Arsenal need some production from someone who isn't Saka

Hello and welcome to the Friday grab bag. First up, a little bit on the biggest game of the week.

In previous seasons, Arsenal have been overly dependent on Bukayo Saka for goals and assists, with production lacking when he was either injured or simply not at his best. Arsenal thought they rectified this problem by signing Noni Madueke to back him up, and I did too.

Madueke was extremely productive for Chelsea last season, turning his elite dribbling into a lot of shots and xG, and a decent amount of xG assisted too. For Arsenal, he’s producing the same high quality dribbling output and getting almost as many touches in the box, but he’s not turning it into shots or shot assists.

As we noted earlier this week in a piece about PL player of the year contenders, Saka’s production this year has been excellent, even if it’s not quite where Arsenal fans expected it to be. A side-by-side comparison with his backup makes this even more clear.

In his press conference ahead of Arsenal’s big maybe title decider against Manchester City this weekend, Mikel Arteta said that Saka is definitely out, while Madueke feels fine following the knock he took against Sporting CP midweek, and expects to be available.

It would be unfair and almost certainly inaccurate to call one player or area of the pitch the Most Important Thing in a game, but Arsenal actually getting some useful production at the end of Madueke’s elite dribbling could go a long way towards getting their attack out of the rut it’s been in lately.

On the podcast, the boys went a little deeper into this matchup, and recapped the UEFA Champions League quarterfinals as well.

This week’s Patreon exclusive podcast dives into the first big transfer rumours of the summer. Our Patreon has one bonus podcast episode per week, plus 2 behind the scenes off-topic conversations from the other recordings.

It’s been a very good month for Variance Betting, which is +8 in April and about +40% ROI for the season. Ted has 6 bets on the Premier League and 3 on MLS this weekend, while the Championship lines did not look favorable to us, so there wasn’t a good reason to put money down there. If you’d like to learn how to be a smarter gambler and learn how and why to avoid bad lines like that, you can subscribe to Variance Betting here.

The FPL corner

This is a big double game week, hope you had your chip strategies ready for it. Manchester City and Chelsea are the two big teams doubling up, but they’re not the only ones. The next most popular team to pick up players from is Leeds, and we covered Dominic Calvert-Lewin in last week’s newsletter.

If you’ve got any other individual player hunches for teams doubling up, this projected goals and clean sheets chart from Solio FPL should help you figure out if you should go for it or look elsewhere.

Erling Haaland, Antoine Semenyo and Marc Guehi are the meta Man City FPL players at the moment, but if you’re looking for a differential guy, it’s probably Rayan Cherki. He’s owned by about 9% of players, but he’s been an xA machine. If Haaland can actually start finishing off the chances that Cherki creates for him, FPL points will come.

And finally, the easiest way to keep on top of stuff like double game weeks and chip strategies is by subscribing to LazyFPL. They send out a newsletter with everything you need to set up your team 24 hours before every game week.

Games we’re watching

Chelsea vs. Manchester United — Besides the obvious title decider between City and Arsenal on Sunday that we mentioned above, this one is almost as big. United are in CL spots, but not exactly secure after dropping points in their last two games. Chelsea appear to be in free fall, but get right back in the fight with a win here.

Bayern Munich vs. Stuttgart — Stakes aren’t that high, but it’s 1st vs. 3rd. Should be a high quality game.

Roma vs. Atalanta — Roma are running out of margin for error in their CL fight, and this is a tough fixture.

PSG vs. Lyon — Hey, Lyon finally broke their winless streak last game! Now they get their hardest fixture of the season.

Stuff we’re reading

Matt Doyle at Tactics Free Zone analyzed the surprising exit of Javier Mashcerano from Inter Miami and who deserves the blame for how it went wrong.

The homies at Scouted broke down the surprising value that Serie A teams are getting out of shopping in the Balkans.

Max Radwan at The Cutback was impressed by England women’s performance without the ball in their win over Spain.

Fintan O’Reilly at Total Football Analysis sees Carlos Forbs as a potentially great wide player for a fast and direct transitional side.

Jonathan Liew at The Guardian is rightfully disgusted with the 2026 World Cup’s defining feature being all about robbing fans at every opportunity.

The Athletic’s staff dug into the potential future of Saudi investment in football following news that they’re winding down their investment in golf.

If you enjoyed this newsletter, we’d appreciate it if you would forward it to a friend. If you’re that friend, welcome! You can subscribe to The Transfer Flow here. We also have a podcast where we go in depth on transfer news and rumours every week. We’re on YouTube here, and you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify by searching for “The Transfer Flow Podcast.” If you’re interested in football betting, check out this post on why we started Variance Betting.