Football is a simple game, but it is also a complicated one and sometimes the greatest complication is working out just how complicated. As data reveals the intricacies of its internal workings and informs ever more complex pressing and counter-pressing schemes, so at the same time the bluntest and most obvious observations take on a weird profundity: “What they need is somebody to put the ball in the net.”
At the highest level, the impact of data on processes has been huge and led to disconcerting shifts in perspective. Take, say, Brighton’s 2-2 draw against Liverpool in October when all four goals stemmed (one via a penalty) from transitions after the ball was won high up the pitch.
Even a couple of years ago the basic assumption would have been that this was the result of carelessness on either side. On this occasion, it was clear that possession had not so much been lost, as the standard description would have it, but had been won back. These were goals that resulted not from mistakes but from transitions provoked by the excellence of the team that had regained the ball.
Pep Guardiola spends days analysing opponents, seeking the tiny vulnerabilities in their defensive setups, working out where he can create overloads or generate pockets of space for Manchester City’s creators to operate in. Everything is analysed, everything crunched to maximise efficiency while capitalising on opponents’ inefficiencies. There is extraordinary sophistication. And yet the old truisms are not yet untrue: sometimes it really does help to have somebody who can score goals.
The issue of what a centre-forward should be is one that, in different ways, has manifested at Arsenal and Liverpool this season. For Arsenal, the question is whether a side can mount a realistic title challenge without a high-class goalscorer. The answer, obviously, is yes: he has Erling Haaland now, but Guardiola has regularly won titles without an orthodox striker and never seemed entirely convinced of Sergio Agüero’s merits.
The converse is also true: Harry Kane has scored 23 goals in 19 Bundesliga games this season, but Bayern are second in the table. It can be that an overreliance on one goalscorer makes a threat predictable, has a negative impact on other processes. But still, as Arsenal lost three league games in December while having a higher xG than their opponents, it was impossible not to think how much more credible their title challenge would be with somebody to convert the chances they were creating.
Gabriel Jesus is a fine forward. His movement is excellent and he is diligent in his defensive work. He makes a lot of what is good about Arsenal function; if he were to be replaced, it would not be a simple case of slipping in a more reliable goalscorer and expecting everything to remain the same, just with more goals.
The fact remains that Jesus is no great finisher. He has never scored more than 14 goals in a league season and has reached double figures in three of his seven seasons in Europe. Even after scoring at Nottingham Forest on Tuesday, he ranks 505th of 532 players in the Premier League for goals minus xG (penalties excluded), a rough measure of striking efficiency. That may not matter if his prime purpose is to create spaces for others and they provide the goals, but Bukayo Saka, the club’s top scorer in the league with seven, is 463rd in that metric. Set pieces aside, Arsenal are a side who need a lot of chances to score goals.
But then so, too, does Liverpool’s centre-forward, Darwin Núñez. He has seven league goals this season, but he lies 24 places below Jesus in that goals minus xG list, ahead of only Nicolas Jackson, Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Yehor Yarmolyuk, the 19-year-old Brentford midfielder whose fledgling career is yet to yield a goal.
To an extent that is because of his remarkable capacity to hit the woodwork: doing so four times against Chelsea on Wednesday took his tally for the season to 12. The sense is that at some point his luck has to turn and at least some of those efforts will end up going in. He has the feel of a striker who could suddenly hit form and produce a 20- or 30-goal season. But then much the same was said of another persistent woodwork-botherer, Timo Werner, and it never quite worked out for him.
B ut it doesn’t seem to matter: in Núñez’s case what that metric seems to highlight is the volume of chances he generates – even if he does then miss a lot of them. There is something extraordinary about the apparent impregnability of his self-confidence, the way misses seem not to concern him: go again, fail again, fail again, score … and repeat.
It is not just about the goals, which come almost as a bonus. Núñez is relentless, indefatigable, a constant roil of energy and physicality, creating space. His unpredictability – he is as likely to belt a shot into the top corner from 30 yards as he is to miss an open net from five – means defenders can never relax anywhere near him.
He has seven league assists this season, more than anybody other than Mohammed Salah, Kieran Trippier and Ollie Watkins, and four more than Jesus. In that sense his profligacy may not matter; Núñez becomes almost the embodiment of the high-octane Jürgen Klopp ideal of football.
Except a troubling thought does occur. Imagine a situation in a crucial Europa League game, or against Manchester City at Anfield next month, or even at the Emirates on Sunday, assuming he is passed fit. It’s a tight game, with few chances either way. It’s goalless late on. Liverpool are defending, win the ball back and break. Núñez is played through one-on-one. Do you back him to score? It may be that he is so adept at spreading chaos he generates chances even against high-class opposition but it could also easily be that history remembers one significant failure and determines that for the want of a striker a title was lost.
But then it may also be that because of all the other work he – or Jesus – does, a title was won. How simple a game football is can be a complicated question.
