Arsenal: the fouls, the cards, the comparison with last season, and the team

By Tony Attwood

• There are signs that Arsenal are winning the battle against the eternally negative media
• The run of wins and run of defeats against Manchester C
• How the media are setting Arsenal up for a disaster?

Today, possibly for the first time, or at least one of the first times, a few journals are devoting time to reviewing the work of the referee for this weekend’s big match.   The approach of the articles is pretty much standard – that referees are doing a great job, that they know how to control the managers and the players, and everything is working well.  Nothing new to see.  No need for a fuss.

Which is ok if that is what you want to read, but it can become a problem when we get to articles such as that recently run by Sky, which says Arsenal’s attacking issues remain a big problem

That headline appeared on Sky’s website recently, so I thought I would offer their journalists, who are undoubtedly doing a valiant job trying to follow the dictates of Sky’s anti-Arsenal editorial policy, while making some sort of sense of what they write.   And here it is: a league table in the order, not of points gained but of goals scored.

 

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
2	Manchester City	31	19	7	5	63	28	35	64
1	Arsenal	32	21	7	4	62	24	38	70
3	Manchester United	33	16	10	7	58	45	13	58
6	Chelsea	33	13	9	11	53	42	11	48
5	Liverpool	32	15	7	10	52	42	10	52
8	AFC Bournemouth	33	11	15	7	50	50	0	48
7	Brentford	33	13	9	11	48	44	4	48

 

Now, what you might notice there is that not only are Arsenal just one goal behind Manchester City, (who are currently having a big luv-in with the football media), but also when we look at the top six clubs in terms of goals, Arsenal have scored 14 more than the sixth top-scoring club, which has played one more game.   

While of course, Arsenal also have the best defence in the league.

It is a detail, I know, and not that important really, but it is when details like that spring up all the time, one begins to appreciate the extraordinary pressure Arsenal, the players and management team are under from the media.   It is not so much that the media say things that are wrong (although they do often do that) but rather that they are misleading.

And so we might move on to asking….

Which club has the fewest yellow cards this season?  Arsenal.  (Tottenham have the most with just on double Arsenal’s number).  And just in case you were remembering that rush of red cards Arsenal got last season, Arsenal have had none this campaign.

And to add a little point of detail, last season the media went utterly beserk because Arsenal got six red cards, including that one when Declan Rice kicked the ball back two yards to the spot where a foul was committed, and got sent off for that.   This season, with the season not completed of course, Arsenal have not only the lowest number of yellow cards but also the lowest number of red cards (zero).

We might compare that total of reds with seven for Chelsea – more than Arsenal got last season, when the media was calling Arsenal an utter disgrace and the dirtiest team ever to set foot on a football pitch (or something like that), whle Chelsea still have five more games to get even more players sent off.   But strangely, while Arsenal’s total of reds last season was headline news, no one mentions Chelsea’s red total very  much.   Could there be some sort of bias here?

And that is not it.  Maybe we should ask, do Arsenal foul more than other teams?   No, they are 16th in the fouling table, committing 21% fewer fouls than the team with the most fouls committed.

So are Arsenal putting in tackles all day long, and thus slowing the game down?   No, Arsenal are pretty much mid-table for tackles.  Tottenham for example, commit 16% more tackles than Arsenal in an average game.

So where does all this “Boring Boring Arsenal” stuff come from?  Well, because of the quality of their defence, Arsenal have the fourth-highest possession rate in the league.   And although we should note that possession by itself is not generally a good thing unless it leads to a club being at the top of the league.   I’ll let you go and look that one up.

Anyway, the team…;.

The Standard go with 

Raya;

White, Saliba, Gabriel, Hincapie;

Zubimendi, Rice; Madueke,

Eze, Martinelli; Havertz

The Metro have

Raya;

White, Saliba, Gabriel, Hincapie;

Rice; Zubimendi, Eze,

 Madueke, Gyokeres  Trossard

And the Manchester Evening News has 

 Raya;

White, Saliba, Gabriel, Hincapie;

Zubimendi, Rice; Madueke,

Eze, Trossard;

Gyokeres.

So there we are.   We all know what we are hoping for.

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