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Victory Through Harmony
By Walter Broeckx
Scoring goals the most important thing in football. Without scoring goals you just cannot win games. We could rely on other teams to score own goals as United did last season when the own goals was their second best striker. But we prefer to score our own goals ourselves.
So where do our goals come from so far this season? But I will not try to look at this in the most used way of goals scored. No, I will also try to see which player has the best goal scoring record compared to his number of games and also to his actual game time.
Take note that in the following numbers I took all the games in consideration.
| Player | Goals |
| Samir Nasri | 14 |
| Theo Walcott | 10 |
| Marouane Chamakh | 10 |
| Andrey Arshavin | 7 |
| Cesc Fabregas | 7 |
| Robin Van Persie | 8 |
| Alex Song | 5 |
| Nicklas Bendtner | 4 |
| Carlos Vela | 3 |
| Bacary Sagna | 2 |
| Jack Wilshere | 2 |
| Henri Lansbury | 1 |
| Abou Diaby | 1 |
| Sebastien Squillaci | 1 |
| Laurent Koscielny | 1 |
Well no big surprise here I would say. I think we all have seen that Samir Nasri was the best player we had this season and it showed in the goals he scored. I really think that he is having a year like Cesc was having last year. Scoring goals for fun and certainly for the fun of the fans. Also Walcott and Chamakh have reached double figures so far this season.
But now lets see how many games the players have played and how many goals they have made per game. I also included how many games they need to score a goal and made a ranking based on this criteria. For this table I counted all the games the players played in as a whole game.
| Player | Ap | Total games | Gl | Goal/game | Games needed |
| Henri Lansbury | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1,00 | 1,00 |
| Samir Nasri | 23+5 | 28 | 14 | 0,50 | 2,00 |
| Theo Walcott | 12+10 | 22 | 10 | 0,45 | 2,20 |
| Robin van Persie | 8+7 | 15 | 8 | 0,53 | 1,87 |
| Marouane Chamakh | 23+6 | 29 | 10 | 0,34 | 2,90 |
| Cesc Fabregas | 17+5 | 22 | 7 | 0,32 | 3,14 |
| Nicklas Bendtner | 8+7 | 15 | 4 | 0,27 | 3,75 |
| Andrey Arshavin | 23+6 | 29 | 7 | 0,24 | 4,14 |
| Carlos Vela | 3+10 | 13 | 3 | 0,23 | 4,33 |
| Alex Song | 26+1 | 27 | 5 | 0,19 | 5,40 |
| Abou Diaby | 7+2 | 9 | 1 | 0,11 | 9,00 |
| Bacary Sagna | 23+1 | 24 | 2 | 0,08 | 12,00 |
| Jack Wilshere | 24+3 | 27 | 2 | 0,07 | 13,50 |
| Sebastien Squillaci | 22 | 22 | 1 | 0,05 | 22,00 |
| Laurent Koscielny | 24 | 24 | 1 | 0,04 | 24,00 |
So the player who has ended first in this table is Henry Lansbury. But as he only played one game this gives a bit of a false image. But I left him in but I do think you should ignore his position as he hasn’t played since.
Now after this you will notice that Robin is out of position in both league tables – appearing below the position his number relates to. This is because the table was drawn up before the Wigan game and then his numbers updated after that. I’ve left the position in to give a clue as to what a difference that performance at saturday made. You can see that prior to saturday he would have been in third place (leaving aside Lansbury) and now he is top.
Before saturday we have again Samir Nasri in the “real” first place. He scores one goal in every 2 games he is playing this season. Not a bad return I would say. He surely is worth his money.
And shortly behind him in the table before saturday is Theo Walcott. He almost scores the same number of goals. In third place before Wigan, but now top of the league after that match we have Robin Van Persie who is just starting his season and who is starting to find his best form back.
And then we go one step further and I have tried to see how many minutes a player needs to score. The table above doesn’t give the whole picture, because a player could have 22 games coming on as a sub in the last 5 minutes. So it would be a bit unfair to this player to compare him with another player who has been playing 22 games for 85 minutes. So here is the table in which we tell you how many minutes a player needed to score a goal.
| Player | Ap | min total | Gl | Minutes needed |
| Henri Lansbury | 1 | 90 | 1 | 90,00 |
| Theo Walcott | 12+10 | 1157 | 10 | 115,70 |
| Robin van Persie | 8+7 | 801 | 8 | 100.12 |
| Samir Nasri | 23+5 | 2053 | 14 | 146,64 |
| Nicklas Bendtner | 8+7 | 723 | 4 | 180,75 |
| Carlos Vela | 3+10 | 586 | 3 | 195,33 |
| Marouane Chamakh | 23+6 | 2013 | 10 | 201,30 |
| Cesc Fabregas | 17+5 | 1514 | 7 | 216,29 |
| Andrey Arshavin | 23+6 | 1906 | 7 | 272,29 |
| Alex Song | 26+1 | 2305 | 5 | 461,00 |
| Abou Diaby | 7+2 | 681 | 1 | 681,00 |
| Jack Wilshere | 24+3 | 1951 | 2 | 975,50 |
| Bacary Sagna | 23+1 | 2088 | 2 | 1044,00 |
| Sebastien Squillaci | 22 | 1980 | 1 | 1980,00 |
| Laurent Koscielny | 24 | 2079 | 1 | 2079,00 |
And again we find Henry Lansbury in first place. But no offence Henry but I will leave you out of my comments.
Before Wigan we had in first place Theo Walcott. If you take the real minutes played by the players than it shows that Theo is the one who scores the most goals.
And then in second place we had Robin Van Persie – but now following that hat-trick he is actually top. Closely followed by Samir Nasri our overall top scorer. For the Bendtner dislikes also take notice of the high position we find our Danish player.
I also do have a feeling that Carlos Vela could be a good finisher if he would get a run of games. Let us hope he finds such a run at Arsenal or at another club on loan in the next months. Some have given up on him, I’m not one of them.
I think as we have scored most goals so far in all competitions we can be confident about our goal scoring possibilities. And remember that the players who needed the least minutes on the pitch to score goals have been out with injuries for a while this season. If we can keep them fit together with our top scorer from last season (Fabregas) who also have had his share of injuries this season, we should be able to score a lot of goals.
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interesting walter. i wonder what the assists look like then combined with the goals
i know nasri’s teammates have largely let him down when he finds them in space. he should have more assists than 3
so who is most productive in terms of goals+assists?
i’m too lazy to find out, that’s why i come to untold! 😉
nice briefing walter the father of accurate information.
Walter, I’d say these tables go further to show just how good van Persie is. Coming back from injury, he has taken a minimal time to get back to his sublime best. I love this player.
He is like the rarest of rare flowers which don’t last very long but give you immense pleasure while they do.
Ahh, I went all Bobby Frost back there. Anyway, my fingers are in a perpetual state of crossed ever since he’s come back. I never want him to be injured again!
@super sam: You may be surprised but I’d say Andrei Arshavin would be somewhere very near the top in that list.
All I know is Bac has scored more goals this season from open play then Wayne Looney.
/thread
Very interesting. So many fans say that we need a ‘proper goalscorer’, but just look at Walcott and RVP’s minutes-per-goal numbers. They’re both banging them in very regularly. That partnership has the capacity to be incredibly prolific. Add in Nasri’s contribution and that is a frightening attacking trident! The goals can come from any of the three.
Like super sam, I’d also be interested in a combined goals+assists table, I suspect Arshavin would then rocket up the table in the ‘minutes-per-goal/assist’.
nice one walter!!
please tell Wenger this cup means alot to us
What is interesting as well after the Wigan game, we have 4 players in double figures! Thats like having two 20 goal per season strikers and its just January. Wenger’s philosophy makes the need for a 20 goal a season striker redundant.
Slowly but surely, we will have options who will help us adapt to different plans if Plan A is not working. We are already at the cusp of having a well rounded squad. The influx of youngsters coming through is going to make us formidable in the near future.
good stats, Walter. I like Bendtner’s stats – considering he doesn’t get a consistent run in the side he does well, and general wisdom seems to be that a goal every other game is a good return from a striker.
12 assists for ARshavin this year I believe is the total.
Great statistics Walter.
What I find interesting as well is by scoring a goal last night Kocielny improved his position little 2 goals in 26 matches so that means him needing 13 matches (and that is better than Wilshere) while goal by Cesc makes no change in his position as it’s 8 goals in 24 matches, so match needed is 3.
great post