47.5% against 27.4%
Those are the two numbers that define Arsenal’s season so far. Across their first three Premier League matches, 47.5% of the club’s touches in the opposition half came in the right-hand third of the pitch. Just 27.4% came on the left. Both figures are the division’s extremes, and not narrowly. Arsenal spent the summer refusing to chase a marquee left winger and instead leaned harder into what they were already doing.
None of this is new. Last season the Gunners took 41.7% of their attacking touches down the right, a share only West Ham beat. Their 31.8% on the left was the lowest in the league.
Bukayo Saka is the anchor. What matters is that the plan survived without him. When Saka was injured last season, Noni Madueke and Max Dowman occupied the same channel and generated the same threat.
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Havertz and Odegaard keep drifting
Against Chelsea on Sunday, Kai Havertz positioned himself wider than Saka to overload the flank, then cut infield to score the equaliser.
Wednesday in Naples, Martin Odegaard spent stretches of the match functioning as a right winger. He and Saka connected more often with each other than with anybody else on the pitch. Arsenal registered 4.05 expected goals, their highest figure in the Champions League since this data started being collected in 2012-13.
Odegaard’s winner arrived at the end of a 29-pass move involving 10 players, assisted by Christos Tzolis. Saka had already been substituted.
Lopsided on purpose
The left has not been abandoned. Tzolis has four assists in five competitive appearances since arriving. Riccardo Calafiori has two. Between them that is six of Arsenal’s nine assists across all competitions this season.
The touch maps say something else. Calafiori averages 39.6 touches per 90 minutes, fourth-lowest in the squad. Ben White, on the opposite side, averages 68.4 and is one of only four players to have started all five matches.
Five games, five wins, 10-1 on aggregate. Chelsea remain the only side to have genuinely stretched the champions. Two questions are still waiting for answers: what happens when a team blocks that right-hand lane, and what happens if Saka and Odegaard are unavailable at the same time?
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