Since his birthday on September 5, Bukayo Saka has been a man in a hurry. In the four league games played after turning 23, the Arsenal winger has notched up another five Premier League goals and assists.
That takes his tally of goals and assists to 91, moving him up to eighth on the list of most Premier League goal contributions before the age of 24 — surpassing Marcus Rashford’s total of 87.
Only Raheem Sterling, Cesc Fabregas, Cristiano Ronaldo, Romelu Lukaku, Robbie Fowler, Wayne Rooney and Michael Owen had more at that age, but leapfrogging Rashford offers a pertinent moment of comparison.
Rashford, who turns 27 in three weeks, should have accelerated away from Saka in the last four years and be entering his prime now. Instead, he is a talent who has faded at club level and has found himself on the outside looking in at England. Saka, almost four years his junior, has usurped him and is an ever-present in the national team.
But having hit double figures in goals in each of the last three Premier League seasons, the same as Rashford did between 2018 and 2021, can Saka continue the upward curve into his mid-twenties and go stratospheric when it comes to goals and assists?
At this juncture, Saka’s trajectory is similar to the arc Rashford was on when he was a winger-cum-striker who was slipstreaming past defenders and finishing with conviction under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.
Rashford now has 123 Premier League goals and assists to his name — an addition of 38 since he turned 24 — but apart from the 2022-2023 season when he managed 17 goals and seven assists (30 and 11 in all competitions) the last few years have seen him stall.
His identity as a player has become muddled. In the last 18 months, he has become a target for Manchester United fans over a perceived lack of work ethic and hesitancy to run at defenders, most notably against Liverpool in September when he was booed.
At his best, Rashford possesses more trickery and can eliminate defenders in a way Saka does not, but what Saka has always had, from his very early teenage years, is a remarkable efficiency in his game. Rashford has always been patchy in the final third; last season was the fifth time out of nine that he failed to reach double figures for Premier League goals.
There have been off-field issues, too, so there has to be individual responsibility for his stalling.
A caveat is that Rashford has been operating in a dysfunctional team for much of his career. At one point, he was the shining light in darker times. Now he looks like another star swallowed up by the black hole of footballing identity at Old Trafford.
The contrast with the environment Mikel Arteta has created at the Emirates is one of the main reasons why Saka looks well placed to avoid a similar stagnation.
For starters, he is said to be increasingly clear-headed about which brands he wants to associate with and how much time he is willing to dedicate to outside activities given the relentless schedule.
On the football side, he has absolute clarity on his right-wing role, so much so that there are complaints he is too robotic and not daring enough up against full-backs. Rashford has never quite enjoyed that certainty, having switched between the wing and a central striker berth, an ambition now ditched having not developed his all-round game well enough to convince any of his five managers.
Saka has the benefit of knowing the machinations of Arteta’s system inside-out with the familiarity of sharing the flank with Ben White and Martin Odegaard, forming a trio that started a run of 62 of 76 Premier League matches together before last month’s north London derby.
He even went on a run of 82 consecutive Premier League appearances between May 2021 and August 2023. That availability has underpinned Saka’s unblemished record of never posting worse numbers than the previous season in every completed campaign so far.
If Saka maintains those standards of around 25 goals and assists every season for the next five years, it would still mean he is in stellar company. But there is a final leap that he can make: the category of wide player who can produce like a striker (aka Mohamed Salah), where a goal in every other game becomes not only the standard but the expectation.
Arteta believes he can do it but there is always the danger of burnout; a temptation to forget that Saka is not a machine and that he is a young man who has grown up in the public eye since 17 and is expected to remain in the spotlight for at least another decade.
Perhaps that is what has cracked Rashford. But looking at how Arteta is individually improving Saka, Kai Havertz and Odegaard, among others, it is not hard to envisage Rashford discovering a more complete version of himself if placed in the Arsenal environment.
Arsenal have established themselves among the elite the past two and a half years and could well become champions this season. Saka is still young but he is not a junior member of the squad anymore: he is one of its leaders and has taken up the mantle of captaincy in Odegaard’s absence.
The youthfulness of this Arsenal team is what gives Saka such a solid platform to build on. Jurrien Timber (23), William Saliba (23), Riccardo Calafiori (22), Declan Rice (25), Odegaard (25), Havertz (25) and Gabriel Martinelli (23) comprise a core of young players tied down on long-term deals, primed to pursue major trophies in their peak years.
Saka has another 11 months before he turns 24. Should he avoid serious injury, as he has his entire career so far, the Arsenal winger should have another season’s worth of games to add to his total and overtake more prestigious names. He only needs another 20 goals and assists to overtake Ronaldo, which would give him the record for a winger — even though he made 20 starts at left-back and left-wing-back, and another four in central midfield during Arteta’s early tenure.
Arteta finds a new compliment to bestow on Saka each month, but there is always a gentle reminder buried within the praise that he is not yet fully satisfied by his progress. It often feels like he gives more consideration to the words he uses regarding Saka; an extra pause to ensure he cultivates a sober framing for the public but a motivational message underneath direct to the player.
In October 2022, Arteta spoke about how Saka’s end product was unusually reliable for such a tender age. “Yes, we don’t really see it, especially forward players and wingers with that level of consistency and numbers,” he said.
“At his age, it is something really strange to find, but it is not a coincidence when you look at him every single day. The way he trains, the way he applies himself, the qualities that he has. And he can do more.”
And he can do more. Arteta continually lifts the ceiling of potential and speaks with such passion that it feels like he is on a personal mission to forge Saka into a homegrown superstar. If Saka’s numbers improve again this season, he may have helped create one.
(Top photo: Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)
