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8 hours ago
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Arsenal may be on the brink of multiple trophies as the 2025/26 season comes to a close, but it feels as though their best and most visible superstar has failed to lead the charge from the front of the pack.
Even as Bukayo Saka has earned a massive contract extension with huge wages from the Gunners, the 24-year-old has not looked his usual self in attack. With nine goals and seven assists across all competitions, a year after bagging 12 and 17 respectively, Saka's contributions have seemed muted.
With the Gunners still alive in all competitions — on the verge of a Premier League title, positioned in the EFL Cup final, set to contest the FA Cup quarterfinals and still alive in the Champions League Round of 16 — they will need their England international to take up his mantle as star player.
The Sporting News details what has ailed Saka, where he is struggling — and yet, how the narrative around his difficulties has been overblown based on optics rather than tangible output.
MORE: 2025/26 Premier League top goal scorers
What's wrong with Bukayo Saka?
Burnt out by a high-minutes load
Since his arrival on the Premier League stage as a regular first-team starter for Arsenal, almost nobody has played more minutes at such a high-leverage position as Saka.
He has logged 15,411 minutes in Premier League play since the start of the 2019/20 season. Of all the forwards in the league, only Ollie Watkins, Mohamed Salah, and Jarrod Bowen have more. All three of those players have declined considerably in the 2025/26 campaign.
Add in the fact that Saka has also been heavily used for the national team over that same length of time, to the tune of an additional 48 appearances and 3,279 minutes, and it's easy to see why the 24-year-old is likely suffering from exhaustion.
Saka hasn't had Martin Odegaard to filter him possession
One of the hallmarks of Arsenal's tactics over the past few years has been their heavy skew to right-sided possession, with Saka and Martin Odegaard dominating the ball together in a partnership, leaving those playing on the left to feed on scraps.
Over the two seasons that Odegaard was most healthy — 2022/23 and 2023/24, when he logged over 3,000 Premier League minutes in both campaigns — Saka averaged 54.4 and 60.9 touches per 90 minutes, respectively.
Since then, with Odegaard's minutes declining due to fitness issues, the number of times Saka has been on the ball has plummeted. With the Arsenal captain playing just 3,400 minutes the previous two seasons combined, Saka has only averaged 43.8 touches per 90 minutes in 2024/25 and 45.8 so far in 2025/26.
With Odegaard on the shelf, Saka has been forced to do much more ball progression, which is usually the Norwegian's role. In the 2024/25 season, Saka was in the 81st percentile of progressive carries for forwards, but this season he has increased slightly to the 85th percentile, meaning he is working harder to bring the ball forward and has less ability to find himself on the end of finished product.
So, how much is Saka really struggling?
In the end, while there are definitely signs that Saka has declined slightly, the rate of his slump is actually far less than it would appear. Additionally, the narrative around Arsenal's set-piece oriented tactics under Mikel Arteta affecting Saka has been widely overblown.
Saka's rate of dribbling has actually increased. From the start of the 2019/20 campaign to the end of the 2024/25 season, he was eighth in most dribbles completed, with 282 successful out of 601 attempted, an average of 1.67 completed dribbles per 90 minutes. This season, that has actually increased, as he is sitting on 1.8 successful dribbles per 90 minutes.
His key passes, as well as his non-penalty expected goals and expected assists, have both remained high, suggesting he is suffering from a bout of bad luck in front of goal. From an xA perspective specifically, the set-piece narrative is debunked quite considerably. His expected assists figure is at 5.76 for the Premier League season thus far, according to The Analyst, which is sixth in the English top flight. From open play, that figure is 4.81, meaning he sports a smaller differential from overall to open play than Bruno Fernandes (8.83 vs. 6.43) and Adam Wharton (5.93 vs. 4.28) above him, as well as Pedro Neto and Dominik Szoboszlai behind him.
By expected threat (xT), a new aggregate statistic used to measure how a player's actions (in this case, passes and crosses) create danger for the opposition based on location, Saka is sitting at 0.18 per 90 minutes, which is exactly the same number he put up last season.
Finally, from a ball progression perspective, Saka is right up there with the best in the league. Through 31 matches, his total of 193 progressive carries already eclipses last season's full mark by one. He is third in the Premier League in carries that end in a shot with 27, behind only Cody Gakpo and Matheus Cunha, and he is third in the league in carries that end in a chance created with 22, behind only Callum Hudson-Odoi and Pedro Neto.
Encompassing pretty much every angle of statistical analysis, Saka is not struggling nearly as much as the end product might suggest, especially from a tactical standpoint. He remains one of Arsenal's most important and influential players, even if it feels a bit like they are winning the Premier League in spite of his presence, not because of it. Furthermore, he is likely to turn it around soon, whether that be down the stretch of the season, the World Cup this summer, or the start of next campaign.
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