FBRef). It was always likely that his numbers would come ‘back towards the pack’ this season and so it proved, though he still overperformed his XG (scoring eight Premier League goals from 7.2 XG). He has 0.28 goals per 90 this season compared to 0.66 goals per 90 in 2023-24.
A lot of this will be due to good old-fashioned variance- the needle was disturbed last season and came to rest a little this. Injuries to Saka and Havertz entirely changed the face of the Arsenal attack and Trossard made the highest number of appearances for the team this season with 56 (albeit his minutes played are behind the likes of Raya and Saliba)- only missing the early League Cup rounds against Bolton and Preston North End.
Last season, his goalscoring run, in my view, was built on a Freddie Ljungberg style penchant for arriving late onto the ball in the penalty area. The presence of Kai Havertz upfront hugely facilitated this, though Gabriel Jesus’ jink and pass to him for his finish at home to Bayern Munich last season only go to further the point in my eyes.
Trossard built that goal scoring run on being a finisher in more than one sense of the word. He would watch the play unfold and then arrive undetected to provide the ultimate flourish. His finishes were often one touch or first time and the fact that he has two strong feet help him to do this with reasonable regularity.
But the injury situation in attack in 2024-25 meant that Arteta had to call upon Trossard to contribute to build up more than he did last season. With Havertz and Saka in place and Odegaard in good form, his role as a finisher was a little easier to achieve.
This season, with Arsenal’s forward line decimated by injuries, Arteta had to lean on Trossard in the build-up phase a little more. He registered seven Premier League assists this season compared to just one last season (which actually makes his PL goal contribution numbers- 15- better than 2023-24 when he had 13).
His number of key passes, passes into the penalty area and passes into the final third all rose on average compared to last season. This would have been particularly pertinent during Odegaard’s injury enforced absence when Trossard and Havertz timeshared the right eight and centre-forward roles and a lot of creative burden fell on him.
Probably the crowning image of the Belgian’s season was a Cruyff turn that melted Pedro Porro’s ankles in January. (Leo also scored the winner in that game). In effect, Trossard is the dream ‘plug in and play’ player. He has performed very competently for Arsenal as a goalscoring wide player arriving on the end of moves, as a facilitating false 9 who will drift into wide areas to allow space for others to run into and this season he has performed a decent shift as more of a creative player.
Ultimately, he probably isn’t the player you quite want at the top of your appearance charts, he is your ideal ‘12th man’ but injuries elevated him in the hierarchy. I am still undecided over reports of a new contract (or a pay rise with no extension in contract length). On one hand, there is a sense that he was an opportunistic signing who has more than served his purpose.
On the other, there is the feeling that few players in the world could assume so many different attacking personas. His game is built more on his more cerebral gifts than his raw physicality, which, in theory, age should be slower to weary. I think it probably depends on the volume of business that Arsenal are able to do in the window. But Trossard is one of the only members of the squad who is difficult to pin down, a player who is, simultaneously, positionless yet plays all the positions.
