LONDON -- Fifty three minutes gone at the Emirates Stadium, Arsenal nerves beginning to fray as Leeds United probed for an opener and Noni Madueke slides a pass to no one in particular. The home faithful take up the groan with gusto. It had felt for quite some time now that they were on a hair trigger with their left winger. That one (very bad) action made clear that that was the case.
No one should expect fans in the stadium to keep a running tally of every action by every player. That's for the nerds in the press box who are glued to spreadsheets while the best athletes on earth are showcasing their wares within spitting distance. However, it's fair to ask if more allowances might have been made for Madueke if someone had offered a printout of his analytics at the interval.
That misplaced pass was only the second of 24 Madueke had attempted that did not find their target. By the final whistle, the winger, a surprise inclusion in the starting lineup following the injury of Christos Tzolis during the international break, led Arsenal in a raft of key categories: progressive carries, attacking third touches, penalty box touches, line-breaking passes received, chances created, expected assists, the list really could go on.
No wonder that the stats that try to aggregate everything a player does on the ball utterly adored Madueke. Opta's model, which measures the probability that any on-ball action will result in a goal in the next 10 seconds, gave Arsenal an overall expected possession value (xPV) of 1.22. Madueke made up 0.6 of that. In terms of individual xPV, only eight players have had better games in the Premier League this season.
Among Madueke's highest value actions was, of course, the precise cross to the back post, flicked back into the danger area by Ben White for Riccardo Calafiori to turn in an equalizer the faltering champions desperately needed. A low cutback from the byline in the direction of Declan Rice on the penalty spot, only cut out by a diving Ethan Ampadu; the model loved that, as it did the cross that Kai Havertz directed into James Trafford's arms.
Madueke might have ended this game on the same underwhelming grand total of nine goals and four assists from 49 Arsenal games, but he could leave the pitch confident that he had boosted his chances of carving out a more significant role in the weeks ahead. Certainly his boss seemed impressed.
"I'm really happy with him because he deserves the chance that he got," said Arteta. "In training he has been the best player in the last 10 days, and he gave me no option not to select him and not to play him today. You could see that every time he was in and around the ball, he looked a threat."
Here's the thing, though. What the Emirates Stadium saw from Madueke today was not that different statistically from a great many of his performances last season. And that is where the lived experience of watching him and the statistics he ended a game with rub up against each other. After all, that same possession model will poke holes in Calafiori's performance because so many of his passes went backwards. He provided plenty of value, expected and actual, crashing the box.
It's the sort of thing that Madueke's critics might argue he rarely does. And yet, last season, no Arsenal player averaged more xPV per 90 Premier League minutes than Madueke. He was a progression dynamo, supremely effective at carrying the ball into dangerous positions, often by blowing past defenders. The 24-year-old had arrived from Chelsea as a darling of the analytics community. Three and a half shots per 90 in that final season in West London, 0.42 xG. Those are numbers comfortably worthy of a £50 million transfer fee. The shots fell off a cliff, but there was a slight uptick in creation. If all you had access to was the analytics, you might think that Madueke would have charmed a skeptical audience in year one.
Boy, did it not look like that watching Arsenal's attack slog around the field in the spring. It really felt like Madueke was the archetypal good-stats-bad-player player. Whatever the numbers said, as the season wore on, the performances were not up to the level required. Perhaps some of that was a function of the lineups he found himself in; Madueke, Gabriel Martinelli and Viktor Gyokeres is a trio blessed with pace and not a lot of ball control. Those darts to the byline could raise hope in an instant before dashing them soon after as the ball rolled out for a goal kick. Madueke was betting big, but he kept rolling snake eyes.
His game seemed tailor-made to highlight the gaps between a possession model and the lived experience of watching a game. Today the former loved above all else that pass to Rice on the penalty spot because if that pass found its target than the chances of his team scoring would skyrocket. Of course, that pass did not find its target.
Analytically Madueke made what was likely the highest value choice. When you're a supporter in the trenches, trying to overturn a deficit in the gammiest, grindiest of early kickoffs, you'd really rather Madueke stuck the ball top bins. Is that too much to ask? It isn't as if the skeptical view is without its justification. It's one that has been shared by Arteta. Missing from that quote above was a telling assessment of Madueke's past form. "When I haven't liked what he was doing so much, or it wasn't impacting the game, I made certain decisions," said the Arsenal manager. "He has accepted them and what he's done is raised the level."
He is going to have to keep doing so. The inevitable reality of wingers whose first instinct is to drive at their full back, to gamble with possession in pursuit of the byline or a shooting position, is their gambling tends to frustrate their own supporters as much as their defender. When those high-risk, high-reward attackers are ex-Chelsea, well, there's even less patience. To make matters worse, that poindexter over there well actually-ing me? Get him gone.
And yet the stats deserve to have their corner fought for. If they think that attempting and not completing that pass to the penalty box adds value to the possession, it must be because the millions of sequences that make up their database conclude that more often than not it will make their team more likely to score. It stands to reason then that if Madueke keeps playing it, eventually it will pay off.
As it did today. For an hour Madueke kept asking the question, probing at an impressive Leeds defense. Jayden Bogle bodied him off the ball as he drove to the byline, and he just went at him again and again. An hour plus of knocking at the door, of making the aggressive play, and eventually Arsenal's breakthrough came, in large part because he had shown the patience that some seem not to have for him.
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