The Saka Problem Isn't Saka

The Saka Problem Isn't Saka Every few weeks the same conversation starts up. Bukayo Saka isn't the player he was. He's lost a yard. He's in a dip. He doesn't look right. The latest round came this week. Graeme Souness went further than most, accusing Saka of going down too easily and of simulation. Before that it was Emmanuel Petit, who argued over the summer that Saka had finished the season poorly and that "there are so many strong and talented players who are better than Saka." At the World Cup, Gary Neville and Ian Wright both said he didn't look like himself. Some of that had a basis. Saka went into the summer carrying an Achilles problem, and nobody watching England in June thought they were seeing him at full tilt. But "he was carrying an injury" and "he's in decline" are two very different claims, and the second one doesn't survive contact with the evidence. Look at what he actually does, what opponents do to stop him, and how his numbers have moved over three seasons, and you get a very different picture. The Most Watched Man on the Pitch Start with the thing the criticism never accounts for: no Arsenal player gets the defensive attention Saka does. You see it every week. When Saka receives on the right, the full-back stays tight, the winger tucks back to double up, and a central midfielder shades across to close the inside channel. Three bodies for one player is common. Against deep blocks, it can be four, with a centre-back stepping out to meet him on the edge of the box. That's not paranoia from Arsenal fans. Opponents were already regularly doubling up on him in 2023, and that year the club reportedly complained to the referees' body about the treatment he was getting. There's no public stat that counts how many defenders commit to one player per possession. But the fouls tell the story. In 2025-26, Saka drew 54 fouls in the Premier League — the most of any Arsenal player, and 15 more than the next man, Leandro Trossard. This season he's been at it again: 15 fouls won in his first few league games at more than three per 90, second in the division only to Bournemouth's Alex Scott. Go further back and, by late 2024, he was one of only six Premier League players to have been fouled more than 300 times since Arteta took charge. Defenders don't foul players they aren't worried about. They foul the ones who have already got past them, or are about to. A winger who is "in a dip" doesn't get kicked three times a game. Saka has spoken about this himself. His approach is simple: defenders can't keep fouling him all game, because the yellow cards eventually stop them, and if he hides from contact he isn't doing the job he's in the team for. That's the mindset of someone who knows he's the target and keeps going at people anyway. This is also where Souness gets it backwards. A player who is fouled more than almost anyone in the league will inevitably have moments where he goes down and the referee waves play on. That's not evidence of simulation. It's evidence of volume. What That Attention Does for Everyone Else Here's the part the critics miss entirely. Every defender who commits to Saka is a defender who isn't marking somebody else. When the full-back, the winger and a midfielder all shift towards the right touchline, the space appears on the other side of the pitch, and in the pocket Saka has just pulled them out of. Ben White's overlap works because the full-back can't follow him without leaving Saka. Martin Ødegaard arrives late into the half-space because the midfielder who should be tracking him has been dragged wide. The Coventry match report earlier this season described exactly that pattern down Arsenal's right. Arteta has started using this deliberately. Saka is now routinely swapping positions with Kai Havertz, which takes him away from the touchline and into central areas where defences can't set up the same trap. Arteta's explanation for why that matters was blunt: without that variety, "we know how the opponent is going to defend him." That's the manager telling you, in plain terms, that teams plan specifically around stopping Saka. Compare that to the other Arsenal attackers. Eberechi Eze, Christos Tzolis and Noni Madueke have all had spells on the left this season, and none of them draws anything like the same number of bodies. That's not a criticism of them. It's a measure of where Saka sits in every opposition analyst's planning. Three Seasons, One Constant The "dip" narrative also ignores how consistent Saka has been once you account for fitness. 2023-24 was his best scoring season — 20 goals in all competitions, a career high, with 16 in the league alongside nine assists. That was Saka as the primary outlet on the right, carrying the ball at defenders and finishing moves himself. 2024-25 was interrupted by a hamstring operation in December that kept him out for around three months. He still finished with 16 league goal involvements in 25 appearances — six goals and ten assists. Early that season he was the Premier League's leading creator: after seven games he led the division for chances created (27), big chances created (12) and assists (seven), and no player in Europe's top five leagues had created more big chances. That's not a player in decline. That's a player who was the best creator in the country until his body stopped him. 2025-26 was the title-winning season, and the hardest one to judge, because the Achilles problem shaped so much of it. Seven league goals and five assists in 31 appearances, with 11 goals in all competitions. Lower than his peak, yes. But he was still Arsenal's most-fouled player by a distance, still the player opponents set up to stop, and still part of a side that won the league. Across that whole period, the creative output has been remarkably steady. From Arteta's appointment to late 2024, Saka was in the Premier League's top five for chances created, both overall and from open play. Since his debut, no Arsenal player had created more chances, more big chances, or provided more assists. He's also been one of the most available players in the league. Between the start of 2021-22 and late 2024 he played more than 10,000 Premier League minutes and missed just four league games. So what's actually fluctuated? The goals. And even that has an explanation. The Goals Go Up and Down. The Threat Doesn't. Saka's goal tally has moved with his fitness and with his role. In 2023-24, when he was largely fit and Arsenal relied on him to finish moves, he scored 20. In 2024-25 and 2025-26, injuries cost him minutes and sharpness, and the goals dropped. That's not a mystery, and it's not decline. This season, fit and with a different brief, the goals are coming back. By the time Arsenal beat Lille last week, he had four in all competitions for Arsenal and two more for England. Arteta reckons he could easily have four or five more, after missed one-on-ones against Napoli and Leeds. The underlying data is the clearest answer to the critics. In the Premier League this season, Saka is averaging around 0.50 open-play expected goals per 90 minutes — nearly double his rate in any previous season at Arsenal. Only two players in the league have generated more expected goals: Erling Haaland and Thierno Barry, both out-and-out centre-forwards. Saka ranks in the top three for shots on target and touches in the box, and has made more fast breaks than any player in the division. Three of his goals this season have come from in or just around the six-yard box. He's creating less than in previous seasons. That's the trade-off of moving him inside and asking him to finish rather than supply. It's a change of job, not a loss of quality. And on the quality question, Gradient Sports — which grades players on how well they execute each action rather than on raw outcomes — has Saka as the best-performing player in the Premier League this season. His grade of 88.5 puts him ahead of João Pedro, Elliot Anderson, Lewis Hall and Rayan Cherki, and above the league's winger average in passing, shooting, crossing, carrying, duels and even one-v-one defending. His assist against Lille came with his very first touch off the bench. So Where Does the Criticism Come From? Partly from standards. Saka has been so good for so long that anything short of a match-winning performance gets read as a problem. A quiet afternoon against Leeds becomes a story. A winger who is merely very good on a given day gets described as struggling. Partly from timing. The worst of the criticism landed while he was playing through an Achilles problem at the end of a gruelling season and into a World Cup. Judging him on that stretch is like judging a striker on the games he played with a broken toe. And partly from not looking closely enough. Count the defenders around him. Watch who's free because he isn't. Look at where his shots are coming from now compared with two years ago. The evidence points one way. Saka isn't in a dip. He's the most marked, most fouled and most carefully planned-for attacker at Arsenal, and he's turning that attention into the best expected-goal numbers of his career while the players around him enjoy the space he creates. The critics are watching the scoreline. Opposition coaches are watching Saka. They know better.