Arsenal couldn’t fully capitalise on Manchester City’s slip-up earlier in the day, drawing a blank at Nottingham Forest.
Here are our Scout Notes from the City Ground.
- READ MORE: FPL notes: Enzo’s role, Sanchez bounces back + just how fit is Palmer?
- READ MORE: FPL Gameweek 22: Saturday’s goals, assists, bonus + ‘DefCon’ points
ARTETA ON WHY HE BENCHED SAKA
A second benching in three Gameweeks saw Bukayo Saka (£10.1m) reduced to little more than half an hour in the late kick-off.
It looked like more of the dreaded minute management but Mikel Arteta did suggest the winger had a “niggle” going into Gameweek 22.
“Bukayo had a lot of minutes and he had a niggle before the game, so we need to manage our players. We have some fantastic players that can provide different things and we did try it from the beginning, we tried after half-time as well, taking more risks and bringing in even more players in those attacking options. We tried in every way and it wasn’t enough, unfortunately.” – Mikel Arteta
The hope now is that Saka gets the next two mostly meaningless Champions League ties off (Arsenal are 99.9% qualified for the knockout rounds), although there is a Tuesday-Sunday turnaround if he does start in the San Siro this week.
Saka very nearly capped off his cameo with an unlikely goal at Forest: a header that Matz Sels (£4.6m) did very well to claw away.
RICE HEAVILY INVOLVED
A lot of the talk around Declan Rice (£7.4m) this season – particularly from salty non-owners – has been the ‘unsustainability’ of his attacking returns and how fortunate he’s been.
But Saturday was a Rice hard-luck story.
The midfielder was at the heart of most of what Arsenal did well in a generally sub-par collective performance.
It was Rice who delivered the cross for Saka’s aforementioned chance, and it was Rice who sent a teasing ball in for Mikel Merino (£5.6m) to nod wide from six yards. FPL’s top-scoring midfielder, doing quite a bit of box crashing himself (often without being found), was also a stud’s width or two from converting Ben White‘s (£5.1m) delivery. Rice later tested Sels from a Saka cross.
Plenty of encouragement, despite the blank.
GABRIEL’S PHENOMENAL RUN – AND WHY DON’T WE CAPTAIN HIM?
Arsenal’s attack underwhelmed on Saturday but they still could have easily come away with three points. Aside from the chances we’ve already discussed, Gabriel Martinelli (£6.8m) missed a sitter from close range and Viktor Gyokeres (£8.7m) should have done better when allowing Murillo (£5.2m) to recover and close down his breakaway chance.
The Gunners’ defence was on point again, though. Having Gabriel Magalhaes (£6.8m) back brings a sense of calm that perhaps wasn’t there when he was out.
Over the course of the season, the Gunners have remarkably conceded less than 1.0 xG in 18 of their 22 matches. On Saturday, Forest had just one shot in the box – and that was quickly shut down and blocked by Rice.
The turn of the New Year has been significant as Gabriel has now gone above Erling Haaland (£15.1m), and everyone else of note, for points per start (7.9 v 7.5):
Gabriel has also got a markedly lower blank starting blank rate (sBln, above) than Haaland: the Brazilian stopper has delivered fewer than six points in just three of his 15 starts in 2025/26.
It begs the question of why Gabriel isn’t in the captaincy conversation more. It’s maybe just the unshakeable glass-half-empty mentality with defenders: just as a forward can haul despite otherwise being anonymous, a defender can excel for 89 minutes and have their return wiped out by a freak goal or wonderstrike.
ANDERSON’S DEFCON STREAK GOES ON
We wrote a few weeks ago that basic individual errors were masking some pretty good underlying defensive numbers from Nottingham Forest.
Since Sean Dyche took over, the Tricky Trees are fifth in the Premier League table for lowest expected goals conceded (xGC).
Further helping their cause is the return of Ola Aina (£4.7m), meaning no more runouts for the dodgy Nicolo Savona (£4.5m) or Oleksandr Zinchenko (£4.9m).
Not only that but Ibrahima Sangare (£4.9m) is back from AFCON. In the Dyche era, it’s four clean sheets in seven matches with Sangare in the side – and none from seven when he’s not starting.
Sangare also seems to bring the best out of Elliot Anderson (£5.3m), who looked back in the groove on Saturday.
Anderson made it six straight DefCon returns, and 15 in his last 19, against the Gunners:
Had DefCon not been in place in 2025/26, Anderson would have blanked in 18 of his 22 starts. As it stands now, though, he’s a dizzying 12th in the midfielders’ points table.
