The Arsenal academy product left Hale End for £0, but he is now far better than Saka.

Arsenal are still chasing a quadruple title, but Mikel Arteta knows his team needs to strengthen following Wednesday’s Champions League draw.

Kai Havertz grabbed a point with a second-half penalty. Emirates will play Bayer Leverkusen next week, which will be packed with Gunners supporters, before facing Bodø/Glimt in the quarter-finals.

But there is no doubt that the Londoners look tired, and no one embodies that better than Bukayo Saka, the talisman of a team staring at greatness.

what is happening with bukayo saka

First of all, Saka is one of the best wingers in the world. His energy, enthusiasm and ability to create something great from raw materials led to him signing Arsenal’s richest contract in history.

However, he has only six goals and five assists in 26 Premier League games this season, and there are calls for him to replace Noni Maduke, with former Manchester United defender Paul Parker making the bold claim that he is “better than Bukayo Saka.”

While this is not true, it shows both the gains Madueke has made since swapping blue for red last summer and Saka’s own struggles during the campaign. In the match against Leverkusen, they picked up the momentum in the final stages of the game, but lost six of the eight games and failed to create any chances.

Saka is elite but not without his flaws and there is a point to the argument that he should feature against Everton on Saturday night, especially with so much to play for over the next few months.

The time has come for Madueke to step up, but some on the Gunners board are sure to look with pity on the former youth player who never made it to the first team and is now one of the best players in the world.

Hail Ender now better than Saka

Arsenal’s Hale End Academy is one of the best in the world. With so many talented prospects emerging, it would be impossible to keep track of each and every one of them.

Still, the Bayern Munich star is now “the best right-winger in the world”, according to Times reporter Hamza Khaliq-Rounat, and it must be frustrating that Michael Oliseh was one of the players who slipped through the hands of his coach.

The 24-year-old has progressed steadily since joining the German side from Crystal Palace in 2024, scoring 10 goals and providing 16 assists in 23 Bundesliga games this year. This impressive performance is further evidence that he has been a “world-class player since his time at Palace”, as analyst Spencer Mossman put it.

Indeed, with 26 assists in all competitions this season, Oliseh is the top assist maker in all of Europe and it doesn’t look like that individual honor will be taken away from him.

The former Eagles maverick is developing into a very good player, the architect of Bayern Munich’s attack and the perfect partner for Harry Kane (also a former Gunners youngster, by the way).

Given that Arsenal have shown interest this season in the player who left Arsenal in 2009 as an academy student, he ultimately did not settle in north London and instead moved to Chelsea, where he spent more than six of his formative years.

There is no doubt that Oliseh is the best player at the moment, ahead of the likes of Saka, Lamine Yamal and Mohamed Salah.

Of course, that doesn’t mean Saka won’t take that spot away from him in the coming years, and I don’t think many Gunners fans would trade Olise for their star player.

Orise may be better than Saka at this point. A move from Arsenal to Munich will inevitably boost Saka’s numbers, but he has emerged as one of the world’s best wingers in a tough division like the Premier League since his teens, and is more than capable of leading Arteta’s project towards sustained success at home and abroad, as he has done over the past few years.