In terms of win-rate, how are Arsenal comparing with other top clubs?

 

 

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Those figures are bad, and bode ill for those clubs unless they can do something about it – such as signing a highly powerful and influential player who will pull the team around single-handedly, or have a coach who really knows what went wrong and works on doing something about it in the summer.

Of courrse, journalists don’t look at this sort of situation because they like to write their own tales of imagination with their own bias, or as in the case of the recent report about how much Chelsea were making from their recent games, from reports sent to them by the club.

I can’t prove it but my impression is that for some reason Arsenal does not feed ready-written Arsenal-friendly stories to the media as much as other teams, and so as a result the journos go looking for their own (invariably negative) tales.

And yet if Arsenal really wanted to do it, they could find positive stories to hit the press with day after day.  (After all, we publish enough of them here!)

For example, one could do a piece on how the top three have pulled away from the rest of the last 100 games.    True it is not a totally positive story, because Arsenal are behind Man City over the last 100 matches but even so, given this includes the last 24 league  games of 2021/2.  That, you might recall, was the season in which Arsenal started with three straight defeats in the league and had the media and bloggers calling for Arteta not actually to be sacked, but rather culled.

In fact, during the last 24 games of 2021/2 Arsenal won 15, lost eight, and drew one.  That is a win rate of 62.5%.  And that figure starts to give us a club about what is happening to Arsenal, for in the following season the win rate was 68.4% and last season it was 73.7%.  That is an amazing leap in form – and to show just how far the club has come in 2020/21 when the win rate was 47%.

To look at this another way, if we take the Arsenal win rate across the last two seasons and compare it with the teams rivalling Arsenal across those two campaigns we find that Arsenal have a win rate of 71.1%.   We might compare that with Liverpool who havea win rate across two seasons of 56.6% – although listen to the media and you’d have thought it was Liverpool who were storming ahead and challenging Man C.

Newcastle had a win rate of 48.7%.  Tottenham who are so often talked up by the media had a win rate of 52.5%.  Arsenal on 71.1% are not just ahead, but way ahead.

Now of course I have left Manchester City out of these calculations thus far because we all know they have bought themselves a superb squad through having unlimited access to finance, and through having undertaken 115 activities which, to say the least have caused the rest of the League a certain amount of concern.  The Man City win rate is 73.7%.

And encouragingly, if we look back to last season Arsenal were on that win rate last season.  

Of course Manchester City have got to that win rate and stayed there, and that is what Arsenal have to do, as obviously we can’t rely on the rest of the League to do the right thing about Man C – although it would be nice if they did.

But 73.7% win rate is the target.which of course is exactly what Arsenal got last season.   More of the same will do me fine, because eventually someone is going to stop Manchester C spending anything they like no matter what.