By Tony Attwood
- The draw for the next round and predicting the season from five games played
- Arsenal are bottlers and referees have no idea what they are doing
In 2019, Mikel Arteta joined Arsenal with the club at the time having the 13th worst defence in the league, having conceded twice as many goals as the top team in the league, and only nine goals fewer than the bottom club.
By the end of the season, Arsenal’s defence had improved somewhat, and it was only the eighth-worst defence in the league. Not wonderful, but a fair achievement in just over half a season and with only one winter transfer window to help recruit anyone.
A year on, at the end of the 2020/21 season, Arsenal suddenly emerged as the club with the third-best defence in the league. An astonishing turn around.
However, at the end of the next season, 2021/22, Arsenal sank back down the defensive table to eighth again, having let in 48 goals, significantly up from the 34 of the season before. So what was going on?
Well, basically, the focus was on changing tactics and reworking the whole approach of the team. Between 2020/21 and 2022/23, goals scored went up by 65% while the goals conceded stayed pretty much the same.
Then attention switched to the defence and the goals conceded total, which had been sitting in the top 30s and low 40s for a number of seasons. The number dropped between 2022/23 and 2023/24 by about a third.
Now, as we know, that magnificent goal tally of 91 goals scored in 2023/24 sank to 69 in 2024/25 as opposition defences realised that the only way to stop Arsenal was to clatter into our players. Refs did little to stop this, and the injuries shot up to a level far higher than any other club in the league was receiving (27 major long-term injuries compared with 21 for the next highest club total.)
This left the problem: how to get the goal balance up, without having the players spend half the season in the treatment room.
To solve this dilemma, the starting point has to be the fact that there is no rule about how many goals it takes to win the league. Nor indeed how many goals it takes to come second. In 2023, Arsenal came second, scoring 88 goals. In 2024, it was second again with 91 goals scored. Last season, as you will recall, it was second for a third successive time but with just 69 league goals achieved. That was four fewer than 2018/19, when Arsenal came fifth!
What’s more, in 2018/19, Arsenal had Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang playing, and he knocked in 31 goals. Yet as I say, Arsenal came fifth. And in fact, the following season, Aubameyang got just two fewer (29) while Arsenal slipped down to eighth.
So goals don’t automatically mean a title win, or even coming in second place, as we saw last season. A drop from 91 goals to 69 from one season to the next and yet still the club came second.
But we can work out from these figures what will happen this season. And certainly if Arsenal continue as they have been doing thus far this season, the number of goals scored will rise from last season’s 69 to 76. So we can expect the media to go back to their old hobby horse of Arsenal needing a new striker. Unless of course, our new signings realise that they have to beat the opposition and the referees.
However, that’s not all there is, of course, since goals conceded are also an issue. Although if Arsenal continue at the present rate, they will end up having let in 15 goals, giving a goal difference of +61!!!
Last season, Liverpool’s goal difference was +45, and the season before, +44, while in 2022/23, Manchester City as Champions, got a goal difference of +61.
Which is by chance exactly the goal difference Arsenal will get if they carry on at the rate as established in the opening five games of the season.
Now my point here is that as the tables above show, you do not need a mega-scorring number nine to get the sort of high number of goals in a season Arsenal got in the two seasons before last. It is quite possible, and in fact easier, to achieve this by spreading the goals around.
Arsenal have scored 10 league goals in five games, which at the current rate will mean 76 goals at the end of the season. Still not at the total for the 2022/23 and 2023/24 season, but with a defence that has only let in two goals in five games, that would leave us with only 15 or 16 goals conceded in the whole season!
Last season, Liverpool won the league, letting in 41 goals. The season before, Manchester City conceded 34 goals. Go back to 2022, and both Liverpool and Manchester City let in 26 each.
In fact, going back through the records, the best defensive record I can find is Chelsea 2004/5 in which they scored 72 conceded 15, giving them a GD of +57. As I noted above, Arsenal are currently on track for 76 goals scored and 15 or 16 conceded. Enough to win the league.
