West Ham v Arsenal. The home/away factor, plus shooting and cards

 

 

• Now everyone is following up our thoughts. For once, we’ve influenced the agenda. A bit.
• In Europe it is getting rather tight, but Arsenal are now the team in form

A nd from the Arsenal History site….

• 100 years since Chapman joined Arsenal: 10, Why Knighton had to go

By Bulldog Drummond

There is a feeling of buoyancy among many of us Arsenal fans as a result of the last two games.   Two matches, two wins, eight goals scored, one conceded.  But of course that was only two and the two games have hardly made an impact on the League table (not least since one of them was in Europe of course).

As matters stand in terms of the last six games table, Arsenal are very much not out of the woods yet, sitting fourth, one point behind ManC in second, but nine points behind Liverpool.  And Liverpool are thus far showing no signs of slipping up, with five wins and a draw in their last six.

West Ham on the other hand, are who we have to bother about tomorrow, and in the last six games they are the fifth-best team in the league, with three wins and a draw, plus two defeats.

 

Indeed if we compare Arsenal away with West Ham at home this season there is only one point and a couple of goals between the clubs.  Arsenal have a bit of an edge, but it is the slimmest of edges…

 

And yet I can’t but feel positive, even if it is just as a result of those last two games.  A sauntering 3-0 win over a Nottingham Forest team which up to that point were being talked up by the media not least because Edu has gone on gardening leave for six months.  Yet that amazing 1-5 win against Sporting, a club that had not dropped a single point for at least two hundred years (I may have got that figure wrong, but it was a long time) seemed to change all perceptions.

So on the face of it, using the metric of the last six games, which we have quoted for quite a few years before Arsenal games, this looks like a draw.   But it feels, in advance, nothing like a draw.

The big part of the upturn comes from the return of star players like Odegaard and Rice, although we must remember Arsenal still do have players out: Ben White, Gabriel Magalhaes and Takehiro Tomiyasu.   The first and last of those three we know all about but Gabriel remains a bit of a mystery.  He was hooked off the pitch because he felt discomfort, so that was that.

West Ham have four players out, two because of offences.  Mohammed Kudus was sent off and was then charged with violent behaviour after being sent off, and Edson Alvarez Velazquez is also suspended because of two yellow cards.  It is funny, when Arsenal had a player off for two yellow cards (as I am sure you will remember) it was the major story for weeks, but with WHAM it seems to pass us by.

Indeed after all the furore about Arsenal and cards, it is worth seeing what the discipline table looks like.  And we can know Arsenal are not going to be shooting away at the top of the charts, because the media has lost interest in the topic,

 

Team	Yellow cards	Yellow Position	Possession%	Possession Position
Chelsea	45	1	55.4	4
Manchester Un	33	5	52.8	7
Arsenal	29	10	51.7	10
Newcastle United	28	11	49.6	11
Tottenham Hots	28	12	59.8	2
West Ham Un	27	14	45.5	14

 

As we can see Arsenal and West Ham are about the same in terms of yellow cards, while (not much noticed by the media – and certainly not much noticed compared to the “3 red cards” furore).  Chelsea have 16 more yellows than Arsenal, but we don’t talk about that.

It is, in passing, interesting to see Tottenham’s high percentage level for possession.  Indeed they are second only to Manchester City in this regard, and yet neither club is doing as well as we might expect on seeing this figure.  Possession we are discovering is not everything.

But why doesn’t possession equal success?   Quite simply because of the value of the counterattack.  A club with a lot of possession constantly edges forward and tends to draw its own defence up the pitch.  That means that if their attack does break down, one accurate long pass forward will have the team that was defending suddenly onto the attack, with much of the opposition defence having been pulled forward to support the constant arrays of its own attack.

Nottingham Forest have been the great counter-attacking team this season, and indeed have had a lot of success with it, but as with all single-ploy teams, eventually, the opposition work out how to play around it.   I’m not sure Forest have another ploy that they can put in place. 

More anon.