My grandson in an email writes:
The result yesterday was, for me, damning. It shows how dependent we are on Grealish, who yesterday had his worst performance of the season (summed up by the penalty miss) and so we lost. He is at the top of our goal-scoring and assist-making charts, and it seems that anything good coming out of the team must go through him. This is worrying, because if he gets injured or suspended (which he is one yellow away from) then we'll have problems.
That said, I don't think we are too far from being a decent team. Sure, if we play as we did yesterday then we'll be relegated, but in some previous games (I'm thinking vs Spurs, Arsenal, West Ham, Liverpool, Man Utd and others) we could have picked up more points. Now I know that "could have" is not good enough, so I will say what needs to be done. We need to buy a new striker.
I know that I've previously defended Wesley, and I still believe he needs to be shown support, but I wouldn't have bought him in the first place. 17 goals in 48 league games for a 22 year-old may be impressive in the German, Spanish, French, or even Dutch Leagues, but it is not impressive in the Belgian League. It certainly doesn't warrant a £22 million transfer and it is foolish to have him alone as the only established striker in the team (Davis and Kodjia are too inconsistent and injury-prone to fit my definition of established).
The statistics support my argument. If we define (goals scored)/(expected goals scored) [G/xG] as a metric of a forwards finishing ability, and compare the top-scoring striker on each of the 20 Premier League teams, then Wesley ranks 3rd from bottom (0.66 - every 3 goals he should score he scores 2 of them), above only Watford and Newcastle's strikers. He ranks 2nd from bottom when we compare key passes (passes leading to a shot - a measure of creativity). What is especially worrying is that when you look at two of the teams below us, Southampton and Norwich, they aren't struggling in this department with Ings and Pukki both on 9 goals this season (and 1.53; 1.41 for G/xG). Saturday's game against Southampton is key, and we will need to deal with Danny Ings.
The next 3 league games are crucial to this season. All 3 are winnable. Then after that we should consider our options in January.