Two Arsenal players feature in Opta’s statistical Premier League Team of the Season for 2022/23.

The BBC presented Opta’s Premier League Team of the Season this week, formed using stats from the campaign.

Summer signing Oleksandr Zinchenko featured in the side, with Opta highlighting the fact he’d completed the most passes, most passes in the opposition half, most passes into the final third, and most touches per 90 of any Arsenal player to play 1,000 minutes.

They also credited him with 16 build-up goal involvements, the fifth-most in the Premier League, despite missing 11 games.

Then Martin Odegaard was also named on the team, after doubling his goal contribution tally from 2021/22.

Opta focused on his creativity, highlighting that Odegaard was fifth in the league for chances created, fourth for passes in the opposition half, and joint-first for secondary assists, as well as being the league’s highest-scoring midfielder.

Odegaard had also been named in Garth Crook’s Team of the Season, with Crooks writing: “For so much of this season, Arsenal looked like they were going to make it. The reason they appeared so convincing was due to their captain Martin Odegaard.

“The Norwegian playmaker brought [such] a calm sophistication to the Gunners’ performances that the Premier League title suddenly seemed doable.”

Crooks also selected William Saliba, writing: “The loss through injury of William Saliba in the latter part of the season almost certainly cost Arsenal the title.

“The games against Southampton at home and West Ham away were ones the Gunners would have won under normal circumstances, but these were fixtures fuelled with pressure and expectation and Arsenal’s defence buckled under the weight of them.

“When Saliba came into the Arsenal side in the early part of their campaign he looked immense, and the bigger the game the more composed he appeared.

“The impact of the Frenchman’s injury to Arsenal’s title chances was there for all to see and they simply had no one in their ranks good enough to replace him.”

Interestingly, WhoScored didn’t include Saliba, Odegaard, or Zinchenko in their Team of the Season, but they did find a place for Bukayo Saka.

Saka had an average 7.4 rating from WhoScored across the season, just less than 0.2 points behind the league’s highest-rated player – Kevin De Bruyne.