Arsenal 2026-27 Player Previews: Wingers & Forwards
A highly capable bunch. If they stay healthy.
Arsenal’s attacking group is the position group under the most scrutiny this season. How could it not be? The Gunners scored the 5th-fewest goals of a Premier League winner all-time last season and managed a pedestrian 7th-best open play xG in the league. In a way, it doesn’t really matter because they still won the league. But all it takes is one bad bounce for a 1-goal win to become a draw. If you’re scoring more goals and opening up wider leads, you better insulate yourself against the capricious whims of the football gods.
You’d expect more production out of this bunch (and Martin Ødegaard behind them) if guys are healthier. Here are the PL starts - matches played for each: Havertz (7, 12), Ødegaard (16, 24), and Saka (25, 31). If you add Ebere Eze to the mix, Arsenal did not have a single league game with all four attackers available at the same time. That’s a lot of firepower and quality to miss!
Bukayo Saka, 24, RW - when he’s healthy, Saka is arguably the most complete winger in the world. He does pretty much everything at an elite level and that includes helping out defensively. But fitness is a real concern with him. His Achilles seems to be a chronic issue that has contributed to his decline in production year-over-year. When Arsenal were truly humming on attack, that right side triangle of White-Ødegaard-Saka were playing together consistently. Even if you allowed for swapping White for Timber, there hasn’t been anything remotely close to consistency for that position cluster, which has hurt things.
If he stays fit, watch out. I think people have forgotten how incredible of a player he is and can be because he hasn’t hit those highs all that frequently of late. I hope we get to see that again. He’s fun to watch.
Noni Madueke, 24, RW / LW - the lightning-fast, crafty-dribbling winger is a bit of a frustrating player. His highs are tremendous but his end product is often wanting and he can struggle with consistency. You can’t teach pace though, and he has bags of it. Other than Gabriel Martinelli, the rest of the Arsenal attack isn’t blazingly fast. Saka, Havertz, and Gyokeres are fast enough but not in a “blow you away with speed” manner. Madueke is that fast — it adds a different dimension, a literal change of pace, to the Arsenal attack.
You’d really like to see him increase his goal contributions this season. He gets himself into such great positions.
Christos Tzolis, 24, LW - the Greek winger joined the Gunners in the summer after putting up gaudy numbers at Club Brugge over the last two seasons (33G, 32A). He’s impressed in preseason racking up six assists, including two in the Community Shield, and potting a goal. His clean touch and intelligent play has stood out. He seems to always make the right choice with the ball to do something positive. He’s got big shoes to fill replacing Leandro Trossard. Hopefully he’s got the same clutch gene.
I think he’ll quickly become a fan-favorite in North London. Hopefully he meaningfully improves the left side of the attack, which has been searching for consistent threat for a few seasons.
Gabriel Martinelli, 25, LW - the Brazilian seems to have fallen out of favor in North London after a (very) down season in the Premier League where he notched a solitary goal and just four assists. He was much better in other competitions, tallying 10 goals and three assists. Nevertheless, he’s been heavily linked with a move away from the Emirates before the close of the window. To be fair to him, he was statistically more likely to score six PL goals last season than he was to tally the lone goal he managed.
For what it’s worth, I can’t see Arsenal selling him without a replacement lined-up unless the plan is to use Noni Madueke and Ebere Eze more frequently on the left to rotate with Tzolis. Martinelli is a useful player. I’m pretty sure he’s the fastest player on the team. He works incredibly hard at both ends of the pitch. I’d be sad to see him go but that’s the business of football, I suppose.
Max Dowman, 16, RW - the teenage phenom seems set to breakthrough into a first-team semi-regular this season, which is mind-boggling. He won’t turn 17 until December 31st. He played significant minutes in the preseason, although some of that is down to how many attackers Arsenal had coming back from World Cup duty. It’s probably telling that he didn’t see the field in the Community Shield. Mikel Arteta and the club will still want to bring him along slowly, but if he keeps making impact plays when he gets on the pitch, he’ll force his way into more and more playing time.
Viktor Gyökeres, 28, CF - what to make of Big Vik? His 14 goals against non-top-6 clubs last season most assuredly helped Arsenal win the league. You could reasonably argue that those matches were why Arsenal won the title. They feasted on the weaker teams and were relatively pedestrian against the bigger clubs. Those results (or comparative lack thereof) against the Big Boys is concerning though, as is Gyök’s goose-egg against them.
Gyökeres is a hammer. When the task calls for a more precise tool, he can really only be a hammer. There were promising signs towards the end of last season when he started to combine a bit better with his teammates and hit a nice little run of form, but his lumbering movement and mediocre touch will continue to be a limiting factor. He could definitely do with a bit more help from his teammates being better at spotting his runs. That frustrated curl back towards the play after not being played through was an all-too-common sight.
However you want to describe last season, some of it was down to Kai Havertz getting injured on MD1 and missing half the season. That absence made Gyökeres an immediate every match starter without any opportunity to ease into things. If the Havertz stays healthy this year, the pair could make for a nice thunder and lightning one-two punch. Mikel Arteta can pick which one he thinks is best-suited to a particular matchup and use the other in relief. Gyokeres getting the nod to bang bodies and soften up the defense before Havertz comes on for graceful finishing touches. Havertz starting and Gyokeres coming on to smash a tired defense to pieces.
Kai Havertz, 27, CF - my kingdom for a healthy season from Kai. Havertz missed the second half of the ‘24-’25 season with a February hamstring injury that required surgery and suffered a knee problem in the opening match of ‘25-’26 that kept him out until January. He’s a transformative player when he’s in the lineup. Like so many of Arsenal’s stars, he’s a complete player who can fill multiple roles and does a bunch of different things well. He can drop deep for combination play, he’s good in the air, he makes excellent late-arriving runs into the box, he scores goals, and his out-of-possession work goes underappreciated.
He posted 20 goal involvements in his first season at the club, which you’ll remember started quite slowly before a red-hot second half. He’ll match / eclipse that mark if he stays fit.
At the time of writing, both Reiss Nelson and Gabriel Jesus are still Arsenal players, but they’re likely to be sold before the close of the transfer window. Nelson looks to be heading to just-relegated West Ham for £3M. Gabriel Jesus has been heavily linked to Napoli, but it’s not entirely clear that the Italian club are willing to pay a reasonable fee nor the player is 100% on board with the move.
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