How Liverpool beat Arsenal to the title and what Arsenal can do about it

 

 

• A “controversy” is hardly the word: how PL refs vary their approach
• Why Arsenal slipped this season, and the outstanding issues from the campaign

By Tony Attwood

There somehow seems to be a feeling around that Arsenal has come second by default, or perhaps that because it is the third season running that Arsenal has come second, and coming second is not something of which we should in any way be proud.   In which case, it is argued, the whole Arsenal approach is faulty, it should all be overthrown, and Arsenal should build a new team.

Now of course we all want Arsenal to win the league, but failing that, coming second in the League and being in the Champions League semi-finals surely isn’t that awful that everything needs to be changed.   But this view has largely been ignored by the media, because it is a positive Arsenal story, and those are rarely reported.  Arsenal having the best defence in the league this season (and not just by a goal or two) is not news.

Indeed I wouldn’t be surprised if the old anti-Wenger saying that, “Fourth is not a trophy”, when the club managed, year after year, (on a budget smaller than other clubs), to get into the Champions League, now mutates into “Second is not a trophy”.

But just to get down in black and white what Arsenal did achieve in a season of multiple injuries, here is the league table in goals against order.   

 

Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
Arsenal	37	19	14	4	67	33	34	71
Liverpool	37	25	8	4	85	40	45	83
Chelsea	37	19	9	9	63	43	20	66
Manchester City	37	20	8	9	70	44	26	68

 

And from this you might care to notice that Arsenal had the equal lowest number of defeats, the third-highest number of goals scored, and the second-best goal difference.  In essence to have caught Liverpool Arsenal simply needed to have turned six draws into wins – something that happened in each of the last two seasons, but was impossible with the multiple injuries this season.

We might also ask what Liverpool did to win the League.    And this is a really interesting question as it turns out, and again one I have not seen answered. For the numbers involved here are so weird that I had to go to a second source to check that there was not some sort of computer glitch going on.  In fact, even after checking the numbers look so strange I have had to check them again.

 

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
3	Liverpool 2024	38	24	10	4	86	41	45	82
1	Liverpool 2025	38	25	9	4	86	41	45	84

 

But as those numbers show, Liverpool have hardly improved from the 2023/24 season to the 2024/25 campaign.   They have turned on draw into a win, and nothing else.  The number of goals scored and conceded appears to be exactly the same!  In short they became champions not because of their improvements, but because Arsenal slipped back under the pressure of injuries.

 

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
2	Arsenal 2024	38	28	5	5	91	29	62	89
2	Arsenal 2025	38	20	14	4	69	34	35	74

 

In short, injuries meant that our goalscoring collapsed by 22 goals, which basically explains why the club moved from five draws in the 2023/24 season to the 14 draws of the 2024/25 season.

This indicates that in essence there is nothing wrong with Arsenal’s approach except an ability to keep injuries down.   We know that there is a very limited amount that referees will do to help in this regard, and that many teams now see the way to beat Arsenal is to go in against them very strongly.  So nothing can be done but get a bigger squad.

The impact of the injuries on Arsenal’s attack can be seen most graphically in this chart

 

Season	Goals	Shots pg	Yellow	Red
Arsenal 2023/4	91	17.3	62	2
Arsenal 2024/5	69	14.4	64	6

 

The goal tally declined because the number of shots declined, with Arsenal taking three fewer shots per game – which is significant considering the number of goals Arsenal scored in 2023/24.   And although we have touched on it before it is worth noting once again: the attitude of referees changed.   Whereas in 2023/24 and 2024/25 the number of yellow cards was almost identical (1.68 per game compared with 1.63 per game – which is to say 0.05 more yellow cards per game last season than the season before) the reds went up 300%, which clearly made Arsenal players more cautious.

Indeed this lunatic escalation in red card giving against Arsenal by PGMO only stopped when the entire media focussed on the numbers, and we started pointing out the unlikely nature of these stats – that is yellows staying the same but reds going up threefold.

When we compare Liverpool in the season just finished with 2023/24 what we find is that they managed to keep their goal level the same from fewer shots – which effectively means from fewer opportunities.  Meanwhile, they suffered no dramatic change in referee attitudes towards their tackling.

	Goals	Shots	Yellow	Red
Liverpool 2023/24	86	20.8	65	5
Liverpool 2024/25	86	17.1	65	3

 

So here is the difference: Liverpool committed more fouls than Arsenal, and got one more yellow card than Arsenal, but somehow Arsenal managed to get double Liverpool’s number of red cards.

Thus while Liverpool’s red cards came down by almost half from one season to the next, Arsenal’s red cards doubled.  Which is odd given that Arsenal’s defensive style, as noted in the yellow card total, remained almost exactly the same.

So the big question really ought to be not one of who will each club sign this summer, but rather, how will the referees react to Arsenal in 2025/6?